A Middle Class Slave Revisited By Steam Train (steam_t2000@yahoo.com)
Chapter 14: Life in a coffle.
That evening after dinner Master and I talked about the day's events and I asked Master "Why did he presume that no one else would know how to look after slaves in the same manner he does?"
He replied, " From my experience Steve across many states, not many share my outlook on slaves. There are lots of people in the north who want nothing to do with slavery but it is hard to find many people who follow the middle road that I have tried to traverse. Slavery is the law and I use what is legal to make my living very successfully".
"Now take how Calhoun treated his slaves, he was better than a lot of slave owners. His slaves were all healthy and well nourished. He did this to protect his investment but personally he was indifferent to the slaves he owned, they were not treated as humans but as animals and items of property" Master said.
Master went on to say that he needed to change the basics of Cal's attitude to slaves. Slavery was a fact and necessity of life these days wether you agreed with it or not. However whilst a person is still a slave they can also still have some human dignity. This was what Master wanted to instil in Mr McAlister and his son Alex.
As for Masters son Alex, it was also a `right of passage'. Master told me that he found it very common that the son rebels against the parent's ideals and morals. In this case Master could not risk such rebellion. He needed to protect his slaves as he did not want to have them sold to other owners once he was gone, who would again treat them like animals.
So as much for the sake of his slaves as anything, his son Alex was going to learn a harsh lesson about slavery over the next year. Master said that at the end of that year he hoped that Alex would appreciate all the consequences of the decisions he would make as President of Premium Foods as far as they affected the slaves he employed.
Master allowed me to sleep with Josh on my last night before returning to Green Bay Farms. A day is a long time to be separated from your lover, a whole year, that's an eternity. Josh was full of encouragement for me to go through with the challenges of the next year. Unfortunately he would not be allowed visiting rights as Master said that would raise problems with the other slaves in the coffle and with the guards and cause too many suspicions.
My sex with Josh that night was very poignant, we both were trying to look for the positives but the loss of your soul mate and partner for a whole year is a cruel blow. Especially so for Josh as he was free. I was a slave and through my experiences with Matt I had suffered separation before, at least this time I knew we stood a good chance of meeting back up.
In the back of my mind was the question, would the fire and passion still be there after we were apart for so long?
The next morning I was ordered to strip naked by Mr Woods and then taken out and bundled into a slave delivery van in the same cage as an equally naked Cal for the trip back to Green Bay Farms. I hadn't been totally naked in public for quite a while and I could feel my face blushing. I looked just like a freeman again. Master had allowed my body hairs to all grow back. There was a tinge of grey appearing on my temples and the odd grey hair on my chest. It was a shock when I saw these grow back grey. I was getting old!
As we waited in the van, Master and Mr Woods escorted another man dressed in a polo shirt, slacks and leather shoes to the van and placed him in the cage next to Cal and myself. I guessed this was Masters son Alex but I also knew I had to pretend to know nothing. That was my strict instructions from Master.
I tried to make conversation with Alex and Cal asking their names and why they were being enslaved, but both were very sullen and extremely nervous looking, almost spooked. When I shook Cal who was in the larger cage with me to try to get some form of response from him he replied, "Fuck off slave".
Well that did it, I was trying to be nice to my former master but if he had an attitude like that then who cared, so I said, "Look who's talking, in case you haven't noticed you are a slave too" I laughed at him then and then without thinking spat on him. He attacked me but with little success. I may have lost some of my strength but he was an easy conquest.
As the truck moved along the excitement of the struggle aroused me, especially as this was my former master. I don't know why but at that moment I found myself with a primeval urge to sexually dominate. I want, no I need to be the pack leader.
I forced myself on Cal and took my pleasure up his arse. He verbally abused me, screamed and tried to fight me off but I was an expert at this. I had conquered hundreds of men, most much stronger than Cal.
In my moment of sexual triumph I glanced over at Alex in the adjoining cage. He had turned as white as a sheet and the look of sheer terror in his face and eyes said it all. I tried to smile at him in that very moment of my sexual triumph as I ejaculated into Cal's arse.
Alex moved as far away from me as possible, against the far wall of his cage and looked with horror as I cried out "Oh yes ... oh yeah....".
I heard him mutter "Animal".
Instantly I blushed and started to loose my erection. With great shame a thought singed into my consciousness that he was right.
Slaves are treated as animals and thus you get animal like behaviour from them. What else could you expect?
Well I realised then that I expected better of myself than that sort of behaviour. I had let my emotions and my lust take control. All too quickly I had enjoyed myself at the expense of a fellow human being, yes a human, not a slave, not an animal!
I sat back in the cage trying to apologise to Cal and just hoped that in time both Alex and Cal would come to see another side of me and realise that I was actually not a sexual predator but their caring protector.
The truck finally arrived at Green Bay Farm. I could see the driver get out and go over and talk to a guard. The guard signed the delivery papers and then the driver unlocked the cages.
"Out and make it snappy" the guard yelled from behind the driver. Two more guards stood a short distance away just in case of trouble.
The first guard looked again at the paperwork and with a scoff muttered with derision `Indentured slaves!"
We were walked across the big sandy yard into the processing shed.
The senior guard then addressed the three of us `Right listen up slaves. "The fact that you are twelve month indenturee's, not life slaves means nothing whilst you're enslaved. You will behave like all other slaves and you will be treated like all other slaves. Normally we would brand you with the Masters logo but we have a new Master and he has ordered that all new slaves be tattooed as he feels that is more humane. You three guys are even luckier. Being only twelve-month indenturee's you won't even be tattooed. You will wear special bracelets that distinguish you as indentured slaves".
Alex much to his utter humiliation and embarrassment was ordered to strip off before we were fitted with special green plastic coated metal bracelets that had our new slave number and twelve month indenture expiry date engraved on a panel that sat centred on the band.
It was whilst I was being fitted with my bracelet that Aaron Neil walked in accompanied by two more guards.
I recognised both these guards from my previous time as a slave here at Green Bay. Aaron ignored me and so did the two guards who immediately stopped dead in their tracks with looks of amazement on their faces before recovering their composure and going straight over to the naked Cal who was standing to the side wearing his newly fitted bracelet.
`Well look who we have here" one of the two new guards said.
The senior guard who was attending to me stopped fitting my bracelet and replied "Who?"
"This here indentured slave was our former boss Mr Calhoun McAlister. Nearly made my job redundant and put my family under a lot of pressure due to his poor financial skills did this here slave. Serves him right to find himself enslaved. Just reward I say".
"I'm sorry George I tried my ....." Cal replied.
The guard slapped Cal's face. "Never speak to a master unless you're asked a question boy and never call a master anything other than master or boss, do you understand?'
`Yes ..... but master I was only trying to apologise" Cal said.
The guard snatched a prod off his belt, flicked it on and reached over to Cal's torso and placed it against his right nipple. A single shot was all it took to have Cal begging for mercy in a weepy falsetto voice.
"Let that be a lesson to you boy. You're a slave now so you need to learn your place real quick" the guard said.
I glanced over at Alex and he looked like he was about to cry. It was all too much for his refined northerner upbringing.
Neither of the two old guards recognised me. I guess I had aged quite a bit since I was first here as a twenty two year old. Aaron also showed no signs of recognising me until once when walking past me he quickly winked whilst no one was watching.
My new boss Aaron Neill inspected the three of us slaves. He seemed to pause and take longer feeling my balls and cock than the other two slaves, a get back I guessed for all those inspections I had performed back at the slave training facility.
Boss Neill told us slaves that we were lucky. Green Bay Farms was under new management and improvements in line with the owner's wishers were in the planning stages. Over the next months we were to get in the slave quarters, showers and bunk beds. He then left instructions with the original three guards to place us in a coffle with slaves selected from the shipment of new slaves due that afternoon.
We were lead back across the big, sandy yard. The guard hurried us on and led Cal, Alex and I quickly back into the large barn-like structure on the other side of the yard. That was the slave's barracks. For me this was an all to familiar building
Inside we went along the wide concrete path down the centre of the building. Aligned on both sides were the cells with solid walls separating each cell from the one next to it? The front was composed of bars from floor to ceiling, with a door made of the same bars set into it. They looked the same as I remembered the cells to be, the floor covered in straw. The new bunk beds were yet to arrive though when they did they left little spare room. The bunk beds were tiered four high and two sets backed against the rear wall one set against each side wall and one butted against each other in the centre. There was only `squeeze' room left.
The guard stopped, opened up one of the enclosures and ordered us in. The door was locked and we waited till the rest of our new coffle arrived later that afternoon.
Alex sat down against the back wall looking totally miserable. Cal went over to the left wall and so I went to the right. Both the other guys just stared down at the floor and straw in front of them.
No one said anything for a long while but eventually I felt compelled to speak.
"Guys, especially you (I looked at Cal) I want to apologise. Look I didn't get off to a good start with you guys in the van bringing us here but I'm sorry, really sorry for that. (I looked at Alex) You called me an animal and yeah the way I got carried away I was acting like an animal. It's what slavery does to you, it dehumanises you. It can turn you into an animal, a piece of property, rather than a man!"
"I wont let myself do that again, I am ashamed of myself, I let my anger at you (looking at Cal) for telling me to `fuck off' boil over. Please forgive me, we have to learn to support each other not hate each other otherwise we wont get through the next twelve months" I said.
"I'm Steve White, and what's your names?" I asked.
There was deathly silence.
"Come on guys please forgive me' I pleaded after an excruciating period of total silence.
Nothing .................
I bowed my head and thought to myself `Great work Steve you really have blown this' when .....
"I'm Alex" came a voice meekly from the back wall.
Then ... "Hi Alex, I'm Cal" came a reply from the opposite wall.
Well they were not exactly talking to me but it was a start.
Alex and Cal eventually got into a conversation. I just listened. Cal told Alex openly about his brother and Green Bay Farm and his life. He didn't mention the promise made by Master after he served his time. Alex was far more circumspect in his tale of life. He had borrowed from Mr Booth had suffered some financial setbacks and instead of slavery he had chosen like Cal to serve off his debt as an indentured slave to Master.
After a long time the conversation died down then Alex turned to me and asked `Well if we are going to be such close companions for the next twelve months you better tell us about yourself".
I told a lie of course. My story sounded very similar to Alex's but they both bought it. Master was right too. Cal did not remember me at all. Admittedly it was a long time ago but I still remembered my nights with Cal and Billy-Joe, he did not, at least not then.
Late that afternoon the guards began bringing other guys into the cell. They all looked shattered by the experience they had all just gone through.
Unlike the three of us these guys were new life slaves. They had just been stripped and freshly tattooed. Their minds were very much in a state of shock.
I took the initiative and showed them over to the water spigot that was coming out from the side wall near the front grills, at about head height. I showed them how to use it; it was one of the water spigots with the demand valve that was turned on when you tongued it once you had your mouth clamped over it.
As the guys continued to be bought in none of them spoke very much. They lay, leaned, or stood around as best they could once the room started to fill up. During my first stay at Green bay Farms the coffles had been made up of twenty slaves. This time round it was the same. Later the reason became clear that this was the maximum number of beds that could be fitted into a cell.
Some of the guys were whimpering quietly to themselves, others screamed and shouted with rage and frustration, yet others were chafing and fretting about their loss of freedom whilst others just stared with blank eyes into nothingness. All of them plus Cal and Alex looked a picture of misery as they clustered there together in our cell.
It was a central tenet of former President G.W. Shelley's policies that once you were enslaved, it was permanent unless you were indentured. There was no appeal, no shortening of the sentence by parole boards, no nothing: once you had been enslaved you stayed a slave for the rest of your life. President Shelley had justified this by saying that to act as a real deterrent, everyone had to know that it was a permanent sentence.
I had suffered the impact of this policy. I knew just how mind destroying slavery could be in a coffle. No hope, just never ending tedious mind sapping work. The new slaves were quickly realising their lives had changed forever. I knew the mental terror that they were all going through at that time but until they actually got out in the fields in the coffle they had not yet realised the full extent of how their lives had changed.
In the late afternoon guards started bringing back to barracks the active coffles and all the new slaves in our cell watched with interest but with fear and apprehension in their eyes as the coffles were unchained and locked in their cells for the night.
Slave chow was bought round and ladled out into plastic bowls. I needed to crap after eating and in one corner of the cell there was the usual crap hole. I got disgusted looks from many of the new slaves but I knew they would soon have to get over their inhibitions.
There was no alternative!
I also knew but could not let on, as it would arouse suspicion that it was far better to piss and crap in the hole in the morning before going out to toil in the fields. I thought to myself that they would soon learn to be regular with their craps either in the morning before going out to the fields or the evening after your return.
Out in the fields, there were no facilities, when you wanted to piss; you just did it, as you were not allowed to break the rhythm of the work by stopping. You just let go as you moved along, digging or harvesting, or whatever. You could only crap in the fields at the short break that you were allowed in the middle of the day. Then you just dug a small hole with your spade or hoe, squatted over it, did your business, and then covered it up again.
No way could you crap whilst working, as the whole coffle would have to stop whilst you squatted down as there just wasn't that much slack in the wire joining the coffle together.
If you couldn't be regular, you had no option but to let it drop as you worked and this I knew from experience was really gross. Instead of being able to hold your cheeks apart and squat really low down so that the turds don't leave a mess on your arse, when you're walking along in the coffle and have to drop one it really leaves your ass filthy. There is of course no way of cleaning yourself, except that, at the next break, if you are lucky, there might be a few blades of vegetation at the side of the field that you could try to use.
I finished my piss and crap and a short time later we were told to settle down and go to sleep. Mercifully, thanks to Master Booth there was a really good, thick layer of straw on the floor. If it had of been that thick during my previous stay I would have considered it a real luxury however after spending my last years back in beds, including many nights in Masters very luxurious bed I found it hard to get comfortable lying all alone by myself that night.
Our cell soon settled down but you could hear the slaves in the numerous other cells enjoying each other's bodies. It is what slaves do, what all slaves do! What else is there to do every night except play with your fellow slaves? Fucking is the only bit of pleasure you get as a slave, and the only partners to fuck are your fellow slaves in your coffle
I took the initiative and asked the question, I didn't want to spend the night lying by myself. "Hey guys It's really nice to have one or two 'special' buddies. Anyone here interested in getting to know me better. As I get to know you, you will get to know me and we will both get to know what we like and dislike. Enjoying each other's bodies is the only bit of pleasure you get as a slave, and the only partners to pleasure are you fellow slaves in this coffle. Anyone want to join me tonight?"
There were no takers for a while and then to my total surprise Cal got up and moved over and lay beside me.
"Don't look so surprised, ok, make it up to me Steve" was all he said, it was all he needed to say.
The next morning after a breakfast of slave chow we started work. I knew from experience what would happen first before we were taken out to the fields
First, we were instructed on slave discipline and shown the consequences of our misbehaviour
The guards showed us their "goads" pieces of metal about two feet long with a convenient handle at one end and explained that they were adapted from devices used to herd cattle. If the tip of the goad touched you, you'd have an extremely painful shock, sufficient to knock you to the floor.
They explained that once we were working in the fields our overseer would use a whip, strap or tawse to make sure we were working at the proper pace. But when we were being moved around the plantation, and were not wired in a coffle then guards leading us would not hesitate to goad us if we dared to move out of line, or tried to disobey them or attack them in any way.
Like my first time around the guards to ensure that we all understood that they were deadly serious, pulled one guy out from our coffle (I knew what was coming and made sure I was in the middle of the group) and moved him to where we could all see. A guard pushed his goad onto the slaves right nipple. At once he gave a great shriek, and then fell to the floor, writhing, with his limbs twitching uncontrollably.
We were ordered to move out and followed the guards out of the building; Cal and myself helped support the poor unfortunate example of goading. We crossed the open courtyard back into the building where we had been fitted with our lightweight indentured bracelets.
I felt a shiver of dread again as I walked back into this building that held so much pain for me.
We went out through the other side into an area that was covered by a roof but was otherwise open to the air. It was still the blacksmith's forge, and there was a naked slave pumping up and down on a big bellows to make the charcoal in the hearth glowed white.
My fellow slaves thought they were going to be branded as well as tattooed but I knew otherwise so I stepped forward first.
The guards motioned me forwards, and the blacksmith, obviously a slave as he, like all of us, was also naked - motioned for me to kneel down by the side of the giant anvil that was just in front of the hearth.
The blacksmith reached down and positioned me so that my head was hanging over the pointed end of the anvil, with my neck resting on it. The blacksmith picked up a short length of chain from a pile by his side, looped it around my neck, and then dipped a rag into a bucket of cold water and slapped that down onto my neck, too.
He then took a red-hot link from the hearth and used it to join the two ends of the chain together, and I could see steam arising from the wet cloth that had obviously been placed there to stop severe burns to my neck. Even with the wet rag providing some protection for my neck I could feel the heat of the hot link Four of five blows of the blacksmith's hammer were all that were necessary to close the red-hot link together, joining the chain permanently around my neck.
Finally, the blacksmith splashed a cup of water from the bucket over the still glowing link to cool it, pulled the rag away, and told me to get up.
I knew what to expect this time with the weight of the chain around my neck. It weighed about four pounds. It was quite tight around my throat so it was not all that long in length. Each link was extremely thick and chunky. The guard ran a finger around the inside of the chain, and pronounced it a good fit.
When we had all had these chain collars fitted, the guards again lined us up and before they led us off the senior guard told us.
"These chain collars are used to wire you together in your coffle when you're working on the plantation. We thread a wire hawser through one of the links, so you can move up and down the wire, to a certain extent. But with the wire then locked to the collar of the slave at either end of it, it's easy to control you. You can't escape, unless all 20 of you act together. And so we only need one overseer to watch all 20 of you work, and he's only there to ensure you keep up a proper work rate by encouraging you with his whip."
We were then led us off into another part of the building, which like my first stay had rows and rows of leather work boots on racks. In the mornings when all the coffles were being readied to go out into the fields you need to go to the rack, take a pair of the correct size, and put them on.
When we were all booted up, the guard led us out of the door, to the outside where our new coffle had its first experience of wiring. The guards threaded this steel cable through a link in our collars, and clamped the two ends to the end slaves. There was about three feet of slack between each slave. It was not awkward until the coffle was ordered to set off and march towards the fields.
When you're trying to walk a fast pace as we were, urged to do by the threats of the overseer the new slaves who had no experience like I had found it difficult at first, though they soon got the hang of having the wire over their shoulders, it was easy to miss your step and stumble into the slave in front or behind you as you were so close.
We were taken to a field in the middle of the plantation. We passed fields with coffles of naked slaves like us in them. All sorts of activities were going on digging, weeding, hoeing, and cutting as order was restored to the run down farm.
It took fifteen minutes to get to "our" field, and once there we were all issued with shovels, marched to one end of the field, we told to start digging.
We had to advance in a straight line across the field breaking up the sods and neatly turning the soil over. The solitary overseer walked up and down behind us, and if he thought any slave was slacking, or if the line ceased to go straight, his tawse cut across our naked arses and backs to "encourage" us.
Life on a coffle had not changed; there was absolutely no respite. We worked away under the hot sun, with no breaks except the short one at midday.
When we were finally marched back towards the complex, my muscles were aware that they had not done this type of work for a long time. However I stood up to the day far better than the rest of the coffle who were so exhausted from working that all they wanted to do was sleep.
Even my new buddy Cal was that exhausted he was asleep before I could encourage any sex out of him. Alex looked like he was going to die of exhaustion and for the first few weeks everyone was that tired that I didn't have to worry about protecting Alex or Cal from anyone else in the coffle including myself.
End Chapter 14 (Part 23 Continuance of Original)