by Hill, April
THE END.
"OW, TANNENBAUM"
by April Hill
As our story begins, it is almost Christmas, and Melissa Wilcox Harris, spirited but thoroughly spoiled heroine of "Getting Out of Dodgeville," is finally a very happily married woman. She and handsome widower, small rancher and part-time sheriff Ben Harris have recently celebrated their second wedding anniversary, and are now preparing to celebrate their second Christmas together as a family. Their first Christmas together was a bit hectic and harried, since Melissa had just presented Michael and Callie, Ben's children by his first wife, with a new baby brother. Baby Andrew had appeared a scant five-and-a half-months after Ben and Melissa's wedding, but only nine-year-old Michael was old enough at the time to note his little brother's somewhat short gestation period. At six, Callie was more interested in cuddling and cooing over the adorable addition to the family than worrying about the suspicious timing of his arrival.
"Well, that'll probably shoot the blazes out of my best argument," Ben said, wearily." When Callie grows up and figures it all out, there'll be hell to pay. That's all a teenaged daughter with raging hormones needs to know—that the father advising her not to have premarital sex has his own feet of clay."
"Your feet had nothing to do with it, Darling," Melissa observed, sweetly." Just explain to her how you were helpless to resist—seduced by a dishonest but fabulously attractive Thanksgiving turkey." (This was a reference to the peculiar manner in which Ben and Melissa had met and fallen in love—an affair chronicled in an earlier Thanksgiving story, called "Getting out of Dodgeville.") Since that time, Melissa had learned a number of things about the man she loved. He had proven to be a wonderful husband and father, an excellent provider, kind, patient and honest and possessed of a wry sense of humor. He was unfailingly loving and tender with his wife and children, and had never raised a hand in anger to any of them.
The cautionary words in the foregoing sentence are "anger," and "wife." It was absolutely true that Ben Harris had never raised a hand to any of his children—for any reason, including anger. It simply wasn't the sort of discipline he believed in, and with his own kids, he'd never seen the need. His wife, on the other hand, was another matter, entirely.
Not that Ben was ever really angry when he took his beloved new wife over his knee for another well-deserved spanking. At these times, in fact, he always made a special point of being calm and in control. But spank her he did—not frequently, but very, very soundly. Quite a bit more soundly than Melissa had anticipated when she agreed to the "arrangement."
The arrangement in question had been arrived at with Melissa's grudging but more or less mutual consent, when it appeared that her stubborn refusal to change certain lifelong habits was going to make more drastic measures necessary. Even Melissa agreed that she needed to change—although this reasonable attitude on her part came and went rather mercurially. Neither she nor Ben liked quarreling, and Melissa had already endured and left a six-year relationship with a man who'd bored her with daily, long-winded lectures. An occasional light spanking from a man she loved and trusted not to really hurt her could hardly be any worse, right? If it would make the Man of the House feel like the Man of the House. And besides, Melissa had a plan. Ben Harris was a man, after all—an exceptionally lusty and vigorous man, from Melissa's already extensive experience with him. She secretly believed that with just a small application of feminine wiles and womanly manipulation, all future spankings could be readily diverted into something else—something of a much more enjoyable and less disciplinary nature—something more on the order of erotic foreplay. A bit of giggling, a few light, playful swats on her coyly presented bottom, followed by a pleasant flush and a mild tingle on the symbolically punished areas. Having already suffered two or three rather memorable spankings under Ben's strong and determined hand, Melissa probably should have seen the flaw in her thinking, but Melissa was in love, and love—as we all know—is sometimes blind and exceedingly stupid.
Melissa was in for a very big surprise.
Melissa's list of bad habits was on the lengthy side, and at the top of the list was her excessive smoking. In point of fact, Melissa smoked like the proverbial furnace, whereas Ben Harris regarded even a single puff from a single cigarette as excessive, and considering the fact that he made most of his living as what he called a "working cowhand," Melissa was annoyed.
"Haven’t you ever heard of the freaking Marlboro Man?" she growled, rubbing her just-spanked behind in a vain attempt to alleviate the sting. "All real cowboys smoke! Just my luck to end up with the one cowboy in the whole world who doesn't!" She had been apprehended while sneaking a cigarette in the barn—a triple threat, Ben explained patiently. Not only was she damaging her own lungs and the respiratory health of the one nursing cow, two horses, and twelve chickens currently in residence, but she also could have easily set the barn on fire. When he took the offending cigarette and snubbed it out under his boot, the incident might have been over—had Melissa not haughtily pointed out that it was only one lousy, freaking little cigarette, and that a fair number of the damned chickens in question were already destined to be dinner, sooner or later. Ben sighed, then simply picked his wife up under one arm and carried her the few feet to a nearby bale of hay. After dumping Melissa over the prickly bale on her stomach, he yanked down her jeans and panties, then used a broken but amazingly sturdy length of leather harness to set her bared buttocks on fire—as a sort of demonstration. And when she called him an unpleasant name or two, he responded with several additional well aimed licks—a little harder, and to a couple of hard-to-reach places he'd missed the first time around. As each stripe of the leather struck its tender target, Melissa kicked and squirmed, howling at the top of her still-remarkably-healthy lungs. The sound of her screeching echoed around the barn and into the rafters, virtually guaranteeing that the chickens wouldn't be laying that day.
Melissa also found speed limits and the wearing of seat belts annoying, which very much annoyed her new husband, particularly since he was still for all intents and purposes most of the law in Dodgeville, Texas. Moreover, Melissa regularly laced her sentences with the sort of unladylike profanity that an old-fashioned fellow like Ben Harris didn't regard as seemly, especially in the presence of children. Melissa had quickly learned—the hard way—not to swear in front of Michael and Callie, but she failed to see how a few random, colorful expressions could harm a child of only fourteen months.
Baby Andrew's first fully understandable phrase, delivered two weeks before Christmas, was "Oh, shit." He had just dropped and broken a bright red glass ball, while "helping" Ben unpack a box of Christmas ornaments.
"That's not really swearing," Melissa insisted, sensing a sore bottom in her immediate future. "What else can you say when you do something like that? Besides," she added quickly, "he could have heard it anywhere."
"At the pool hall in town, maybe?" Ben inquired testily, scooping up the shards of glass before Baby Andrew could begin helping again. "Or hanging out in bars, with a lot of those bad companions of his?"
That particular spanking didn’t happen, because Andrew had to be bathed and put to bed, and because Ben always believed it was more useful to deliver a spanking at the time and at the scene of the crime—like giving a puppy who'd just peed on the rug a quick swat on the rear end with a rolled-up newspaper, he explained with a grin.
* * *
A yearly outing to find and cut down the perfect Christmas tree was a revered Harris family tradition, customarily done around two weeks before Christmas. This year, however, the outing had been delayed by icy weather and a dozen missing steers. Ben and Randy Detweiler, their trusted ranch hand, had ridden out at dawn for three days running, searching for the lost cattle. The children were disappointed, but having been raised on a cattle ranch, they understood their father's priorities. Melissa, on the other hand…
"I'll take the kids in the pickup and bring back the absolutely perfect tree, Darling," she insisted." T
hat way, when you get back, we'll be all ready."
Ben shook his head. "The pickup's got a bad transmission," he said." I've been meaning to get to it for a month, so stay out of it. Don’t get something too tall, and the tree'll fit in the trunk of the car, once you lay the seats down. Just be sure you let someone else cut it down. Michael will try to convince you he can do it, but he's too young to handle an ax. Go to the big place out on the highway, and they'll cut it and bag it for you."
The expedition started merrily, with Baby Andrew bundled into his heaviest snowsuit and both older children quarreling over the "right" kind of tree. Callie liked fat, fluffy ones, while Michael was emphatic about it being tall—right to the ceiling. The Harris home was an old, three-story Victorian, with twelve-foot ceilings in the downstairs "parlor," so Melissa agreed with Michael. A tall, stately tree it would be.
After four hours of trudging around several lots, dragging Andrew behind them on a sled, like a small furry lump, they still hadn’t found the "right" tree. They went home treeless, after a brief stop in town for hamburgers to soothe their disappointment. The following morning, with Ben out on the range again in the rain and sleet, Melissa drove the children to school very carefully, then made her way back to the ranch over icy, sleet-slickened roads. She was almost to the house when a highway work crew waved her to a stop. A gigantic spruce, uprooted by heavy ice, had fallen across one lane. Melissa turned on the radio and sat in the warm car, discussing the weather with Andrew, listening to Christmas carols, and watching idly as two men approached the crippled tree with a buzzing chain saw. And as the cheery strains of "O, Tannenbaum" burst from the speaker, Melissa glanced up at the tree again, then leapt from the car, waving frantically.
It wasn't difficult to get the highway crew to agree to spare the tree, considering the size of its trunk and the work involved in cutting it into manageable sections. She slipped two of them twenty dollars each to wait until she dropped the baby off at Ben's mother's, went back to the house for the pickup, then returned to have the massive tree loaded into the back, where its equally-massive trunk hung over the rear by a good ten feet.
"That's one hell of a big tree, lady," one of the men remarked, shaking his head doubtfully." You sure you can get it home by yourself? These roads are pretty bad. You’re Ben Harris's wife, right? Maybe you oughta' get him out here, instead. Tell him Roy Jenkins says 'hey'."
Small towns! Melissa thought irritably." I'll be fine, Mr. Jenkins, really. Ben will get it off the truck for me."
"Thought Ben was still out on a horse, lookin' around for them steers o' his," commented the second man. "And ain't that the same pickup he told Gabe Johnson down at the Shell station had a bum transmission? Wouldn't let no wife o' mine go drivin' 'round with a bum transmission in this weather."
"He fixed it," she lied. "Last weekend. Took him all day, but it's just fine, now. Runs like a top, Ben says." Melissa had always been a bit surprised at how easily her lies popped out of her mouth.
"Don't sound it," the man observed. "Sounds like a bucket o' damned bolts. You might wanna tell Ben to check it out again."
Melissa forced a smile, put the truck in the first gear she could force it into, and pulled away, with the bum transmission grinding and the trunk of the salvaged tree dragging behind.
Michael was delighted. Callie stuck her nose in the air and went inside to watch "The Little Mermaid" for maybe the fortieth time that month.
"It'll never fit through the front door," Michael said. "And it's awful tall."
"You wanted it tall! "Melissa cried.
"And heavy," Michael added. "Dad and Randy'll have to get it off the truck, if they get back tonight."
"No!" Melissa yelped. "We can do it by ourselves. And don't mention to your father that I drove the truck!"
"Why not?" Michael asked suspiciously.
"It's a long story, but there's a new video game in it for you, if you'll just let me tell him—when I'm ready, okay?"
Michael hesitated. Ben Harris's children were almost as honest and incorruptible as he was, but Michael was at the age where he really liked video games.
"It's upstairs in my closet. Red Santa paper, with a big green bow and a little brass bell," Melissa said quickly, dangling the bribe more enticingly. Callie would be easy. She rarely paid much attention to what was going on, unless Walt Disney and Company hand a hand in it, and when she did notice anything, she could usually be distracted with chocolate pudding.
Michael's friend Dwayne shook his head. Dwayne had come home from school with Michael and would be staying overnight, meaning there was yet another witness to be bribed into silence. "Betcha' can't. Betcha' that sucker weighs a ton."
Melissa walked around the truck for several moments, studying the problem.
"Go inside and open the big window in the living room," she ordered, feeling suddenly confident and in control. "And take off the screen." The enormous window at the rear of the house, commonly called a "picture window," was constructed in two large sections that cranked fully out to allow the breeze in, or to close tightly against the winter chill.
"It still ain't gonna fit," said Dwayne. "Even if we could carry it up the steps."
Melissa smiled triumphantly. "We're not going to carry it. I'm going to back the truck up to the porch. Then, all the three of us will have to do is slide it off the truck and through the open window. And while it's still resting on the windowsill, we'll simply saw off the bottom branches to where it'll fit in the living room. Eleven feet, maybe ten and a half—to allow for the stand. Michael, go down to the shed and find a saw."
At that point, there was still time to avoid catastrophe, but Melissa was wallowing in pride at her own cleverness and not thinking clearly. Okay, so Ben might get a little cranky when he saw the size of the tree and how she'd gotten it in the house, but as long as she didn’t break the window and as long as didn’t find out about the pickup, what was there to be really mad about? Even Ben wouldn't spank her for something so silly and unimportant. Not at Christmas! Well, not too hard, anyway. She pulled the growling pickup around to the rear of the house.
With the living room window open and the screen removed, the two boys began to argue about who would direct the operation. Melissa summarily elected Michael, then got in the pickup and turned on the ignition. The clattering noise coming up from the beneath the floorboards wasn't reassuring, but the so-called "bum" transmission had held so far. What was another fifty feet or so, right?
Slowly, Melissa backed up across the lawn, edging closer to the wide wraparound porch, with its aging rails and faded gingerbread trim. She lined up the tree's trunk with the open window, yelled for the boys to move aside, and, feeling like a pilot landing a 747, stepped carefully on the accelerator for the final approach.
The truck groaned once, then lumbered backward. When the trunk of the tree cleared the railing, Melissa put on the brake and tried to shift into park, but the gear lever wouldn't budge. The truck wasn't moving especially fast, but it wasn't stopping, either.
The porch rail went first, of course, and the momentum of the collision must have altered the truck's course, because the tree missed the open window completely and crashed through the living room wall. The pickup, like the Pink Energizer Bunny, then simply kept going, crushing the porch itself before finally grinding to a halt in a jumble of splintered planks and shattered posts. Melissa ducked quickly, avoiding by an instant being struck in the back of the head by the treetop, which had seemed spindly when she first saw it. The sturdy tip crashed through the glass of the cab's rear window like a hurled spear, filling the cab and the back of Melissa's coat with broken glass, pine needles and twigs, and the lovely, heady fragrance of Christmas. Melissa turned off the ignition and looked out the driver's side window just in time to watch the porch roof collapse onto the still-frozen Christmas tree. Seconds after that, a collection of stray shingles slipped off the roof and into the bed of the truck. And then it was silent.
While Melissa
sat in the cab of the truck with her forehead resting on the steering wheel, Michael climbed over the tree and onto the porch to inspect the damage.
"Well," he observed philosophically, "At least you didn’t break the window. And the tree'll probably fit now. If we cut it off where it went through the wall, anyway."
Dwayne shook his head. "Man, are you lucky your dad ain't the kind to take a strap to your butt. I'd be in for a first class, hellfire whuppin' if I ever done somethin' this stupid."
"Yeah, well, he's still gonna' ground me," Michael grumbled, "maybe for the rest of my life."
As the only co-conspirator in imminent danger of that "first class hellfire whuppin," Melissa said nothing, but started pulling twigs and broken glass from the neckline of her coat.
* * * *
It was dark by the time Ben and Randy rode in that night, bone-tired and cold. They said goodnight at the barn, and Randy wandered off down to the small bunkhouse, while Ben unsaddled and fed the horses and settled them down. Melissa waited by the front door, watching as her husband came up from the barn into the yard. He stopped before he reached the porch, to remove his muddy leather chaps. They were still stiff with cold, and so was Ben, but he smiled up at her, and winked.
"Found 'em all. About six miles north. Just wanderin' around in the brush, too dumb to find their way home. I hope you've got a pot of hot coffee in there."
Melissa nodded miserably. "I have something to tell you," she said. "I had a little accident."
Ben looked up quickly from what he was doing. "Are you all right? The kids?"
"We're fine, Ben. No one's hurt. It wasn't that kind of accident."
He grinned. "That's the only kind that really matters, babe. Let me get outta' these, and you can tell me what happened." He finished unbuckling the chaps and tossed them across the railing. "It's not the hot water tank again, is it?"
