Disclaimer: This PWP is only for the enjoyment of warped and deranged minds, if you don’t fit this category….shoo…you’re reading out of your league.

Rating T for Teen and above for the liberal dose of innuendo.

Author’s note: This mentions events from In a Father’s Arms, but you don’t have to read it first to understand this one.

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Johnny had never been affected in such a way by peppers…he had grown up on them…there wasn’t a pepper around that could bring the heat of color to his face, make him sweat, or gasp like he was at the moment except the two very different peppers sitting in the large bowl before him. They were meant to be a decorative dash of color on the table.  Maria’s garden had provided a bountiful harvest this year, and had produced the peppers quicker than they could be used, canned, or dried for future use.  Therefore, she had begun placing some of the surplus vegetables into bowls or baskets, and arranged them on the tables and counters.

Now Johnny was caught like an animal in a gunsight by the view before him. If it were not for the fact that they had company for Sunday dinner, namely the Reverend and his wife, he and Scott probably would have never noticed the strange phenomenon.  Phenomenon that was another one of his brother’s ten dollar Harvard words that had crept into his vocabulary just like mortification had this morning at church.

Thinking about mortification, this could prove to be a mortifying situation, if he and Scott did not get their amusement under control, judging from the murderous glares his father kept piercing them with, life would be taking an unpleasant turn. A long and protracted throat clearing issued from his father’s mouth, a sound somewhat like a grizzly bear trying to hack up the rabbit it had just swallowed whole.  Johnny bit his lip as the sound, instead of scaring him into calming down, sent him into another fit of giggles.

//Dios…what is wrong with me?  Gunfighters don’t giggle…as a matter of fact they shouldn’t be lifted from a buggy by their father, or fall asleep on his chest in church.//

The sound of Scott squeaking, as he tried valiantly to hold in his amusement caused Johnny to cut his eyes towards his brother.  Scott’s eyes were wide open and casted downward studiously avoiding looking at the bowl in the middle of the table. His bottom lip was held in place by his straight white teeth. His breath huffed in short panting gasps, as he obviously fought the urge to howl with laughter.

Reverend Kaufnpee’s wife had no idea her conversation starter had set off the unbridled mirth of the Lancer brothers. She had revealed as they were in the process of sitting down, and serving their plates, that her maiden name had been Sneezenwets, a name she had been ridiculed for all through school. Children being the cruel creatures they were always teased little Ima Sneezenwets, taunting her by sing songing the phrase, ‘blow your nose, so you don’t sneeze, and wet your toes.’

The brothers had slowly turned to face each other, and neither one had to say out loud what they were thinking…because they knew exactly what the other was thinking.  They were thinking, ‘and it’s much better to cough and pee, than to sneeze and wet?’  The two younger Lancers’ had dropped into their chairs, and tried to focus their attention on anything but Mrs. Kaufnpee’s face, as she dominated the conversation with her observations and opinions.  That’s why they had noticed the bowl in the middle of the table, trying to evade her sanctimonious glares. 

Of course it was purely coincidental that the Reverend’s wife’s next topic for her one-sided, long winded discussion would be the folly and moral fiber of today’s youth.  She had cut her beady, judgmental eyes right to the brothers, as she pursed her lips in displeasure, like she had just sucked an unripe lemon, her face looked so pinched it was a wonder it did not cave in.

Circumstance can be a cruel and evil situation, because as the younger Lancers trained their eyes on the bowl of colorful vegetables, Mrs. Kaufnpee hit her stride in her tirade. She announced loudly and knowingly the problem with today’s youth was their propensity to not follow the scriptures, all too often they fall into the trap of fornicating.  She was convinced that copulating without the benefit of marriage vows had them all on a fast ride to hell. And then with a smug smirk on her face she gestured to the brothers with her sixth glass of wine and slurred, “And hell will be a hotter experience than the bowl full of peppers sitting on this table.”

It didn’t not help matters, that as she had raised her wine glass towards the boys, Scott had picked up his goblet, and Johnny his glass of milk, and they had taken a swallow just as she had made her drunken declaration .  Scott sprayed his mouthful of wine right into the good Reverend’s face.  Johnny had snorted and then coughed, shooting milk from his nose with such force it splashed into the vegetable display.  The youngest Lancer’s face turned bright red, as he fought to breathe through the coughing, and the milk dripping from his nose.

Murdoch, the Reverend, and his wife had all rushed to Johnny’s aid.  Just as they made it to Johnny’s side he managed to suck in his first good lung full of air.  He needed to wipe the milk from his face, so he reached for his napkin, lying beside his plate.  When he did, Murdoch and his guests’ eyes followed the track of his hand, and that’s when they saw it, the sight that had caused such hilarity in the Lancer brothers.  Whoever had placed the assortment of red, green, bell, banana, chili and hot peppers into the large crystal bowl had failed to notice that the tip of a small banana shaped pepper had pushed into the rounded and folded ends on the bottom of a bell pepper, making it appear like the two peppers were enjoying carnal pleasures of the flesh.

No one spoke, as all eyes were now glued to the display in the bowl, the only sounds audible were the deep inhalations, as Scott and Johnny tried to catch their breath.  All that changed, as an indignant and slightly inebriated Mrs. Kaufnpee recognized the implications of what she was viewing.

“Oh my, is that how you cross breed peppers?  I hardly think the dining table is an appropriate location for acts of reproduction,” she self-righteously declared as she staggered back to her chair and poured her seventh serving of wine.

The men dissolved into fits of laughter, so boisterous was their amusement they didn’t even hear it when Ima belched loudly, and then dropped her head in a drunken stupor onto her plate. Red faced and sweating from the exertion of their belly rolling laughter, the men stumbled outside into the cool air, and were overcome with chuckles when Johnny stated, “Was it just me, or was it getting too hot in there?”

The End

Southernfrau

September 3, 2007