The Bracelet

 

 

“Shut yer mouth ya filthy b*****d.”  Keene shouted as the cane whip that never left his hand made a whooshing sound as it landed hard on the shoulder of the dark figure huddled between two of the blood and sweat stained oak shelves. “This one is sure a troublemaker.” Keene thought to himself, remembering all the problems he had already had with the young black man over the past few weeks.

 

“Mister Keene” as he was called on the ship, by the Captain, the crew and the slaves alike, had worked on slavers since his father had apprenticed him right after he had turned twelve in 1716. Up until two years ago, he had always sailed out of Boston harbor in the city where he had been born and raised, making two or three trips per year to Africa and then to the southern ports in America where the slaves would be sold before sailing up the coast to Boston with the top deck loaded with cotton, the much easier to handle ‘White’ cargo as it was referred to by the crew. His career had begun eighteen years ago when he signed on as a hand on a Boston Slave ship, and now he was the First Mate of the “St. Thomas Cloud”, a Three-Masted schooner out of Portsmouth New Hampshire.

 

Mr. Keene was highly regarded in his profession for his consistent ability to arrive in America with more than ninety to ninety-five percent of his cargo intact.  Losses of much more than ten percent were the norm in this business and of course, that top ten percent affected the profits greatly.  He was a shy quiet man, when he wasn’t wielding his cane, who had never married, having had only one intimate relationship in his life which had failed when he was 21 and still in Boston. Since that time he had gradually become very withdrawn and depressed and had gained a lot of weight over the last eight years.

 

The cane was raised again for yet another strike, but the Negro instinctively cowered deeply into the crevasse formed in the oak as if he was a hermit crab retreating from a small child who had just caught him exposing himself on the beach. The man’s name was Taluc and he was, when he was standing, a six foot tall muscular man of about twenty. Taluc’s tribe, the Wassai, lived deep in the African jungle where the elders often warned young men like him about the Wahabio or “White Devil Men” who came and stole them away in the night. Like many of the young men in the village, he had never paid much attention to the elder’s warnings.

 

Huddled in the dark cubicle, his pure white teeth & the whites of his eyes contrasted vividly with almost perfectly smooth velvet black skin. Smooth, that is except for some beaded lines branded across his chest that indicated his level of progression into manhood.   Some days earlier, he, along with several others from his village had been captured by a neighboring tribe and sold to Mr. Keene after a three day trek down the river to the West African coast.

 

Mr. Keene who was now just a couple of years past thirty, almost waddled as he moved along the long corridor lined with dozens of cubicles just like the one that Taluc lived in for the entire journey across the Atlantic. The rocking motion of the ship would occasionally put him off balance and he would steady himself with his hand holding one of the oak shelves until the ship again shifted and the weight of his raised leg would come crashing back to the deck.

 

“He have legs like the Baobab tree.”  Taluc said quietly to the man in the next cubicle when Keene was far enough away to not hear him. The fact that the other man spoke a different language and had not understood any of Tuluc’s constant jokes over the past few weeks had become irrelevant…He had already died.  The night before, he had pierced his jugular vein with a nail he had found on the top deck two days earlier when being brought up for the Captain’s weekly ‘Medical’ examination. On those bittersweet weekly visits above deck, and just like cattle on a ship stuck in the doldrums, the ones too sick to continue the voyage or who might be contagious to the rest were summarily stripped naked and tossed overboard to preserve the food and water for the others.

 

Also cowering in fear, although not of Mr. Keene, in the cubicle below the dead man was an eleven year old girl called Aldor. She was a member of the Wassai tribe as well and was in fact from the same village as Taluc. The Wassai lived a peaceful existence tending goats and farming and except for some general chores, children Aldor’s age spent most of their time simply enjoying nature and learning about how they would fit into Wassai society. She spent a lot of time swimming with her friends in the river that ran near her village and down to the coast. In fact, that is where she and another girl had been captured six weeks ago.

 

Aldor’s naked budding breasts, which would hardly have been noticed back in her village where all of the women went naked, were what had ‘inspired’ two of the younger crew members to have attempted to rape the child the day before. The boys were both seventeen and on their first voyage.  The excitement of seeing their first woman naked, even a very young black one like Aldor had led to the terrible attack.

 

Even though Aldor had been a happy child back at her village where women were reasonably treated, her father had already made arrangements to trade her to an older man for a small herd of goats. She was not happy with the bargain, but women had no say in those matters. Aldor’s skin was every bit as smooth and dark as Tulac’s. Hers however had no tattoos or piercings, and was as soft as a black rose petal. Aldor had her own set of perfect teeth as well.  In addition, her bright eyes added to the beautiful innocent smile peering cautiously out from inside her cubicle. Keene had never used the cane on Aldor. In fact, he hardly ever hit the women with it, except the troublemakers, that is.

 

Keene had interrupted the rape and in his anger had called the boys ‘Filthy B******s’ several times as he hit one of the laughing boys so hard that the cane broke the skin even through the shirt he was wearing. But Aldor whimpered not because of the rape the day before, as it was not even the first time she had been raped, only the first time by the Wahabio (White Devil Men). Her great anguish came from the dripping blood of the dead man above her with the nail gently pushed into his neck.  The blood of a dead person contained their spirit and his spirit was constantly dripping right onto her naked body. This punishment was much worse than the rapes she had endured back at her village, or here on the ship.

~

In the morning, while making his rounds, Mr. Keene discovered the dead man in his cubicle and stripped him of his loin cloth and an Elephant hair bracelet that he had been allowed to wear on his right wrist ever since his capture.  He looked carefully at the dead man’s peaceful face. For some reason Keene could not remember ever striking this man, although he probably had on several occasions. As the body was being carried to the top deck to be thrown overboard, Keene called to the crew members to stop as they were starting to climb the stairs.  He walked towards the two and put the bracelet back on the dead mans wrist, saying “What good is that to us, let him take it to Hell with him.”

 

As the two carried the corpse to the top deck and it’s watery grave, Mr. Keene took a lantern from the post and turned to look at the sobbing girl.  He quickly realized that the dead mans blood was covering much of her body.  He handed her the loin cloth that he now held in the same hand as the cane. Aldor took the cloth from him and was still whimpering uncontrollably with the cloth clutched in her hand as she looked into Mr. Keene’s eyes as if to ask what he wanted her to do with it. Keene, still holding the lantern in one hand, put the cane down on the deck and took one end of the cloth while Aldor still held tightly onto it and began to gently wipe some of the blood from her shoulder, being careful not to look at the young girls exposed breasts.

~

At the next ‘Medical’ inspection the sky was calm and peaceful as several white clouds were billowing far off in the distance.  Keene and Aldor’s eyes did not meet when she came on deck as she was shielding her eyes from the bright sun with her hand. But again he carefully avoided looking at the child’s nakedness as she passed by. As the medical examination went on, the Captain and Mr. Keene quickly went from one slave in line to the next, the whole process lasting just over an hour.  They were looking for signs of contagious illness that could ruin a good cargo, or those who were just too weak to finish the voyage and would simply waste water and food if left alive. 

 

As the Captain moved on from Aldor and examined an older woman next to her, Keene stared for a moment into Aldor’s brown eyes that had now become adjusted to the bright sun. She looked back into Keene’s blue eyes wanting to thank him for his earlier kindness with the piece of cloth, but did not speak with her lips, only her eyes.

 

Taluc, standing towards the other end of the line had become seriously ill with the Cholera and had been suffering from diarrhea and vomiting constantly for the entire week.  There was no doctor on board, but it was determined by the Captain that Taluc was too sick to survive and he struggled as he was stripped naked by Mr. Keene and dragged to the railing by four of the crew.

 

As Aldor watched the weakened Taluc fighting with the four Wahabio trying to throw him over the side, she felt a strange touch of revenge. “He does not have legs like Baobab trees, you filthy b*****d. He has kind eyes like the sky.” Aldor screamed to Taluc, mixing her language with the English words she had learned on board.  Taluc looked back at her in fear just as he went overboard into the depths.  Taluc, in fact, was Aldor’s older cousin from her own village and it was he who had raped her several times since she had turned ten the year before.

 

Mr. Keene was sure that he had heard the girl say the words ‘Filthy B*****d’ as she yelled at Taluc, but as he looked at her again, he passed the thought off thinking that it must have just been some words from her language that had a similar sound. Some sort of prayer for his soul or something like that. At that moment however, Keene realized that she must have heard him using the words “Filthy B*****d” several times while he had whipped Taluc and the boys who had attempted to rape her.

 

As the crew escorted the now thirty-nine men and ten women back below deck for another week, Aldor’s eyes once again met those of Mr. Keene. “You will be all right little girl.”  Keene said to Aldor who of course did not understand the words, but knew exactly what he had said.

 

 “You are good man, you are not Wahabio, thank you for being kind to me.”  The eleven year old said in her own language looking deeply into Keene’s eyes, as she carefully avoided looking at his legs. He knew, as well, exactly what she was saying.

 

Afterword:

 Aldor was sold to a plantation owner in the Colony of Virginia and although she was never ‘raped’ again, at 23 she did bear a son, whose father, the plantation owner’s son, she loved until her death in 1794. She took her son swimming often at the river and he was treated well by his father. But no one ever knew why Aldor had given the child the most unusual name of Mister. It was extremely rare for the Governor to grant manumission in the mid 1700’s after a 1723 law practically prohibited the freeing of one’s own slaves. It is thought that after Aldor had died that the father had helped her son escape to the north. He was just a couple of years past 30 when his new life began.

 

Thaddeus Keene moved back to Boston and took a job in a hospital and never shipped out to sea again. He began to lose weight and a year and a half later he was married to a young woman named Mary who also worked at the hospital. Thaddeus fathered only one child, a girl born in 1751 with brown eyes, perfect teeth and a bright smile. Her mother named her Hope. She visited the south when she was 16, but nothing is known about her after that, although some historians in Boston think that Hope was an early force in the Underground Railroad.

Reviews

[Gandré]

This was a a great story. I loved its nostalgy. I think you are a great writer of such history-related stories. Thank you for leaving me two reviews. At the moment I don't have PC I use Bberry and it wouldn t let me see reviews. Be well, Donn.