A Middle Class Slave Revisited By Steam Train (steam_t2000@yahoo.com)
Chapter 16: At what price? - Conclusion.
Cal was a changed man from his experience on the other side of slavery. You could tell it the moment you set eyes on him. It was confirmed when he began talking to Master after we showered and dressed upon arrival back at the residence.
Master handed Cal his release as he had promised and an offer of employment as the Vice President of Agricultural Production for Premium Foods. Cal was so humble in accepting the offer. Gone was any trace of his former attitude to slavery.
One comment amongst many that he made to Master stuck in my head.
"You know Will, I often wondered how bad it must be to loose your freedom, to be enslaved but never did my imagination delve into the depths of despair that I have suffered these last twelve months. I always knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel for me, I trusted you to keep that tunnel open. All those other poor guys who are sentenced to a life in slavery, they have no hope its mind shattering and soul destroying".
In my mind I fully agreed with Cal's sentiments. They were just how I felt. I had, had at different times a better life than many free citizens, but it was that basic right to choose to do what I wanted when I wanted that haunted me. Sure most free citizens had to work and were really captives to their employer and their mortgages but if they really wanted too they could throw it all in, sell up and go do something else. I could not do that.
Alex was introduced to us as Masters son. He wasn't so much changed as wearied. He just said it had been a year in hell and for now he could not talk about it. His dad actually apologised to Alex and said that maybe he had asked too much of his son.
When Master went on to say he was a man of his word and at the next board meeting he would step down as President in favour of Alex but would remain on as Chairman and Chief Executive, Alex stopped his father and told him to wait a bit longer. Alex said he wasn't sure he was the man for the job.
Master looked shocked but Alex was firm in his resolve and just said "I will talk about it later dad, when I can think things through".
Like Alex I was suffering from my year in the coffle. There was no doubt my body was trying to tell me I was no longer a young man; in fact I was forty-three years old. I was after the year superbly fit for my age but the aches and pains were constant. I felt like all I wanted to do was sleep for days on end.
In the privacy of his study Master handed me the release from indenture papers for Steven White. He then sat me down and told me all of his plans for me.
Steven White was a real person who was born and grew up near here at Greenwood, Mississippi. He was my age to within months and had died working on one of Masters properties in Canada. He had no known living kin and having died in another country was thus ideal for Masters plan.
In fact it was when Masters staff had approached him with the dilemma of what to do with the original Steven Whites savings and assets as meagre as they were, that the idea of giving me a slice of freedom had first occurred to Master.
The slave tracking system was deliberately loose and untraceable. This prevented families ever tracking down and making contact with their enslaved kin. The only record that had been kept of me from the moment of my enslavement was that a number of other slaves including me, all known only by their temporary slave numbers were shipped out on a particular date. I was then sold, renumbered, shipped again, and when eventually sold again I was renumbered.
No one kept a record of which slave got which number, or how your numbers changed as you moved through the system. It made it impossible for anyone to trace you, unless a coincidental meeting occurred or as in my case my owner traced my parents.
"I can't give you your real freedom Steve but I can give you the next best thing" Master said. He handed me a package containing Steve Whites birth certificate, social security number and other forms of identification. "Steve all that is now required for you to do is present my release from indenture document at a bank, open an account with the two thousand dollar check that I have made out to you in the envelope and start a new life" Master concluded.
I didn't know what to do or say.
I sat there stunned. Then I cried. No I more than cried, I broke down and wept uncontrollably as if I had lost my closest friend. Looking back it was a funny reaction but I was so totally overwhelmed I guess because it came so immediately after twelve months in hell.
Master did not have to do this. In fact it was illegal and could result in him being enslaved if he was caught out. Yet he did.
He told me he wanted to do it just for me. I had been more than a slave to him. I was an intimate lover. He could not look at me anymore and see a slave. He saw someone who was precious to him.
I sobbed away, emotionally bound up in the spell of this momentous occasion in my life.
"Steve I can't be friends with a slave. So if I want to be friends with you then I have to set you free. This is as close as I can manage". Master said.
"Thank you Master, how can I ever repay you?" I sobbed.
"You have already by being a totally loyal and loving slave. This is your reward" Master said.
"Steve one word of warning, you are Steve White no longer Steve Wright. You can't associate with your family except on the very rarest of occasions. They are aware of this and want you to have your freedom. They will all be down on the weekend but after that I don't know how you will manage to meet up. Your two brothers are in high profile public positions and meeting is risky, very risky".
"Michael is now Minority Leader in the Senate and William has just been appointed as an Associate Justice of the U.S, Supreme Court. You meet up with them in public and the press will ask who you are. If you decide to meet in secret be very careful. Public figures have no private life and certainly no secret lives. You will get found out, I can't protect you or your brothers. I don't even know if I could protect myself from the fall out from such an occurrence. So don't even consider it Steve" Master said.
"Yes Master" I humbly replied.
"No Steve its yes Will from now on ok?" master corrected.
"Ummm yes .... Will ..." I replied cautiously.
"Now Josh is waiting for you upstairs and Heath is waiting for me" Master chuckled. "Oh and you had better be prepared for Josh's wrath. He knows all about your nights at Green Bay with Craig and Cal and all the other slaves, or did you forget Aaron and Josh are close friends?"
I felt the blood draining from my face, I had worried from the beginning would my years separation from Josh impact on our relationship.
"Hey Steve don't panic I was half kidding. Sure Josh knows but he's been unbearable this last week knowing you were returning. He loves you Steve. You have nothing to fear. Now go quickly," Master said.
Josh tried to be cold and formal with me, but one kiss on his neck, he's very sensitive there and he was all over me.
I have had lots of sex in my life with many different guys but nothing compares to the feel of Josh's naked skin against mine. It is more than love it is lust. I feel so at one with him. When I am with Josh the worries of the world cease. We exist for that moment as a lone solitary couple adrift totally from the sea of humanity that is swirling around us.
Whilst I was nearing the end of my indenture at Green Bay Farms Josh had completed his Juris Doctor degree with high honors and was now a full-fledged lawyer. He had already decided with Masters help to move to Harvard to complete his LL.M. - Master of Laws degree.
I didn't want to be seperated from Josh and I agreed to accompany him to Harvard. I couldn't get a job there with ease as I was too old at forty three for most casual jobs and I did not want to draw attention to Josh and myself. The last thing I wanted was any suspision that I was a runaway salve.
Masters training of me by Margaret in the kitchen now became obvious. I was an extremely well trained house servant. Josh went off to the Law School supported financially by Mr Booth and I kept house like any good married couple. My cooking was pretty spectacular too.
You cannot imagine the sheer joy I felt in those first years of walking the block down to the supermarket and having the freedom to choose the groceries and food for our table.
I confess I grew to like my role as the contented house partner. I made it my purpose in life to ensure that at home Josh was loved and totally care for. Our home was his sanctuary away from the stress and trauma of his studies and then later the legal system.
Josh wanted our gay relationship to be public. I cautioned him about doing this. Eventually I persuaded him to go and talk with my brother William.
I stayed at home alone the day Josh visited my brother.
William strongly advised against going public. The legal profession was still very conservative. It was one thing for a master to fuck his slave, a totally different thing for two free men to have sex together especially if one or both of them had thoughts of pursuing a career in law.
It was not this argument however that won Josh over. It was my brothers comment that by placing me in the public eye he was risking my freedom and his own. He didn't care about himself but he certainly cared about me.
During Josh's two years at the Harvard Law School, he worked on the Harvard Law Review. Again he distinguished himself academically, graduating with high honors and catching the attention of Judge Marco Esposito of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California.
Justice Esposito hired Josh as his law clerk. I went with him, setting up house in San Francisco. The ideal place for a gay couple to reside. Our year there was possibly one of our most enjoyable together especially as it was close to the Napa Valley and Mr Booths estate.
Our time in San Francisco didn't last for very long. At the end of a year, Josh moved on to another clerkship on the recommendation of Justice William F Wright, that's right, my brother, this one to Justice Harold L Dubois of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington D.C.
When he finished his Supreme Court clerkship Josh was hired by the Administration through the influence of my brother Senator Michael Wright, first as a special assistant to the U.S. Attorney General and then as Associate Counsel to the President. Finally taking up the post of Deputy Solicitor General.
In this capacity Josh argued numerous of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the Federal Government, winning nearly two thirds of them.
When the Republicans won the next Presidential election, Josh returned to private practice.
He became a partner at Logan and Larson, a prestigious Washington, D.C. firm, where he ran the `Appellate Division' and continued to argue cases before the Supreme Court.
Josh worked for Logan and Larson for the next decade, earning a yearly salary that financially set us up life, but Josh practised law first and foremost because after me it was his greatest love, the monetary rewards were secondary.
During his time at Logan and Larson, the year when I was fifty-four years old, two deaths occurred that had a major impact on me. I guess it is that time of your life when death amongst your peers and family starts to rear its head and affect your psyche.
First my father passed away aged eighty-five. I travelled to his funeral but had to stand back with the large crowd and watch my mother and my two brothers grieve for my dad.
My oldest brother Michael read a eulogy composed by my mother. It spoke passionately about my father's life and his family. She mentioned the vacant seat that she had deliberately left next to William. She told the congregation that my father and her had had three sons and regardless of what the law said she continued to love three sons.
She said that no mother who had suffered the pain and bonding of childbirth could ever allow the love of that creation to wither and die even if the law said she no longer had a third son because he was enslaved.
I had to turn and leave at that point the emotion was too much. I know I attracted some stares but if I had stayed I would have broken down and drawn more attention to myself.
Secondly Matt was killed in a car accident driving to pick up Master Booth from the airfield. Ironically it was a Premium Foods truck that veered onto the wrong side of the road negotiating a corner and collected the car Matt was driving head on. Matt died instantly.
I had never seen or visited Matt from the time I left with Josh for Harvard. It was judged too risky for me to be seen in parts where I was well known as a life slave. It was also unfair on Matts overseer, Mr Woods, Josh's father, who of course knew I was living with Josh as a free citizen but would have had to turn a deliberate blind eye to my presence and status if I actually visited the `Residence'.
Matt throughout our physical separation had remained my closest friend. With Master Booth's permission I had regular Internet and phone contact with Matt at the William C Booth Indentured Slave Training Facility where he had continued to serve faithfully up until his death.
Ignoring the risk I accompanied Josh down to the `Residence' and I paid to have Matt's body cremated. At a small private ceremony I scattered Matt's ashes over the rose garden at the residence as I said my private farewell to the man who had introduced me to real sex, sex between men.
There were tears in the eyes of his students from the William C Booth Indentured Slave Training Facility, the other slaves from the `Residence' and in my own eyes as I scattered his remains and said quietly "I will remember you buddy".
Matt always used that term, buddies', we had grown apart as the years passed and he accepted this better than I did but we remained buddies! He was born a slave and thus born to serve as far as he was concerned. He expected nothing more of his life and Matt remained until his death totally contented with that life. Amazed till the end at the luxury of the life he now considered he was living.
My mother passed away the very next year. With my father gone she quickly lost the will to live. She now wanted to join my father in death saying to my brothers that life had passed her by and that she was too weary to try to keep up.
I made one private visit to mum when it was obvious her health was failing. We talked for hours and again she begged for my forgiveness for what she saw as her failure in me being enslaved. There was nothing to forgive but I knew it was pointless arguing with her, so I gave her my forgiveness. It was the greatest gift I could have given her. She went to her grave a contented soul.
Then when I was sixty-one, the new Democrat President nominated Josh to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, widely considered at the time to be the most important intermediate appellate court in the country.
During his four years on the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals Justice Joshua Woods wrote 43 opinions. Only five of his decisions were not unanimous, and he dissented from other judges' opinions on only three occasions. Legal opinion was that Josh through his court opinions showed that he was a "judicial minimalist," emphasizing respect for precedent rather than a broader, more controversial approach.
Josh told me in private that I was the greatest influence behind his minimalist approach. He did not want to broker controversy. He shied away from public exposure through controversial and radical decisions and kept his private life and especially me completely hidden and separate from his public duties.
I had been set free as much as possible by Mr Booth but it had its limits. I never accompanied Josh to any judicial or social functions. Nothing that would draw attention to me was ever undertaken. Our holidays together were always sedate affairs in the privacy of a summer retreat Josh had bought in Maine. We never had guests over to our house. My culinary skills were reserved for Josh and no one else.
What ever the legal experts felt Josh was, he did it successfully because when my brother William passed away suddenly aged seventy of a heart attack Josh was nominated and confirmed to replace him as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
I attended my brother's funeral but as I did at both my parents funerals I stood back in the crowd and watched my brother's family and my other brother Michael with his family grieve at their loss.
I could never be a part of my wider family. My nieces and nephews and their families I never met, I was still a slave to my sentence. My freedom had its limits.
Soon after my brother passed away I was called to California.
My old Master, Mr Booth like my mother before him was slowly fading away. He was now eighty-four years of age. Josh and I made it to Napa valley in time and sat with his family as his breathing became more and more laboured.
His consciousness roused just before his demise and seeing Josh and I sitting in the room he beckoned us over. He smiled at Josh and whispered to him, "Thank you for coming", then he weakly grabbed my hand and uttered slowly to me `Thank you too for coming my friend and lover" then with one last gasp passed away smiling at me, content in his life.
I was devastated at his death, more so than even Josh who owed him everything or his two sons and his daughter. He meant more to me than anyone but Josh. He was Lover, Master and Friend. With his passing there was a hole in my soul that even Josh could not fill.
I was still madly in love with Josh and he with me, after all these years. We had a most perfect relationship. Sure there were the lovers tiffs and the moments of `no talk' but we worked our way through all of those.
I never fully recovered from the loss of Master Booth. I was sixty-six years of age when he passed away and should still have had plenty of zest in me, yet within my soul I began to feel weary.
This feeling slowly grew in me over the next years and I noticed as I approached my seventieth birthday that I was not just weary but physically tiring, sometimes almost exhausted doing chores that previously would have had little effect on me.
Josh pestered me to get myself checked over but hey I'm a guy and us guys we shy away from doctors don't we!
Well I should have listened because by the time I went to the Doctors it was too late. The cancer had spread from my bladder through my system. It was inoperable.
Josh took leave from the court and we spent what little time I have left, here in Maine where I have written down these memoirs of my time in slavery for Josh.
Perhaps in time when he too passes on and no harm can come of my deception he will leave this saga to my nieces and nephews so that they may truthfully know what happened to their Uncle Steve.
I doubt very much if the populace at large will be interested in reading about my life as a middle class slave. Still as that very old emancipist song states, `the times they are a changing'. Well all things have their cycles maybe slavery will have its hour and pass as all things do. Then my story may be of historical interest to historians and a commentary on how society was during this period.
One thing is for certain, my time has passed. I can no longer rise from my bed and Josh cares for my every need. I don't want to leave him. I still lust for him. No one unless they have had real sex with another man could possibly understand how I could so long for the company of Josh.
I loved Josh, more than words can ever be written or actions can ever tell. He has been the reason for my existence and the light that quelled my depression. Unwillingly I have to leave Josh now but I know as long as Josh lives and breathes my memory will live on.
I cherish the good times we have had together and there have been many. Now that I must depart forever don't sink into depression over my passing but go out and celebrate that you made my life so perfect. You don't deserve to go to your grave alone, you will soon be free with my blessings to love another as you choose. I want you to be as happy till your dieing days as I have been since I met you.
I was so very fortunate. I met Master Booth then Josh. Millions of other unfortunate slaves never did. They lived and died during my lifetime no better than animals, owned and sold like items of livestock.
Under the slave reforms set up by President Shelley there was, when it came to slaves, no regard for human dignity only blatant economic pragmatism.
Yes the streets are safer and the trains run on time and many enjoy a privileged life thanks to those slaves but at what price?
Too great a price, far, far too great a price!
Steven Frank Wright Friend, Buddy, Lover and Slave.
Two days after completing his memoirs of his life as a Middle Class Slave, Steve passed away in my arms as the first rays of the sun broke through for a new day. We had slept the night together.
He had called me in to his bed the night before and said, "Josh cuddle me please, the end is near and I don't want to die I am frightened!"
At around three in the morning Steve opened his eyes and looking at me as we lay cuddling in the moonlit bed, he uttered his last words ..... "I love you".
I held him tight as he slowly slipped away from life through the early hours of the morning, his breathing getting shallower and shallower.
When he stopped breathing I screamed out an ear piercing long wail of "Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo" and then totally distraught with grief I held him tight and violently cried and wailed till I had no more tears left to shed.
The love of my life had gone!
I did with the greatest difficulty survive his passing but one of the principal reasons and focuses for my life had gone with Steve's last breath.
I arranged a small private funeral for Steve White.
Steve had been set free as much as possible but the nature of that freedom meant that he lead a very quite secluded life. He had few friends. He talked and was friendly to the neighbours but he had no close friends in Washington. He never mixed within my legal circles.
His closest friends were a small select group of students from his early days at the William C Booth Indentured Slave Training Facility who knew our secret deception and kept it sacred. They were my close friends too. Foremost amongst them was Brett McDonald and Aaron Neill. They visited us regularly through out Steve's life. They paid their final respects at his funeral simply by being there for him and me.
I will continue to emerse myself in the practise of law, the other great love of my life till I too end my days here on earth. I have since Steve's death made it to the pinnacle of my profession, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court but life for me will never be the same regardless of my success or of wether in the fullness of time I find another companion.
Steve was a most wonderful, irreplaceable, compassionate man. I was a slave to his love and he was the strength and support behind my success. Whatever legacy I leave to the people of the United States of America it is all due to a slave!
My lover and partner Steve Wright.
Regards,
Joshua R Woods Lover, Friend & Humanitarian.
End Chapter 16 (Part 25 Continuance of Original)
The End.
I hope you enjoyed the ride!
I have tried to write a story that takes you, the reader through a wide gambit of emotions from laughter to sadness and all points in between. You are the final judge in wether I have succeeded in this aim.
Thank you to all the people who have emailed me with words of encouragement about this story and my writing style. I appreciate the time you have taken to contact me. I have endeavoured to reply to each and every one of your emails.
I especially wish to thank Pete Brown who gave permission for me to write this sequel to his marvellous original story.
Steam.