He remembered his Swahili name, Amani. That's what his mother called him last time almost 3 months ago before they were captured and brought by ship, a life-time corporal punishment for only being of a different colour and not able to run and hide.
He wasn't allowed to read or write the new strange language but he remembered the ship's name: Edgefield. Date: 1/1/1853. He was five years old, orphaned and alone. Even at home, his tribe worried for him, he was small and frail for his age and as a slave it meant... he was a freebee with a big sale. In their long journey they were made to learn basic English to understand commands and ask for food and toilet breaks.
As demand for slaves increased, the Portuguese began to enter the interior of Africa to forcibly capture people. Enslaved people were often torn from their families and sold, with families being divided across plantations or colonies. All slaves were given names by their owners. It was up to the slave owner to assign whatever name they wished, and most often consisted of no more than a first name, just like for him. He was named Pym.
Mr. Mills, who boasted to be a direct bloodline of the pilgrims, was as white and as cruel as they came at the time. He had acres of land which was growing as he was a forerunner and shameless crusader of the Indian Removal Act, leading the forced relocation of Native American tribes from their ancestral lands. He prided himself with books where he kept account, describing his killings of what he termed as filth.
He had a large estate taken from the natives through years of his family's atrocities and prided himself with the largest collection of African Cattle people to work for him. Pym was a freebee thrown in with his new assignment.
Like you would feel for a baby animal with big eyes and doll lips, Mr. Mills felt an unfamiliar fleeting pity towards the little slave. He was given the most tender position of work, at the barn and his home. He was to support Mrs. Mills in the kitchen and her farm which consisted of vegetable fields, cattle barn and chicken coops. Like most of the other slaves, he worked in the fields, performing a variety of tasks from sunup to sundown. Mrs. Mills turned out to be crueller than her husband.
In his wretched life, the only sunshine was Master Theodore Mills. It started on Pym's first day under Mrs. Mills' charge. He didn't know how to work the stoves. He couldn't figure out how much and how frequently to add wood to keep the open flames burning. Mrs. Mills had picked up a burning piece of wood with tongs and branded Pym's back with it. When he shouted and tried to run away, he was thrashed like little animals should. That night in the barn, Master Mills had come to visit the new boy. Theodore was seven years old, a splitting image of Mr. Mills, extremely handsome, tall and white with Caramel dark blonde hair, with kind grey eyes and a gentle smile. He was wearing a linen shirt that reached to his knees and socks. Pym sat in the corner of the barn, wearing a similar but old and torn undershirt and nothing else. His eyes red from crying and face swollen from the beatings.
Theodore had brought some soup and bread for the boy and ointment. He had seen the torture from the upstairs landing and even after seeing all the pain surrounding his household and farm, this time it felt like he was being physically hurt. Every strike on the slave boy felt like a strike on his back and heart. He had cried himself to sleep and then carried his supper and smuggled some of his mother's ointment to the barn. He knew if caught he could be beaten and the boy may face an even worse punishment, but he couldn't help himself. He had to go and comfort him.
As soon as he approached Pym, he ran deeper into the barn, fearing more beatings, he was confused on what he may do to get tortured. Theodore kept the food and the cup of ointment on the floor and sat on his knees next to it, waiting for Pym to approach him like a wild puppy. After a long time, Pym crawled out and approached the food slowly. He sat opposite Theodore and picked the bread and started to run away but Theodore held his wrist gently. "What's your name?" He said in the best pronunciation he was taught by his tutor. Pym looked at him with scared, large, red and beautiful eyes. "Your name...I Theodore...you?" Theodore touched their clasped hands on his chest and then on Pym's. "Amani...huh... Pym!" he responded. "I like Amani... I will call you Amani!" Theodore smiled and Pym smiled back... from that night on, he was Amani... only for Theodore.
Mrs. Mills kept Pym poor, depriving him of basics like food, clothing, and for shelter he lived in the barn. In the next 11 years Pym, though still small and thin, had become a skilled craftsman, house servant, and livestock handler.
To Mrs Mills' disgust, Pym was also extraordinarily beautiful even to her hateful eyes. He was small but tightly muscled, his torso weirdly cut into eight blocks, his chest square and nipples big and black. His skin was broken and healed repeatedly but still looked soft and silky. His hair curled when it grew but she had them sheared like her sheep. But most striking was his face, it was angular with large black eyes bordered with thick long lashes and his lips were shapely and pink. He used chewing sticks made of barks and salt to clean his teeth which were straight and whiter than Mr and Mrs. Mills who used tobacco and charcoal.
His beauty fuelled her anger and whippings was a common form of punishment, he was forced to work long hours, often even overnight and punished for not working fast enough, being late, or defying authority like looking up while talking to Mr or Mrs. Mills.
By 1863 there were almost half a million slaves but the census recorded only 180 K, which was more than 30% of the state's population. Many of them, like Pym, lived in barns, attics and basements hence were never recorded, like a twisted Cinderella story.
If Pym was a tortured slave, hated and punished by Mrs. Mills, Amani was a cared for boy, loved and doted on by Theodore. As days became months and weeks grew in years, the boys became best friends. Theodore... Theo came to the barn every night, sometimes with food, clothes or medicines but always with love and care. Amani told him about his village, jungle and exotic animals, whatever little he remembered, Theo taught him to speak, read and write. They spent all their nights together, Theo slept in the barn with Amani on many of those nights, sneaking to his room at dawn.
On Theo's sixteenth birthday, Amani had touched their lips together as a gift, the way he had seen the town preacher do to Mrs. Mills when Mr. Mills went away for days for his quests.
Theo had felt a jolt of fire in his body and had gotten hard in his breeches. He ran away to his room, his heart beating like a drum, his mind spinning with images of Amani and his boy part now a painful hard manhood.
After several minutes, he ran back to the barn. Amani was awake, in a whirlwind of confusion and arousal. Theo had taken him in a hug and then kissed him fully, pressing their lips together and slowly moving their pelvises close enough to feel each other's engorged organs. They kissed for hours that night, exploring each other, trying things that came naturally. Lips, tongue, smiles and moans filled Theo's sixteenth birthday night eve.
The next morning,Theo dressed in his best short jacket and new trousers instead of his usual breeches. Under the jacket, he wore a shirt and a waistcoat with embroidery made by Amani under Mrs. Mills strict supervision. As the Mills left for church, Theo touched his felt hat towards Amani, very slightly but surely. Amani looked up for a moment and then down at Theo's new shoes with buckles, he normally wore boots because he worked with horses and cattle.
Mr. Mills came back extremely angry from church, there were rumours about Preacher Galveston and Mrs. Mills. That evening, Mr. Mills got drunk and violently thrashed Mrs. Mills. Her screams of agony and his angry brutal words with the sound of leather belt on skin filled the night. Amani held a crying Theodore in his arms all night in the barn, that's how they celebrated his sixteenth birthday.
The next morning a horrible news floated in the town. One of Preacher Galveston's slave girl had taken some candy, she must have been eight or nine, and that her slaveholder had punished her by holding her head under a rocking chair while she whipped her. The incident had resulted in a crushed jawbone and permanent disfigurement.
One news brought more gossip of such cruelty by Preacher Galveston and his staff against his slaves. It was very common for his slaves to run away into the woods after being badly whipped. They were forced to, for they could not do their tasks, and so they stayed in the woods till they got well. Sometimes they stayed there five or six weeks till they were taken, or were driven back by hunger. But there were great many who never came back; they were whipped so badly they never got well, but died in the woods, and their bodies found by people hunting for them.
Galveston sent his men to collect the collars and chains and bells, which they would take from dead slaves. They would just take off their irons and then leave them, and think no more about them.
Galveston was tall and a heavy set man, a widower with no children. Feared by slaves, staff and ladies of the night. Many left battered and brutally mutilated by him. These were all rumours because nothing got proven. He wasn't a priest but proclaimed himself as a preacher and head of the inquisition committee.
