"You lucked in, this time, old son," the skipper retorted, "the garrison belt is reserved for boys with fuzz around their peckers; your little peenie-weenie is bald as a frog, so I believe I'll put you over my knee and redden your little fantail the old-fashioned way."



Stevie mustered his courage. "It don't make no nevermind to me if you whup me or spank

me, "he said. "I'll turn thirteen in two months, my cock is almost five inches long, and I had my first wet dream a couple weeks ago, so I'm old enough to whup, if you wanna do it that way."

Mike Rattigan wondered if one day such an excess of testosterone would get his son into trouble. "Well excuse me, Mr. Five-Inch-Cock, but I believe most boys would choose a spanking over a whipping," he said with the merest trace of a smile.



The towhead thought it over. "I ain't most boys," he muttered.



The lobsterman shrugged and beckoned like a trapdoor spider inviting a cricket into its lair. "Step up, boy - let's do it," he said. "Face sideways, bend over my leg, and present your butt."

Stevie swallowed hard; his face was the color of wet pie dough. "I hope you're enjoying this," he muttered. "I was gonna repay the money from Mom's purse; you're spanking an innocent kid."

The father stared down his son. "Yeah, right," he said, "Keep dreaming, mister; you are not leaving this room 'til you've taken twelve swats on your naked bottom, so settle down and show me there's a set of balls between your legs."

Stevie's face reddened, his nose began to run, his lower lip thrust out petulantly. "Goddamnit,

I said I was gonna put the fucking money back," he blurted. Almost before the words were out, he realized the magnitude of his mistake and he clapped a hand over his mouth.

Capt. Mike's lips thinned and whitened. After a moment of dead silence, he said, "Very well, mister, that outburst and your salty language just cost you two more whacks."

"I'm sorry, Skipper - it slipped out," the boy stammered.

"Being sorry won't save your ass this time, buddy. But, if it's any consolation, you got your way about one thing - you'll be punished with the belt rather than my hand, so your brother and Buddy won't see you spanked over my lap like a ten-year-old."

Stevie knew the damage was irreversible. He made a sullen face and studied a chameleon searching the windowsill for a tasty bug.

"Did I ever tell you guys that I was raised in an orphanage in West Virginia?" the lobsterman asked.

Bobby-Joe rolled his eyes. "Daddy, you told me and Stevie about Ste. Mary Merkin's Orphan Asylum about a trillion times," he said.

"Really? That many? And did I tell you about Brother Bartholomew, the orphan warden? That man ran his asylum with an iron hand and the stingiest pignut hick'ry switch in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. Saturday night was spanking night at Ste. Mary Merkin's. Right after supper, the boys who'd pissed Brother Bartholomew off during the week were summoned to the chapel and made to take off our pants and underpants and sit on a hardwood church pew praying for the salvation of our souls. At bedtime, the warden arrived with his switch and set to work. Boys were made to bend side-by-side over the back of the pew with our nekkid heinies pokin' up like Moon Pies while Brother Bartholomew moved up and down the line, giving each of us what for with his hick'ry stick. He spanked the boys who'd committed Mickey Mouse offences first and saved those of us guilty of serious misbehavior - masturbating or taking the Lord's name in vain - until the end so we had to watch four or five spankings before our turns came."



"Jeez, no wonder you ran away and joined the Marines," Bobby-Joe said.

"I guess I was tired of being last boy in the spanking line every Saturday night," Capt. Mike reminisced. "But, looking back, I recollect learning some important basic lessons lined up with my little nekkid ass freezing in that drafty old chapel. The more I think about it, the more likely it seems that a generous dollop of Brother Bartholomew's country discipline is what you guys need to keep you on the straight and narrow. Per'aps even Stevie will learn to keep his mouth from flapping at the wrong time."

"I wouldn't bet on it if I was you," Bobby-Joe sidemouthed.

"As you were, Jarheads," Capt. Mike said. "Let's get this over with."

Stevie felt a surge of excitement; he leaned back against the wall and tried to control his breathing. His anus was tight as a cloistered nun's coosie. His dad loomed over the terrified boys and asked, "Who's first?"

Bobby-Joe pointed to Buddy; Buddy pointed to Stevie; Stevie pointed to his brother. "He is," they blurted in unison.

"You guys aren't quite as rambunctious now as you were when you were roughhousing on the bed, are you?" Capt. Mike posed. The question was followed by a lengthy silence, broken by Stevie juicily chomping a wad of Fleers Double Bubble Gum.

Bobby-Joe tugged at his scrotum. Once his balls were hanging to his satisfaction, he said, "I'm kinda scared, Skipper."

"At Ste. Mary Merkin's, I learned to keep a tight asshole during a hiding, boys; if you do

that, the rest of you will take care of itself," the skipper said. "That's good advice for 'most

any situation you'll encounter in this life. Since you guys aren't exactly falling over one another to be first, I believe the most humane way to attend to this is to line you up and handle the job assembly-line-style."

"You know best, Skipper." Bobby-Joe said. The lobsterman flicked the razor-strop against his leg hard enough to make a pop; three boys jumped as if they'd received electrical shocks to their genitals. "Kneel side-by-side on the bed, spread your knees, bend at the waist, and make targets of your butts." The boys assumed spanking positions, each painfully aware that his perineum - that part of his body between the back of his scrotum and the tip of his spine - was visible from behind.

"Bobby-Joe and Buddy are getting twelve swats," Capt. Mike continued. "Stevie - my little Jarhead with the big flapping mouth - has fourteen coming. Your punishments will be meted

out two swats at a time, gentlemen. I'll pass behind you and apply a sharp snap to your left buttock, followed, in close order, by one to the right buttock. Then I'll move on to the next Junior Gyrene and keep repeating the process until your asses are hot as a sumo wrestler's jockstrap. The first half of your punishment will be applied by hand; that should get your attention and start the teardrops flowing. The balance will be laid on with the garrison belt." The bedroom fell silent, except for the shallow breathing of boys and the cooing of a mourning dove in a chinaberry tree outside the open window.



"I'm finished talking," the Skipper said. "Unless one of you Junior Jarheads wants to get something off your chest, we'll get started." Nether cheeks rimpled; faces twisted into convoluted grimaces of dread and anticipation. Stevie got it first; his dad rested a hand on his left buttock and patted it affectionately; a shiver ran the length of the boy's spine. Capt. Mike's hand was muscular and callused from years of winching crab and lobster traps from the Gulf of Mexico; he raised it nearly to the ceiling and brought it down in a blur; it struck with a sound like a cherry bomb goin g off inside a Theban tomb. A pink wad of bubble gum popped from Stevie's mouth, along with a whoop of pain and a tablespoonful of slimy green snot. The staccato smack of the Skipper's hand against the boy's naked rear echoed through the bedroom, motivating doves outside in the window to flutter off in search of quieter neighbors. Stevie had resolved to make his dad proud of him by taking his punishment like a Marine, but with the second snap of the paternal hand on his naked flesh, he began to cry - the disconsolate drawn-out wails of an orphaned calf separated from the herd. A lollipop-red welt sprang up on either asscheek in vivid contrast to the pasty white parts of Stevie's body not normally covered by

a swim suit.

Buddy was next. He was terrified of the Skipper's spanking hand. He knelt between the Rattigan boys, buttocks lewdly upthrust, ass-skin tautened by the degrading buttocks-up position Capt. Mike made the boys assume. Disregarding the Skipper's instructions to not look back,

he sneaked a peek through the inverted V of his thighs - past his danging donnagher. The Skipper towered over him wearing a vaguely jocular expression; the boy couldn't have known that his testicles were being mentally likened to a pair of ball bearings in a Red Man tobacco sack. Even before he was hit, a teardrop welled up, spilled over long sooty lashes, and tumbled erratically down his cheek to hang glistening on the point of his chin. Buddy was aware of the Skipper's hand resting on his freckly ass; it felt warm, hard, very powerful, and very businesslike. He allowed himself to relax a bit, lulled by the knowledge that however painful the experience might be, the hand on his ass was there to dispense justice - Cracker style. "Relax, old son," the Skipper said. "You deserve this; cooperate with it."

Buddy craned over his shoulder, gave a resigned nod of consent, and croaked, "Go ahead - do it." Only when he could no longer feel the Skipper's horny hand did he realize that the hand was poised four-feet above Ground Zero and would make landfall on his grinning pink bottom in half-a-nanosecond. Once it fell, a full two seconds elapsed before he reacted to it. Then it occurred to him that the deafening CRACK he'd heard had been a strong male hard hand slapping a tender, young male buttock full-strength, and the unpleasant sensation in the buttock left no doubt in his mind that the spanking was underway.

Buddy's body stiffened; hairs on his nape stood out like fence pickets;a rose-red weal, the size of a man's palm, popped up on his fanny. Adding insult to injury, he expelled dry-fart that more resembled an emanation from an Arkansas drayhorse then a human boy. "Gawdamn, Gyrene, do

you have a frog in your ass?" the Skipper growled.

"I couldn't help it, sir - that really hurt!" Buddy blurted through clenched teeth.

"Relax, old son; we've barely started."

"I'll try, sir! The Skipper's hand snapped down on the culprit's bum a second time with the sound of a stick snapping. Buddy yelped and craned up at the lobsterman with beseeching gray eyes, but Capt. Mike had already moved on to the next boy.

Bobby-Joe was going on fifteen; he'd inherited sticky-up red hair and freckles from his mother's side of the family. He was lanky and tall for his age, but already his young body was showing signs of filling out.

"How are you holding up?" the lobsterman asked his elder son.

Bobby-Joe favored his father with a shy, lopsided smile. "I'm okay, Dad," he said, "but, I kinda wish this was over; I ain't too hot on gettin' whupped with my weenie waggin'."

Capt. Mike tousled his son's shaggy hair and said, "You're lucky your mother isn't home to

see you, boy."

"Yes, sir - you got that right." In truth, not only was Bobby-Joe reconciled to a spanking, but he found the prospect of getting one deliciously erotic. Several of his junior high school buddies had regular encounters with their father's belts; more than once the Rattigan brothers observed belt hickies on the fannies of local Cracker boys while skinny-dipping in the Turner River. On such occasions, he invariably pressed the boy for details of his run-in with paternal justice. It wasn't long before Bobby-Joe became the boy other boys consulted when they wanted to know how their buddies were punished at home. Danny Prosser got it on the bare back with a hazel switch which he had to cut and soak in brine 'til it was supple and stingy; Josh Macauley was spanked with a belt at bedtime - usually through his pajamas pants, and he wasn't allowed to wear underpants. Jon Hayley still got it bare-ass with a hairbrush, although he was going

on sixteen. And so it went.

Truth to tell, if Capt. Mike had changed his mind and called off the spanking, Bobby-Joe would have felt cheated. He'd worked hard for a reddening, and felt he'd earned it fair and square.

"Brace yourself, mister."

"Wait a second, please, Daddy," the boy pleaded, "I ain't ready."

"Get ready, goddamnit."

"Yes, sir." Capt. Mike would have been nonplussed if he'd realized his son's foot-dragging wasn't because Bobby-Joe was garnering his courage, but because the boy was on an adrenaline and testosterone rush and wanted to prolong his first spanking. The kid genuinely enjoyed the camaraderie of being punished naked with two other boys, and he enjoyed the bittersweet bonding with his dad. He relished the roiling of his testicles, the granitic hardness of his penis, and the anticipatory tingle in his buttocks. Even Stevie's plaintive wails turned him on, although he suspected that he, Stevie and Buddy would be wailing in three-part harmony before the second hand on the big Seth Thomas clock on the wall finished it's sweep. "Okay, Daddy, I'm ready," he said with a boy's eagerness to please. He jackknifed his body more sharply, further stretching his ass-skin to enhance the sting of his father's hand. "Go ahead, sir."

The lobsterman's hand descended on his son's quivering buttock with the brittle snap of river ice breaking up in the spring. Bobby-Joe's eyes widened in amazement; he'd had no idea his bottom was so tender that a single pop of his dad's hand would feel like a branding iron pressing against it. He let out falsetto yelp - half whistle, half squeal - the sound of a prairie dog warning its colony of danger. The second wallop landed an instant after the first. Fighting back tears, the boy craned over his shoulder and blurted, "Ow, Skipper - that hurt!"

Paying Bobby-Joe no further heed, the Skipper turned his attention back to Stevie; with nary a pause between boys, he began the morning's second round of spanks; one resounding smack to the left buttock - one to the right. By the fifth round, the boys were crying so lustily that Stevie's collection of leaden toy soldiers, which he kept on an antique etagere borrowed from his mother, rattled and jiggled. Three-inch-tall Erwin Rommel tap-dancing on his shelf was a whimsical sight, indeed.

Then, the hand-spanking was over; Capt. Mike allowed his sons and Buddy Mulaney one carefully timed minute to rub, holler, and blow through their teeth before he picked up the Marine Corps belt and ordered them to reassume the spanking position for the principal punishment. The three were past caring that the bottoms were candy-apple red, their penises

in states of maximus erectus, or that some areas of the pubescent anatomies they presented for punishment wouldn't be seen again 'til after they'd graduated from high school and were undergoing physical exams for induction into the armed services.

Sawney Bean, the neighborhood's eleven-year-old newspaper boy, skidded his bike to a halt in the Rattigans' driveway, gawked in awe at the boys' half-open bedroom window, and clapped his hands over his spatulate ears to muffle the ruction of Bobby-Joe, Stevie and Buddy being disciplined with Capt. Mike's garrison belt. He must have had a guilty conscience, because he spun the bike about and pedaled off down the street as fast as his Schwinn would go.



ADDENDUM:

TOASTED CRACKERS is a fictionalized account of an event that took place fifteen years ago. A fictionalized account is an account in which names and locations have been changed and dialogue has been recreated.

The character identified as Buddy Mulaney graduated from high school and went on to obtain a teaching degree. He currently teaches high school English in the Florida Panhandle.

Capt. Mike Rattigan mortgaged his house to buy a second lobster boat. His eldest son, Bobby-Joe, passed the Coast Guard Motor Vessel Operator's test and is skipper of that boat.

Stevie Rattigan, the "Little Jarhead With the Big Flapping Mouth," joined the Navy, rather than the Marine Corps, after his high school graduation. On 12 October, 2000, he was killed aboard the USS Cole (DDG-67) in Aden, Yemen, during a terrorist attack on his ship.



An illustrated version of Toasted Crackers is available from the author, who can be contacted by e-mail at Prydwyn@AOL.com. The account will be sent by You Send It, and will be in WPD (WordPerfect Document) format only.