The slave is a muscular African of average size. He has a huge, deep, clear voice like a bell. His name is Umbasa, but in America everybody calls him Jim. He has a twin brother, Umbobo, who was overlooked by the slavers and is still in Africa.

The slave is very loud and insulting towards the master, but always at a safe distance so there can be no reprisal. The other slaves feel sorry for Jim's misdirected energy. Who in the world is he doing all this for? Most believe that, even amidst the moral evil of slavery, that there should still be gentility. Hopefully the slaves will someday overthrow the masters, but in the meantime people still have to live and there must be decency. Many think that the volume and tone of Jim's angry words represent something more important to Jim than the terrible injustice of human captivity which effects not just him, but all the others around him as well.

The master, Errol Fenwick, is a quiet, educated, well mannered man who is sexually normal and quite virile with his beautiful young English wife Elizabeth. They are very much in love and have a splendid happy marriage. They plan to have two children within the next few years.

Elizabeth doesn't believe in slavery and feels uncomfortable around all the Africans she encounters. She agrees with Thomas Jefferson, that if slavery were abolished, the Africans should be transported back to their rightful ancestral homeland. America is a melting pot for European civilization, because it has removed the cultural divisiveness caused by the absence of a common European language. Africans, however, have no part in any of this, and should not be forced into mimicking a European heritage they simply do not share.

Errol would like to see the end of slavery too. He insists, however, that if the return of Africans across the sea is going to be workable, that the government must, at the same time, facilitate the transportation of Europeans in northern states to the South. Those now crowded into slave labor conditions in the sweat shops of the industrial Northeast could then immediately fill the agricultural jobs being left behind by the Africans. Only the younger Africans would need to leave. Those past the reproducing years could stay if they want and continue in their present jobs as free workers or seek employment elsewhere if they prefer. Errol insists that if the transition isn't handled this way there would be massive economic upheaval.

The Fenwicks have an overseer, Hans Brunhauser who carries a club and doesn't like to use it overmuch, but can and will, if he has to. Hans has a bad back and receives therapeutic spinal massage from a young slave girl Jorina in return for unusual food items which he brings to her from town. Theirs is is not a romantic or sexual relationship, but Jorina is fond of Hans and so tells him about the things that Jim has been saying about the master.

"Jim, he say Massa don't do right in bed fo the mistress, that Massa is no man. Jim say that he is real man and that mistress should find real man like him. The others all laugh when Jim say this. When they laugh Jim get mad and say he'd like to see Massa dead. Sometimes Jim get drunk and talk real dirty. Sometimes he go on and on and say that Massa is soft and go naked with soft men in town. He say these things to all the other slaves". Hans knows and likes Errol Fenwick well enough to be appalled and deeply angered by this. He never involves his employer in anything related to slave discipline and this will be no exception. It's a downright embarrassment!

April 11, 1832. Slave Row

The main common area is bright with torch light and there are over one hundred and twenty slaves gathered to witness the punishment. Jim is naked, with his hands tied to a tree limb over his head. Hans speaks up to the crowd in the cool night air "You are called here to witness the punishment of one who slanders. A liar is an abomination to all of mankind and to God".

Hans begins the relatively light but painful, switching. Jim cries out "I born a man chile, and gonna say anything I want. You no man. White men all do together like man and woman". Jim then goes on to vividly describe specific actions he imagines must occur. Many of the crowd gasp and murmur at his words.

Hans walks around and looks at Jim. "I was going to give twenty slices, but now I'll have to give forty. Belay this vileness, you godless dirty mouth bastard, or by Christ I'll horse whip you to death just to stop your mouth". But Jim just can't stop. A strange little itch in his brain just won't let him. He goes on and on, dirtier and dirtier, but Hans keeps to the light switch. After two hundred slices Jim is raw, very sore, and finally becomes silent from the pain. A women salts his stripes and he's back to work in only two days.

Jim is no longer loud. He somehow got the idea that Hans had overheard him previously, so he goes on with the slander and insults, but quietly. The accusations and language become fouler every day. One day Elisabeth is riding past the fields and Jim yells from a thicket where he can't be seen "Massa ain't no man. Why don't you get with a real man?" Elisabeth doesn't hear the words clearly and thinks it's just yelling among the slaves from one to another. Jorina felt bad to see Jim switched, but she likes the Fenwicks and finally tells Hans about all these new developments.

Hans has talked recently with a friend who is overseer of a much larger farm than the Fenwick place, with bigger problems too. The man tells Hans about a slave with a foul driven mouth just like Jim. First a whipping. Next another really bad whipping with a promise. The slave still doesn't stop. The promise is kept and the overseer cuts out the slave's tongue. Unable to speak, the slave begins to throw stones. Finally the overseer castrates the slave in front of the entire farm population. This gets the desired result. The slave is sullen and sluggish thereafter, but no longer a problem.

Hans gives Jim a long bad beating with a horse whip this time. Jim is laid up for four days. He has been told about the castration at the neighboring farm and now for awhile seems to have learned his lesson.

July 16, 1832

In mid morning Elizabeth comes back from a horseback ride through the countryside and puts her shoes out to air on the back porch, as she always does during hot weather. She goes back into the house.

In late afternoon Elizabeth goes to fetch her shoes, but they are gone. She looks up just in time to see Jim, with her shoes, passing out of view into a small shed a hundred feet back in the woods at the edge of the lawn. She goes to tell Errol, who has just finished shaving, and is relaxing in the bath tub. He and Elizabeth are going to dinner at a neighboring farm tonight.

Errol finishes his bath quickly, then slips on some work clothes, grabs his pistol, and goes to the shed. He approaches very quietly and peeks through a crack in the shed wall. Jim is naked on his hands and knees. He has harnessed his sex organs Arab style with Elizabeth's shoe laces and is stimulating his penis crazily with his right hand. On the floor in front of him are Elizabeth's shoes. Jim is kissing the shoes passionately while saying "Oh Mistress! Yes Mistress! Jim obey!"

Errol breaks in on him. Jim recoils when he sees the gun squealing "No Massa, please!"

Errol is very angry. "You pathetic damned wretch. By God, you'll not violate my wife again. I'm going to have Brunhauser flay you alive!"

This time Hans castrates Jim who is very quiet from this point forward... but what of Jim's twin brother back in Africa?

July 18, 1832. Gold Coast

Umbobo in free, but works on a farm too. One day the owner's pretty young wife Lynn is sitting dangling her feet over the edge of her back porch. Umbobo is hiding naked under the porch and has crawled up so that he can almost taste the young woman's feet. A large insect bites Umbobo's thigh and he lurches forward, contacting the girl's feet with his lips.

Lynn looks down, especially horrified when she sees that Umbobo is naked, and screams. Her husband Michael, who is just coming up from the fields for lunch, runs to the scene just as Umbobo comes out from under the porch. He strikes Umbobo, who falls and lays cowering on the ground. Michael looks at his wife. Lynn says "He tried to kiss my feet!" Michael's face becomes red with anger and he yells at Umbobo "What were you planning to do? Were you going to rape her? Speak up, God danm you!" Umbobo is ashamed, but also hateful and defiant, and says nothing. He just glares up at his outraged employer. Michael draws his machete, raises it high, and with one blow, cuts off Umbobo's head.

October 4 1832

Back in Lumberton, Jim has grown steadily more and more depressed since being gelded. He still thirsts for Elizabeth's feet, but in a different, more spiritual way. He can't even get near the house without causing an uproar, and hasn't seen Elizabeth for months. At mid morning he goes into the barn, lights the hay on fire, climbs up to the loft, and jumps down into a barrel of upturned spading forks. He expected to die immediately, but writhes in agony for almost ten minutes before he is consumed in the flames.

February 13, 2023

Says Jeff aloud to himself:

"God, I feel sorry for those guys but they did kind-of bring it on themselves. Even in their bad situations they had much better options. For both brothers the passion was imposed on a love object that was just too remote from the start. Really unrealistic and masochistic... Like I'm not? But with me the remoteness of Cathy wasn't there at first... but it is now... and I better face up to it. A barrel of pitchforks, then flames... Not for me!"

That night Jeff really studies on how remote Cathy has actually become. He tests her in little ways. He can't even get her to smile a little no matter what he says or does. She smiles only for Sharron.

February 14, 2023

Jeff begins the third strange tale.

"The Disgrace of Ling Fong"