June in southern Missouri was hotter than usual: every day a sweaty sauna. The whine of traffic on Interstate 55 was a steady buzz in the background of the truck stop, and in spite of the air-conditioning, the waitress' t-shirt bore two large sweat rings as she moved between the table. Lucy Lewis and Henrietta DeLaponte were sipping huge glasses of iced tea, fanning themselves as they could. They were heavy women, Henri much heavier than Lucy, and both suffered in the heat. "Damn, it's hot," Henri exclaimed, rubbing her frosty glass on her chest.
"Damn straight," her friend replied. "Wish't it'd cool off. June always like this here?"
"Naw. It's usually nice and not too hot. Al Gore may have something after all."
Lucy shook her head no. "Chubby old prick ain't got nothin' right yet."
A middle aged, t-shirted trucker with a long pony tail and cut off sleeves entered and took a seat at the counter. The waitress moved slowly over, offering coffee, to be met with a chuckle of ridicule. "Got any plans for t-night?" Lucy asked.
"Dunno. Guess Billy's comin' over for my birthday." Henri smiled broadly. "He ain't been home much the past coupla months. You know where he's been?"
"Might have an idea," Lucy said with feigned innocence. "May have seen him a time or two."
"You're an insatiable whore, ain't ya Juicy Lucy?"
Lucy took a sip of her tea. "He's been around a bit, but not all the time. Think he's hanging out with a buddy of his."
"Buddy? Didn't know he had a buddy."
"Calls him Ponyboy."
The dark haired woman thought for a moment. "Oh, Harold, Harold Laroux. Yeah, he's a bright kid, don't know why he didn't go to college. Lives by hisself, his mom died a coupla years ago. Got an awful lisp. Messes around with all kinds of mechanical stuff, computers. Billy used to pick on him when they was in high school. Guess they buried the hatchet."
"Yeah, kids change after a while. Said they was workin' on something special."
Henri's eyes blinked. "Oh no, that may be trouble. Maybe they'll blow each other up and we'll be free of them."
"Now, now, Henri, hasn't Billy behaved himself better lately?" Lucy said, shaking her head in disappointment. "Been more respectful, easier to live with?"
"Yeah, but that's cause you're givin' it to him nice and regular. Ain't showed his poor Momma any affection since that evenin' in your basement."
Lucy laughed. "Maybe he'll do something nice tonight for your birthday."
"Oh yeah, I think not," the larger woman sniffed. "It's your birthday, too, and I'm sure he'll give you the big wiener instead of me."
"What about his friend Ponyboy?"
Henri laughed. "That's kid's a geek, probably don't have a dick bigger than a Vienna sausage. Pimples, no hair on his face. Skinny as a post, probably fall in if he got between my legs 'less he had a board tied across his butt."
"Hmm. They got something in the works. Maybe they're working on a car."
"That might be. Billy's always wanted to be a mechanic, and Ponyboy's into tinkering, too."
"There you go, Henri. Billy's fixing up a car just for you, gonna give it to you tonight."
"I know what you hope he give you for your birthday tonight. You haven't been much fun since you've been getting it regular."
"Never knew how that felt before. Hope I don't lose it, I love getting fucked and sucked every night."
"Wish't I could get someone to do that for me." The trucker gave them a strange look and Henri blew him a kiss, which made the man turn his attention to his waitress again very quickly.
Lucy looked at her watch. "Gotta wait till 6:00 to go home, but you're invited to come along."
"Me? Really?"
"Yeah. Billy said he had a surprise in store for both of us."
Four hours later, it was cooler in Lucy's basement. The women stood wearing fresh t-shirts, shorts and flip flops, while the two young boys were dressed in shorts that went to their knees and nothing else. Harold Laroux was a skinny kid of medium height, his torso flat and skinny, his legs thin; he looked more naked than if he wore no clothes with his scrawny, hairless frame. Billy DeLaponte was taller and chunkier, with some strength lingering in his once pumped arms, a small hairy belly hanging over his waist. With as much flair as he could manage, he whipped a bedsheet off a device and said grandly: "This is my gift to both of ya, Lucy, Mom. It's a spanking machine."
"Spanking machine?" Henri asked dubiously. The boys had rearranged the furniture in Lucy's playroom: the prie-dieu/tit press was turned around and faced a strange, wheeled contraption. The lower section had a screw that lifted the top shelf up and down, the top was a circular contraption full of gears and pulleys with a flexible, open topped arm with two screws. In the arm was a thin, black cord. The machine was connected to a laptop set up on a small table facing away from the center of the room toward the stairs.
"Yeah, a sthpanking machine," Harold replied liquidly. "It moveth up and down by a program so it don't hit th'same place twice, less I thet it up that way. I kin let it work random, or I kin program it to follow a pattern. Kin put th'whip in here, or a paddle, or all kindza things."
"Need to work out a few attachments and perfect the programming, but it's something to make you happy" Billy continued. "You can put anything you want in its range and it'll whip it."
"Workth better if I scan the target inta the computer. Then I kin map out the whole sethsion. Vary th' thrength as well as location."