The Long Day of Revenge (17 page)

Lucinda’s mouth dropped wide as she saw it was Manolo.

Chapter Thirteen

The next three months had been disastrous for all concerned. The Cinco de Mayo event was nearing as it was now April, but Lucinda couldn’t have cared less, or at least she told herself that. The minute she and Manolo were face to face, all had become clear, and the final match had been struck before falling into a pool of gasoline. She had gone to the hotel, packed her bags, taken a cab to the bus station, and bought a ticket back to Agua Prieta where she informed her family her marriage was done. The following week, when she knew Manolo was out of the country fighting in Venezuela, she went to Mexico City, cleaned all of her things out of the apartment, and returned back home.

Her family felt it best not to be involved and let things take their course.

Manolo, on the other hand, tried feverishly to make amends, but Lucinda avoided contact with him at all costs. She knew what she had seen.

In one of their rare phone conversations just after the incident, Manolo had brought up the fact that Lucinda herself was leaving Esmeralda’s room and was obviously guilty of the very same things he had committed, but Lucinda countered by truthfully telling him she had found the place due only to his drunken babbling. She furthermore explained he was the reason she had visited the Casa De Campo, as she’d hoped in speaking to people who were heavy into the discipline game, she’d get a better understanding of his way of thinking and save their marriage, which was now doomed. Their relationship wouldn’t have been deader if Gaditano had buried a horn in it.

Even worse was the fact that aside from a relationship in shambles, Manolo was more concerned than ever over the killing of Gaditano. He was also suddenly making the rounds as a playboy. Word was spreading through the grapevine about his carousing, which would have put De la Torre to shame by comparison. Like Doctor Frankenstein, she had created a monster and let it loose on the world.

What brought Lucinda back to the rodeo ring in Aqua Prieta that particular day was pure fate.

“Someday the people will be calling out my name above all others…”

She remembered the training session before the encounter with Gaditano, where Manolo fought the air rather than a live animal, and how he whirled about doing kneeling pass after kneeling pass. How times had changed.

“The molinete de rodillas…”

Visions danced in her head. Happier times in an empty rodeo ring.

“Watch me, Lucinda.”

Manolo stretched his arm outward as he practiced with the muleta, standing now. These reactions were intended to thrill people at the Manzano ranch, but things had not worked as he planned. Afterward, though, he had done quite well on the sand.

“Maybe you should thank Gaditano instead of killing him,” Lucinda whispered to the wind. “He made all of this happen. It has worked out for you, but not for us.”

She remembered so many things in a chain of thoughts, but not in the order in which they had happened in life. The goring at the ranch and the mad rush to the hospital. Manolo’s raving into the camera in Nogales as he announced plans for his long day of revenge for all to hear. The fatal goring of De La Torre in that very same ring. The discovery of the Casa De Campo and what went on within. Her wedding night with Manolo. His outstanding triumph in Mexico City. She did not, however, think of her many spankings, paddlings, and whippings, whether deserved or not.

“How do you love a man more in love with his own perversions than he loves his own wife? How do you love a man who lives only to kill a bull?”

She hated Manolo anymore. There was no doubt about that. It was not him as much as what he had become. Who was at fault? Was she a bad wife? Was he a good man who went insane? Was it something that happened after the goring? Manolo had said from time to time that he felt the devil go into him when in the hospital, and through some dream he had made a deal with this great enemy of God. During the last three months, she didn’t know what to think. She looked into the empty stands and swore.

“Damn the world of the bulls, and damn me for ever falling in love with someone like Manolo Garza.”

The newspapers all knew of their breaking up. So did the television stations. Manolo had been mum about the situation in itself and seemed deathly afraid if Lucinda started talking, she would bring up the spankings at length, making him the brunt of bad jokes, spoofs, and gossip. If it did not ruin his career in the bullring, it would tarnish things. As for life in the shadow of pending divorce, he was less concerned. The tabloids indicated he was making the circuits.

“So once more, you worry about yourself more than me or us,” she remarked to the silent arena. “I should have known what kind of man you were from the start.”

But had Manolo really been like that?

“It isn’t that bad!”

She remembered her pants coming down that day and how weird it felt, but it was the spark that started a whole forest fire.

“Owwww!”

Manolo had changed.

They had not filed for divorce yet, but separated. What either was waiting for now was anyone’s guess.

It had not been her fault Manolo had cheated on her at that whore house. She had endured more from him than any other woman would have. She knew that now.

“Piss on you and your horseshit spankings,” she growled to herself. “I put up with a load of shit from you for way too long, Manolo. Go your own fucking way and leave me in peace. I’m better off on my own or with someone else. Fuck all your kinky shit. Go to your whores and be happy, you asshole.”

She did not hate Esmeralda, even though she was clearly one of the women Manolo had visited. Manolo was the villain here and the lone one. It was too hard to believe that a bull had made him crazy.

“The people will be calling out my name…”

“The Pass of Death…”

“Jesus Christ!”

She remembered now, how she had hit him square in the balls with the bull’s horn and how she had been disciplined for it. She didn’t really object then.

Perhaps she was as strange as she perceived Manolo.

It was too late to think of that now.

“They told me I’d find you here.”

The voice sounded familiar.

Turning, Lucinda was startled to find herself face to face with Esmeralda, dressed in street clothes and not her robe.

“Do you hate me?” Esmeralda asked.

Lucinda shook her head in the negative.

“Not you. Manolo.”

Esmeralda looked into the silent rows of seats and grinned.

“I didn’t know you were Manolo Garza’s wife when you came to me. I honestly didn’t.”

“No reason why you should have. At least you have kept his secret, too.”

A gust of wind came up, blowing sand about.

“I am so sorry for what happened,” Esmeralda choked out. “Please. I mean this.”

Lucinda gave a nod of acceptance.

“I do believe you. It’s him I cannot believe.”

“You’re probably wondering why I am in Aqua Prieta?’

Lucinda nodded again.

“First, I tracked you down, as I wanted to see you. Second, I’m done with the Casa De Campo. I’m going to my hometown. Right now, I’m driving right across the border to Reynosa, and I’m starting my life over. I’ve been lucky. Money, no disease. I’m quitting while I’m ahead.”

She stopped and brought up something unrelated.

“I think you should be there when Manolo faces that bull of his. Then if you never get back together, you should be here to see this supposedly great day of his. Leave the relationship with one good memory if you can.”

“His life was built around killing a bull,” Lucinda snorted contemptuously. “It should have been built around us. That’s where the trouble is. I hate him.”

“Then why are you here?”

Esmeralda looked down at the sand beneath her feet and reflected.

“If something does happen to him, you will always regret not having been there.”

Once more, Lucinda envisioned the young man she had fallen for. She remembered her own bedroom episode that evening following the training episode and how she had masturbated.

“I came for something else. If you won’t do it for you, will you do it for me?”

Lucinda extended a hand as if to agree.

“Right now, your wish is my command.”

“I still think I’m the culprit here, even if you do not. I want you to have the opportunity to do what we didn’t in Nogales. I want you to pull down my pants and give me the whipping of a lifetime, and I mean a real one, not something for therapy.”

“No,” Lucinda protested. “That’s silly.”

“I have a long drive to Reynosa, and I want to do it with my ass smarting. In a way, I have it coming.”

“No, you don’t.”

Esmeralda’s eyes grew harder. “If you don’t do it to me, I’ll do it to myself.”

Again, Lucinda objected, but Esmeralda had unfastened her belt and was offering it to her.

“I deserve this one.”

Again reluctantly, Lucinda nodded.

“Let’s go into the corral. There’s no one here and won’t be. I’ll do this for you if that’s what it will take for you to get on with your life. I don’t need it for me. I’m already where I want to be as far as my life is.”

“Really?” Esmeralda asked suspiciously. “Well, I don’t suppose it will matter much then, if you humor me now.”

Like two gunfighters in a western film, the women walked across the sand and into the corral which, as Lucinda had promised, was empty. There, Esmeralda found a hitching post, and after dropping her pants to expose her bare posterior, took hold of it, bending for maximum punishment.

“I want to be welted,” she insisted. “I want to leave here limping and crying.”

“You didn’t cause it,” Lucinda again protested. “We caused it ourselves. Manolo caused it. Even I caused it. You’re just a third party who stumbled in on us.”

“Give me a whipping,” Esmeralda commanded.

Except for the session they had deemed as therapy back in Nogales in January, Lucinda had never spanked anyone. In her relationship with Manolo, she was always the recipient and never the messenger. This was going to be extremely strange.

“Yell at me. Tell me what you’re going to do to me,” Esmeralda whispered.

“I’m going to give you a brutal whipping,” Lucinda shot back, “I’m going to blister your ass! I’m going to spank the sin right out of you so you never go back to it again!”

The strangest part of all was Lucinda now found herself meaning everything. Rather than receiving punishment, she was the one emitting it. Now there was a lot of frustration to release.

“Yeowwwwww!”

The scream was genuine and not forced or exaggerated as Esmeralda had instructed in Nogales. This was her personal redemption, and it was for real. The first blow had been murderous, too, brought way back from afar to smack hard against the naked flesh, reaping a mark almost instantly.

“This is to teach you to run from your wicked ways! It isn’t just Manolo and myself you have effected, but how many others! Now is the time for you to turn and change your life around! This will help you remember!”

Again, a merciless smack came with the belt, causing Esmeralda to bolt and cry out. Lucinda, however, was chastising her loudly, drowning out the cry.

“This pain will go away in time, but how much pain have you caused! You need to repent! You need to make things right! You need this punishment to make you straighten out a waste of life! There’s more to life than money and men! There’s your own self to value!”

Lucinda reached forward and with belt still in hand, yanked Esmeralda’s pants and underwear down further, all the way to her ankles, so her legs were also uncovered. These she intended to give a good belting to, as well.

“I know all your tricks, too! No matter how hard you try to relax your muscles! No matter how you cry and squeal! No matter how you move! You’re getting it like never before!”

“Ow! Owwwww! Owwwwww! Owwww!”

The next set of licks landed on Esmeralda’s upper legs rather than her increasingly aggravated bottom, bringing new direction for the pain.

“Owwwwwwww…”

Lucinda mocked her mercilessly.

“Owwwww…nothing! This is exactly what you deserve!”

At this moment, Lucinda understood the very same demon that had entered Manolo in the hospital and changed him for evil. She, too, was possessed by a new and dark force. While she had not borne the ill will she might have at any time to Esmeralda and placed the blame for everything on her roving husband, she had to admit relishing this punishment. She also learned for the first real time, what Manolo must have felt, and even in the midst of teaching her target a lesson, there was arousal. This went far beyond whatever churning or turmoil within her stomach she had felt in Nogales. This go around, her sexual calling was much louder. Within her body, her loins fought against the last bit of suppression. Her underwear was soaked.

“You are going to learn a lesson to take with you to Reynosa that you’ll always remember, and you’ll also never forget who gave it to you! You know why this is happening! You should thank me, instead of crying and whimpering like a little kid! Take it like a full grown and responsible woman! You take it now!”

The next set of blows was again directed at Esmeralda’s ass, which was clearly turning sore. In spite of this, she made no effort to move or to shield herself, but firmly gripped the hitching post and screamed with each whap.

“Ow! Oh, yes! Ow! I’m sorry for everything I’ve done!”

“Are you going to stay sorry?” Lucinda asked as she paused between hits. “I know your tricks. You better not be talking to spread out the pace for this whipping. I know your tricks.”

“Nooooooooooo,” Esmeralda cried once more. “I am sorry! I am sorry! I’ll never do anything like I’ve been doing again! I will live a good life! Owwwwww!”

“We’re going to make sure,” Lucinda announced, as she struck furiously with another set of belt blows. The hits were fast, and they were extreme.

“Owwwwwwww!”

“Raise your voice if you want, but we aren’t done. You’re getting twenty more, and you’re going to count them!”

“Noooo,” Esmeralda protested, and it was sincere. “I promise I’ll never do anything like in Nogales again! Noooo! Please...”