Hey, guys!

I’m sorry that it’s taken me so long to write! I kinda decided that for now I would only post on Pick My Brain when I had a section of my new short story, “Unshackled” to post.

I would like to ask you, that if you would like to read my story and haven’t begun following our friend, Sefu, the African slave from Mississippi, to go back to the first chapter, posted on November 19, 2008 to follow the story from the beginning. If you don’t, you might not understand what is going on at this point in the story! Also, if it has been awhile since you read chapter one of “Unshackled,” you might want to go back and re-read it to refresh your memory!

Chapters two and three of the story are posted below. However, I must warn you: these chapters contain some vulgarity, violence, and language that, unacceptable to today’s standards, were a part of everyday life in the antebellum slave-owning south. Please do not think of me as a racist. Rather, understand that I am trying to make this story as realistic as possible, even if it means that I may have to use a racial slur once or twice.

At any rate, please enjoy “Unshackled,” chapters two and three! Leave me a comment with your feedback!

 

Andrew

 

 

 

II.

Later that evening, the slaves from the Master’s plantation gathered to eat, something that they did every night. The slave shacks were located at the center of the cotton fields, arranged in a circular pattern. These shacks were poorly constructed of wooden planks, leaking during a rainstorm and a draft through when it was windy on a regular basis. Each night, the slaves would gather around a long wooden table in the center of the cabins to eat some of the daily allotment of cornmeal and pork that Calloway brought in. The slaves also received scraps from the Master’s table from Peter, the head domestic slave at the Big House. The food was then cooked around a large bonfire near the table within the ring of shacks.

After the slaves had sat down and begun eating that night, Sefu looked around and noticed that Sokkwi was not sitting with the rest of the slaves. He elbowed the slave next to him and asked him where Sokkwi was, but the woman suddenly became very scared and turned away from him. He looked over at Lucifer, whom had come down from the Big House as well for the meal, and was given a toothless grin and a wink. He then mouthed out the words, “Nevuh seen again,” which sent the usual shiver down Sefu’s spine that he received whenever he was around Lucifer.

He knew that something had happened to Sokkwi, but he wasn’t sure what. However, he was almost positive it wasn’t a good thing. He had seen the Master return earlier with Sokkwi walking alongside him, but shortly after Sokkwi’s return, he had disappeared and no one had seen him or heard from him since, just as Lucifer had predicted. He had heard of something called “lynching” and wondered if this is what had happened to Sokkwi. According to Lucifer, a lynching was a group of whites who captured a slave or someone from the motherland who had stepped out of line and tortured or even killed him in a grotesque manner. Lucifer had told Sefu and the rest of the slaves this and it really instilled a lot of fear of the slaves not to step out of line.

Lucifer also explained to the slaves about men who hunted down fugitive slaves. As a part of the Compromise of 1850, which balanced the number of slave and free states after the acquisition of land after the Mexican American War, a Fugitive Slave Statute was enacted. This Fugitive Slave Statute stated that any slave that escaped from his or her master would be sought out, and if found, returned to the territory or state of which they had escaped. Lucifer told stories of slaves who had tried escaping and were found by vigilante slave hunters and then returned to their masters, who then enacted violence against their disobedient and deserting slaves. Sometimes the free blacks of the north would be captured and brought down to the south and enslaved to gather a bounty, even though they were free. And if they were extremely unlucky, a slave hunter might even decide to kill the fugitive slave rather than merely bring him back to his master in the south. The vigilante would never be convicted—of murder anyway…he might end up getting a conviction due to destruction of private property, but even then he would get away almost scotch clean, simply because the slave was not considered human, but rather, property, an animal.

Sefu had thought the option of running away from the plantation since Sokkwi disappeared and realized that he needed to escape for his friend’s sake. He could no longer stay on the plantation, doomed to serve the rest of his life as someone’s property. He couldn’t live under the tyranny of all the rules the Master had set in place anymore; he wanted to be his own man, his own person, to make his own decisions. He knew that he could have a better life on his own, doing things his own way. He could succeed in this society if he could make his own rules and live his own life, rather than having someone more “powerful” telling him what to do all the time.

Sefu glanced over and was surprised to find Lucifer staring at him, a glint in his eye and his usual bone-chilling grin on his face. Sefu nodded at the old man and mouthed out the word, “Tonight.” The old slave winked back and mouthed the word back to Sefu: “Tonight.”

 

III.

The sun had been set for hours now and the sound of the frogs and crickets had quieted around the plantation. The bonfire from dinner, around which the slaves sang their traditional spiritual songs and performed their religious tribal dances for their native gods and commemorating their tribe of Mbundu, had finally started to dim, the coals turning a dull red and casting a reddish-brown glow around the slave encampment.

Sefu sat on the wooden table in the middle of the encircling slave shacks waiting for Lucifer. The old man was waiting for the Master, the Old Master and their family to go to bed so it was safe for Sefu to make his escape. He found his sight drawn to the flickering embers in the fire pit, feeling hypnotized by the smoke curling from the hot ashes.

He didn’t even notice that Lucifer was watching him until he heard a twig snap to his left. He quickly looked over to find the wrinkled domestic half obscured by the shadow of the slave shack intermittently illuminated by the occasionally brief flicker of flame from the bonfire’s embers.

Sefu stood up and quietly walked over to the old man. “Is you ready?” Lucifer whispered. The fugitive simply nodded in response. Lucifer put his arm over Sefu’s shoulder and began to advise him to stay on the dirt path, to run fast and to head west to Jacksonville where he could find help getting north via the Underground Railroad. As they arrived to the dirt path that led into the forest, Lucifer gave Sefu a pistol.

“Now, Sefu,” the old man began. “Dis’ere pisto’ is da pisto’ of da Massuh hisself. Der should be enough bullets in dis’ere pisto’ in case you needs to fight off any threat you might find along da way. But if you fire a bullet, you’s bettuh run lahk hell, ‘cuz you knows dat any slave huntuhs in de area will be on their way to you. Good luck, boy.” And with that, the old man placed the cold pistol in Sefu’s hand and hobbled back towards the slave quarters.

 

Sefu realized how psychological an escape for a slave truly is as he ran down the dirt path towards Jacksonville. Every single sound, be it a rustling leaf or a cracking twig or the hoot of an owl sounded to him like the crack of a shotgun, the pounding feet of slave hunters or the howl of bloodhounds. After running for two hours straight, he decided that he needed to take a break. A small brook ran alongside the road, so the fugitive stooped down and took some water. He pictured in his mind the distance he would have to travel and decided that he could easily be to Jacksonville the day after tomorrow if he continued at the pace he was travelling.

As he got off his knees and wiped the cold dribble of brook water from his mouth, he thought he heard something. He realized that there was probably nothing to worry about, that it was most likely just a deer or something in the woods. But wait, was that a growl? Maybe it’s a wild dog or something, he thought to himself. Sefu sighed deeply and began to run down the path again toward Jacksonville. Suddenly, he heard an outburst of barking from behind him. He quickly turned around to see a lone dog running towards him, fangs bared. Figuring that it was just a wild dog, he realized he could never outrun the animal. He took out the pistol that Lucifer gave to him, leveled it at the sprinting animal, and pulled the trigger.

Sefu stepped back as the gun felt like it tried to jump out of his hand. The dog stumbled as it ran, then tipped over and eventually skidded to a halt, carried by its own momentum. The sound of the gun’s blast echoed in the forest and seemed to hang in the air as though the darkness trapped it from escaping. As the gun’s report died away, the fugitive recognized another sound that hadn’t been there prior to his shooting the dog. The sound started dim and whispery at first, but slowly began to escalate until the distinct sound of a pack of dogs heading towards him became discernable.

Sefu’s blood ran cold. He took off into a sprint west, away from the sound of the angry dogs, which were now joined by sound of hooves and whistling as the hunters followed the bloodhounds’ trail. As fast as Sefu was running, the sounds were getting closer. A cramp began to form in the slave’s calf and he realized that he was starting to get tired. He thought to himself that maybe he should give up, that maybe the hunters wouldn’t turn him back over to the Master. He hoped that they would spare him the future suffering he would serve on the plantation and just kill him then and there.

Sefu found that he couldn’t move. He seemed to be frozen in place on the dirt path as fear coursed through his veins. The echoing yelp of the dogs drew nearer and the pounding of the horses’ hooves seemed to regulate the beating of Sefu’s heart. Just as the dogs came around the bend in the road, an arm grabbed Sefu’s and pulled him behind a brush on the side of the road. Sefu looked at the face of his rescuer to find Lucifer breathing hard beside him. The old man looked to the fugitive and put a long bony finger over his lips.

The barking began to echo throughout the area as the hooves of the horses began to slow. Sefu looked through the brush and saw the bloodhounds sniffing the air in the area that the two slaves were hiding. Sefu jumped when he saw three horses trot into view upon which were seated three men with shotguns. The horses stopped as the three men watched the bloodhounds sniff the area. One of the men dropped off his horse and looked around, his shotgun hanging loosely at his side. Lucifer began to sniff at the air. Sefu looked over at him curiously, when he realized in horror that the old man was going to sneeze due to the dust settling from the horses’ gallop. Before he could cover the older slave’s mouth, Lucifer uttered a stifled sneeze, in an attempt to obscure their position. The unmounted slave hunter, however, heard the sound and shot a glance at the brush.

“Whoevuh yous is, y’all bettuh come awt na-yuh en nawbuddy’ll get huht,” he said, slowly, as he raised his shotgun at the bush. Lucifer looked at Sefu and nodded sullenly. The old slave slowly stood up, followed by the fugitive.

“Whah, lookee dar,” one of the men on horseback said with a chuckle. “Looks lahk we gots ourselves a couple’uh fugitive niggas on our hands. We’s gunna get a big payoff on dis’un.”

The unmounted slave hunter motioned with the shotgun as one of the other slave hunters hopped off his horse and pulled a couple of shackled out of the saddlebag attached to his horse. “Y’all common ovuh heah now,” he said slowly, never taking his eyes of the escaped slaves. Sefu looked over at Lucifer, who nodded and gave him a little wink.

Emerging from the woods on opposite sides of the brush, the two slaves walked slowly. Sefu had no fear now, although he was trying to come up with a plan to escape from the situation. He remembered the pistol that the old man had stolen from the Master and wondered if he could find a way to use it without giving a warning to the white men carrying shotguns. Suddenly, as Lucifer was walking towards the man with the shackles, he tripped and fell into the sand. All three shotguns went toward the fallen slave. Sefu took advantage of their diverted attention, whipped out the pistol and shot it toward the still-mounted hunter. However, in an effort to make the movement fast, Sefu missed the white man and hit the horse in the head.

The horse fell sideways immediately, carrying the slave hunter down with him, landing on the man’s leg. The man cried out in pain. “Awh, mah leg! Gett’im offuh me! Damn nigga! Ah’m gunna keel you! Yaw shot mah haws!” The man with the shackles quickly ran over to his fallen friend and lifted the dead horse just enough to allow the man to scramble out from under it. The third hunter never took his gun off the fugitive. The dogs were barking wildly.

“You in fo’ it now, boy,” he mumbled to Sefu as he took the pistol away from the slave. The fallen hunter scrambled to his feet, leaning on his friend for support. Sefu noticed that his foot looked crushed. Rather than address the fugitive, however, the injured hunter looked to the old man.

“Ah you okay, Lucifuh?” the white man asked.

“Yessuh, Mistuh Wallace. Haw about you? Is you okay?” Lucifer asked, pretending to care about the injured white man. Sefu looked over at the old man in horror. Lucifer had betrayed him by telling him to take this way, only to turn him in to the slave hunters!

“Yuh, Ah’ll be fahn, but yer friend heah ain’t gunna be okay in a seggund,” the man the slave referred to as Wallace said angrily. “Ya killed mah haws!” The man reached for his friend’s shotgun, but the other man wouldn’t give it to him.

“If yuh kill’im now there won’t be no reward for ketchin’im, and if theah’s no reward, then we have nothing to pay Lucifuh. And if we have nothing to pay Lucifuh, you ken say goo’bye to hee-yim evuh helpin’ us again,” the man holding the injured hunter up said. This seemed to settle Wallace down some. The man seemed to look off in the distance as if perceiving a sound coming down the road. “Ah’ll be raht back,” he said, leaving Wallace to stand on his own. A loud cry echoed back to the hunters, the traitor and the prisoner. The man sprinted back to the group, and hit Sefu on the side of the head with the butt of his shotgun.

“Yuh sunnuvabitch!” the white man yelled as he swung at the slave again, tears streaming down his face. “Yuh keeled mah dawg! Yuh keeled her!” He drove the butt of his shotgun into the back of Sefu’s head. The slave collapsed onto the dirt road, his mouth filling with a mix of blood and gravel. The rest of the hunters did nothing-they realized how much their friend’s dogs meant to him, and nothing short of killing the slave would quench his thirst for revenge. The hunter put his foot on Sefu’s back to hold the slave down and pointed the shotgun at the back of the slave’s head. Sefu closed his eyes as he heard the shotgun being slowly cocked and braced himself from the explosion that would end his life.