It seemed like the days were getting longer, though perhaps that was because spring was creeping into summer, and that was the way that things went that time of year. The days had been getting longer and longer since December, but that wasn’t what was really getting Ben down. He was finding, as time went on, that there was more to do than he could handle, and worse than that was the fact that the money just wasn’t coming in the way that it used to. The family was mostly self-sufficient, but they still relied on the sale of small livestock and their produce stand to make it through some of the more difficult months, especially when winter rolled around and they were surviving off the canned food that Ruby put together and shelved in the cellar for the rougher months.
Ben was just thinking that maybe it was time to go big. Rabbits and chicks weren’t going to support his family, even if the chickens and the rabbits did produce both meat and manure that could be used to keep their gardens going. The family owned dairy goats and a single cow, of course, along with their three horses, which they kept for both work and pleasure, but that wasn’t going to do what he needed. They had the acreage from when his grandfather had been alive and left the property to him, but they didn’t have the livestock to breed and then to sell for meat or for dairy. He’d have to do the research to decide where they were going to go from here. He had a family to support, and Charlie was getting expensive.
There was a lot on his mind as Ben walked through the back door of the house and shuffled off his boots. It took him several moments to catch the raised voices, and he frowned, then sighed and shook his head. One, of course, belonged to his oldest, and the other was his wife, Ruby. He ran a hand back through his black hair and ruffled it, then rubbed at his temples before stepping through the back mudroom into the kitchen in his stockinged feet.
The kitchen was a war zone. Ruby stood on one side of the table and Charlie on the other. Charlie’s hands were clenched into tight fists, and her face was red with anger, tears streaking her cheeks. Ruby’s blue eyes were bright with her own fury, and her red hair looked unkempt. He’d begun to think of it as her “crazy look” that she got when things really deteriorated at home, especially during a schooling session.
“Charlotte Nicole, go to your room,” Ben said to his daughter, keeping his eyes on his wife with a warning look. “I’ll straighten this out.”
He was tired. Damned tired. There was work to be done and the kids should have been spending more time helping him, but they’d spent too much time in the “real world” and gotten the impression that it was child labor for him to demand that they do chores around the homestead so that they could help to keep the family fed. So much for the citification of America, as far as Ben was concerned. He’d rather stay here and raise the kids where they’d learn real values, not the things that they were being taught in public schools these days. Who you were as a person was a reflection of the things that you valued; Ben had learned that the hard way. And now, as he watched his older daughter acting like a spoiled brat, he realized that the things she valued were material. It saddened him, and he shook his head, finally turning to look at her. “I said go to your room, Charlotte. Don’t make me tell you again or you can stand in the corner with your pants down around your knees if you wanna keep pushin’ me, girl.”
It took an effort, but Ben managed to ignore his daughter when she rolled her eyes at him and headed for the stairs. He took a deep breath, seeking to find his center, then he turned his attention to his wife, cocking an eyebrow at her. “So, do you want to tell me what’s goin’ on this time?” Fights between Ruby and their older daughter were pretty typical, and it didn’t surprise him to walk in on the two of them fighting. It was always up to him to get control over the situation, since Ruby’s temper was hotter than anybody else in the family. He’d have a talk with her, then have a discussion with his daughter, laying down discipline to one or both as he felt it necessary to do so.
Ruby sighed and shook her head, and Ben closed his eyes, taking a deep, calming breath as he pulled out one of the chairs and sank down into it. Finally he opened his eyes and looked up at his wife, following her with his eyes as she slowly sat down in her own chair. “I don’t like to come in from working in our gardens to find that the two of you have been fighting, an’ you know it, Ruby. There’s no supper ready, an’ I’m exhausted. I need your help out there workin’ our land, an’ if you can’t, that’s fine. But I’d appreciate it if the stuff at home was gettin’ done, Ruby. So you wanna tell me what stopped supper from bein’ ready? Cause you know full well that we can’t afford to order somethin’ in.”
“No Sir,” Ruby said, shaking her head. “An’ I’m sorry ‘bout that, Benny. I was about to put a casserole in the oven when Charlie came in here an’ started with her demands. I’ve got a splittin’ headache an’ I don’t think I can take much more of this.” Ruby sighed, shaking her head. “She wants to go out for a date into town on Saturday with that boy Greg that she’s been seein’. I don’ like him, Ben. I said ‘no’ an’ that’s when she started yellin’ about how I was bein’ unfair an’ she was gonna ask you. Cause she thinks that you’re gonna go against what I’m sayin’.”
“Well then she’s got another thing comin’ if she asks me to go out on that date,” Ben told his wife. “That boy’s bad news an’ I ain’t gonna have her hangin’ with him. I ain’t ready to be a grandfather just yet,” he added with a little chuckle.
“So that’s what this was all about?” Ben asked, becoming serious as his wife stood up to finally get the casserole into the oven. She turned once she had finished the task, leaning against the stove and crossing her arms over her chest. Ben raised his eyebrows, and she dropped her arms. “You two had this big fight over her not bein’ able to go on a date this weekend?”
“It always starts with one thing an’ goes on from there,” Ruby said, shrugging her shoulders. “First it was because she wasn’t allowed to go on the date, an’ then she wanted her own horse, an’ then she needed a new dress. An’ I told her that until she’s contributing to the family, she’s not gonna have those things. They cost money, an’ it’s money we don’t have right now. I swear to you that kid thinks that money grows on trees.”
Ben felt a twinge of regret. For the past five years he’d been sending money to his ex sister in law to help support her children, since his brother Raphael hadn’t been supporting them himself. Though he had dropped his payments to five hundred dollars a month, it was still money that would help to give his own children the things that they wanted, and not just the things that they needed. “We’ll talk about her gettin’ a horse if she gets her grades up an’ starts doin’ more work around the homestead. I don’t think she’s near responsible enough for a pet of her own,” Ben told his wife.
For a moment Ben said nothing, then he shook his head at Ruby. “When I came in here, I heard two voices yellin’. You wanna tell me what you were doin’ yellin’ at our daughter? Cause I gotta tell ya, Ruby, it ain’t just about her bein’ respectful an’ doing what she should. Some of that’s on you, an’ she’s learnin’ from your example. You oughtta know that by now.”
Ruby groaned, her head rolling back on her neck, and it struck Ben that she acted a lot like Charlie did. Or maybe it really was that their daughter was learning too much from Ruby. “That’s exactly what I’m talkin’ about. You act like than an’ then she does too. She’s disrespectful to you an’ she’s disrespectful to me an’ I’ve about had it. I work way too hard runnin’ this place to have the two of you constantly throwin’ it up in my face!”
“You don’t know what it’s like bein’ home with Charlie all day!” Ruby snapped back. Ben could tell that she was frustrated, but his own temper rose with her tone, and he pushed back from the table, his chair scraping against the hard wood beneath it.
“I know she’s my daughter, an’ I know I love her no matter what she does an’ how she behaves,” Ben told his wife. “An’ I know that hearin’ you talk like that would probably hurt her feelin’s, even if she doesn’t show it. An’ I think that my wife needs as much a lesson in respect as my daughter does. So we’ll be talkin’ before bed tonight, I can guarantee you that.” He wanted to make sure that he was going to have sufficient time to deal with his wife when he laid down the law for her. Right now, his daughter needed him, and he was starting to think in more ways than one.
“You think about that,” Ben said to his wife as he stood up, staring hard at her, his blue eyes steely as he shook his head and turned to leave the kitchen. “I’m gonna go have a talk with our daughter. An’ no, I ain’t gonna tell her she can go on a date. I won’t contradict you that way, Ruby. But I’d appreciate it if you’d return the favor an’ show me a bit of respect.”
Because he didn’t want to give his wife a chance to launch into a full attack on him when he was already agitated, Ben went out of the kitchen without turning another look in her direction. At the bottom of the stairs, he hesitated for a moment, listening to the music pumping down the steps from Charlie’s room. He took a deep breath, reminding himself that she was sixteen, vulnerable, and sensitive. He would never quite understand girls, but he loved his to death. Sometimes that meant putting up with things that he thought were downright stupid, like the fact that the women in his family didn’t seem to quite grasp the concept of respect.
Behind him, the front door opened and closed, and he could hear the excited chattering of his younger daughter as she came in from some chore outside. He smiled to himself, reminded that they made him proud all the time, even when there were times that he thought he could wring their necks.
Once he had braced himself, Ben started up the stairs, walking up them slowly. Outside Charlie’s door, he took another deep breath, then knocked hard on the door, wanting to make sure that he was heard over the blaring hip hop that she was listening to. The lyrics made him cringe, but he and Ruby had decided to allow their daughters to express themselves through their music, and, within reason, in how they dressed. Thankfully, he didn’t think that either of their children had made poor choices.
When the door opened, Ben sighed. His daughter’s cheeks were streaked with tears, her eyes red, her hair a mess. “Can I come in?” he asked her as gently as he could. They both knew that hew as here for discipline, and that tended to make things difficult. But he didn’t want her to feel unsafe talking to him, either, and he had always tried to be an approachable father, even when he had to correct his daughters, or, for that matter, his wife.
Charlie made a face and moved out of his way, so Ben passed her into the room and then went to sit down on her bed, turning his head to look at his daughter where she was still standing in the doorway. “I’d like to know what happened with Mama,” he told her gently. “Your side of the story. I didn’t get much from her, but I know that the two of you were yellin’ at one another pretty hard, an’ you know that ain’t allowed, Charlie. Not for neither of you, an’ I’m gonna be havin’ a talk with your mother, too. But I wanna know what got this thing started. An’ I wanna know what I can do to help.”
His daughter slammed the door, and Ben winced, but he didn’t say anything for right now as she leaned against it and crossed her arms over her chest, glaring hard at him. “Mom’s a bitch,” she said, and he winced again, then tried to clear his expression. That, too, would be something that they could talk about a little bit later. For right now, Ben focused his attention on his daughter as she continued to talk. “I asked her if I could see Greg on Saturday an’ she said no. Then she said I shouldn’t even bother to talk to you about it cause you’re just gonna say no anyway. She called him a bastard an’ some other nasty names an’ said he’s no good for me.”
“Is he?” Ben asked as calmly as he could. “Good for you, I mean.”
Charlie shrugged her shoulders. “I dunno. I don’t care, either. I like him, and it’s fun when we’re together. It’s so boring here. I hate it and I wish that we could just move back into the city! Mom’s always on my case, and everybody knows you like Rissa better’n me!”
Ben could see that his daughter was becoming defensive, and he didn’t like it particularly. He took a deep breath and shook his head. “Rissa an’ I get along better’n you an’ I do because she’s younger an’ ain’t goin’ through all this puberty like you are, an’ she doesn’t act out like this, Charlie. You should be learnin’ by now that your family wants to spend time with you, but ain’t nobody want to hang out with you while you’re yellin’ at ‘em an’ makin’ ‘em feel like you don’t want ‘em around. Stop this right now. If you can’t talk to me with respect, then we’re done talkin’, an’ we can start the part I know you ain’t gonna like. You got somethin’ to say, you apologize an’ you say it nicely.” Ben paused, then added, “I’m listenin’.”
“Okay,” Charlie said, huffing a breath in through her nose. “I’m sorry, Daddy.” Ben was pretty sure she knew that she was in trouble from the incident in the kitchen, and he knew that probably had something to do with the reason why she changed her tune so quickly. “I’m just upset because Mama said those things about Greg. I like him. He’s fun to be around. And I’m only gonna be sixteen once and I’d like to have some fun while I still can!”
“I can appreciate that, Charlie,” Ben said slowly. “Livin’ on a farm is hard work an’ I can understand how you might want to go back to the city. Sometimes I wish that we could go back to the city. But this is our live now, baby. It’s somethin’ that we’re all gonna have to get used to. I love you, an’ I love your sister an’ your Mama to death, but with things bein’ the way that they are, this is our life now. You’re gonna have to get used to it. An’ in the meantime, we’ll see about you gettin’ to spend some more time with your friends in the city.” Ben hesitated, then shook his head. “But not this weekend. Not when Mama said ‘no’ an’ not with the way that you been actin’ right now. You wanna have that time, you’re gonna have to start contributing to the homestead, baby girl. I know it ain’t easy, but life ain’t the same as what it was before. We’re all adjusting these last two years. You need to make adjustments too.”
As he watched, Ben could see the emotions flicker across his daughter’s face before she finally just gave a little nod of her head. “Okay,” she said weakly, making Ben smile. They’d come a long way in the last two years, and he really thought that Charlie was learning. If he could get Ruby to stay off her case, he thought that he’d have a very mature sixteen year-old daughter. He was proud of her, though he knew that he didn’t tell her that enough.
Now Ben smiled up at his daughter and nodded his head. “I’d been plannin’ on givin’ you a good spankin’ for that fight with your mother, Charlie, but you know what? I think maybe you’re learnin’ somethin’. I think we can skip it this time. But that don’t mean you ain’t gonna be punished. This weekend, you’re gonna help me in the barn, muckin’ out all the stalls for the horses an’ our other animals. I want you to spend that time thinkin’ about responsibility an’ how you can earn some of the privileges that you think are rights. Cause you goin’ out with Greg ain’t a right, baby girl. That’s a privilege an’ you only go if Mama an’ I say that you can.”
It took a moment before Charlie nodded her head. “Yes Sir,” she told her father.
He could see that she was breathing heavily and struggling to keep her emotions in check, so Ben stood up and crossed to his daughter, putting his hands on her shoulders and kissing her forehead. “I’m proud of you, baby girl,” he told her, tucking a strand of short dark hair behind her ear. “Sometimes it ain’t all your fault you’re fightin’ with Mama an’ I know it, so I’ll be talkin’ to her too. You done good acceptin’ what I told you. Makes me proud.”
Ben kissed Charlie’s head again, then opened the door and headed for the stairs to check on what was going on with his wife and his younger daughter.
***
Supper was only ten minutes over when the first crack of thunder sounded. Ben glanced around at his family. “Rissa, the goats put up an’ the tarps up on the rabbits?” he asked his younger daughter.
“Yes Sir, Daddy,” Clarissa said.
Ben nodded in approval and smiled at his younger daughter, then turned to his wife. “You wanna go grab the dogs an’ bring ‘em in for the night? I don’t like leavin’ ‘em out in this kind of a storm.” There were three dogs, two border collies and the Rottweiler that the family kept for alarm and protection. “They can stay inside tonight. Maybe even make a fire later on an’ we can all sit down an’ watch some television.” Because they home schooled, the bedtime schedule was a bit more flexible than it might have been otherwise, especially since neither child worked the morning chores (yet).
“Charlie, did you get the horses in like you’re supposed to?” Ben asked, turning to his older daughter. It was one of her chores to take care of grooming the horses, and one of the steps in doing so was to bring them in. Most of the heavier work was done by Ben and sometimes by Ruby, so that the girls didn’t have to strain themselves too much unless they were being punished.
Next to him, Charlie shifted a bit in her seat. “Yes Sir,” she told him. Ben thought that he noted a bit of nervousness in his daughter’s voice, but he pushed that out of his mind and nodded to Ruby.
“Go on an’ get the dogs. I’m gonna go on out with Rissa an’ check to make sure that the rabbits are all secured up for the night. Charlie, you get started on the dishes. We’ll be back in about twenty minutes. You should be done by then an’ I can make us all a fire an’ we can watch television.”
It would take Ruby a while to find the dogs and bring them in, since they had a free rein of the yard and Buddy, their Rottweiler, loved the rain. He’d be the hardest to track down, while the collies were likely to be near the barn, hoping to be let in.
Standing up from his chair, Ben crossed to his wife, kissed her, then reached out to ruffle Charlie’s hair. He gestured for Rissa, and then headed to the back door, where he stepped into his boots, then stooped to tie them. “Get your boots on,” he said to his younger daughter. “I don’t wanna worry about you soakin’ through your normal shoes. Shouldn’t be wearin’ any in the house anyway, sweet girl. Get those boots on an’ we’ll check on the rabbits.”
The rain had only just started, which was lucky, because there wasn’t a lot of mud. Ben kept his head down as he trekked out with Clarissa behind him, heading back to the area behind the garage where they kept the rabbit hutches. “You got them covered up, baby!” he said, grinning at Rissa. “I’m real proud of you for doin’ what I ask. You’ll make a good homesteader one day.” He smiled again, shaking his head at the thought that his younger daughter was his little redneck, then he checked the tie downs to make sure that the tarp would protect the rabbits and their straw from the rain and the wind. He reached out to pull Rissa into a hug, holding her against his body, and then started back toward the house, fighting the wind.
That was when Ben heard a cry, and a whinny from one of the horses. He looked up, turning his head and frowning as he looked toward the pasture, and then his eyes went wide. “Charlie!” he exclaimed as his daughter skittered out of the way of a rearing horse. “Get on the other side of the fence!” He let go of Rissa’s shoulders, turning to her only for a second. “Go help your mother get the dogs an’ get inside!” he told her, then took off at a run toward his older daughter. “Get out of there, Charlotte!” he shouted, reaching under the fence rail to grab her by the collar and pull her the rest of the way out. Ben took a step back himself, shaking his head.
The storm was making the horses nervous, and Ben shot his daughter a look, then slowly went to the gate, crooning to the anxious horse as he did so. When he got close enough, he grabbed the halter and then led the gelding toward the barn, leading him inside and then getting him settled into his stall. He checked quickly to make sure that the stall was clean, then scratched his head and groaned. He’d have to feed the horses tonight, since Charlie hadn’t done it. He expected that he’d find her up at the house when he was finished, but as he was leaving the barn, he met her coming in with one of their two mares, her head down.
Shaking his own head, Ben went to grab the other mare. She was calmer than the gelding had been, but still nervous as he led her into the barn, then got her settled into her stall. He checked her over, checked her hooves, then grabbed a pick out of his back pocket to pick a rock out of her hoof. As he finished up, he heard the sound of Charlie distributing the oats, and he went to stand in the hall of the barn, staring at his daughter. “Well?” he said to her. “What have you got to say for yourself, Charlotte?”
For a long time the sixteen year-old didn’t say anything, just staring down at the ground at her feet. She kicked at the concrete floor, then shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t put the horses up like I said,” she said finally.
“I can see that, Charlotte,” Ben said. He shook his head, then sighed heavily and crossed to his daughter. He put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a tight squeeze against himself. Although he was angry with his daughter, he loved her dearly, and there was enough harshness in the house with her and Ruby snapping at one another all the time. “Let’s get on inside before the storm really hits an’ we can talk about this in there. I’m sure your sister’s got Mama filled in on what’s happenin’, Charlie. An’ I’m pretty sure you’ve got a good idea yourself that you ain’t gettin’ out of it this time. Come on. Let’s go.”
Ben didn’t give Charlie a chance to hang back, but instead put his arm around her shoulders and guided her out of the barn. She was small for her sixteen years, and he tucked her against him firmly as he rushed for the house. “Hurry up!” he shouted over the thunder. The rain was really starting to come down now and he didn’t want either of them to get wetter than they needed to. He’d forgotten his jacket, and she was only wearing a t-shirt and already beginning to tremble against him. They were going to need that fire after all.
Once he had pushed his way through the back door, Ben called out to his wife. When she answered, he said, “Go on an’ get that fire started up! Charlie an’ I are gonna have a chat in my office. Rissa, go ahead an’ do the dishes for me baby,” he added when he saw his younger daughter at the sink. He didn’t say anything else about Charlie being in trouble because it was between him and her and he planned on making things as quick and quiet as possible, though he doubted that his daughter was going to make that particularly easy.
The office was down the hall from the living room, part of the original single-story building that had been added to over the century. Ben reached it, then opened the door and gestured for Charlie to go in ahead of him. “I’m going to go get you some dry clothing,” he told his daughter. “I want you to go stand in the corner. You might as well take off your jeans an’ your panties. You won’t be needin’ ‘em in a few minutes.” Though he was sure that Charlie had already known that she was in very serious trouble, he noticed the way that she stiffened, looking up at him with blue eyes filled with dread. Ben dropped a kiss onto her forehead, then pointed to the corner. “Go on. You’re soakin’ wet. I’m goin’ out for a minute, so you’ll have some privacy, an’ the corner will protect your modesty. I mean it, Char. Go.”
Ben left the office and headed for the laundry room, which was part of the mudroom. When his wife gave him a questioning look, he nodded for her to come with him, and then he entered, digging through the hanging laundry that had been washed and dried and which now hung waiting to be taken upstairs. “Charlotte didn’t put the horses up,” he told Ruby when he heard her enter the room behind him. “So she came out while we were out there to try to get them before I could notice. Amarillo reared up at her an’ I had to get him down an’ put away. She got the mares an’ got everybody fed, but I ain’t happy she lied to me.”
Turning to his wife, Ben sighed, then shook his head. “I don’t know what gets into her sometimes. I know she ain’t happy livin’ here an’ I suppose that some of that’s my fault. I shoulda thought about how this decision was gonna impact my girls. But she’s gonna have to get over it, Ruby. We got no choice now. We’re gonna make this work, cause that’s what we do. That’s what Nerys do.” He sighed, then ran his hands back through his thick black hair and shook his head. “I don’t know what to do with her sometimes.”
“Well I ain’t helpin’,” Ruby said with a sigh. “I mean, she an’ I fight like we’re cat an’ dog. An’ it ain’t makin’ it better for you, or for her. I know it, but it’s like... It’s like it’s somethin’ in our blood.”
“An’ we’ll be talkin’ about that, too,” Ben said. “You an’ me will have a chat tonight before bed. I talked to Charlie an’ I ain’t gonna have you antagonizin’ her, Ruby. She’s a good kid, even if you can’t see it right now. You owe her better than the way you been snappin’ at her an’ makin’ out that she’s doin’ so much wrong. She makes the right choices most of the time. I’d thank you to remember that.” He paused, then added. “An’ it’s the same blood coursin’ through her veins as is coursin’ through yours. She’s your daughter, Ruby, not an enemy.”
Turning, Ben grabbed a pair of sweat pants out of the clean laundry, then a t-shirt off a hanger and started out of the laundry room, leaving his wife to think about all that he’d said. They would, indeed, be talking about this situation later on. He wasn’t going to have his two girls fighting with one another that way all the time. If he had to start taking Charlie out with him when he did his chores, it might be good for her in more ways than one. Maybe if things continued as they were, he would take that into consideration, and possibly choose that path. He wanted what was best for his family, and so far it felt as though he was making a lot of bad choices.
With a heavy sigh, Ben let himself back into his office. He closed the door behind him, then turned on the light and crossed the room to close the blinds on the other side of the room, giving his daughter more privacy. When he turned to look at her where she stood in the corner, naked from the waist down, she was looking at him, her blue eyes liquid with tears. He glanced at one of the old wooden chairs tucked up against the wall, noting that she had folded her wet jeans and her panties on the chair, and then put her shoes on top of it. “I didn’t think to grab you any socks,” Ben said apologetically to his daughter as he carried her clean clothes to his desk, then bent to open one of the drawers, digging around inside for an appropriate tool for the work that he was about to do. A moment later he put a twelve-inch wooden ruler on the desk and then sat down in his chair, turning to look at Charlie. She’d turned back to the corner, and now Ben sighed again.
“So let’s start by talkin’ about why you lied to me.” Ben cleared his throat to let his daughter know that he wasn’t done talking, then he continued. “Seems to me you were worried about gettin’ yourself into trouble for not doin’ your chores an’ you thought that you’d be able to get the horses in before I could tell what you were doin’. An’ it seems to me that you weren’t really thinkin’ that one through, since I gave you somethin’ to do before I went to check on them rabbits.” Ben stared calmly at the back of Charlie’s head, then shook his head. “So tell me, Charlotte; what did you think was the worst thing that could happen if you told me the truth about not bringing the horses in?”
In the corner, Charlotte made a small, unhappy sound, and Ben closed his eyes, steeling himself. It was difficult for him to see any of his girls cry, and Charlotte, in particular, could break his heart. She’d said earlier that Rissa was his favorite, but the truth was that Clarissa and Ruby were particularly close, and in spite of the fact that she wasn’t the baby, Charlie was special to Ben in a way that he could never explain. It was a father’s bond with his first daughter, and he didn’t try to explain it to others. He loved Charlie in a special way that was reserved just for her. He didn’t love her more than Clarissa, just differently.
“Daddy...” Charlie said after he was silent for several long moments. “I didn’t want you to be disappointed in me,” she said finally, her words choking in the end. Ben could see from behind that she was crying, her shoulders trembling as she fought sobs, and he sighed, then got up and went to his daughter, putting his hands on her shoulders and giving them a squeeze, then turning her around and pulling her firmly into his arms, hugging her tightly against him.
After a moment, Ben pulled back from his daughter and brushed the dark brown hair out of her face, searching her blue eyes. “Baby girl, I ain’t disappointed in you. I’m disappointed in the choice that you made. I’m frustrated that you’re askin’ me to let you do things when you ain’t doin’ the few things I’m askin’ of you. But you? You ain’t a disappointment. I’m proud of you every day, Charlie. Even when you do things that don’t make sense to me.”
Ben sighed deeply, then pulled Charlie close and kissed her forehead. “Baby girl, I love you, but you’re gonna have to be punished for this one. I let you off the hook earlier because you done me proud by doin’ what I asked without havin’ a fit. I think you’re growin’ up, I really do. But I’m worried that this one is gonna keep happenin’, so we’re gonna talk about it. First you’re gonna get yourself a good, sound spankin’, an’ then you an’ me are gonna talk about what happens next. I already told you that you got chores this weekend, but I think that you an’ I are gonna be workin’ together from now on. You’ll go where I go, so I can show you how to do the chores you been avoidin’. Maybe you just don’t know how an’ don’t wanna ask for help. I dunno. But I also know that you an’ Mama have been snappin’ at one another an’ maybe it’s best you wasn’t spendin’ so much time around one another right now. I got plenty of time to spend with you if you can spend it with me doin’ the things I gotta do. Understand?”
“You’re always busy, Daddy,” Charlie said in a small voice. “Since we moved here, you always got somethin’ to do.”
“That’s right. But that don’t mean I ain’t got time for you, Charlie. Now, one big difference is that you can come with me when I’m workin’. You couldn’t do that before. An’ maybe we can even do some of your schoolin’ while we’re out workin’. That way you only have to do the tests with Mama an’ you two won’t wind up gettin’ on each other’s nerves so much. What do you think?”
“Yes Sir, Daddy.”
Ben cupped his daughter’s face in his hands and looked deeply into her eyes, feeling as though his heart was reflected there. He sighed, then shook his head. “No, baby. I ain’t tellin’ you somethin’. I ain’t layin’ down a punishment. I’m askin’ if you’d rather be spendin’ that time with me instead of cooped up in the house workin’ on school with Mama. If you’d rather stay here, then we can do that, too. This is about you, not some mistake you made.”
Beneath his hands, Charlie shivered a little bit, and Ben pulled her into another tight hug, rubbing her back and gently tugging at the ends of her long brown hair. “I’d like that,” she said finally, and her voice choked again. Ben knew it was time to get the worst of this out of the way so that she could start relaxing again. He didn’t mean to make her wait, but he wanted to make sure, before he warmed up her bottom, that Charlie knew just how much he loved her. He kissed her forehead again, then gave her back a final rub. “Then let’s get your spankin’ over with so we can go watch some television with Mama an’ Rissa. I won’t wake you up tomorrow mornin’ for chores, but Saturday’s fair game. Understand?”
“Yes Sir, Daddy.” Charlie gave a weak nod of her head, and that was all that Ben needed. He was perhaps more ready than she was to just have this over with so that he cold relax with the family. Though he hated to admit to it, disciplining his wife and children was additional work that had to be done once work was done.
Standing up from his desk chair, Ben went to pull out the old wooden chair that he had placed against the wall. He put it in the center of the room, then sat down in it and reached for Charlie’s hand. She was already naked from the waist down, and there was naught to remove, so he simply tugged her forward between his knees, then sighed. “Charlie, reach for that ruler I’ve got on my desk, would you? I’m gonna be needin’ it.” It didn’t bother him to know that such a request increased Charlie’s dread of what was coming, or that it humiliated her. That was part of the punishment, and part of what made it effective. He wanted to make sure that she was never going to want to be in this position again.
Charlie turned, bending back a bit, barely snagging the ruler with her fingers, and Ben let go of her hand to give her more room to do what she needed to do. A moment later, his daughter was holding the ruler out to him, and Ben took it from her, then tapped it hard against his thigh in warning. “Well, Charlie. Let me make this clear: When I give you a chore to do, you get it done. If there’s some reason you can’t get it done, then you tell me before it’s too late an’ I’ll either help you or make sure that somebody else can do it. So you’re gettin’ punished for that. An’ you’re also gettin’ punished cause you lied to me, Charlie. This is gonna be a hell of a spankin’, just so you know. I don’t expect you’re gonna want to do much sittin’ when I’m done, but you’re gonna go on out there with Mama an’ Rissa an’ we’re all gonna choose a movie to watch together. An’ you’ll be nice about it too. You understand me?”
“Yes Sir, Daddy,” Charlie said again. There were tears in her big blue eyes, and her brown hair had fallen into her face. It made Ben sigh and shake his head. He hated having to punish his daughter so severely, but he knew that it was something that had to be done.
“Come on then, baby girl. Let’s get you over my lap so that we can get this nasty business done with. A good, sound spankin’ will get my baby back on the straight an’ narrow faster than anythin’ I know.” He only hoped that his words were true, because if they weren’t, Ben wasn’t sure that he knew another way. He’d been brought up with hard work and strict punishment, and now he was raising his own family the same way.
When Charlie hesitated, Ben reached for her hand again and guided her down over his lap, pulling on her hand with his left and using his right to push her down and into position. He adjusted her carefully, raising her bottom up over his right thigh and lowering his left so that her chest and shoulders were low and her bottom made an excellent target. “Hang onto the rungs of the chair if you need to, Charlotte. I expect you to keep yourself in position an’ to not go tryin’ to wiggle your way off my lap. You know it’s only gonna get worse for you if you try,” he added, wanting to make sure that his daughter understood what was going to happen to her, and how much it was going to hurt. He felt her body shift and knew that she was doing as he suggested. A little sob came from the direction of Charlie’s head, and Ben knew that they both wanted this over with as much as one another.
Using the ruler to pat at his daughter’s upturned bottom, Ben began his lecture anew. “Those horses are countin’ on you to do your chores, Charlotte. When the weather comes in like it’s doin’ right now, they need to be safe in that barn. Worse, because you waited until the last minute, you nearly got yourself killed. Nothin’ funny about that. You coulda saved a lot of time an’ a lot of trouble if you’d done your job in the first place. I’m disappointed in you, an’ you’re gonna have to prove to me that you can be trusted with your jobs again. I hate not bein’ able to trust you, baby girl.”
With that, the little pats became more aggressive, and then Ben raised the ruler and really brought it down hard on Charlie’s white bottom. The ruler made a rather odd sound, one that was unique to all spanking implements. It was a sort of a “thwack” from the thin, narrow length of wood. The reaction from Charlie was instantaneous, her body bucking beneath him, and Ben pulled her tighter against his body, wrapping his left arm more firmly around her side. “I’m only gettin’ started, little girl,” he scolded his daughter. You wanna get your breathin’ under control an’ really be thinkin’ about what you done wrong. You don’t want this to happen again any more than I do, now do you?” He applied the ruler again, this time a bit lower than the last smack of the dreaded wood, raising a narrow red line with puffy, darker red welts at the edges. He rubbed the ruler over her bottom, giving her a chance to regain her composure and to answer his question. He knew that she would want to, even though it didn’t require an answer. Charlie always tended to try to do her best to make things right when she’d done something wrong, and she’d really messed up this time.
“Y-yes Sir!” Charlie sobbed.
Ben nodded his head and rubbed his daughter’s back a little bit. “Well then, let’s get on with this thing,” he told her. This time, when he raised the hand that was holding the narrow makeshift paddle, Ben didn’t really hold back, and he didn’t give his daughter much time to think between smacks. Instead, he brought the ruler down an inch below his last mark, using more force than he had before and shaking his head. “If you think this hurts, you need to be thinkin’ about what coulda happened to you if that horse had gotten to you, Charlotte!” he told her, letting the ruler fall steadily in an even rhythm as he spanked down her bottom, an inch at a time. By the time that he reached Charlie’s thighs, her bottom was covered in narrow red lines and thin welts, and she was sobbing hard.
In spite of her cries, however, Ben was very proud of his daughter. She hadn’t tried to reach back and she wasn’t struggling against him, and he knew just how hard that had to be. So when he was halfway to Charlie’s knees, Ben stopped and patted her back. “I’m real proud of you, Charlie. You’re doin’ a great job. You learnin’ your lesson?” He was asking her, as much as for any other reason, to make sure that she was still breathing well enough to speak clearly. If she wasn’t, they were done. If she could speak to him (and he was sure she’d be able to), he would work his way back up her thighs and bottom before he was finished.
“Y-yes Daddy!” Charlie sobbed.
Ben paused to rub the sixteen year-old’s back for a moment, then sighed. “Half done,” he said. The announcement was met with a wail of dismay from Charlie, but Ben was determined to make sure that she understood the gravity of what she had done. “This part is for lyin’ to me about doin’ your chore. You or one of those horses coulda gotten bad hurt, an’ we need the horses, Charlotte. You remember that the next time you wanna skip out on one of your chores.” He shook his head, and then he began again, this time working his way up, covering the most recent marks first, doubling them up, and moving up from Charlie’s thighs to the fullest part of her bottom again. When he was finished, Ben lay one last, very hard thwack of the ruler against Charlie’s bottom, then he rubbed the ruler against it before leaning over and tossing it back onto the desk.
With his free left hand, Ben rubbed gently at Charlie’s back, trying to soothe her into a more even pattern of breathing. She was a mess, sobbing hard, making small whimpering noises of dread and he was beginning to think possibly even fear. “It’s over, baby girl,” Ben assured his daughter. “All done now. Daddy’s finished.” Still, he kept Charlie over his lap as she sobbed, wanting to get her calmer before he took her to her feet and then attempted to comfort her.
It took nearly five minutes before Ben thought that Charlie was ready, and then he gently guided her up and onto her feet, then reached for one of her hands, running his thumb over the back of it. With the hand that was free, Charlie wiped at her eyes and at her running nose, but didn’t reach back to rub her bottom. She knew better.
“I got you sweats,” Ben told his daughter. “I figured they’d be most comfortable. Why don’t you go put those on? An’ I’ll leave so that you can change your shirt. I’ll take them into the laundry room an’ get them goin’ for you. Then we can go find a movie to watch with Mama an’ Rissa, an’ you can apologize to your sister for her havin’ to do the dishes for you since you were out with the horses. Okay?”
When Charlie gave him a small nod, Ben stood up and wrapped his arms around his daughter, embracing her tightly and then kissing her head. “You go on an’ change your clothes. Bring ‘em out to me an’ I’ll take ‘em. You can stand in the corner while I get everythin’ settled an’ then, if you want, we’ll talk.” He nodded to her, brushed her hair back from her face, and then left the office so that she could change her clothes, rub her bottom, and maybe clean up her face a little bit. He felt for his daughter, and hated seeing her cry. It was even worse when he was the one who had made her cry, and he had to force himself to remember that it was her own doing that had gotten her into this situation in the first place. She deserved the spanking, and if it made her cry, well, that was part of her working through her guilty conscience, wasn’t it?
A few moments later, the office door opened, and Charlie passed her clothes out. Her head was down, and Ben could see that she was still crying. He turned before she could close the door again, taking the clothes in his left hand and using his right to cup her cheek gently. “Charlie,” he said softly. “I love you baby girl.” He bent to kiss her head again, then drew back, taking the clothes with him as he headed for the laundry room, expecting her to do as he had said and to put herself into the corner. He took the clothes into the laundry room, added them to their appropriate load, and then loaded that into the washer.
When he was finished, Ben headed back to his office. He knocked on the door, then pushed it open. Sure enough, Charlie was standing in the corner and sobbing softly to herself. She was fully dressed, and she had her hands still tucked up in front of her, not rubbing. Ben had to say that he was proud of her, but he didn’t voice the feeling. If she needed to rub, he wanted her to feel free to do it once the punishment was over.
“Come on,” he told Charlie, reaching out for her so that she could come to him for a hug. “Let’s have a quick cuddle so that we can find out what movie Rissa has picked out. I’m sure she’s already chosen something. How much do you want to bet it’s Ever After?”
“I hope it’s Flicka,” Charlie said. “I like that movie.”
Ben recognized the hint, but chose to ignore it. If she was going to have a horse of her own, there was going to have to be an income first, and then she was going to have to show that she was responsible enough to take care of a horse. Instead, he just hugged his daughter’s shoulders tightly, then wiped the tears from her face. “Come on,” Ben said to his oldest. “Let’s go an’ spend some time as a family. You can stay up tonight, but tomorrow you’re goin’ to bed early. Understand?”
“Yes Sir,” Charlie said, not for the first time that day.
***
Two hours later, Ben had taken Charlie up to bed and Ruby had tucked Rissa up. They swapped girls, each giving goodnight kisses, and then Ben met his wife in the hallway. “You know I need to turn in early. Especially after a storm like this, I’ve gotta check on the animals in the mornin’. So it’s time for us to have a talk,” he told Ruby. “Our room. Now, Ruby.”
Though his wife gave him a withering look, she obeyed the obvious instruction. Ben had naturally taken charge early on in their relationship, and though his father in law had teased him about it, the entire family (except, perhaps, for the children) knew that he was in charge of his wife and that meant that he sometimes disciplined her when he felt that it was necessary. Nothing was more important to Ben than the well-being of his family, and since he felt strongly that Ruby was setting a bad example for their older daughter, he wanted to nip this in the bud before it kept going and got out of control.
Ben gave his wife a few moments to prepare herself for their talk, then he followed her into the bedroom and carefully closed the door behind him. When he had done so, Ben crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow at Ruby. “You wanna tell me what’s goin’ on with you an’ Charlie this time. I got her side of the story, sayin’ that you’re tellin’ her Greg is a bastard an’ you don’t want him around her. I happen to agree that she’s too young to date, but you think your words might’a been a bit harsh there, Ruby?”
It had been an exhausting day, and Ben would have preferred to be relaxing instead of arguing with his wife. At times like this, he always knew that things would eventually deteriorate into an argument, and he wasn’t looking forward to the consequences of the argument any more than he was sure Ruby was. He was prepared when she lashed out angrily, and he just breathed deeply, seeking his calm center.
“You don’t know what it’s like bein’ with her all day, every day!” Ruby cried, throwing her hands up in obvious frustration. “She’s always askin’ for things that we can’t afford, an’ complainin’ about not being able to go into town. She provokes me, Benny! An’ then she gets upset when I react to her. What do you expect me to do?”
“I expect you to love our daughter, an’ to be an adult,” Ben snapped back. It was becoming increasingly difficult for him to contain his agitation with both his daughter and his wife, and his frustration from Charlotte earlier was now starting to spill over to Ruby. “Do you think that your choice of words didn’t hurt her feelin’s? Just ‘cause you don’t always see her react doesn’t mean ain’t hurt! I think she was prolly angry, and she was prolly yellin’ at you, but she’s a child, Ruby. An’ you’re supposed to be actin’ like her mother, not like her sister. She an’ Rissa don’t fight this badly. What has gotten into you?”
“You don’t understand!” Ruby shot back, her blue eyes dark and blazing with temper. “I ain’t allowed to say ‘no’. She’s always threatenin’ me that she’s going to tell you, or ask you, and then you’re supposed to be mad at me an‘ we’re supposed to be fightin’ just like we are right now. This is what she wants! For you to be gettin’ on my case an’ makin’ me cry!” And sure enough, there were tears in Ruby’s eyes.
Ben shook his head, sighing as he scrubbed at his black hair with both of his hands. He took a deep breath, calming himself, then shook his head and looked back up at his wife. He was about to say something when he heard a small knock at the door. He turned to it, then opened it slowly to find his younger daughter, blue eyes wide, dark hair mussed. “Are you guys fightin’?” she asked, looking from Ben to Ruby and then back to Ben. “I don’t like it when you fight.”
“We ain’t fightin’, sweetpea,” Ben told his daughter. He bent to kiss her cheek, then squeezed her shoulder. “Go on back to bed, baby. I’ll be in to tuck you back up in a little bit. I gotta talk to Mama about somethin’. Don’t you worry about a thing. We ain’t fightin’.”
Clarissa paused a moment in the door, then nodded her head and turned around. Ben waited until she had gone all the way to her room, and watched as she closed the door behind her, then he closed his own bedroom door and turned back to his wife.
“I don’t contradict you, Ruby. If you tell her no, then I don’t tell her yes on purpose. If she asks me, an’ I don’t know you told her no, then I might say yes. That’s a communication problem between us. Maybe we need to talk about everythin’ before we say yes or no. If that’s the case, so be it. That’s fine. But she ain’t gonna get a different answer from me than she got from you unless you ain’t tellin’ me what you’re tellin’ her.
“But this ain’t about Charlie. This is about you, an’ the things that you said to our daughter. I don’t ever wanna hear you raisin’ your voice to her like that again, an’ the next time that she tells me that you’re sayin’ things about her friends like that -- things that ain’t warrented, Ruby -- then we’re gonna be havin’ a much more serious discussion than what I got planned tonight. You understand me, young lady?”
“What do you have planned?”
Ruby’s voice was nervous, and Ben stepped forward, putting his hands on his wife’s shoulders and pulling her to him in a tight hug, then whispered in her ear, “I’m going to spank your bottom until it’s good and hot.” He nipped her ear, then pulled back from her and went to sit down on the bed. He patted his lap. “Come on, little girl. Let’s get that skirt up, those panties down, and see how pink we can get your bottom for you. Maybe next time Charlie’s pushin’ at you, you won’t take the bait.” He cleared his throat, hoping that his wife would take the lesson this time, so that he wouldn’t have to fight with her the next time. What was coming, the part where she bared her backside and, he hoped, went willingly over his lap... Well, that part was rather exciting, as he saw it.
Even before the objections started, Ben could sense them. He shook his head and reached for his wife’s hand. She didn’t enjoy this nearly as much as he did, and that, he thought, was part of the point, and part of why he enjoyed it as much as he did. He tugged her close to him, then slowly began to raise her skirt. “If you won’t do it, Ruby, I will,” he told his wife as he slowly got her skirt all the way up, then tucked it up into the waistband. It was long, and still provided some protection, but he had sufficient room to reach under it and tug down her panties. She was wearing one of those black lacy numbers that did things to him, and he shifted, trying to ease the tightness in his jeans. With only a momentary second thought, he unbuttoned his own jeans, adjusted himself, and then tugged her panties down. “Might as well take these off,” he said, smiling up at Ruby. “I don’t think that you’re going to be needing them when I’m done.” He guided them down to her ankles, then helped her step out of them, waiting while she toed off her shoes.
When Ruby was sufficiently undressed, Ben guided his wife down and over his lap. He adjusted her position, giving her a bit more “wiggle room” than he had done with Charlie, and then he slowly ran his hand up her right thigh, gripping the firm, solid flesh there and then slowly pushing her skirt up over her hips. He gathered what was left of it in his left hand, then pinned her down over his lap. “Just my hand today. But another argument like this with either of the girls an’ I’m gonna tell you that it’ll be your hairbrush. Don’t test me on this, Ruby.”
Ben rested his hand on his wife’s bottom, spending a moment just feeling it. He liked to do this, to tease her, spending a few moments before he started by massaging the flesh a little bit. He felt that this made her more tender in this area, causing his spanking to have better results. He wanted her blood flowing, in more ways than one. He casually ran his hand back down her right thigh, then up her left, letting his fingers explore where her legs had parted just slightly to give him access. “Wet already?” Ben said. He tutted, then shook his head. “I guess you’re ready to start then, aren’t you?”
“No!” Ruby cried, but Ben just laughed softly and raised his hand, bringing it down with a resounding smack on his wife’s tender, pink bottom. The massaging had done what he wanted it to, acted as a warm up, getting her bottom ready for what was coming to it. He didn’t stop at just one smack, but he brought his hand down on the other cheek, letting his fingers wrap around her right hip.
“You have such a pretty bottom,” Ben told his wife, raising his hand and bringing it down harder on her left cheek again. “And it is truly lovely when it’s all nice and pink and squirming over my lap.” He was already slightly uncomfortable where she was laying on him, now fully hard, but he coughed slightly and shook his head. He wasn’t going to deny his wife the discipline just because he was a little bit uncomfortable. Instead, he applied himself to earnestly spanking her bottom, now working quickly, his hand racing up and down, the flesh trembling beneath his hand. Ruby wasn’t moving much yet, and he wanted her there, where she was squirming and just beginning to fight him. That was the point at which he liked to stop...
Just as Ben was starting to think about what he would like to do to his wife, she began to squirm, crying out with her protests. “Oh, so you want me to stop?” Ben asked his wife. “You’d like me to stop spanking you?” He gave her two more very hard smacks of his hand, then he stopped, resting his hand on her bottom for just a moment and then slowly letting it stroke downward, parting her cheeks and gently brushing against her trembling asshole. He could feel the shuddering breath that Ruby took beneath him, her legs spreading a little bit to give him better access, and then he gave the little brown hole a light flick of his finger. “Eager beaver, aren’t you?” Ben asked, shaking his head teasingly. “I’m not done by a long shot, Ruby.”
Tutting again, Ben raised his hand and continued on with the spanking. Ruby started to squirm again almost instantly, wiggling over his lap as she fought to avoid the slaps of his hand. He had to smile. Their daughters did better than Ruby did a lot of the time, and he thought that maybe she squirmed special just for him because she knew that he liked it when she wiggled over his lap. It was for that reason that Ben really began to apply himself, this time using his hand to smack down hard on Ruby’s thighs, leaving dark pink handprints immediately. “I’m not spankin’ you for fun,” he reminded his wife. “This is to remind you to think before you go yellin’ at our daughter. We’ll see about makin’ you feel better once it’s over an’ done, but for right now, this is what happens when you wanna go actin’ like you’re the teenager in this family. I ain’t havin’ it, Ruby Nery, an’ you should be knowin’ better than what you been doin’!”
That stopped the struggles, and now Ben could hear the deep sobs of regret coming from his wife. He sighed and laid a good, hard half dozen to her sit spots, then he stopped, resting his hand on her bottom again, feeling he heat radiating off of it. “I hear about this again an’ it’ll be your hairbrush, an’ nothin’ after. You hear me?” he asked. He was still aroused, but he wanted to make sure that his wife was clear that this was a punishment.
Through her sobs Ruby replied with a weak, “Yes Sir.”
Ben nodded his head with a smile and gently turned his wife in his lap, tugging her skirt down and then cuddling her in his lap. He kissed her head, then held her tightly to him. “I love you, Ruby. An’ I love our girls. You’re gonna start doin’ better with Charlie or we’re gonna be doin’ a lot of this an’ you know it.” Then he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her hard, parting her lips with his tongue and exploring her mouth aggressively. Slowly he leaned her back on the bed, smiling when she hissed as her bottom came into contact with the mattress. “Serves you right,” he said, hooking his fingers into the waistband of her skirt and then starting to tug it down. He kissed her belly, then looked up at her. “An’ if you think you’re sore now... I’m tellin’ you, Ruby.”
“I know,” Ruby said breathlessly. “Can we just... Move on?”
“Gladly,” Ben said with a grin as he pulled his wife’s skirt off and slowly spread her knees, dipping his head to kiss her tender feminine folds. He breathed in the scent of his aroused wife, and reminded himself that in the end, it was always worth it.
Ben was just thinking that maybe it was time to go big. Rabbits and chicks weren’t going to support his family, even if the chickens and the rabbits did produce both meat and manure that could be used to keep their gardens going. The family owned dairy goats and a single cow, of course, along with their three horses, which they kept for both work and pleasure, but that wasn’t going to do what he needed. They had the acreage from when his grandfather had been alive and left the property to him, but they didn’t have the livestock to breed and then to sell for meat or for dairy. He’d have to do the research to decide where they were going to go from here. He had a family to support, and Charlie was getting expensive.
There was a lot on his mind as Ben walked through the back door of the house and shuffled off his boots. It took him several moments to catch the raised voices, and he frowned, then sighed and shook his head. One, of course, belonged to his oldest, and the other was his wife, Ruby. He ran a hand back through his black hair and ruffled it, then rubbed at his temples before stepping through the back mudroom into the kitchen in his stockinged feet.
The kitchen was a war zone. Ruby stood on one side of the table and Charlie on the other. Charlie’s hands were clenched into tight fists, and her face was red with anger, tears streaking her cheeks. Ruby’s blue eyes were bright with her own fury, and her red hair looked unkempt. He’d begun to think of it as her “crazy look” that she got when things really deteriorated at home, especially during a schooling session.
“Charlotte Nicole, go to your room,” Ben said to his daughter, keeping his eyes on his wife with a warning look. “I’ll straighten this out.”
He was tired. Damned tired. There was work to be done and the kids should have been spending more time helping him, but they’d spent too much time in the “real world” and gotten the impression that it was child labor for him to demand that they do chores around the homestead so that they could help to keep the family fed. So much for the citification of America, as far as Ben was concerned. He’d rather stay here and raise the kids where they’d learn real values, not the things that they were being taught in public schools these days. Who you were as a person was a reflection of the things that you valued; Ben had learned that the hard way. And now, as he watched his older daughter acting like a spoiled brat, he realized that the things she valued were material. It saddened him, and he shook his head, finally turning to look at her. “I said go to your room, Charlotte. Don’t make me tell you again or you can stand in the corner with your pants down around your knees if you wanna keep pushin’ me, girl.”
It took an effort, but Ben managed to ignore his daughter when she rolled her eyes at him and headed for the stairs. He took a deep breath, seeking to find his center, then he turned his attention to his wife, cocking an eyebrow at her. “So, do you want to tell me what’s goin’ on this time?” Fights between Ruby and their older daughter were pretty typical, and it didn’t surprise him to walk in on the two of them fighting. It was always up to him to get control over the situation, since Ruby’s temper was hotter than anybody else in the family. He’d have a talk with her, then have a discussion with his daughter, laying down discipline to one or both as he felt it necessary to do so.
Ruby sighed and shook her head, and Ben closed his eyes, taking a deep, calming breath as he pulled out one of the chairs and sank down into it. Finally he opened his eyes and looked up at his wife, following her with his eyes as she slowly sat down in her own chair. “I don’t like to come in from working in our gardens to find that the two of you have been fighting, an’ you know it, Ruby. There’s no supper ready, an’ I’m exhausted. I need your help out there workin’ our land, an’ if you can’t, that’s fine. But I’d appreciate it if the stuff at home was gettin’ done, Ruby. So you wanna tell me what stopped supper from bein’ ready? Cause you know full well that we can’t afford to order somethin’ in.”
“No Sir,” Ruby said, shaking her head. “An’ I’m sorry ‘bout that, Benny. I was about to put a casserole in the oven when Charlie came in here an’ started with her demands. I’ve got a splittin’ headache an’ I don’t think I can take much more of this.” Ruby sighed, shaking her head. “She wants to go out for a date into town on Saturday with that boy Greg that she’s been seein’. I don’ like him, Ben. I said ‘no’ an’ that’s when she started yellin’ about how I was bein’ unfair an’ she was gonna ask you. Cause she thinks that you’re gonna go against what I’m sayin’.”
“Well then she’s got another thing comin’ if she asks me to go out on that date,” Ben told his wife. “That boy’s bad news an’ I ain’t gonna have her hangin’ with him. I ain’t ready to be a grandfather just yet,” he added with a little chuckle.
“So that’s what this was all about?” Ben asked, becoming serious as his wife stood up to finally get the casserole into the oven. She turned once she had finished the task, leaning against the stove and crossing her arms over her chest. Ben raised his eyebrows, and she dropped her arms. “You two had this big fight over her not bein’ able to go on a date this weekend?”
“It always starts with one thing an’ goes on from there,” Ruby said, shrugging her shoulders. “First it was because she wasn’t allowed to go on the date, an’ then she wanted her own horse, an’ then she needed a new dress. An’ I told her that until she’s contributing to the family, she’s not gonna have those things. They cost money, an’ it’s money we don’t have right now. I swear to you that kid thinks that money grows on trees.”
Ben felt a twinge of regret. For the past five years he’d been sending money to his ex sister in law to help support her children, since his brother Raphael hadn’t been supporting them himself. Though he had dropped his payments to five hundred dollars a month, it was still money that would help to give his own children the things that they wanted, and not just the things that they needed. “We’ll talk about her gettin’ a horse if she gets her grades up an’ starts doin’ more work around the homestead. I don’t think she’s near responsible enough for a pet of her own,” Ben told his wife.
For a moment Ben said nothing, then he shook his head at Ruby. “When I came in here, I heard two voices yellin’. You wanna tell me what you were doin’ yellin’ at our daughter? Cause I gotta tell ya, Ruby, it ain’t just about her bein’ respectful an’ doing what she should. Some of that’s on you, an’ she’s learnin’ from your example. You oughtta know that by now.”
Ruby groaned, her head rolling back on her neck, and it struck Ben that she acted a lot like Charlie did. Or maybe it really was that their daughter was learning too much from Ruby. “That’s exactly what I’m talkin’ about. You act like than an’ then she does too. She’s disrespectful to you an’ she’s disrespectful to me an’ I’ve about had it. I work way too hard runnin’ this place to have the two of you constantly throwin’ it up in my face!”
“You don’t know what it’s like bein’ home with Charlie all day!” Ruby snapped back. Ben could tell that she was frustrated, but his own temper rose with her tone, and he pushed back from the table, his chair scraping against the hard wood beneath it.
“I know she’s my daughter, an’ I know I love her no matter what she does an’ how she behaves,” Ben told his wife. “An’ I know that hearin’ you talk like that would probably hurt her feelin’s, even if she doesn’t show it. An’ I think that my wife needs as much a lesson in respect as my daughter does. So we’ll be talkin’ before bed tonight, I can guarantee you that.” He wanted to make sure that he was going to have sufficient time to deal with his wife when he laid down the law for her. Right now, his daughter needed him, and he was starting to think in more ways than one.
“You think about that,” Ben said to his wife as he stood up, staring hard at her, his blue eyes steely as he shook his head and turned to leave the kitchen. “I’m gonna go have a talk with our daughter. An’ no, I ain’t gonna tell her she can go on a date. I won’t contradict you that way, Ruby. But I’d appreciate it if you’d return the favor an’ show me a bit of respect.”
Because he didn’t want to give his wife a chance to launch into a full attack on him when he was already agitated, Ben went out of the kitchen without turning another look in her direction. At the bottom of the stairs, he hesitated for a moment, listening to the music pumping down the steps from Charlie’s room. He took a deep breath, reminding himself that she was sixteen, vulnerable, and sensitive. He would never quite understand girls, but he loved his to death. Sometimes that meant putting up with things that he thought were downright stupid, like the fact that the women in his family didn’t seem to quite grasp the concept of respect.
Behind him, the front door opened and closed, and he could hear the excited chattering of his younger daughter as she came in from some chore outside. He smiled to himself, reminded that they made him proud all the time, even when there were times that he thought he could wring their necks.
Once he had braced himself, Ben started up the stairs, walking up them slowly. Outside Charlie’s door, he took another deep breath, then knocked hard on the door, wanting to make sure that he was heard over the blaring hip hop that she was listening to. The lyrics made him cringe, but he and Ruby had decided to allow their daughters to express themselves through their music, and, within reason, in how they dressed. Thankfully, he didn’t think that either of their children had made poor choices.
When the door opened, Ben sighed. His daughter’s cheeks were streaked with tears, her eyes red, her hair a mess. “Can I come in?” he asked her as gently as he could. They both knew that hew as here for discipline, and that tended to make things difficult. But he didn’t want her to feel unsafe talking to him, either, and he had always tried to be an approachable father, even when he had to correct his daughters, or, for that matter, his wife.
Charlie made a face and moved out of his way, so Ben passed her into the room and then went to sit down on her bed, turning his head to look at his daughter where she was still standing in the doorway. “I’d like to know what happened with Mama,” he told her gently. “Your side of the story. I didn’t get much from her, but I know that the two of you were yellin’ at one another pretty hard, an’ you know that ain’t allowed, Charlie. Not for neither of you, an’ I’m gonna be havin’ a talk with your mother, too. But I wanna know what got this thing started. An’ I wanna know what I can do to help.”
His daughter slammed the door, and Ben winced, but he didn’t say anything for right now as she leaned against it and crossed her arms over her chest, glaring hard at him. “Mom’s a bitch,” she said, and he winced again, then tried to clear his expression. That, too, would be something that they could talk about a little bit later. For right now, Ben focused his attention on his daughter as she continued to talk. “I asked her if I could see Greg on Saturday an’ she said no. Then she said I shouldn’t even bother to talk to you about it cause you’re just gonna say no anyway. She called him a bastard an’ some other nasty names an’ said he’s no good for me.”
“Is he?” Ben asked as calmly as he could. “Good for you, I mean.”
Charlie shrugged her shoulders. “I dunno. I don’t care, either. I like him, and it’s fun when we’re together. It’s so boring here. I hate it and I wish that we could just move back into the city! Mom’s always on my case, and everybody knows you like Rissa better’n me!”
Ben could see that his daughter was becoming defensive, and he didn’t like it particularly. He took a deep breath and shook his head. “Rissa an’ I get along better’n you an’ I do because she’s younger an’ ain’t goin’ through all this puberty like you are, an’ she doesn’t act out like this, Charlie. You should be learnin’ by now that your family wants to spend time with you, but ain’t nobody want to hang out with you while you’re yellin’ at ‘em an’ makin’ ‘em feel like you don’t want ‘em around. Stop this right now. If you can’t talk to me with respect, then we’re done talkin’, an’ we can start the part I know you ain’t gonna like. You got somethin’ to say, you apologize an’ you say it nicely.” Ben paused, then added, “I’m listenin’.”
“Okay,” Charlie said, huffing a breath in through her nose. “I’m sorry, Daddy.” Ben was pretty sure she knew that she was in trouble from the incident in the kitchen, and he knew that probably had something to do with the reason why she changed her tune so quickly. “I’m just upset because Mama said those things about Greg. I like him. He’s fun to be around. And I’m only gonna be sixteen once and I’d like to have some fun while I still can!”
“I can appreciate that, Charlie,” Ben said slowly. “Livin’ on a farm is hard work an’ I can understand how you might want to go back to the city. Sometimes I wish that we could go back to the city. But this is our live now, baby. It’s somethin’ that we’re all gonna have to get used to. I love you, an’ I love your sister an’ your Mama to death, but with things bein’ the way that they are, this is our life now. You’re gonna have to get used to it. An’ in the meantime, we’ll see about you gettin’ to spend some more time with your friends in the city.” Ben hesitated, then shook his head. “But not this weekend. Not when Mama said ‘no’ an’ not with the way that you been actin’ right now. You wanna have that time, you’re gonna have to start contributing to the homestead, baby girl. I know it ain’t easy, but life ain’t the same as what it was before. We’re all adjusting these last two years. You need to make adjustments too.”
As he watched, Ben could see the emotions flicker across his daughter’s face before she finally just gave a little nod of her head. “Okay,” she said weakly, making Ben smile. They’d come a long way in the last two years, and he really thought that Charlie was learning. If he could get Ruby to stay off her case, he thought that he’d have a very mature sixteen year-old daughter. He was proud of her, though he knew that he didn’t tell her that enough.
Now Ben smiled up at his daughter and nodded his head. “I’d been plannin’ on givin’ you a good spankin’ for that fight with your mother, Charlie, but you know what? I think maybe you’re learnin’ somethin’. I think we can skip it this time. But that don’t mean you ain’t gonna be punished. This weekend, you’re gonna help me in the barn, muckin’ out all the stalls for the horses an’ our other animals. I want you to spend that time thinkin’ about responsibility an’ how you can earn some of the privileges that you think are rights. Cause you goin’ out with Greg ain’t a right, baby girl. That’s a privilege an’ you only go if Mama an’ I say that you can.”
It took a moment before Charlie nodded her head. “Yes Sir,” she told her father.
He could see that she was breathing heavily and struggling to keep her emotions in check, so Ben stood up and crossed to his daughter, putting his hands on her shoulders and kissing her forehead. “I’m proud of you, baby girl,” he told her, tucking a strand of short dark hair behind her ear. “Sometimes it ain’t all your fault you’re fightin’ with Mama an’ I know it, so I’ll be talkin’ to her too. You done good acceptin’ what I told you. Makes me proud.”
Ben kissed Charlie’s head again, then opened the door and headed for the stairs to check on what was going on with his wife and his younger daughter.
***
Supper was only ten minutes over when the first crack of thunder sounded. Ben glanced around at his family. “Rissa, the goats put up an’ the tarps up on the rabbits?” he asked his younger daughter.
“Yes Sir, Daddy,” Clarissa said.
Ben nodded in approval and smiled at his younger daughter, then turned to his wife. “You wanna go grab the dogs an’ bring ‘em in for the night? I don’t like leavin’ ‘em out in this kind of a storm.” There were three dogs, two border collies and the Rottweiler that the family kept for alarm and protection. “They can stay inside tonight. Maybe even make a fire later on an’ we can all sit down an’ watch some television.” Because they home schooled, the bedtime schedule was a bit more flexible than it might have been otherwise, especially since neither child worked the morning chores (yet).
“Charlie, did you get the horses in like you’re supposed to?” Ben asked, turning to his older daughter. It was one of her chores to take care of grooming the horses, and one of the steps in doing so was to bring them in. Most of the heavier work was done by Ben and sometimes by Ruby, so that the girls didn’t have to strain themselves too much unless they were being punished.
Next to him, Charlie shifted a bit in her seat. “Yes Sir,” she told him. Ben thought that he noted a bit of nervousness in his daughter’s voice, but he pushed that out of his mind and nodded to Ruby.
“Go on an’ get the dogs. I’m gonna go on out with Rissa an’ check to make sure that the rabbits are all secured up for the night. Charlie, you get started on the dishes. We’ll be back in about twenty minutes. You should be done by then an’ I can make us all a fire an’ we can watch television.”
It would take Ruby a while to find the dogs and bring them in, since they had a free rein of the yard and Buddy, their Rottweiler, loved the rain. He’d be the hardest to track down, while the collies were likely to be near the barn, hoping to be let in.
Standing up from his chair, Ben crossed to his wife, kissed her, then reached out to ruffle Charlie’s hair. He gestured for Rissa, and then headed to the back door, where he stepped into his boots, then stooped to tie them. “Get your boots on,” he said to his younger daughter. “I don’t wanna worry about you soakin’ through your normal shoes. Shouldn’t be wearin’ any in the house anyway, sweet girl. Get those boots on an’ we’ll check on the rabbits.”
The rain had only just started, which was lucky, because there wasn’t a lot of mud. Ben kept his head down as he trekked out with Clarissa behind him, heading back to the area behind the garage where they kept the rabbit hutches. “You got them covered up, baby!” he said, grinning at Rissa. “I’m real proud of you for doin’ what I ask. You’ll make a good homesteader one day.” He smiled again, shaking his head at the thought that his younger daughter was his little redneck, then he checked the tie downs to make sure that the tarp would protect the rabbits and their straw from the rain and the wind. He reached out to pull Rissa into a hug, holding her against his body, and then started back toward the house, fighting the wind.
That was when Ben heard a cry, and a whinny from one of the horses. He looked up, turning his head and frowning as he looked toward the pasture, and then his eyes went wide. “Charlie!” he exclaimed as his daughter skittered out of the way of a rearing horse. “Get on the other side of the fence!” He let go of Rissa’s shoulders, turning to her only for a second. “Go help your mother get the dogs an’ get inside!” he told her, then took off at a run toward his older daughter. “Get out of there, Charlotte!” he shouted, reaching under the fence rail to grab her by the collar and pull her the rest of the way out. Ben took a step back himself, shaking his head.
The storm was making the horses nervous, and Ben shot his daughter a look, then slowly went to the gate, crooning to the anxious horse as he did so. When he got close enough, he grabbed the halter and then led the gelding toward the barn, leading him inside and then getting him settled into his stall. He checked quickly to make sure that the stall was clean, then scratched his head and groaned. He’d have to feed the horses tonight, since Charlie hadn’t done it. He expected that he’d find her up at the house when he was finished, but as he was leaving the barn, he met her coming in with one of their two mares, her head down.
Shaking his own head, Ben went to grab the other mare. She was calmer than the gelding had been, but still nervous as he led her into the barn, then got her settled into her stall. He checked her over, checked her hooves, then grabbed a pick out of his back pocket to pick a rock out of her hoof. As he finished up, he heard the sound of Charlie distributing the oats, and he went to stand in the hall of the barn, staring at his daughter. “Well?” he said to her. “What have you got to say for yourself, Charlotte?”
For a long time the sixteen year-old didn’t say anything, just staring down at the ground at her feet. She kicked at the concrete floor, then shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t put the horses up like I said,” she said finally.
“I can see that, Charlotte,” Ben said. He shook his head, then sighed heavily and crossed to his daughter. He put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a tight squeeze against himself. Although he was angry with his daughter, he loved her dearly, and there was enough harshness in the house with her and Ruby snapping at one another all the time. “Let’s get on inside before the storm really hits an’ we can talk about this in there. I’m sure your sister’s got Mama filled in on what’s happenin’, Charlie. An’ I’m pretty sure you’ve got a good idea yourself that you ain’t gettin’ out of it this time. Come on. Let’s go.”
Ben didn’t give Charlie a chance to hang back, but instead put his arm around her shoulders and guided her out of the barn. She was small for her sixteen years, and he tucked her against him firmly as he rushed for the house. “Hurry up!” he shouted over the thunder. The rain was really starting to come down now and he didn’t want either of them to get wetter than they needed to. He’d forgotten his jacket, and she was only wearing a t-shirt and already beginning to tremble against him. They were going to need that fire after all.
Once he had pushed his way through the back door, Ben called out to his wife. When she answered, he said, “Go on an’ get that fire started up! Charlie an’ I are gonna have a chat in my office. Rissa, go ahead an’ do the dishes for me baby,” he added when he saw his younger daughter at the sink. He didn’t say anything else about Charlie being in trouble because it was between him and her and he planned on making things as quick and quiet as possible, though he doubted that his daughter was going to make that particularly easy.
The office was down the hall from the living room, part of the original single-story building that had been added to over the century. Ben reached it, then opened the door and gestured for Charlie to go in ahead of him. “I’m going to go get you some dry clothing,” he told his daughter. “I want you to go stand in the corner. You might as well take off your jeans an’ your panties. You won’t be needin’ ‘em in a few minutes.” Though he was sure that Charlie had already known that she was in very serious trouble, he noticed the way that she stiffened, looking up at him with blue eyes filled with dread. Ben dropped a kiss onto her forehead, then pointed to the corner. “Go on. You’re soakin’ wet. I’m goin’ out for a minute, so you’ll have some privacy, an’ the corner will protect your modesty. I mean it, Char. Go.”
Ben left the office and headed for the laundry room, which was part of the mudroom. When his wife gave him a questioning look, he nodded for her to come with him, and then he entered, digging through the hanging laundry that had been washed and dried and which now hung waiting to be taken upstairs. “Charlotte didn’t put the horses up,” he told Ruby when he heard her enter the room behind him. “So she came out while we were out there to try to get them before I could notice. Amarillo reared up at her an’ I had to get him down an’ put away. She got the mares an’ got everybody fed, but I ain’t happy she lied to me.”
Turning to his wife, Ben sighed, then shook his head. “I don’t know what gets into her sometimes. I know she ain’t happy livin’ here an’ I suppose that some of that’s my fault. I shoulda thought about how this decision was gonna impact my girls. But she’s gonna have to get over it, Ruby. We got no choice now. We’re gonna make this work, cause that’s what we do. That’s what Nerys do.” He sighed, then ran his hands back through his thick black hair and shook his head. “I don’t know what to do with her sometimes.”
“Well I ain’t helpin’,” Ruby said with a sigh. “I mean, she an’ I fight like we’re cat an’ dog. An’ it ain’t makin’ it better for you, or for her. I know it, but it’s like... It’s like it’s somethin’ in our blood.”
“An’ we’ll be talkin’ about that, too,” Ben said. “You an’ me will have a chat tonight before bed. I talked to Charlie an’ I ain’t gonna have you antagonizin’ her, Ruby. She’s a good kid, even if you can’t see it right now. You owe her better than the way you been snappin’ at her an’ makin’ out that she’s doin’ so much wrong. She makes the right choices most of the time. I’d thank you to remember that.” He paused, then added. “An’ it’s the same blood coursin’ through her veins as is coursin’ through yours. She’s your daughter, Ruby, not an enemy.”
Turning, Ben grabbed a pair of sweat pants out of the clean laundry, then a t-shirt off a hanger and started out of the laundry room, leaving his wife to think about all that he’d said. They would, indeed, be talking about this situation later on. He wasn’t going to have his two girls fighting with one another that way all the time. If he had to start taking Charlie out with him when he did his chores, it might be good for her in more ways than one. Maybe if things continued as they were, he would take that into consideration, and possibly choose that path. He wanted what was best for his family, and so far it felt as though he was making a lot of bad choices.
With a heavy sigh, Ben let himself back into his office. He closed the door behind him, then turned on the light and crossed the room to close the blinds on the other side of the room, giving his daughter more privacy. When he turned to look at her where she stood in the corner, naked from the waist down, she was looking at him, her blue eyes liquid with tears. He glanced at one of the old wooden chairs tucked up against the wall, noting that she had folded her wet jeans and her panties on the chair, and then put her shoes on top of it. “I didn’t think to grab you any socks,” Ben said apologetically to his daughter as he carried her clean clothes to his desk, then bent to open one of the drawers, digging around inside for an appropriate tool for the work that he was about to do. A moment later he put a twelve-inch wooden ruler on the desk and then sat down in his chair, turning to look at Charlie. She’d turned back to the corner, and now Ben sighed again.
“So let’s start by talkin’ about why you lied to me.” Ben cleared his throat to let his daughter know that he wasn’t done talking, then he continued. “Seems to me you were worried about gettin’ yourself into trouble for not doin’ your chores an’ you thought that you’d be able to get the horses in before I could tell what you were doin’. An’ it seems to me that you weren’t really thinkin’ that one through, since I gave you somethin’ to do before I went to check on them rabbits.” Ben stared calmly at the back of Charlie’s head, then shook his head. “So tell me, Charlotte; what did you think was the worst thing that could happen if you told me the truth about not bringing the horses in?”
In the corner, Charlotte made a small, unhappy sound, and Ben closed his eyes, steeling himself. It was difficult for him to see any of his girls cry, and Charlotte, in particular, could break his heart. She’d said earlier that Rissa was his favorite, but the truth was that Clarissa and Ruby were particularly close, and in spite of the fact that she wasn’t the baby, Charlie was special to Ben in a way that he could never explain. It was a father’s bond with his first daughter, and he didn’t try to explain it to others. He loved Charlie in a special way that was reserved just for her. He didn’t love her more than Clarissa, just differently.
“Daddy...” Charlie said after he was silent for several long moments. “I didn’t want you to be disappointed in me,” she said finally, her words choking in the end. Ben could see from behind that she was crying, her shoulders trembling as she fought sobs, and he sighed, then got up and went to his daughter, putting his hands on her shoulders and giving them a squeeze, then turning her around and pulling her firmly into his arms, hugging her tightly against him.
After a moment, Ben pulled back from his daughter and brushed the dark brown hair out of her face, searching her blue eyes. “Baby girl, I ain’t disappointed in you. I’m disappointed in the choice that you made. I’m frustrated that you’re askin’ me to let you do things when you ain’t doin’ the few things I’m askin’ of you. But you? You ain’t a disappointment. I’m proud of you every day, Charlie. Even when you do things that don’t make sense to me.”
Ben sighed deeply, then pulled Charlie close and kissed her forehead. “Baby girl, I love you, but you’re gonna have to be punished for this one. I let you off the hook earlier because you done me proud by doin’ what I asked without havin’ a fit. I think you’re growin’ up, I really do. But I’m worried that this one is gonna keep happenin’, so we’re gonna talk about it. First you’re gonna get yourself a good, sound spankin’, an’ then you an’ me are gonna talk about what happens next. I already told you that you got chores this weekend, but I think that you an’ I are gonna be workin’ together from now on. You’ll go where I go, so I can show you how to do the chores you been avoidin’. Maybe you just don’t know how an’ don’t wanna ask for help. I dunno. But I also know that you an’ Mama have been snappin’ at one another an’ maybe it’s best you wasn’t spendin’ so much time around one another right now. I got plenty of time to spend with you if you can spend it with me doin’ the things I gotta do. Understand?”
“You’re always busy, Daddy,” Charlie said in a small voice. “Since we moved here, you always got somethin’ to do.”
“That’s right. But that don’t mean I ain’t got time for you, Charlie. Now, one big difference is that you can come with me when I’m workin’. You couldn’t do that before. An’ maybe we can even do some of your schoolin’ while we’re out workin’. That way you only have to do the tests with Mama an’ you two won’t wind up gettin’ on each other’s nerves so much. What do you think?”
“Yes Sir, Daddy.”
Ben cupped his daughter’s face in his hands and looked deeply into her eyes, feeling as though his heart was reflected there. He sighed, then shook his head. “No, baby. I ain’t tellin’ you somethin’. I ain’t layin’ down a punishment. I’m askin’ if you’d rather be spendin’ that time with me instead of cooped up in the house workin’ on school with Mama. If you’d rather stay here, then we can do that, too. This is about you, not some mistake you made.”
Beneath his hands, Charlie shivered a little bit, and Ben pulled her into another tight hug, rubbing her back and gently tugging at the ends of her long brown hair. “I’d like that,” she said finally, and her voice choked again. Ben knew it was time to get the worst of this out of the way so that she could start relaxing again. He didn’t mean to make her wait, but he wanted to make sure, before he warmed up her bottom, that Charlie knew just how much he loved her. He kissed her forehead again, then gave her back a final rub. “Then let’s get your spankin’ over with so we can go watch some television with Mama an’ Rissa. I won’t wake you up tomorrow mornin’ for chores, but Saturday’s fair game. Understand?”
“Yes Sir, Daddy.” Charlie gave a weak nod of her head, and that was all that Ben needed. He was perhaps more ready than she was to just have this over with so that he cold relax with the family. Though he hated to admit to it, disciplining his wife and children was additional work that had to be done once work was done.
Standing up from his desk chair, Ben went to pull out the old wooden chair that he had placed against the wall. He put it in the center of the room, then sat down in it and reached for Charlie’s hand. She was already naked from the waist down, and there was naught to remove, so he simply tugged her forward between his knees, then sighed. “Charlie, reach for that ruler I’ve got on my desk, would you? I’m gonna be needin’ it.” It didn’t bother him to know that such a request increased Charlie’s dread of what was coming, or that it humiliated her. That was part of the punishment, and part of what made it effective. He wanted to make sure that she was never going to want to be in this position again.
Charlie turned, bending back a bit, barely snagging the ruler with her fingers, and Ben let go of her hand to give her more room to do what she needed to do. A moment later, his daughter was holding the ruler out to him, and Ben took it from her, then tapped it hard against his thigh in warning. “Well, Charlie. Let me make this clear: When I give you a chore to do, you get it done. If there’s some reason you can’t get it done, then you tell me before it’s too late an’ I’ll either help you or make sure that somebody else can do it. So you’re gettin’ punished for that. An’ you’re also gettin’ punished cause you lied to me, Charlie. This is gonna be a hell of a spankin’, just so you know. I don’t expect you’re gonna want to do much sittin’ when I’m done, but you’re gonna go on out there with Mama an’ Rissa an’ we’re all gonna choose a movie to watch together. An’ you’ll be nice about it too. You understand me?”
“Yes Sir, Daddy,” Charlie said again. There were tears in her big blue eyes, and her brown hair had fallen into her face. It made Ben sigh and shake his head. He hated having to punish his daughter so severely, but he knew that it was something that had to be done.
“Come on then, baby girl. Let’s get you over my lap so that we can get this nasty business done with. A good, sound spankin’ will get my baby back on the straight an’ narrow faster than anythin’ I know.” He only hoped that his words were true, because if they weren’t, Ben wasn’t sure that he knew another way. He’d been brought up with hard work and strict punishment, and now he was raising his own family the same way.
When Charlie hesitated, Ben reached for her hand again and guided her down over his lap, pulling on her hand with his left and using his right to push her down and into position. He adjusted her carefully, raising her bottom up over his right thigh and lowering his left so that her chest and shoulders were low and her bottom made an excellent target. “Hang onto the rungs of the chair if you need to, Charlotte. I expect you to keep yourself in position an’ to not go tryin’ to wiggle your way off my lap. You know it’s only gonna get worse for you if you try,” he added, wanting to make sure that his daughter understood what was going to happen to her, and how much it was going to hurt. He felt her body shift and knew that she was doing as he suggested. A little sob came from the direction of Charlie’s head, and Ben knew that they both wanted this over with as much as one another.
Using the ruler to pat at his daughter’s upturned bottom, Ben began his lecture anew. “Those horses are countin’ on you to do your chores, Charlotte. When the weather comes in like it’s doin’ right now, they need to be safe in that barn. Worse, because you waited until the last minute, you nearly got yourself killed. Nothin’ funny about that. You coulda saved a lot of time an’ a lot of trouble if you’d done your job in the first place. I’m disappointed in you, an’ you’re gonna have to prove to me that you can be trusted with your jobs again. I hate not bein’ able to trust you, baby girl.”
With that, the little pats became more aggressive, and then Ben raised the ruler and really brought it down hard on Charlie’s white bottom. The ruler made a rather odd sound, one that was unique to all spanking implements. It was a sort of a “thwack” from the thin, narrow length of wood. The reaction from Charlie was instantaneous, her body bucking beneath him, and Ben pulled her tighter against his body, wrapping his left arm more firmly around her side. “I’m only gettin’ started, little girl,” he scolded his daughter. You wanna get your breathin’ under control an’ really be thinkin’ about what you done wrong. You don’t want this to happen again any more than I do, now do you?” He applied the ruler again, this time a bit lower than the last smack of the dreaded wood, raising a narrow red line with puffy, darker red welts at the edges. He rubbed the ruler over her bottom, giving her a chance to regain her composure and to answer his question. He knew that she would want to, even though it didn’t require an answer. Charlie always tended to try to do her best to make things right when she’d done something wrong, and she’d really messed up this time.
“Y-yes Sir!” Charlie sobbed.
Ben nodded his head and rubbed his daughter’s back a little bit. “Well then, let’s get on with this thing,” he told her. This time, when he raised the hand that was holding the narrow makeshift paddle, Ben didn’t really hold back, and he didn’t give his daughter much time to think between smacks. Instead, he brought the ruler down an inch below his last mark, using more force than he had before and shaking his head. “If you think this hurts, you need to be thinkin’ about what coulda happened to you if that horse had gotten to you, Charlotte!” he told her, letting the ruler fall steadily in an even rhythm as he spanked down her bottom, an inch at a time. By the time that he reached Charlie’s thighs, her bottom was covered in narrow red lines and thin welts, and she was sobbing hard.
In spite of her cries, however, Ben was very proud of his daughter. She hadn’t tried to reach back and she wasn’t struggling against him, and he knew just how hard that had to be. So when he was halfway to Charlie’s knees, Ben stopped and patted her back. “I’m real proud of you, Charlie. You’re doin’ a great job. You learnin’ your lesson?” He was asking her, as much as for any other reason, to make sure that she was still breathing well enough to speak clearly. If she wasn’t, they were done. If she could speak to him (and he was sure she’d be able to), he would work his way back up her thighs and bottom before he was finished.
“Y-yes Daddy!” Charlie sobbed.
Ben paused to rub the sixteen year-old’s back for a moment, then sighed. “Half done,” he said. The announcement was met with a wail of dismay from Charlie, but Ben was determined to make sure that she understood the gravity of what she had done. “This part is for lyin’ to me about doin’ your chore. You or one of those horses coulda gotten bad hurt, an’ we need the horses, Charlotte. You remember that the next time you wanna skip out on one of your chores.” He shook his head, and then he began again, this time working his way up, covering the most recent marks first, doubling them up, and moving up from Charlie’s thighs to the fullest part of her bottom again. When he was finished, Ben lay one last, very hard thwack of the ruler against Charlie’s bottom, then he rubbed the ruler against it before leaning over and tossing it back onto the desk.
With his free left hand, Ben rubbed gently at Charlie’s back, trying to soothe her into a more even pattern of breathing. She was a mess, sobbing hard, making small whimpering noises of dread and he was beginning to think possibly even fear. “It’s over, baby girl,” Ben assured his daughter. “All done now. Daddy’s finished.” Still, he kept Charlie over his lap as she sobbed, wanting to get her calmer before he took her to her feet and then attempted to comfort her.
It took nearly five minutes before Ben thought that Charlie was ready, and then he gently guided her up and onto her feet, then reached for one of her hands, running his thumb over the back of it. With the hand that was free, Charlie wiped at her eyes and at her running nose, but didn’t reach back to rub her bottom. She knew better.
“I got you sweats,” Ben told his daughter. “I figured they’d be most comfortable. Why don’t you go put those on? An’ I’ll leave so that you can change your shirt. I’ll take them into the laundry room an’ get them goin’ for you. Then we can go find a movie to watch with Mama an’ Rissa, an’ you can apologize to your sister for her havin’ to do the dishes for you since you were out with the horses. Okay?”
When Charlie gave him a small nod, Ben stood up and wrapped his arms around his daughter, embracing her tightly and then kissing her head. “You go on an’ change your clothes. Bring ‘em out to me an’ I’ll take ‘em. You can stand in the corner while I get everythin’ settled an’ then, if you want, we’ll talk.” He nodded to her, brushed her hair back from her face, and then left the office so that she could change her clothes, rub her bottom, and maybe clean up her face a little bit. He felt for his daughter, and hated seeing her cry. It was even worse when he was the one who had made her cry, and he had to force himself to remember that it was her own doing that had gotten her into this situation in the first place. She deserved the spanking, and if it made her cry, well, that was part of her working through her guilty conscience, wasn’t it?
A few moments later, the office door opened, and Charlie passed her clothes out. Her head was down, and Ben could see that she was still crying. He turned before she could close the door again, taking the clothes in his left hand and using his right to cup her cheek gently. “Charlie,” he said softly. “I love you baby girl.” He bent to kiss her head again, then drew back, taking the clothes with him as he headed for the laundry room, expecting her to do as he had said and to put herself into the corner. He took the clothes into the laundry room, added them to their appropriate load, and then loaded that into the washer.
When he was finished, Ben headed back to his office. He knocked on the door, then pushed it open. Sure enough, Charlie was standing in the corner and sobbing softly to herself. She was fully dressed, and she had her hands still tucked up in front of her, not rubbing. Ben had to say that he was proud of her, but he didn’t voice the feeling. If she needed to rub, he wanted her to feel free to do it once the punishment was over.
“Come on,” he told Charlie, reaching out for her so that she could come to him for a hug. “Let’s have a quick cuddle so that we can find out what movie Rissa has picked out. I’m sure she’s already chosen something. How much do you want to bet it’s Ever After?”
“I hope it’s Flicka,” Charlie said. “I like that movie.”
Ben recognized the hint, but chose to ignore it. If she was going to have a horse of her own, there was going to have to be an income first, and then she was going to have to show that she was responsible enough to take care of a horse. Instead, he just hugged his daughter’s shoulders tightly, then wiped the tears from her face. “Come on,” Ben said to his oldest. “Let’s go an’ spend some time as a family. You can stay up tonight, but tomorrow you’re goin’ to bed early. Understand?”
“Yes Sir,” Charlie said, not for the first time that day.
***
Two hours later, Ben had taken Charlie up to bed and Ruby had tucked Rissa up. They swapped girls, each giving goodnight kisses, and then Ben met his wife in the hallway. “You know I need to turn in early. Especially after a storm like this, I’ve gotta check on the animals in the mornin’. So it’s time for us to have a talk,” he told Ruby. “Our room. Now, Ruby.”
Though his wife gave him a withering look, she obeyed the obvious instruction. Ben had naturally taken charge early on in their relationship, and though his father in law had teased him about it, the entire family (except, perhaps, for the children) knew that he was in charge of his wife and that meant that he sometimes disciplined her when he felt that it was necessary. Nothing was more important to Ben than the well-being of his family, and since he felt strongly that Ruby was setting a bad example for their older daughter, he wanted to nip this in the bud before it kept going and got out of control.
Ben gave his wife a few moments to prepare herself for their talk, then he followed her into the bedroom and carefully closed the door behind him. When he had done so, Ben crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow at Ruby. “You wanna tell me what’s goin’ on with you an’ Charlie this time. I got her side of the story, sayin’ that you’re tellin’ her Greg is a bastard an’ you don’t want him around her. I happen to agree that she’s too young to date, but you think your words might’a been a bit harsh there, Ruby?”
It had been an exhausting day, and Ben would have preferred to be relaxing instead of arguing with his wife. At times like this, he always knew that things would eventually deteriorate into an argument, and he wasn’t looking forward to the consequences of the argument any more than he was sure Ruby was. He was prepared when she lashed out angrily, and he just breathed deeply, seeking his calm center.
“You don’t know what it’s like bein’ with her all day, every day!” Ruby cried, throwing her hands up in obvious frustration. “She’s always askin’ for things that we can’t afford, an’ complainin’ about not being able to go into town. She provokes me, Benny! An’ then she gets upset when I react to her. What do you expect me to do?”
“I expect you to love our daughter, an’ to be an adult,” Ben snapped back. It was becoming increasingly difficult for him to contain his agitation with both his daughter and his wife, and his frustration from Charlotte earlier was now starting to spill over to Ruby. “Do you think that your choice of words didn’t hurt her feelin’s? Just ‘cause you don’t always see her react doesn’t mean ain’t hurt! I think she was prolly angry, and she was prolly yellin’ at you, but she’s a child, Ruby. An’ you’re supposed to be actin’ like her mother, not like her sister. She an’ Rissa don’t fight this badly. What has gotten into you?”
“You don’t understand!” Ruby shot back, her blue eyes dark and blazing with temper. “I ain’t allowed to say ‘no’. She’s always threatenin’ me that she’s going to tell you, or ask you, and then you’re supposed to be mad at me an‘ we’re supposed to be fightin’ just like we are right now. This is what she wants! For you to be gettin’ on my case an’ makin’ me cry!” And sure enough, there were tears in Ruby’s eyes.
Ben shook his head, sighing as he scrubbed at his black hair with both of his hands. He took a deep breath, calming himself, then shook his head and looked back up at his wife. He was about to say something when he heard a small knock at the door. He turned to it, then opened it slowly to find his younger daughter, blue eyes wide, dark hair mussed. “Are you guys fightin’?” she asked, looking from Ben to Ruby and then back to Ben. “I don’t like it when you fight.”
“We ain’t fightin’, sweetpea,” Ben told his daughter. He bent to kiss her cheek, then squeezed her shoulder. “Go on back to bed, baby. I’ll be in to tuck you back up in a little bit. I gotta talk to Mama about somethin’. Don’t you worry about a thing. We ain’t fightin’.”
Clarissa paused a moment in the door, then nodded her head and turned around. Ben waited until she had gone all the way to her room, and watched as she closed the door behind her, then he closed his own bedroom door and turned back to his wife.
“I don’t contradict you, Ruby. If you tell her no, then I don’t tell her yes on purpose. If she asks me, an’ I don’t know you told her no, then I might say yes. That’s a communication problem between us. Maybe we need to talk about everythin’ before we say yes or no. If that’s the case, so be it. That’s fine. But she ain’t gonna get a different answer from me than she got from you unless you ain’t tellin’ me what you’re tellin’ her.
“But this ain’t about Charlie. This is about you, an’ the things that you said to our daughter. I don’t ever wanna hear you raisin’ your voice to her like that again, an’ the next time that she tells me that you’re sayin’ things about her friends like that -- things that ain’t warrented, Ruby -- then we’re gonna be havin’ a much more serious discussion than what I got planned tonight. You understand me, young lady?”
“What do you have planned?”
Ruby’s voice was nervous, and Ben stepped forward, putting his hands on his wife’s shoulders and pulling her to him in a tight hug, then whispered in her ear, “I’m going to spank your bottom until it’s good and hot.” He nipped her ear, then pulled back from her and went to sit down on the bed. He patted his lap. “Come on, little girl. Let’s get that skirt up, those panties down, and see how pink we can get your bottom for you. Maybe next time Charlie’s pushin’ at you, you won’t take the bait.” He cleared his throat, hoping that his wife would take the lesson this time, so that he wouldn’t have to fight with her the next time. What was coming, the part where she bared her backside and, he hoped, went willingly over his lap... Well, that part was rather exciting, as he saw it.
Even before the objections started, Ben could sense them. He shook his head and reached for his wife’s hand. She didn’t enjoy this nearly as much as he did, and that, he thought, was part of the point, and part of why he enjoyed it as much as he did. He tugged her close to him, then slowly began to raise her skirt. “If you won’t do it, Ruby, I will,” he told his wife as he slowly got her skirt all the way up, then tucked it up into the waistband. It was long, and still provided some protection, but he had sufficient room to reach under it and tug down her panties. She was wearing one of those black lacy numbers that did things to him, and he shifted, trying to ease the tightness in his jeans. With only a momentary second thought, he unbuttoned his own jeans, adjusted himself, and then tugged her panties down. “Might as well take these off,” he said, smiling up at Ruby. “I don’t think that you’re going to be needing them when I’m done.” He guided them down to her ankles, then helped her step out of them, waiting while she toed off her shoes.
When Ruby was sufficiently undressed, Ben guided his wife down and over his lap. He adjusted her position, giving her a bit more “wiggle room” than he had done with Charlie, and then he slowly ran his hand up her right thigh, gripping the firm, solid flesh there and then slowly pushing her skirt up over her hips. He gathered what was left of it in his left hand, then pinned her down over his lap. “Just my hand today. But another argument like this with either of the girls an’ I’m gonna tell you that it’ll be your hairbrush. Don’t test me on this, Ruby.”
Ben rested his hand on his wife’s bottom, spending a moment just feeling it. He liked to do this, to tease her, spending a few moments before he started by massaging the flesh a little bit. He felt that this made her more tender in this area, causing his spanking to have better results. He wanted her blood flowing, in more ways than one. He casually ran his hand back down her right thigh, then up her left, letting his fingers explore where her legs had parted just slightly to give him access. “Wet already?” Ben said. He tutted, then shook his head. “I guess you’re ready to start then, aren’t you?”
“No!” Ruby cried, but Ben just laughed softly and raised his hand, bringing it down with a resounding smack on his wife’s tender, pink bottom. The massaging had done what he wanted it to, acted as a warm up, getting her bottom ready for what was coming to it. He didn’t stop at just one smack, but he brought his hand down on the other cheek, letting his fingers wrap around her right hip.
“You have such a pretty bottom,” Ben told his wife, raising his hand and bringing it down harder on her left cheek again. “And it is truly lovely when it’s all nice and pink and squirming over my lap.” He was already slightly uncomfortable where she was laying on him, now fully hard, but he coughed slightly and shook his head. He wasn’t going to deny his wife the discipline just because he was a little bit uncomfortable. Instead, he applied himself to earnestly spanking her bottom, now working quickly, his hand racing up and down, the flesh trembling beneath his hand. Ruby wasn’t moving much yet, and he wanted her there, where she was squirming and just beginning to fight him. That was the point at which he liked to stop...
Just as Ben was starting to think about what he would like to do to his wife, she began to squirm, crying out with her protests. “Oh, so you want me to stop?” Ben asked his wife. “You’d like me to stop spanking you?” He gave her two more very hard smacks of his hand, then he stopped, resting his hand on her bottom for just a moment and then slowly letting it stroke downward, parting her cheeks and gently brushing against her trembling asshole. He could feel the shuddering breath that Ruby took beneath him, her legs spreading a little bit to give him better access, and then he gave the little brown hole a light flick of his finger. “Eager beaver, aren’t you?” Ben asked, shaking his head teasingly. “I’m not done by a long shot, Ruby.”
Tutting again, Ben raised his hand and continued on with the spanking. Ruby started to squirm again almost instantly, wiggling over his lap as she fought to avoid the slaps of his hand. He had to smile. Their daughters did better than Ruby did a lot of the time, and he thought that maybe she squirmed special just for him because she knew that he liked it when she wiggled over his lap. It was for that reason that Ben really began to apply himself, this time using his hand to smack down hard on Ruby’s thighs, leaving dark pink handprints immediately. “I’m not spankin’ you for fun,” he reminded his wife. “This is to remind you to think before you go yellin’ at our daughter. We’ll see about makin’ you feel better once it’s over an’ done, but for right now, this is what happens when you wanna go actin’ like you’re the teenager in this family. I ain’t havin’ it, Ruby Nery, an’ you should be knowin’ better than what you been doin’!”
That stopped the struggles, and now Ben could hear the deep sobs of regret coming from his wife. He sighed and laid a good, hard half dozen to her sit spots, then he stopped, resting his hand on her bottom again, feeling he heat radiating off of it. “I hear about this again an’ it’ll be your hairbrush, an’ nothin’ after. You hear me?” he asked. He was still aroused, but he wanted to make sure that his wife was clear that this was a punishment.
Through her sobs Ruby replied with a weak, “Yes Sir.”
Ben nodded his head with a smile and gently turned his wife in his lap, tugging her skirt down and then cuddling her in his lap. He kissed her head, then held her tightly to him. “I love you, Ruby. An’ I love our girls. You’re gonna start doin’ better with Charlie or we’re gonna be doin’ a lot of this an’ you know it.” Then he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her hard, parting her lips with his tongue and exploring her mouth aggressively. Slowly he leaned her back on the bed, smiling when she hissed as her bottom came into contact with the mattress. “Serves you right,” he said, hooking his fingers into the waistband of her skirt and then starting to tug it down. He kissed her belly, then looked up at her. “An’ if you think you’re sore now... I’m tellin’ you, Ruby.”
“I know,” Ruby said breathlessly. “Can we just... Move on?”
“Gladly,” Ben said with a grin as he pulled his wife’s skirt off and slowly spread her knees, dipping his head to kiss her tender feminine folds. He breathed in the scent of his aroused wife, and reminded himself that in the end, it was always worth it.
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