Generations of Wellses

"Dad," Mickey said, a bit nervously as he held his cell phone out towards me. "It’s Preston’s dad."

"Who’s Preston?" I asked as I reached towards the phone.

"He’s another debater. A freshman. He’s one of the kids I gave a ride home last night."

Which explained the nervousness, I suppose, since several questionable decisions had led to him and Noah being bent over, naked, next to each other for a thorough whipping that had let Noah crying hard and Mickey bawling. Of course, Mickey had agreed to it, thinking it was an easier choice than losing his keys for a week. So far, neither of the boys seemed angry at me about it, but I suppose another kid’s father calling me would be enough to make him nervous.

"His name is Wells, too," Mickey added, right as I’d started to speak.

"Hello," I’d said.

Before I could add my name, a pleasant baritone answered me.

"Hi. My name is Trey Wells. I’m…"

"I know who you are Trey," I interrupted. "I’ve known who you were since we were nine years old."

"What? Nine?" the man responded, confused.

"Wells?" he added questioningly a second later.

"Jack?" he then asked, a friendly warmth to his voice.

"Jack," I confirmed. "How are you, Trey?"

"I’m great. Are you kidding me? Mickey’s your kid?"

"He’s one of them. And you’ve got one in high school, too, huh?"

"And another in middle school."

"You always did hate being an only child."

"Well, not always, but often enough."



I first met Trey in fourth grade. The fact that we had the same last name made everyone think we were related. As far as we could tell, we weren’t. I guess if your last name is Smith or Jones, you get over the idea that anyone with that last name is a relative very quickly. If you’re last name is Smajstrla, that idea is probably right. Wells is common enough that it’s hard to say that we’re related, but it’s not so common we run into those people every day.

Trey’s family had apparently lived in Bransom for a few generations. We know that my great-great-grandfather moved to the U.S. from Wales in about 1890, and that his name was changed, though we don’t know what the family name was before he arrived here, and we have no clue how he ended up in Texas. We do know the names of my dad’s dad’s father, aunts, and uncles, so we were eventually able to decide that Trey’s family of Wells was probably already here when my great great grandpa arrived. I was in high school, though, when I finally put that information together, and before that, it had been an occasional source of discussion for Trey and me.

Trey and I were never close friends. He was a nice guy and we got along, but we didn’t have a lot of interest in common and didn’t run with the same group of friends.

When Mom and Ralph had married, then bought a house, I’d started attending school at Dunn Elementary. Trey was one of the kids who’d been going there since kindergarten. He already had his close group of friends, and I gravitated to Allen Robinson, who was the other new boy in class, and David B., with whom I’d become friends over the summer. Trey and I talked some and started early explorations of family history, but that was about the limit of our relationship.

The first time things went deeper for Trey and me was in fifth grade.



The old high school wasn’t nearly as big as the new high school, but it was far from tiny. There were the three academic buildings, a teacher’s parking lot, a student parking lot, the auto shop and vocational areas, the football field, tennis courts, baseball field, and a practice area, and none of those places was cramped. The campus was bent a bit, either causing, or because of, bends in the roads, but the street where my mom lives and where I grew up is the longest one along the high school; it has four blocks facing it.

That size explains why I was neither aware, nor shocked to learn, that Trey didn’t live that far from me, on the other side of the school.

Trey and I first became aware of how close we lived when we ran into each other at the football field. It was a miserable, gray day, and both of us should have been inside. I don’t remember if it was late fall or winter, but it was very windy, which put a real bite into the air. It must have been a Sunday, both because it was probably midday when I was there, and because Ralph was home.

I was looking for a place I could huddle out of the wind for a while. When I saw a place like that, Trey was already in it, looking as miserable as I felt.

"Hey," I said, raising my voice to attract his attention.

Trey was huddled into himself. The jacket he wore was pretty light, but probably sufficient for the actual temperature. I’d bet the wind was biting right through it, though. When I spoke, he jumped a bit, but then looked at me. I could see that his face was flushed and his eyes were bloodshot.

"Hey," he returned.

I was barely able to hear him as the wind picked up. He was leaning against one of the bleacher railings, on the downwind side. I’d been planning to go up by the concession building, which was on concrete, so it should have been okay to sit by it for a while. Leaning didn’t sound too bad, though.

I walked up next to him and stood. He looked away from me, but scooted over a bit. I accepted the tacit invitation and leaned back next to him, our shoulders almost touching.

"Weather sucks, huh?" he said after a few long minutes of quiet.

"Yeah. Wish I had a couple of quarters or something. I’d go to 7-11 for a while."

"Why don’t you go home?" he asked.

I shrugged. The quiet lasted a couple of minutes.

"I left ’cause I’m mad at Ralph," I explained, then took a deep breath and put the whole matter out there. "I just got a whipping."

Trey looked up at me and really looked at me.

"You too?" he asked while he was studying my face.

I nodded, suddenly feeling a frisson as I realized it wasn’t the wind that had left his eyes bloodshot.

"Who’s Ralph?"

"My stepdad."

It was his turn to nod.

"How come you got it?" he asked.

I hesitated to answer, but he’d asked first, and I was already hoping to get similar answers from him.

"I got in an argument with Ralph about some stupid chores. I did ‘em, but he said I wasn’t minding, and I disrespected him."

"That sounds like my stupid, Dad," Trey replied.

He dropped his voice to a deep register, before adding, "If you think you can just do what you want, when you want, then talk to me like you own the place, you got another think coming. Get those jeans down, boy."

It wasn’t a great impersonation, since his reedy voice didn’t handle the lower register well, but it got the right impression across.

Trey blushed as he realized how much he’d revealed though.

"My dad makes me drop my pants, too. You get it…"

"You mean your stepdad?"

"Him too," I answered; then explained about Ralph being married to my mom and living across the street, while my Dad lived on the other side of town.

He nodded.

Then he blushed again.

"What do they whup you with?"

Darn it. His question had derailed me, and let him jump into the lead again.

"A belt," I admitted.

"Mine too. Both of them?"

It was my turn to nod.

"So you get it on your jockeys?"

He blushed, but then shook his head.

"Maybe if I’m getting a spanking, but not when I get the belt."

You could look and tell how uncomfortable he was admitting that.

"What the difference between a spanking and…?"

"My mom spanks me. She don’t do it much anymore. Says I’m getting too big. She used to spank me more than Dad did, though. She used this old ruler. Man, that thing was really bad when I was a little kid. Only got it from her once in a long time, though."

"How come?"

"Dad went on a hunting trip a while back, and Mom and me got in a big fight. She decided to whup me. Made me pull my pants down, then made me take a bath and go to bed, and it was only like eight o’clock or something. That was worse than the spanking."

"Yeah, my mom used to use this plastic flyswatter when I was little," I told him, fudging the fact that she used it still, though not as often anymore.

"Stung like the devil. She usually spanked me on my shorts, too."

"She ever spank you bare?"

I nodded.

"Sometimes. I usually pulled my pants down like this," I added, gesturing to just below where the leg band of my jockey shorts would be. "When I had to get bare, I pulled my shorts down like that too, but sometimes she said, ‘further’, and then I knew it was going to be really bad, because…"

"She was gonna spank your legs?"

I nodded again.

"Man, my dad does that. That’s the worst!"

"Yeah, man. The legs hurt so much more than the butt, and that’s bad enough. My dad…"

"Your dad or your stepdad?"

"Both, I guess. Ralph really just hits my legs if I put my hands on my butt while he’s still whipping me."

"Yeah, my dad does that sometimes. I grab hold of the bed – I have to bend over the side of the bed when he whips me – the edge of it I mean, so I don’t do that. He’s hit my hand with the belt before, and that hurts really bad, too."

"Yeah, that’s almost worse than the legs."

"Yeah…" he said.

"Anyway," I said after a pause, "when my dad, my real dad, is about to whup me, if I don’t pull my jeans down far enough, he says, ‘Nope, if I’m gonna whip you, I’m gonna do it right. Get those things down so I can see some legs.’"

"Oh, man. That is exactly what my dad says, too. You think our dad’s know each other? Maybe we are cousins?"

I shrugged, since we‘d talked about it before, but couldn‘t find any relatives in common. I was going to say something else, but he’d trailed off in a thoughtful pause, so I waited a moment.

"Want to see my butt?" he asked nervously. "If I can see yours too," he then rushed to add.

I nodded.

We had to look around a bit, and the place we chose as visually secure was more out in the wind than we would have liked, but there was no clear field of vision from more than a few yards, so we felt secure.

Trey went first. He unzipped his jacket then pulled it and his shirt up a bit. I watched his hands as the fumbled at his fly, then he turned around to face away from me and shoved his pants and jockeys down together, so his butt and a bit of his legs were exposed.

He was red. Very red, and his skin had an almost leather-like texture to it. I could still see some welts, though it looked like they were already fading. My hand reached forward to feel, and then I stopped.

"Can I touch it?"

I looked up to see him nodding, but then he added ‘yeah.’

Despite the red coloring, his skin didn’t feel any hotter than if I’d touched his belly. There was a different texture, though. I reached over to touch his hip, and I could definitely feel it, but can’t really describe it. It wasn’t so much a feeling as simply the lack of the normal velvet softness that a boy’s skin normally has.

I could also feel the corduroy effect the welts had left as they rippled across his cheeks. They weren’t prominent, but they were definitely there to my fingertips.

As I explored his well-thrashed rear with my hand, I heard Trey moan.

"Does it hurt?" I asked.

"Yeah, some," he admitted.

I pulled my hands away.

"No, I meant my butt still hurts. Your hand feels good."

He couldn’t see me, but I nodded my acceptance of that, then reached back in and rubbed for a few minutes.

Trey leaned forward to enjoy the rubbing, resting against the side of the building. While his butt was almost solid red, his upper legs had what looked like three very distinct stripes across them, though one had a split tail, so it had probably been at least four swats. I ran my hand across his left leg for a second, enjoying the rippled effect the fewer stripes had left, but then returned to his butt.

I traced my hands and fingers all across his cheeks, bringing another moan when my fingertips caressed the still white skin around his crack. Then I decided it was his turn, and I stood up.

I think Trey might have been disappointed that I’d quit. He shot a look behind him, but pulled his briefs, then his pants back into place. He was shivering a bit, though I have to wonder if it was all from the cold. When he had his jacket zipped again, he stepped back, and I took his place against the wall.

I did it the same way Trey had, leaving about six inches bare below my butt. He responded the same way I had, without bothering to ask. I wondered if I’d gotten more whips to the legs, because he spent more time there, though he did spend plenty of time on my cheeks as well.

He’d been right – it did feel good. I was still very tender, though I’m not sure I would have said sore, but his hands felt relieving in a way that my own never were. Then, with one hand gently rubbing my cheeks, his other hand moved back to my left leg, and his fingertips slipped between my legs, to that extremely tender flesh. My balls were much too small at that time for his fingers to have come near them, but I still shivered. I didn’t say anything, but he must have noticed, because his hand went back to my butt. I know my dick had liked that brief touch, though.

"Hey, Jack?" Trey asked after a bit, when my flaming cheeks had been thoroughly explored.

"Yeah?"

"You wanna look at each other’s dicks?"

I certainly did.

Trey’s little buddy was just as stiff as mine was. We looked at each other for a few moments. Neither one of us was very big, but it was still fascinating. While mine was pointing slightly upwards, his actually had a slight upward tilt to it. After a few moments, I stepped forward, my index finger and thumb around the base, and tapped his head with mine.

That was enough to start a sword fight.

It was very fun, but it was also very cold, and it wasn’t long before we were both getting goose bumps, which didn’t feel great on already welted skin. By mutual consent, we gave up the game and dressed. At least the diversion had left us both in better enough moods that we decided to give up freezing and sulking and go home.



That event was fun but didn’t mark a real change in our relationship. I remember a sly, shy grin was shared between us after that when we saw each other at school, but we didn’t suddenly become best buds or after-spanking confidants. It was just something that had happened, then our ten-year old minds moved back into our normal routines.

It did stay with me long enough for me to ask Patrick about it, though. Nope, we still weren’t cousins, but after some back and forth, it turned out that he had been friends with Trey’s uncle – his father’s younger brother – and that the two of them had shared a few spankings from both sets of parents when they were just a bit older than Trey and I. It seems likely that my dad had picked up that phrase he used on occasions from Trey’s grandfather.

Patrick did inform me that he and Trey’s dad had often sat around trying to figure out if they might be cousins, though.

When Nora Woods Elementary opened the next year, the dividing line for attendance wasn’t far from my home, and Trey was on the other side. Since we’d never been close friends, I totally lost track of him, and all the new friends I made at Woods lived in the other direction, so I was rarely even over by his house for the chance to see him.

We were back in the same situation in seventh grade. We had a few friends in common, so we spent some time in each other’s company, but we never became close. He played football in middle school and ninth grade, but even after that, the few times we ended up walking home together, just the two of us, I could never think of a good way to say, ‘How long since your dad’s busted your butt? You wanna play with each others dicks again?’

Here I am, normally so silver tongued, but my shyness and insecurity sliced those chances away.

Fate did choose to have a little mercy on me, though.



Do you remember how it was in middle and high school? You were too old to just randomly play with anyone you met who was close to your age, but you still remembered those days. Sometimes you’d just accidentally run into somebody that you didn’t think of as a friend, someone whom you rarely even thought about, and you’d remember the old times and start talking? That happened with Trey and me once in our sophomore year.

Our high school had three major buildings, which were organized by numbers. Math and science was in the three hundred building. Two hundred was some of the arts, and vocational. While the one hundred building was mostly English and History. It was the end of the day, and I’d had to go to the one hundred building to drop off some homework that I’d left in my locker, rather than going straight out the door and home from my last class, as I normally did.

Leaving the English hall, I ran, almost literally, into Trey, who was just leaving his locker.

"Jack!" He exclaimed, sounding a bit surprised. "How‘s it goin‘?"

"Pretty good," I answered. "You?"

He nodded, then we started filling in details.

My home was right across from the practice fields, which put it on the far corner from the one hundred building. It was almost equidistant whichever way I went, so I just started walking with Trey. Our conversation continued, roaming over what we’d been up to, the classes we’d been taking, movies and TV, then teachers we had in common.

"I live right there," he said, pointing a couple of houses up the side street. "You wanna come in and shoot some pool?"

I had no homework and no rules saying I had to come straight home, so I agreed.

I followed Trey’s example and kicked my shoes off at the door, then followed him back to his room. He was an only child, and it was reflected in his bedroom, which was bigger than mine, with a full-sized bed. I wasn’t too jealous, since I was happy with mine, but his certainly looked comfortable.

He started undoing his shirt while we were still talking, and I stood there as he walked over to his closet. I wasn’t jealous of his room, but I could have been jealous of his closet, since there was room in there for my comic collection, along with all my other stuff. He took the shirt off as he stepped into the door, and I watched him.

Trey had only played football for three years, but he’d always been an avid baseball player, and his figure showed that. Except for his underarms, his upper body was smooth, but it was very well-toned, with slender hips, a firm, rippled belly, and even his shoulders were starting to develop, giving real definition to pecs that already had a nice line to them.

Trey held the shirt up, turned it around, then threw it into a hamper.

As he threw the shirt, my eyes were drawn down to his waist and the double blue line of his Fruit of the Looms, peeking out from above his dark brown leather belt. Then my eyes went wide as the belt moved, and I realized he was taking it off as well.

With his back to me, Trey stripped the belt from the loops and hung it up inside the closet, where I couldn’t see it. Then he removed his jeans. The snug white cotton clung to his butt, and it was a very nice butt indeed.

I watched his body work, while he hung the jeans. I felt very self-conscious and was also aware of my hard on. I was trying to look nonchalant and ended up turning, watching him in the mirror over the dresser, as I tried to pretend that I was playing with one of those small birds that drinks from a shot glass that he had displayed there.

"I’m gonna take a piss. Back in a minute," he announced, bringing my attention back to him.

He was still wearing just his briefs, but he seemed totally casual, so I looked back at him and nodded. By nodding, I was able to notice that the front of his briefs didn’t seem very packed and started trying to remember back to when we were ten, wondering if I’d been bigger than him then, or if he just didn’t show well.

And then my attention was drawn back to his closet, and I was left wondering and dreaming until he came back.

Wandering back in a few minutes later, Trey was stepping towards the closet when I stopped him.

"Didn’t you hang your belt inside the closet?" I asked.

Even as I said it, I pointed to the one, long, leather belt that hung from a small hook on the back of the door. I would have noticed it earlier, if I hadn't been paying so much attention to Trey undressing. But as soon as I did notice it, I had to wonder why he had belts in two different places, and why this one looked so much longer. "Yeah," he said and started to blush, obviously knowing where I was heading.

"Then why…"

"That’s the one Dad used to whip me with," he interrupted me, nodding at the one that hung on the inside of the closet door, before I could even finish the question.

"USED to….?" I replied, a hint sarcastically, a hint knowingly.

"How long since the last time you got whupped?" he countered.

"Last summer," I admitted with a blush of my own.

"You’re kidding! Why?"

"I was watching my little brothers a lot, and I’d been spanking them when they got in trouble. I kind of didn’t have permission, and when Dad caught me, he busted my butt."

"That sucks."

I shrugged.

"How ‘bout you?" I asked again.

Trey suddenly looked a bit uncomfortable. I don’t know if he’d realized he was standing there undressed in front of me, or if he didn’t feel comfortable discussing this subject with so little protection over his ass, but he reached into the closet, pulled out a pair of older, obviously well-worn jeans, and pulled them on. Standing straight again, he pulled them over his hips, then reached back and snugged them over his butt.

I couldn’t take my eyes away. Trey’s package might not have been that impressive, but framed by the widespread, denim fly, it was fascinating. Then he reached down and started to button his fly.

I think that started my long-term love affair with button fly jeans.

"I’ve had three this year," he admitted with his butt covered.

"Three?" I asked, rather incredulously.

"Yeah. I mean, I got a couple last year, once for skipping school and once for just getting stupid with my dad, but this year… I dunno. Mom caught me with cigarettes and Dad busted my butt. Dad caught me stealing one of his beers. Then I got it for borrowing Mom’s car."

"I didn’t think you could drive yet," I said, surprised, since I was sure Trey was younger than I was, and I still wasn’t sixteen.

"I know how," he explained archly. "I just don’t have a license. I mean, I only borrowed it to go get Petey one Saturday afternoon so we could get a burger and hang out. There wasn’t any trouble or anything."

"How’d they know?"

"Mom had just filled the tank and she’s keeping track of her miles-per-gallon, so she writes down the mileage, which meant…"

"So when she got in, and there was an extra thirty miles on the car…"

"Twenty-eight and a half… At least I know how far Petey lives now."

At the pause in conversation, Trey reached behind him and shut the door, closing away the offending strap, and symbolically closing the conversation. He walked over to his dresser and pulled out an old Henley. I watched the muscles in his back work, and caught a quick glimpse of that double-blue lined waistband as his arms came up. The shirt came down, and then we went to shoot pool.

Trey trounced me thoroughly. I’d been pretty good at pool once, but hadn’t had a chance to play often in years, while Trey was very good. On the other hand, I might have just been distracted by trying to find a way to restart the conversation long enough to learn if his dad still whupped his bare ass. Then again, thoughts of him lying over his bed, not once, but three times the past year were probably enough to distract me anyway.

Trey took mercy on me after the third game of pool, and we played air hockey, at which I did much better.



That was almost the extent of my relationship with Trey. There were actually four Wells in our graduating class, one of whom was his cousin, and the other was a distant cousin of mine, but that kept us from sitting next to each other. We were close enough to exchange a few snickers during the ceremony, though.

I did run into Trey sometimes after that. The main thing I remember was Yvonne, Stevie’s mom, enjoyed Putt Putt and we would often play a few games on a Friday night or stop by to indulge my love of arcade games after doing other things. Trey worked nearby, and he would often stop on his way home, so I ran into him there on occasion. Except for those quick encounters, he and I drifted away from each other like most high school acquaintances do.



"The thing is, Jack…" Trey said after a minute, interrupting my memories.

Considering the pause, I had to wonder if he’d been thinking back over our school years and wondering what he recalled of them.

"…Preston got home after curfew last night, and he says he rode home with Mickey and Noah."

"My guys got home after curfew, too, but we dealt with it last night."

"Well, I just sent him to bed last night, but now he’s feeding me a line, so I was hoping you or one of your boys could help me figure out what really happened."

I looked at Mickey, who was standing nearby, uncomfortably.

"I’ll do what I can, Trey," I told him, unsure if I’d ask my guys any questions or not, not wanting to put them in a bad position.

"Well, he says that Mickey had promised him a ride, and he kept reminding them he needed to be home at midnight, but they told him they weren’t ready to leave."

"My guys told me that the main reason they were late was that they didn’t realize what time it was until the place was closing."

Trey wasn’t top of the class, but he’d never been stupid either.

"And if Preston had kept reminding them, how could they have not realized what time it was?"

I was thinking of something to say, when Trey went on.

"Do you trust your boys?"

"Yes," I answered without hesitation.

I honestly believe my kids trust me to be fair. They may squirm and avoid, but I’d never seen any of them make a real attempt to organize a group lie to me. And even if I hadn’t trusted them in general, Noah and Mickey hadn’t shown any signs of having a prepared story. If they’d been lying to me, they needed to go into acting now.

"Hang on a second, please."

I could tell Trey had moved the phone away from his mouth.

"Preston, Jack says his kids were late because they lost track of time. How many times did you say you reminded them you had to be home at midnight?"

I could hear another voice, still a baritone, but less resonant than Trey’s.

"I told them I had to be home…"

"A minute ago, you told me you ‘kept reminding them’. Now, did you tell them and keep telling them, or did you just tell them once when you needed to be home…"

"I told them," the other voice interrupted to insist.

"So you didn’t keep reminding them – you just told them once?"

I could nearly hear the sullen shrug in the ensuing silence.

"Jack, he also said something about running out of gas."

"I did not," Preston protested. "I said they had to stop so they didn’t run out of gas."

"Trey," I interrupted before he could address his son. "Mickey did have to stop for gas, but he said…"

I stopped and thought back over what he’d said. They’d told me they’d given two other boys rides home, and that they’d stopped for gas. They never said anything about the actual order. I could have asked Mickey, but I didn’t want to drag him into this and make trouble for him with his friend. Besides, if Preston was that good at organizing information and using it to his purpose, I was willing to give it to him. Solidarity with another dad is one thing, but if he was lying about it, he was impressive.

"No, Mickey said he had to stop for gas. Considering they were already late, I don’t think he would have done that unless they were close to empty."

"Okay, I’ll give him that one," Trey agreed.

I glanced at Mickey, who was sitting on the couch, trying not to look too interested in my conversation, and wondered if I’d ask him about that later or not.

"Can you hold on a minute, Jack?"

"Sure."

"Hey, is it okay if I put you on speaker a minute?" he asked, sounding suddenly inspired.

I agreed again.

"All right, Preston, you got home after curfew, and you lied to me about why…"

"Dad, I…"

"You did not tell the truth about how often you reminded Mickey, Preston. That’s pretty much what lying means. Now, I know you say I’m too strict with you, so how about you take…"

He paused.

"Jack?"

"Yes?"

"Didn’t you say your guys got in trouble for coming home after curfew?

"Yeah," I said, wondering where he was going.

"Both of them, or just Mickey?"

"Both of them."

"Okay, Preston, since you think I’m too harsh with you, what about you take the same punishment Noah got?"

"What!" I exclaimed, and heard an echo from the other end of the phone.

I was trying to figure out how to deal with this without lying, but without opening my boys up to ridicule.

"Go get Noah," I told Mickey, covering the phone for a second.

Mickey stood, and I gestured for him to hurry.

"Hang on, Trey, let me go someplace quieter."

I went over to my office and stood there. Mickey came back with his brother in tow a moment later, and all three of us went into my office.

"Okay, so what’s going on, Trey?" I asked.

Mickey was obviously telling Noah what was going on, and Noah was getting that ‘should I be nervous’ look. I shook my head, hoping he’d understand that I meant he wasn’t in more trouble.

"The thing is," Trey was telling me, "that Preston thinks I’m too strict with him. It’s actually pretty funny, because he also thinks I’m not strict enough with Porter…"

"That’s your younger kid?"

"Yeah, he’s in seventh grade. Anyway, Preston has been trying to convince me since he was in seventh grade that he’s too old to get whupped. I know this is a whole new millennium, so we tried that for a while last year. That little experiment lasted just long enough for me to realize that Preston was listening to whatever restrictions or whatever we put on him, then doing whatever the hell he wanted. We went back to whuppings after that, right, Preston?"

"Da-a-ad!" Preston protested at that information being made public.

"Preston, this is Jack Wells. I’m Mickey and Noah’s dad. Can you hear me?"

"Yes, sir," he answered me with more politeness than he’d been showing his father.

"What do you think of your dad’s idea?"

"Fine, I guess."

"Mickey and Noah are here with me right now. I don’t want to embarrass you, but I’m going to put us on speaker because they need to hear before I agree to this. Okay?"

"Okay," he agreed sullenly.

Mickey came over, took his phone, and turned it on speaker.

"I want to make sure I understand this. You think you’re too old for your father to whup you, so you’re agreeing to take whatever punishment I gave Noah last night?"

Noah had been listening, half-distracted, but now his eyes went wide for a second; then he fell back onto the couch, laughing. Mickey was just shaking his head.

"Yeah," Preston agreed.

I looked at my boys. Noah was laughing too hard, but just nodded. Mickey answered my questioning look with a rueful shake of his head and a ‘go ahead.’

"Preston, my guys got whupped last night."

"You are shittin’ me!" he protested.

"Preston, it’s Mickey."

"Come on, man. You’re sixteen!"

"Yeah, but Noah isn’t. Dad was gonna whup him, and he told me I could either take one too or lose my keys for a week."

"Man, this ain’t even fair."

"Sorry, kiddo," I told him, "but it’s what you agreed to."

"Go to your room and get your pants off, Preston. I’ll be there in a minute."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute. You said I’d get what Noah did. That don’t mean I gotta take my pants off."

I looked at Noah, who was finally settling down. He shook his head, and I’m not sure if the smile was at his friend’s predicament or just a leftover from the laughing.

"Trey?"

"Yeah," he answered me.

"You remember when we were in fifth grade and we ran into each other at the football field after we’d both gotten whippings?"

He paused a second.

"Yeah…"

"Remember we both got it almost exactly the same way?"

"Yeah."

"Is that how you still got it when you were Preston’s age?"

"Oh, yeah," he assured me. "Exactly the same, just harder."

"Noah, why don’t you tell him?"

He shot a questioning look at me, but he’d been following the conversation, and I guess he really did trust me.

"Press?"

"Yeah? Noah?"

"Yeah, it’s me. Dad always bares our butts when we get busted."

"Well, crap."

"Now," Trey said, "go to your room and get your pants off. I’ll be in there in a minute."

This time, I heard what might have been a muffled, resigned, ‘yes, sir.’ Then the phone went off speaker. I did the same.

"That is too funny for words, Jack. Maybe this’ll shut him up for a while. Hey, since our kids are friends now, maybe we should get together some time."

"I’d like that, Trey. Oh, and one thing you should know."

"What’s that?"

"I’ve got a pool table in my house now, and I keep in pretty good practice."

Trey and his family are coming for burgers and dawgs this Friday night.



Noah had gone back to his friends and his football, but Mickey had been waiting for his phone, and he had some important questions when I hung up.

"So you already knew Preston’s dad?"

"Yeah. I’ve known him since we were kids."

"So does that mean we’re cousins or something?"

Some things never change.





Return to Story List

Return to Table of Contents