It’s that time again…time for me to post part three of my story, “Unshackled”!  For all of you who have been following the journey of our slave friend, Sefu, welcome back. This section of the story, like the last, is filled with all sorts of twists and turns to surprise you. And for all of you who are joining us for the first time, welcome! You’ll find sections one and two of the story by scrolling down to previous posts. Don’t read ahead, though..you wouldn’t want to ruin the story for yourself!

I hope you enjoy part three of “Unshackled.”

IV.

Sefu wasn’t afraid to die. He realized that anything would be better than being stuck on the plantation, working in the hot sun and ruining his hands by the sharp cotton bolls, all day everyday. If death was the escape from being a slave for years to come, he welcomed that escape with open arms.

“Stop. Don’t shoot him,” a voice said a few feet away. The voice was both kind and urgent at the same time. Sefu couldn’t move; the hunter’s foot was still holding him down. He breathed a sigh of relief, however, when he heard the firing pin on the hunter’s shotgun release from its firing position. “Let him up,” the voice commanded. Without questioning, the hunter lifted his foot off Sefu’s back. Sefu started to pick himself up, when he felt warm hands grip him by the arm and help him stand up. He looked to see who it was that had saved his life and was met by the gaze of his Master.

“Oh, hello, Massuh…I, um..” Sefu stopped talking when the man took out a rag and began to wipe the blood off his slave’s face. He took a canteen off the saddle of the horse he had quietly rode in on and offered it to the fugitive to rinse out his mouth with. He also brushed the dust from the dirt road off the slave’s clothes.

“It’s alright, Sefu,” the Master said, a smile playing his lips. Sefu was very surprised. The Master was from a very wealthy family, so he owned a few hundred slaves. Sefu was very surprised that the Master knew his name, when he had never actually met the Master before in all his years on the plantation.

Lucifer broke the hypnotized silence of the slave holders and yelled, “He keeled yo’ dawg and haws!” The words of the old slave seemed to revive the angry spirit of the fugitive slave hunters, who called out to the Master.

“Hold up dar, suh!” the hunter whose haws had been shot by Sefu. “Da nigga is right. Yo’ boy keeled mah haws and his dawg. An’ unless Ah’m wrong, Mis’sippi law states dat if one man’s property is killed o’ destroyed, then he who perpuhtrates has to repay da fuhst man bah losin’ somma his property. An’ I do b’lieve dat dat dar nigga’ve yaws is considered property in dis’ere state o’ Mis’sippi.” The other two slave hunters agreed with this and chuckled menacingly. “Would’ja like da honor, Bill?” The slave hunter speaking offered his shotgun to the man whose dog Sefu had shot. The man pushed the gun away and stepped forward, rolling up his sleeves.

“Sho’ I wants de honor, but I wants to teach dis’ere boy who’s boss. Ah’m gunna beat him to neah death and den…I’ll keel him!” At this, the man laughed in a crazy manner. Sefu stepped back. He knew that either way he was going to die, whether he fought back or not. Lucifer had sold him out in the first place, so there was no way he was going to defend the fugitive slave. And the Master? Well, the Master was the one whose plantation he had tried to escape from in the first place! He would probably just sit by and watch the slave hunter beat him to a pulp. Who knows, the Master might even get in a few punches of his own!

“Spare the slave. Take me instead,” the Master said, walking over and tying his horse to a tree. The Master glanced at Lucifer, a sad look on his face as if to say, ‘Why would you do this?’ Coming to a stop a few feet in front of the slave hunter, the Master stood bravely, awaiting the beating that took place that which his slave deserved. He looked over his shoulder at Sefu, a genuine smile on his face.

Before Sefu could smile back, the slave hunter had pulled his arm back and hit the Master as hard as he could on the side of the head with a rock. A grunt escaped the Master’s lips and he collapsed to the ground. He rolled onto his stomach and slowly pushed himself into a crouching position, trying to get up. The hunter dropped the rock on the ground and kicked the Master in the stomach, causing him to double up on the ground. While he was on the ground, the slave hunter kicked him in the ribs a few times, then motioned to the guy whose horse was killed. The horse-owning slave hunter kicked dirt into the Master’s face and stepped on his hand, crushing it beneath his weight. He followed this by kicking the Master in the head. The hunter who owned the dog started beating the Master again along with the injured hunter.

“Holdon a second, y’all,” the third hunter said. The other two stopped beating the master who was laying on the dirt road, now stained with blood, moaning in pain. “It’s okay fo’ us to keel a nigga, but if we keel a white man, we’d be murderers and could go to prison. Maybe we’ve beat him long enough; it’ll teach him not to let one of his niggas from escapin’ and shootin’ someone else’s property.”

“No one is gunna evuh find da man aftuh we keel him. Da coyotes’ll git him befo’ da night is done,” the injured hunter said with a laugh.

“What about da boy?” the third hunter asked.

“You really think we’s gunna spare da nigga?” the dog-owning hunter asked cynically. “Aftuh we’s done killin’ dis po’ moron, we’s gunna keel his nigga, too!” With that, he grabbed the Master under the arms and held him up while the injured hunter punched and kicked him in the stomach.

Sefu realized that he had to do something. The Master had spared his life by offering his own to the slave hunters and now the hunters were planning on killing them both! He noticed that the hunter with the shotgun wasn’t paying attention to him but instead was focused on the other two beating the Master. He also noticed Lucifer watching the fight, a disgusting look of enjoyment playing across his features.

Looking around for a way to escape, Sefu noticed that the rock with which the hunter had first hit the Master had rolled near him when the hunter had dropped it. He slowly stooped down and picked up the rock and looked at Lucifer. He hated the thought of hurting one of his own, but the old slave had betrayed him, almost caused his death and was now participating in the death of their Master, albeit indirectly. He stepped behind the old man, put his hand over the slave’s mouth to stifle out any noise, and slammed the rock into the side of the traitor’s head. As he had hoped, the old man crumpled silently to the ground unbeknownst to his cohorts.

Now that Lucifer was out of the way, he stepped quietly over to pick up the shotgun lying next to the dead horse. Sefu had never used a gun before, let alone held one. He didn’t know what to do in order to make it go off, but he was sure that the trigger was involved somehow, and he had heard something click just before the hunter’s gun was pressed to the back of his skull. Quickly, Sefu scanned the gun and found something that might make that clicking sound. He put his hand around the gun to mask the sound and slowly pulled back the angular piece of metal until it clicked in his hand. He considered to himself whether or not to shoot the hunter with the shotgun. He realized that he would prefer to make it out of the situation alive, so he pointed the gun up and pulled the trigger.

Similar to the result of the pistol he had shot at the horse and dog earlier, Sefu felt his arm jerked back by the pressure of the shotgun going off. However, rather than the sound of the explosion echoing through the forest, chaos ensued. The hunter with the shotgun jumped in surprise and the fighting hunters stopped beating the Master, who at this point was unresponsive and unrecognizable as a human being, and the two horses whinnied and bolted away down the dirt road towards Jacksonville, while the Master’s tied-up horse bucked against the rope tying it to the tree. The bloodhounds began to bark and began to chase the horses into Jacksonville. The slave hunter who owned the dogs and the one that was supposed to be watching Sefu sprinted away after their horses, while the injured hunter whose horse Sefu had shot limped over to the slave. He swiped the shotgun out of the fugitive slave’s hands and stepped back, cocking the gun and taking aim.

“This time, boy, you ain’t got no one to save yer hide,” the slave hunter said. Suddenly, a pair of hoofed legs came crashing down on top of the hunter, knocking him to the ground. Upon hitting the ground, the gun went off and the horse crushed the hunter’s uninjured leg, as well as knocking him out, which was to Sefu’s advantage; now the hunter wouldn’t chase him as he made his escape.

The slave quickly grabbed the rein attached to the Master’s horse and held him in place. He grabbed the shotgun the hunter had dropped and attached it to the saddle in case he would need it and then hopped on the horse. Then Sefu saw the Master, laying in a puddle of his own blood, disfigured and not moving. He realized that the Master had given his body, if not his life, up so that Sefu would be spared. Then again, this was the man who had ruled over him, who had made many rules to run the life of Sefu and his fellow slaves, who wouldn’t let hundreds of human beings live in the way that they chose and do the things that they wanted to do. If he rode back to the plantation alone, he could rally up the slaves to riot and escape with no leader for the slave drivers to follow, being a hero as the slave that helped so many become free, the Toussaint L’Ouverture of Mississippi.

However, following his belief that all men, no matter who they are or the color of their skin, deserve to be treated equally and with love, Sefu decided to bring the Master to a place where he could be taken care of. The man had, after all, followed the slave to make sure that he would remain safe and then risk his life for the Negro. The slave hopped off the horse and quickly jogged over to where the badly beaten Master was laying on the ground. He stooped down, put his ear to the man’s chest, and heard the faint rhythm of a heartbeat. Gingerly, he picked the Master up and put him on the horse and made the slow journey back toward the plantation that he had escaped from.