Soft Apocalypses

by Lucy Snyder

  “But did you spank him?”

  The question made bile and beer rise in Jake’s throat. For a moment he thought he might puke right there on the cigarette-burned Formica table. Maybe talking to Sam about this was a bad idea. But who else did he have to go to besides his brother? He knew what his father would say if the old man were still alive. He knew what the parish priest would say; hell, Father Walton would probably offer to punish the boy himself.

  His wife had made it clear she didn’t approve of spankings, ever, but she was just a woman. It wasn’t her place to boss him, and it wasn’t his place to listen to her. He was the paterfamilias, and discipline was his responsibility.

  “I yelled at him for a long time, and he seemed plenty scared when I was done,” Jake replied.

  Sam shook his head, his frown deepening into a scowl. “That ain’t good enough.”

  “I don’t think he’ll do it again—“

  “Are you tryin’ to raise up a Goddamned faggot?” Sam slammed down his mug, but the bar jukebox was too loud for anyone to pay any attention. He looked horrified and furious. “You want your boy’s soul to burn in everlastin’ hell because you didn’t have the stomach for good discipline?”

  Jake felt as though he’d been slapped in the face. “No, of course I don’t.”

  “You know as well as I do that a boy who plays around with makeup is well on the road to faggotry. You gotta nip that in the bud! Today it’s painted toes, tomorrow he’ll be into his mother’s unmentionables dressin’ up like a queer … you gotta beat some man into him. Spare the rod and spoil the child.”

  “But he’s only seven.”

  “Seven?” Sam snorted. “That’s plenty old enough for a spanking. I was eight when Pa gave me my first. My boys were six. And you was seven, though I reckon you don’t remember too much ‘bout that.”

  For just a moment, Jake felt as though he were back in his old room at the farmhouse, his father grabbing him by the back of his neck and throwing him down on the bed. It was all happening because Jake had cried and refused to help his father and uncles slaughter the calves. He’d been taking care of one calf since she was born, and he loved her like he loved his puppy Rufus. He couldn’t bear to put the knife to her throat.

  “If you ain’t willin’ to do man’s work, that makes you a goddamn girl, and I ain’t raisin’ no girls in this house,” his father had thundered as he pulled Jake’s jeans and underwear down around his ankles. “You wanna be a girl, boy? I’ll show you what’s it’s like to be a girl!”

  His own blood was a freight train in Jake’s ears, the remembered agony and terror and his shame at not being able to take his punishment like a man almost overwhelming, and he wished for the ten thousandth time since he was seven that the Earth would open up and swallow him and leave no trace behind.

  “Pa spanked the devil out of you.” Sam paused to drain his own mug in a single gulp. “I reckon Ma was sure you’d bleed to death, and she finally got Uncle Eustace to take you to the county hospital. Sheriff Andy came by and gave Pa a talking-to. Almost hauled him in. You recollect any of that?”

  Jake shook his head numbly. Bits and pieces of the spanking and his hospital stay circled like sharks through his nightmares, but he couldn’t be sure what was a real memory and what was just a figment of his imagination.

  Sam laughed with a good-times humor that didn’t match the darkness in his eyes and slapped Jake on the shoulder. “Don’t matter if you remember it … the important thing is you butched right up and flew straight! Wasn’t a boy in the whole state more eager to help with the slaughters than you! Pa didn’t have to spank you but a few times after that to keep you in line, did he?”

  “Three,” Jake replied.

  He seldom dared to remember his Pa’s fourth attempt. He was fifteen. Sam was off in the Army by then. Jake had crashed the tractor when he hit an unseen sinkhole; after he got himself out from under the hulk he’d run to the barn to escape the old man’s wrath. When his Pa came after him, he grabbed a rusty scythe … and he didn’t remember much more after that but coming to and seeing the blood and entrails dark against the straw and the whitewashed walls. His Ma found him out there, and she held him for a while and helped him clean everything up. Nobody ever found the place by the creek where they planted his Pa.

  Jake still blacked out sometimes, and came awake in his car or standing in an alley someplace with blood on his clothes and hands. He never went looking to see where it had come from. Once he found a severed finger in his pocket. He threw away all his knives after that. Still, sometimes he’d find blood under his fingernails or in the treads of his work boots and have no idea what had happened.

  “He spanked me three times in my whole life,” Jake said.

  “Three times, and you turned out just fine!” Sam gave him another shoulder-slap.

  Then he leaned forward across the baskets of chewed-up gristle and discarded chicken bones and spoke to Jake more softly: “Look, I know you don’t want to hurt your boy, but pain is good for a young man. It builds character. Pa spanked me twice, and yeah, I hated him for it.

  “But he was preparin’ me for the world, Jake. If he hadn’t given me proper discipline, I’d have never survived what the Serbs did to me when they captured my squad. The pain Pa put me through was a gift that kept me strong, kept my mind clear, and when I had my chance I got free and killed every last one of those sonsabitches with my bare hands. And then me and my boys went down to the nearest village and gave ‘em all a taste of good ol’ American payback. I kept some baby teeth as souvenirs; I knew Sarge would have confiscated anything else once we were back on base.”

  Sam paused, looking as serious as Jake had ever seen him. “Do right by your son, brother. Don’t let him grow up to be some God-forsaken faggot. Make sure he grows up strong like us.”

  Jake poured the rest of their pitcher into his mug. Maybe Sam’s advice was solid. Maybe spankings were like vitamins: too much or too little made you sick and weak. Maybe if he just spanked his son once, and didn’t do it so hard or for so long that the boy passed out and couldn’t remember it clearly afterward, he’d never have to do it again.

  “Okay,” Jake said. “You’re right.”

  “I’m glad you’re seein’ things more clearly.” Sam nodded grimly and raised his mug in a salute. “Sometimes it’s hard to spank a boy the first time, and there ain’t no shame in that; I got some little blue pills that’ll help if you think ya need ‘em. And make sure you use some lard. Not too much, or it won’t hurt enough.”

  “I will,” Jake promised. “I will.”

  Miz Ruthie Pays Her Respects

  Andrew Dockholm straightened his navy blue JROTC uniform and stepped through the automatic doors leading to the Hillsonville Regional Airport’s baggage claim area. He spotted a tall, silver-haired woman in an ankle-length black dress by the lone conveyor belt. She clutched a leather purse and a bouquet of yellow roses and white lilies in her left hand, and was leaning over to try to catch a small blue suitcase with her right. The woman looked just like her pictures on Facebook, except for the black dress; she was mostly dressed in flowery hippie clothes in those.

  “Let me get that for you, Miz Ruthie!” Andrew shouldered his way through the sparse crowd so he could get to the light suitcase before his cousin did.

  “Oh! Andrew. Hello there. I could’ve gotten that, but thank you.” Ruthie blinked at him, looking surprised, then glanced past him, her expression darkening. “Is your mother or your father with you?”

  “No ma’am. I got my regular driver’s license last week, so I just came on out here in my truck after drill practice.” Andrew beamed at her.

  “Do your folks know you’re picking me up?” She looked a bit worried, and maybe a touch suspicious.

  “Not exactly, ma’am…I got the feeling they don’t cotton to you much. Don’t know why ‘cuz you seem like a real nice lady in your emails, and you always give me good loot in Mafia Wars, and we’re family, right?”
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  Andrew’s folks had never made the cause of their disapproval clear, although once when his pa had too much Wild Turkey and had gone on a drunken rant he’d called Miz Ruthie “That Frisco witch.” His pa never had much compunction about calling women the b-word, so the witch thing had made Andrew curious, but later his pa denied having said it and went silent as a lowcountry clam about their cousin. Miz Ruthie had posted stuff supporting Obama on Facebook, but Andrew supposed he could turn the other cheek on that because women usually had stupid ideas about politics. And she’d posted stuff about doing Tarot readings, which his grandpa preached was Satanic, but Andrew had seen a Tarot deck at a gaming store once and as far as he could tell it was just paper and ink like a regular playing card deck. He didn’t see what was so bad about it besides that one devil card. It wasn’t like she was a Muslim or something.

  “It’s only right you want to pay your respects to my grandpa,” Andrew continued. “The whole county came out for his funeral last weekend. It wouldn’t be right to make a lady like you take a taxi.”

  After all, Miz Ruthie had to be at least fifty, practically as old as his own grandma, but he knew better than to tell her that. Old ladies didn’t like you pointing out that they were old. Andrew figured he wouldn’t be much of a man if he didn’t step up and offer to take his cousin out to the family graveyard. Besides, he liked showing off his new truck, a Dodge Ram with a hemi V8 engine. He’d worked three solid years of weekends and summers down at the sawmill to save up for it—had to get his pa to lie about his age to the owner at first—but at fourteen Andrew had been as big and strong as any sixteen-year-old. And besides, like his pa and grandpa had always said, all those labor laws were just dumb government meddling.

  Ruthie still looked worried. “Well, I wouldn’t want you to get in any trouble….”

  “I ain’t gonna get in no trouble! I stay out late all the time, and my pa don’t care as long as I do my chores.”

  “What about your mama?”

  Andrew blinked at her. “What about her? She don’t wear the pants.”

  Despite Miz Ruthie’s gentle protestations, Andrew insisted on carrying her suitcase out to his truck. He took a moment to pop the hood to show her the engine, clean and pretty as a prom queen’s pussy, and tell her how fast it went up the road to Table Rock Mountain. And then they were off, speeding down the highway toward the turnoff to the old stone church where all their kin were buried, including Andrew’s grandpa, the Reverend Robert M. Dockholm, who’d presided over New Bedrock Baptist Church for over thirty years.

  “So are you going into Air Force ROTC in college?” Miz Ruthie asked, gesturing toward his uniform.

  “No ma’am, I’m gonna be an Army Ranger. I already got it all worked out with the recruiter. I’m only in Air Force JROTC ‘cuz that’s all they have at my high school.”

  “What about college?” she asked.

  “College? I already got a job, I don’t need no college.”

  “Ah.”

  Andrew pulled his truck into the gravel parking lot in front of the old stone church; since it didn’t have electricity or indoor plumbing, the congregation only used the 180-year-old building for weddings and funerals in good weather. The lights of the New Bedrock Baptist Church were visible on the hill beyond. The evening sky was a solid ceiling of gray clouds, and the piney air hung moist and heavy. Thunder rolled somewhere in the distance.

  “Well, I’ll do my best to keep this quick so you don’t have to wait out here too long,” Miz Ruthie said, glancing out the window at the ominous sky.

  “Oh, I’m gonna go into the cemetery with you.”

  Miz Ruthie bit her lip. “It would probably be better if you just stayed here.”

  “No ma’am! It’s gettin’ dark out there, and what if you was to trip on a root, or twist your ankle in a gopher hole? I’d be failin’ my duty if didn’t escort you proper.”

  “Okay.” She frowned; clearly she was turning something over in her mind. “But I need to pay my respects in my own way, and I want you to promise you won’t interfere with me.”

  “Sure, I promise.” He drew an X over his heart with his finger. “Soldier’s honor.”

  “All right then.” She opened her door and stepped out onto the gravel with her funeral bouquet, then gave him a sharp look. “You better remember your promise; if you don’t like something, don’t look.”

  Andrew squinted at her, wondering what she meant, and followed close behind as she made her way up the path into the graveyard. The first part of the cemetery was the oldest, some graves dating to the early 1800s. They walked among the mottled, decaying marble stones, some so worn that he could barely make out that there had ever been inscriptions on them. The ground was a patchwork of velvety dark moss, gravel-embedded soil, and short green grass.

  Andrew ran his hands over the tops of the headstones as he walked, the worn stone rough and gritty. Some of these people were born before the nation had its independence. All had died before it was torn by the War Between the States. He felt a surge of pride; he and his JROTC squad had spent several weeks after school cleaning up the cemetery, clearing brush and weeds away from the old markers and headstones and crypts. His grandpa had told him they’d done a right fine job.

  Old stones gave way to newer markers and crypts. The inscriptions became recognizable, and so were the family names. Hillson. Harris. Keller. Smith. Calhoun. Dockholm. Andrew watched as Miz Ruthie went to her mother’s grave, pulled three lilies from the bouquet, and laid them on her headstone.

  But then, instead of heading to the Reverend Dockholm’s freshly-mounded grave near the edge of the trees, Miz Ruthie went to a headstone tucked back amongst the graves of townsfolk who weren’t their kin, except maybe by marriage. She knelt at the forgotten grave, laid the bouquet down, and spent several minutes kneeling there with her head bowed.

  Andrew tried to stand at easy attention while she paid her respects to whoever it was, but just as he was starting to feel really antsy she got up and headed toward his grandfather’s resting place, her hands empty. Shouldn’t she have some flowers to pay proper respects? Frowning, he followed her over to the grave.

  She held up her hand. “Remember, you promised: no interfering.”

  Miz Ruthie pulled a travel pack of Kleenex out of the pocket of her long black dress—

  That’s good, she’s going to have a big ol’ cry over him like my momma did, Andrew thought.

  –which she shoved down the front of her dress, apparently into her cleavage. And then she unzipped the dress from neck to hem. Andrew felt his face flush crimson as she shrugged out of the dowdy old-lady garment, revealing that she was wearing a short stoplight-red cocktail dress and gartered fishnet stockings beneath. Miz Ruthie had a really nice ass, and Andrew felt his blush deepen as he realized he’d gotten a rubbery boner at the sight of her in the clingy satin. She was old enough to be his granny, for sweet Jesus’ sake!

  Miz Ruthie folded the black overdress and set it on a nearby headstone, then strode to the Reverend’s grave and began dancing, sweeping the flowers off his headstone with her lean legs.

  “Miz Ruthie, what are you doing?” Andrew was aghast.

  “Paying all the respects I owe your grandfather.” Her skirt rode up with each Rockette kick, and he saw a sterling silver flask strapped to the outside of her left thigh. “Remember, you promised. Crossed your heart and promised.”

  Once she’d cleared off the headstone, she stood facing it with her legs on either side of the grave, did a half-squat and hiked her skirt up to her hips. She wasn’t wearing any underwear. Andrew watched, horrified and hard, as she made a V with her fingers and pulled up on her pussy, and suddenly she was peeing in a strong arc right on the headstone, urine spilling down the words “In Loving Memory of the Reverend Robert M. Dockholm.”

  Andrew was rooted to the spot, unable to move or speak in his shock. A thousand thoughts crowded in his head, which was about 999 more than usually occupied the space. She w
as defiling his grandfather’s grave! Vandalizing it! And she. Could. Pee. Standing. Up! Andrew had never heard of women doing such a thing. Was she one of those freaky chicks with a dick? He couldn’t see anything like a penis, not even a little Cheeto-looking one like that kid in gym class had. No wonder his pa thought she was a witch!

  Ruthie’s pee stream faltered, stopped, and she swiveled around and did a deeper squat so that her ass was nearly touching the soil. And she began to shit, the poop coming out of her in a long, smooth coil, mounding in perfect circles like soft-serve on the grave. As she grimaced in concentration, gritting her teeth, grinding her hips in circles to squeeze out the poop just so, he began to suspect she’d been practicing. And also probably eating a whole lot of prunes on the plane ride from California.

  Andrew’s vision was starting to darken at the edges, his legs shaking beneath him, so he went with it and fell to his knees, shutting his eyes against his cousin’s abominations and loudly repeating every prayer and psalm he could remember.

  As he spoke, “The Lord is my strength and shield; my heart trusts in Him and I am helped,” inside he was praying, Dear God, strike this wicked witch down with your Almighty wrath, please dear God, oh please, strike her down.

  His hair rose on end, the air going electric, and a heartbeat later there was a sudden crack of lightning in the trees nearby and one of the tall pines shrieked as its trunk was sundered near the roots, and Andrew could hear it falling—

  “Andrew, get out of the way!” Miz Ruthie shouted.

  He opened his eyes to see the pine tree plummeting straight down toward his head, no time to stand up. He frog-hopped forward, but the tree slammed down on his right leg, pinning him to the mossy ground, the pain a bright blue spark arcing from his ankle right up into his spine.

  Miz Ruthie was still in full squat, but was vigorously wiping herself clean with a handful of the Kleenex she’d stashed in her bra; she dropped the crumpled tissues neatly around her poo-swirl, completing the first-glance illusion that it was some kind of ice cream dessert. Then she stood, pulled her flask out of her thigh holster, unscrewed the cap, and poured the liquid inside over her shit sundae. Andrew smelled strong whisky. She stepped aside, pulled a packet of matches out of her bra, and lit up her pile, filling the air with the stench of burning feces.