Chapter 15: Private Lessons
The bunkhouse air was thick with the day’s heat trapped in wood, undercut by the sharp smell of liniment and the sweet, dry scent of hay clinging to their clothes. A single kerosene lantern hissed on the nail by the door, its yellow flame throwing frantic, jumping shadows across the rough planked walls. The other girls were shapeless lumps under thin blankets, their breathing a ragged chorus of exhaustion. Or pretended sleep.
Rose hadn’t moved from the edge of the bunk. She watched Amy enter, her eyes wide and liquid in the low light. “Your hair’s full of straw,” she whispered, her voice scratchy.
Amy reached up, pulled a few brittle strands from her braid. She felt raw, every movement reminding her of Dusty’s hands, Wildfire’s mouth, the unforgiving wood of the loft floor. The soreness was a deep, satisfying monument under the fresh, sharper ache of her welts.
“You’re back late,” Rose pressed, her fingers twisting the hem of her shirt.
“Got held up.” Amy sat on her own bunk across from Rose. The springs groaned. She unlaced her boots, wincing as the leather pulled away from her blisters. The silence between them wasn’t empty; it was stuffed with everything unsaid—the afternoon’s stripes, the evening’s absence.
“I can’t do it, Amy.” The words burst out of Rose, a choked whisper. “I heard Wildfire talking to Rooster after supper. She said I’m dead weight. Said if I flinch during barrel practice tomorrow, I’m done. They’ll put me on the bus.” A tear traced a clean path through the dust on her cheek. “I will flinch. My whole body locks up. I see the crop and I just… freeze.”
Amy listened, peeling off her socks. Her own feet were mapped with new calluses. She thought of the look on Wildfire’s face in the barn—You’ve got the spine. Just gotta harden up the rest. She thought of the terrifying, exhilarating moment she’d chosen to stay in the loft. A choice Rose couldn’t seem to make.
“It’s just pain,” Amy said, her own voice sounding foreign to her. It was what Dusty had whispered, what Wildfire embodied. “It’s just a feeling. It passes.”
“It’s not just pain for me,” Rose hissed, defensive. “It’s… it’s failure. It’s everyone watching me fail. You don’t get it. You take it and everyone looks at you like you’re… like you’re more afterward. They look at me like I’m less.”
Amy stood up. The floorboards were cool under her bare feet. She walked to her bunk, knelt, and reached a hand deep beneath the thin mattress. Her fingers closed around smooth, familiar wood.
She pulled it out and sat back beside Rose, placing the object on the blanket between them.
It was a paddle, about eighteen inches long, made of a dense, polished maple. The handle was worn smooth from use, the blade darkened in spots from oil and impact. It was utterly utilitarian, yet it held a kind of severe beauty. It caught the lantern light and held it in a warm gleam.
Rose stared at it. “What is that?”
“My mother’s.” Amy ran her thumb over the surface. It was cool and flawless. “She was a teacher. Fourth grade. This hung behind her desk. She believed in consequences.” Amy’s laugh was a short, dry thing. “I stole a candy bar from the corner store when I was twelve. She made me take it back, apologize, and then gave me twelve with this. Said she was saving me from a worse world.”
“You brought it here?”
“I brought everything I thought I’d need,” Amy said. She looked at Rose. “You’re scared of the spectacle. The watching. The judgment.” She picked up the paddle, its weight comforting in her hand. “So let’s take the audience away.”
Rose’s breath hitched. She understood. “Here? Now?”
“The other girls are asleep. Or they’re pretending to be. It doesn’t matter.” Amy’s voice was low, steady. A strange calm had settled over her. This felt like the next logical step, a natural progression from the corral, from the barn. A thing she could control. “You’re scared of the feeling. So let’s just feel it. No performance. No one to see you fail. Just you, and me, and this.”
Rose looked from the paddle to Amy’s face, searching for a joke, a trick. She found only a flat, green certainty. “Over my jeans?”
“Start with them on.”
A long moment stretched, filled only by the hiss of the lantern and the distant, lowing of a cow. Rose’s jaw worked. Then, with a shuddering exhale, she stood up. She turned her back to Amy, her whole body rigid with anticipation.
“Not like that,” Amy said. The instruction came easily, as if she’d given it a hundred times. “Over my lap.”
Rose’s shoulders slumped, a surrender. She moved awkwardly, positioning herself face-down across Amy’s thighs. The position was vulnerable, intimate. Amy could feel the tight coil of fear in Rose’s muscles. She adjusted her grip on the paddle.
“Remember why,” Amy said quietly. “The barrels tomorrow. Not failing. Staying.”
She brought the paddle down. The crack was startlingly loud in the quiet bunkhouse, a clean, sharp report that echoed off the walls. Rose jerked, a stifled gasp escaping her. Amy felt the impact travel up her own arm, a solid, honest vibration.
She did it again. And again. A steady, rhythmic cadence. Crack. Crack. Crack.
Each stroke was deliberate, measured. She watched the denim of Rose’s jeans tense and release. Rose’s breathing became ragged, little whimpers punctuating each strike. Her hands clawed at the blanket on Amy’s bunk.
“It’s just a feeling,” Amy murmured, not sure if she was telling Rose or herself. “Let it in.”
After a dozen, she stopped. Rose’s body was trembling, but the initial, panicked rigidity was gone, replaced by a pliant, accepting tension. Warmth radiated through the denim.
“Okay,” Rose whispered, her voice muffled by the blanket. “Okay.”
Amy helped her up. Rose’s cheeks were wet, but her eyes were different. The frantic fear was burned away, leaving a glassy, focused determination. Without a word, her fingers went to her own belt buckle. The click was deafening. She pushed her jeans and underwear down to her knees and lowered herself back across Amy’s lap.
The exposure was stark. Her skin was pale and soft in the lantern light, marked already by the faint, blurred imprint of the paddle through fabric. Amy’s throat tightened. This was different. This was real.
She raised the paddle. The first strike on bare skin was a different sound entirely—a deeper, more resonant thwack. Rose cried out, a short, sharp yelp that she bit off at the end. A bright pink rectangle bloomed on her skin.
Amy found a rhythm. Not Wildfire’s relentless, corrective barrage, but something slower. More intentional. She watched the pink turn to a deeper red, the rectangles overlapping. She listened to Rose’s breathing change. The cries softened, lengthened. Became moans.
Rose shifted. Her hips pressed down, then up subtly, searching. Her fingers weren’t clutching the blanket in pain anymore; they were twisting it, pulling it taut. A low, continuous sound hummed in her throat.
Amy understood. The line was blurring, the sharp shock transmuting into something else, a heat that spread inward. She didn’t stop. She followed the transformation, her strokes settling into a steady, demanding tempo that matched the new rhythm of Rose’s body.
The bunkhouse faded. There was only the heat under her hand, the sound of wood meeting skin, Rose’s stifled, breathy sounds, and the heavy, charged air between them. Amy’s own skin felt too tight, a sympathetic echo buzzing through her.
When she finally stopped, her arm was aching. Rose lay utterly still for a long moment, her back rising and falling in quick, shallow breaths. The skin across her backside was a uniform, fierce crimson, a stark testament in the dim light.
Slowly, Rose pushed herself up. She didn’t look at Amy. She pulled her jeans up over the vivid warmth, hissing softly as the fabric made contact. When she turned, her face was flushed, her eyes dark and wide.
“Okay,” she said again, her voice raw but steady. She touched Amy’s shoulder, a brief, electric contact. “Thank you.”
She didn’t go back to her own bunk. She sat next to Amy on the narrow bed, their thighs touching. They stared at the opposite wall, listening to the sound of their own breathing settle.
“Does it always…” Rose began, then trailed off.
“Turn into that?” Amy finished. She looked down at the paddle, resting on her own knee. “No. Not always. Sometimes it’s just pain.” She thought of the corral, the pure, searing focus of it. “This was something else.”
Rose nodded, swallowing hard. “I think… I think I can face the barrels tomorrow. Not because I won’t be scared. But because I know what the other side of the scare feels like now.” She glanced at Amy, a shy, complicated look. “You knew that would happen.”
“I guessed,” Amy admitted. She leaned her head back against the wall. The exhaustion was a tidal wave now, pulling at her bones. “I’m learning.”
From outside, far across the yard, came the distinct, leathery crack of a single strike. A late punishment, or an early one. Then silence.
Rose flinched at the sound, but it was a reflex now, not a terror. She slid off the bunk and stood, moving with a new, careful grace. “Goodnight, Amy.”
“Night, Rose.”
Amy waited until Rose was settled in her own bunk, until the sounds of pretending sleep returned to the room. She slid the paddle back under her mattress, her fingers lingering on the smooth wood. Her mother’s face floated in her mind, stern and certain. Saving you from a worse world.
Maybe she had. But she hadn’t prepared her for this one. A world where you could choose your pain, shape it, wield it. A world where you could be both the saved and the savior, sometimes in the same night.
She blew out the lantern. Darkness swallowed the room, complete and absolute. In the black silence, the heat on her own skin, the memory of Rose’s moans, the phantom vibration of the paddle in her hand—it all coalesced into a single, solid truth in her chest.
She was becoming something here. Something she had no name for. She closed her eyes, and sleep took her instantly, a deep and dreamless plunge.