SAN DIEGO, CA) — It’s been a while since we featured a twisted story from Devin Greely. In this piece, Greely writes from inspiration after hearing the song, Slap Her Down Again, Paw.
It’s another sick and twisted one, but we wanted to share it with you anyway. Enjoy.
Violent story. R-rated.
Inspired again by Roy’s challenge and a very disturbing song recorded over fifty years ago.
Lyrics first:
Slap Her Down Again, Paw
by
Arthur Godfrey
Come her,e gol-dern you
Take that, and that, and that
That’s right!
Slap her down again pa
Slap her down again
Make her tell us more pa
Tell us where she’s been
We don’t want our neighbors
Talkin’ bout our kin
Slap her down again pa
Slap her down again
Well pa and ma were so dern sore
They woke me up one night
There was an awful cussin’
And ma said pa was right
They was a-waitin’ sister Bess
Who never kept her word
The Sun came up as Bess came in
And this is what I heard
Quote
Slap her down again pa
Slap her down again
Make her tell us more pa
Tell us where she’s been
We don’t want our neighbors
Talkin’ bout our kin
Slap her down again pa
Slap her down again
Unquote
Now poor old Bess got so dern mad
She ran away one day
To meet that travellin’ salesman
With city-slickin’ ways
We ran and stood beside the road
With shotguns by our sides
Me and Deke and pa and ma
Who yelled as they came by
Why don’t you slap her down again pa
Slap her down again
Yeah, make her tell us more pa
Tell us where she’s been
You know that we don’t want our neighbors
Talkin’ bout our kin
Slap her down again pa
Slap her down again
Now ma and pa they planned for Bess
To marry Deacon Brown
And not that travellin’ salesman
Who always came around
They made poor Bessie go to church
Her face was mighty red
The deacon took one look at her
And this is what he said
Oh, slap her down again pa
Slap her down again
Make her tell us more pa
Tell us where she’s been
We don’t want our neighbors
Talkin’ bout our kin
Slap her down again pa
Slap her down again
Unquote
Doesido
Oh yes, hot stuff
Well the moral of this story girls
Is don’t stay out too late
Unless you take your shoes off
Outside your pappy’s gate
If ma don’t hear you comin’ in
She won’t lay down the law
And you won’t have to worry
Cause you won’t see much of pa
Slap her down again pa
Slap her down again
Make her tell us more pa
Tell us where she’s been
We don’t want our neighbors
Talkin’ bout our kin
Slap her down again pa
Slap her down again
Take that, and that, and that,
(laughter)
SLAP ‘ER DOWN AGAIN, PAW
Devin Greely
03
“Gol dern if Bessie Sue din’t do it all over again!”
Heard Maw stomp’n all up and down the hall, and paw growling, and Deke said, “back to sleep, skunk” whenever I sat up in bed to listen harder.
It was an awful cuss’n when Bess finally did come in. Must’ve been close to daybreak. Paw said: “take that” (smack), “and THAT’ (smack) “and THAT, and THAT and THAT” (smack, smack, smack).
Cold hear maw, who was certain sideways on the sofa. Herd the springs complain as she lugged up: “Slap er down again, Paw, Slap her down again,” ‘sept maw didn’t finish the second “down again”, cause her bad lung was flaring, and she just coughed and coughed, then kicked against something metal and spat in the sink.
Fer breakfast, ma made buttermilk cakes, sausage, and salt pork. Me and Deke was waiting for ours to finish frying, and Paw was still out moving the beefs and hogs.
Holding the batter spoon like it was a hatchet, Maw bellowed up the stairs, “Bessie Sue! This instant!”
Paw pushed open the screen door and stomped the shitcake off his boots. “Winston’ll be by after church, reckon, for them two slaughters.”
Ma served me up first, and Deke tried to swipe my cake with his fork, so I hollered, and ma spanked me first across the face with the batter spoon then Deke twice’d, on his arm and head. Then she served Deke up a cake and poured the batter for Paw’s.
“Sorry,” I said, cowering. But Deke didn’t say nothing, he just dug into the meal. After setting down the spoon, Maw came back and dumped some sausage and salt pork on the table for us all to share.
Paw rubbed his gut and squinted.
Ma tiny’d her eyes. “Th’ulcer?” .
Paw felt around, poking his fingers all over his guts. He beared down, then walked toward the crapper. “Need to pinch a loaf is all.”
After Paw shut the door, I laughed, and ma threw the spoon at me. It nailed me right in the chest and batter spattered all up my best corduroy shirt.
“Dern retard,” she shouted. “No humor in Paw’s ailing. Like to see you two nothins up at dawn and feeding them livestock. Spoiled and soiled, you both-Bessie! Down here, Lord! I’ll give you twice the whipping your Paw gave you last night.”
“Drag er down, ma?” Deke asked.
“G’won then.”
I upped to follow Deke, but ma made me stay. She took me by the collar and dragged me over to the sink, then after heating the water to steamy, started scrubbing the batter off me.
‘Ow, ow, ow” I kept complaining.
“Shush it, ‘tard,” you make fun your’ Paw’s expense, wouldn’t have to scald yur.”
Was thumping and squealing and Bessie shrieking: “Git out, asshole! Ass! Hole!”
“Lord,” Ma gritted her teeth and tapped out a Pal Mal.
Deke came Barreling down the stairs and near collided with Paw.
“Paw! Paw! Bess’s bled herself again. She’s bled, Paw.”
“Not true! Not true!” Bess raced down the stairs and collided with Paw. She swung away from him, right into maw’s mood and exhale cloud. Bess was hiding her arm behind her back, but I could see it was a blood-o-dotted towel wrapped round her arm.
“Dern devil’s spat,” maw said, yanking bess’s arms round.
Like I tole, Bess’d been beat last night into dawn for staying out, and they’d both yelled: “Where y’been?” and “Who y’been with?”, and when ma pinched Bess’s tits, me and Deke had both’d gone red.
Bess had confessed.
(Smack, paddle, whack).
“The traveling salesman.”
“Which one?”
“The one at the parade?”
(Smack, smack) “The one with the green suit and the gimp leg?”
Maw, bent to backhand: “Smack her, Paw.”
“Yes, that’s the one. That’s Billy Moke.”
So, now we got to see her, over breakfast, and I ain’t never seen her so bruised up. headside yellow-brown, and purple eye ringed, was Bessie this morning.
“Just bruises though is all,” maw said, scanning from me to Deke.
Ma makes it known every time Bess carves herself, that it’s her doing and that she does it cause she’s crazy. “Piglette. You best bleed it dry, cause there ain’t a bit of sympathy. I know what you done. Mr. Carlyle at the Jr. High be calling, insinuating them cuts was part of the beating you got. No one but you-self draws blood. Your pappy’s arm deep in gore with them slaughters and fats. Daily. Y’think he’ll flinch cause you prick your own? Superficial’s all. Just cause it’s colorful, girl, don’t make it greater.”
Ma pushed Bess down into her chair, and for a spell there was no-speak, except for Paw criss-crossing his knife and fork (whenever Paw’s got two stick sorts in his grip, he makes like he’s sharpening em).
“After breakfast you get in that warsh room and wrap them sores.”
Paw stopped sharpening and said, “Let em stay. Deacon Brown gonna see what we’re ‘specting him to press on. Girl keeps this up, he’s got the Lord and thunder and, well, more motivate we got here.” She blinked and blushed, certain acknowelg’d she’d insulted Paw.
Bess redden all around her bruises, then clamped her ears.
“That traveling salesman, Billy Moke,” whispered Deke. “Bess said she’s gonna Lope with him.”
“What’s a lope?” I asked.
“Shut it,” Ma boomed over and with her fists in the air, towering and swaying like euc limbs, then bellowed down on Bess: “You marrying Deacon Brown, girl. Like it er not. Brown’s ain’t signed that escrow yet for east acres. He’s dun gonna save this family from poverty. Pay off that loan. Keep this here home.”
Bess looked about to plug maw in the throat with a utensil, and Maw raised her backhand.
“No fucking home, hell hog!” She hissed, then bolted.
And ma’s hand came down, but instead of skin again, she bashed her knuckles on the table. “Eee-oooooh! Damn piglette! Git her boys! Paw?”
Deke leapt up. “Me too?”
Pa said, “Slow it, youze. Gonna get the Remington.”
“Kin I git my 22, Paw?” asked Deke.
My heart was throbb’n. “And me, my sling shot?”
Comm’n too,” Maw said, furious and raining sweat, and she don’t even got a weapon save her backhands and save her mouth.
We climbed in the truck; Paw driving, then Deke and Ma, and me kneeling on the floor. I could feel zackly where we was headed. The truck bounced across Little Creek, then up the dirt road behind Henderson Well. Paw stopped.
‘Neath a hot air balloon-size oak, the gimp leg traveling salesman, green trousers round his ankles, back and arms winged against a bow, and Bess was on her knees pleasure’n him. That traveling salesman, despite his handicap, was thrusting violent into Bessie; as violent, I think, as when ma n Paw was beating on her.
Paw was so heated he jumped out the pickup, leaving the car in gear.
Lucky, Deke pulled the break and set the gear to park.
Paw first un-bottle-corked Bess from the salesman, who, even though he was detached, still had his eyes close and was thrusting his wet weenie in and out of air. And only for a blinklett did he see what was coming: Paw hammered him in the jaw with the butt of the Remm, then in the gut, then cracked him in the crotch.
“G’help yur Paw,” ma said, laboring out the pickup.
I was bare-footed, and cut my heel on one of the salesman’s teeth. Bess was screaming “fuck you this” and “fuck you that”, so Paw slapped her first palm front, then back hand, then again, Hollywood style, sending her back flopping onto the rooty ground.
He rested his hands on his knees, heaving and waving me and Deke to get into it. Which we gladly did, kicking him mostly. I spat on his lights out face, and Deke drop-kneed him a couple times.
When Bess came to, she started hollering, crowing insane, pulling her hair and wailing. She leaped on Deke’s back, drew his bolo knife from the sheath and stabbed it right through the palm of her hand.
Ma fell onto her and hog-tied her with her big ‘ol arms. “Sheee-it!” she wailed as the bolo blade slid across her knuckles. Ma made a fist with her other hand and cracked it right down on Bess’s nose.
What a bloody mess. ‘Neath that ‘ol oak.
*****
Wasn’t no cussing after Doc Carver jabbed Bess with that knock out stuff. Deacon Brown lifted the ampoule from the trash: “Hal. Per. Oh. Doll. Hmm.
“Sure like to have some of that whatchamacallit juice on hand back home,” said Paw, grinning small and firm.
“She sure red-faced,” said Deacon Brown, a big ball of dip in his cheek. He smiled all rot mouth then spat in the trash.
Carver dressed maw’s knuckles with gauze as she wagged her head and phlegm-wheezed. Then Carver lectured her bout cancer th’lung. But Maw sure hushed him: “My pappy lived on tobacc’r. Three pack a day and survived rheumatoid on swill to the age of seventy-five, and weren’t no cancer neither. He was run over by a train cause he didn’t hear it coming.”
Doc Carver shook Bess till she awaked, nodded and her eyes fluttered from whole to half-lidded. “Now you stop this prick’n girl.”
Deke pinched my ass, so I swung at him. Then Maw slapped me, and Paw slapped Bess, and Carver whispered something to the Deacon. All I heard was “Best man” and “baptism”. And Brown nodded and smiled then worked a scratch on the back of his neck, then another on his knee, then one on Bessie’s scalp. She’d fell back asleep, so I ain’t sure whether it was really itching, or just affectionate.
END.
***TPT Does Not Endorse Violent Behavior towards Anyone!