Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2018 01:38:34 +0000 (UTC) From: Christian Debus Subject: The Homecoming, Part 1 The Homecoming A Story of Longing and Rejection Part 1 This is a story of erotic fiction meant for adult readers over the age of eighteen years Written by Jean-Christophe (Chris): Updated February, 2018 Originally written in 2009 but never posted. Nifty needs your support! If you enjoy reading the stories that nifty.org bring to you, then you might like to help by making a donation to allow them to continue with their work. If you'd like to help you can do so by making a donation to http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html Stories archived at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Jean-Christophe_Stories "The characters and ideas in this story belong in the writer's imagination and bear no resemblance to actual persons or events. Please, respect the integrity of this story and don't do any rewrites, make alterations or add other artists' pictures." Note: I started this story about nine years ago but abandoned it for another story called "Changed Circumstances". It stayed dormant on my computer until I reread it recently and decided I would like to post it. I reworked it a little and turned it into a short story of three chapters. Despite my love of consensual slavery and my commitment to it as my preferred lifestyle, I am implacably opposed to slavery. I abhor enforced, chattel slavery for the evil that it was and still is. I regard chattel slavery as an abomination and I crime against humanity. Naively, when I began writing about slavery in 2009, I started this story as my personal expose of those evils. However, upon reflection as a non-American, I questioned if I had the right to write about another nation's history and came to the conclusion that I didn't and never posted this story. Perhaps, in the intervening ears, I have matured as both a writer and a person - I sincerely hope I have - and I have now reached the conclusion that the vexed question of chattel slavery doesn't belong to any one nation or race. Throughout history most nations and races have used slavery for one evil purpose or another which, to my mind, makes slavery a universal issue. And it is with that realisation that I now post this story with the sincere wish that no one takes offence because of it. Chris Part 1: "Returning Home" My name is Thierry Broussard and mine is a sad home coming. And it is made sadder by the knowledge that I have missed my father, Charles Broussard's funeral by several days. It has been a long trip south from Boston to New Orleans and of course my father's burial couldn't be delayed waiting for my arrival. I would have liked to be present as the family laid him to rest in the private, family cemetery at our plantation 'Belvoir'. On my journey south, I pictured my older, half-brother Yves and his wife Odile holding court in the spacious reception rooms of Belvoir's stately home as they played hosts to all those Southern gentlemen and their genteel ladies who'd come to pay their final respects to my esteemed father. In my mind's eye, I can see our house slaves - the males dressed in their royal blue and white, velvet jackets and black, figure hugging, satin trousers and the females discreetly dressed in long, drab coloured dresses with matching scarves and white shawls - serving them the finest Kentucky whiskey and mint juleps. And outside, our field slaves are gathered on the lawns softly singing their melodious laments for their late Master. I have sometimes wondered why we dress our house slaves like this. The male slaves are always peacock resplendent in figure-hugging costumes of bright colours while the females, like drab pea hens are made to wear dresses of grey or deep violet. Once I'd asked my father why this was so. He told me this was traditional and this is how it has always been. I have attended two family funerals in my eighteen years of life. I have faint recollections of my first funeral after my mother died tragically young - a victim of the frequent summer fevers that afflict our part of Louisiana. Again at age twelve, I stood at my father's side and watched as my beloved grandmother was laid to rest alongside my grandfather. Today, I wonder where my father is buried. Is it alongside my mother whose grave for some reason never explained to me is located in forlorn isolation in a distant corner of the graveyard? Or did Yves bury him alongside his own mother who'd died giving birth to him? I rather suspect this is the case. Yves is twelve years older than me and we aren't close. In fact, he has always treated me distantly and with a degree of animosity. At first, I'd looked up to him but always he'd been cold to me and kept me at arm's length. And the fact that he was away during the school year at a Monsieur Trompier's 'Academy for Young, Southern Gentlemen' in New Orleans only served to widen the gulf between us. I'd always expected to follow in Yves's footsteps and attend Monsieur Trompier's Academy and so it came as a surprise to me when my father enrolled me in an exclusive boarding school in faraway Massachusetts. Why he'd opted to educate me in the North both puzzled and confused me. My roots are very Francophone and my attitudes are very much those of a young, Southerner from a slave- owning family. That I was being sent to the cold, English speaking North, away from all that I cherished, hurt me. I begged my father not to 'banish' me so far away from the home and from all the people I loved. Vainly, I pleaded with him to tell me why I was to receive my education in the hated Yankee states while Yves received his education in New Orleans. My father's answers to my questions were evasive. Yet, cryptically he told me my "future" lay in the North. I never understood what he'd meant by that. At first, my school days in the North were unhappy. As a Southerner - and the son of a slave owner - I was treated with contempt and ostracized by my peers. Even my teachers never lost an opportunity to denigrate my Southern roots or to ridicule my French mother tongue and my first two years in the North were miserable ones. For the shorter vacations it was too far to return to Louisiana and so most my school holidays were spent alone. Unlike other "out-of-towners", I never received an invitation to spend my holidays with any of my classmates; they despised my Southern roots so much that I wasn't welcome in their homes. And so I spent my lonely vacations left in the care of an indifferent schoolmaster. When I first travelled North, I was proud of my Southern heritage. I still am although, in truth, some of my attitudes have changed. No doubt this is influenced by my Northern education and exposure to Yankee abolitionist values and I suppose the greatest change has been in my attitude towards slavery. Born into a slave-owning family, I'd never questioned the morality of one man owning another as a chattel. The opposite was true; I'd always believed slavery was pre-ordained and God sanctioned - as I been taught by my father and the church. My father owned many slaves - I don't know the exact number but I do know they number in the hundreds - and he kept a meticulous record of every slave he owned. I'd never been granted access to the thick, leather-bound book which is locked away in the heavy mahogany desk in his study. In some ways this book is a stud register; a listing of every slave who'd ever been purchased or had been born at "Belvoir" over several generations. Here, my father - and his father before him - had recorded the pedigrees of every slave they owned. Faithfully recorded in the beautiful copperplate handwriting of my ancestors, are the records of every slave child born on the plantation. A quick glance would tell you immediately all you need to know about the slave; whose progeny he is, the date of the mating between his sire and his dam and the day of his birth. I knew Yves had ready access to the register but I'd thought nothing untoward about this. After all, Yves is so much older than me - and father was gradually introducing him to the running of the plantation - and I was sure that he would give me the same access to it when he considered the time was right for me assume some responsibility. I'd grown up surrounded by slaves who pandered to my every need and whim and I never saw them as anything other than servants. The question of their humanity never intruded itself into my thinking. Our house slaves all had majestic names bestowed upon them by my father in much the same way that our horses and hunting hounds were named. My father was well versed in the ancient literature of the Greeks and the Romans and so our house slaves all had grandiose names such as Marcus, Flavia, Polydorus or Penelope. And in my white ignorance, I never saw these names as being either condescending or demeaning. Growing up at "Belvoir", slavery was the natural order of my world. I accepted it without question and my perceptions of it were periodically re-enforced during the fire and brimstone sermons of our church leaders. From my earliest years, I listened as they thundered from their pulpits that the Bible legitimised slavery of the "inferior' non-white races. My Bible studies told me the "Curse of Canaan" was upon the black man and condemns him to be a perpetual "carrier of water and hewer of wood"; born to forever serve the needs of the white man. I never questioned this and it never presented me with a moral dilemma. Besides weren't many of our churchmen themselves slave-owners; and didn't that make it right? Why, I even recall those periodic occasions when our local minister of religion the Very Reverend Clarence T Winterbourne would visit "Belvoir" with a young, female slave ready to mate with one of my father's male slaves. I recall that my father would have his chief overseer, Hiram Pettigrew select a half dozen or so prime young, male slaves from among his herd and have them stand naked as Reverend Winterbourne scrutinized and inspected them at close quarters before choosing one to impregnate his female slave. My father was a deeply religious man and wholly committed to his church. He was also a generous benefactor of our local parish church and so he "donated" the services of his male slave to the minister. He'd have seen this as part of his Christian commitment in supporting the minister as a servant of God in much the same way as he tithed his income. My tender years excluded me from witnessing these couplings which always took place in a stall in the horse stables. These were actively supervised by Hiram Pettigrew - who also serves as the plantation's stud master - in the presence of my father, Yves and the minister. On one occasion, when I stood at the threshold of puberty, I did witness such a coupling by secretly peering through a gap in the door. It was to have a profound effect upon me and it would define my adult personality. Naturally, my line of vision was limited by the crack's width and I couldn't see the female slave. But I could hear her soft, appreciative moaning interspersed with a loud cry each time the male slave thrust deep into her. I had a better view of the young male slave; and I have to say Reverend Winterbourne had chosen well in selecting him. By my reckoning, the slave was no older than eighteen but the long years of hard, physical labour had given him a body of a young Adonis. The warm, honey brown colour of his skin indicated that he had some "white" blood in him and as I watched I could see the play of his powerful back muscles under the glistening sheen of his sex sweat. Enthralled, I watched as the rivulets of his perspiration meandered over the sweeping plain of his back before being channelled down through the deep canyon of his ass and trickling over his inner thighs. I watched the erotic way his buttocks flexed with each powerful, forward thrust of his body; I heard the intake of his breath on each partial withdrawal of his cock and his loud grunt as once more he plunged deep into the female lying prone before him. As I watched, my own cock throbbed with a new found intensity and strained at the tight confines of my undergarments for release. And it only got worse! True to his role as stud master, Hiram Pettigrew "encouraged" the male slave in his efforts. He'd taken up a position behind the slave and as I watched he uncoiled the short, leather whip - known among our slaves as the viper - that he habitually wore clipped to his belt and applied it to the young slave's ass. The crack of raw leather striking solid, naked flesh reverberated throughout the stables and startled the equine occupants of the stalls into nervous whinnying and shuffling. I don't know how many more times the overseer used the viper but each time it had the desired effect; the slave quickened the pace of his thrusting and the strength of plunging. Each time, the viper left a tell-tale stripe that showed livid red against the honey- smooth, rounded curves of the slave's buttocks. The erotic sight of the beautiful slave's striped ass flexing with each forward thrust of his hips proved too much for me. I released my own cock from the constriction of my clothing and I timed my hand strokes to the plunging of slave's cock into the female. We climaxed simultaneously! That day awakened me to my own sexuality. I ached to take the female slave's place on the rutting bench and to have that magnificent young slave fuck me. But that could never be. I am white and it is inconceivable that I would allow a slave to use me as a common whore. So my sexual proclivities remain a secret to this very day. After that, I felt encouraged to experiment with some of the younger, male house slaves. Whenever, I was home on vacation, I had the services of a body slave who acted as my valet for the duration of my visit. Father - I guess with the memory of his own youth - allowed me to pick which slave I wanted to serve me. During my most recent visits, I choose a twenty-three year old boy by the name of Ovid to serve me. Whenever I am at Belvoir, Ovid attends me with doglike devotion ever alert to my needs and very rarely do I have to give him an instruction. He seems to sense what I am thinking and what I require of him. He is, in that sense, the perfect slave. Of course, Ovid sleeps in my bedchamber on the floor alongside my four-poster, canopied bed where he is always at my beck and call. Whenever we are alone in my chambers, I keep him nude. As I give him the order to "shuck", I do see the resentment in his eyes but I don't care. His desires aren't of any consequence and mine take precedence over his reluctance to appear buck naked in front of me. And why wouldn't I keep him naked? For Ovid is truly magnificent! Six feet tall and weighing approximately 180 pounds, he is long limbed; narrow waisted and with wide shoulders. Additionally, he possesses a broad, muscular chest and flat, ribbed belly. And in keeping with all other of our male slaves he is prodigiously endowed with a thick, meaty cock and heavy pendulous balls. Ovid possesses a noble bearing which is quite out of character with his status as a slave. I suppose it's possible that he carries the genes of a chieftain or an African noble in his bloodstream and I know enough about the different bloodlines of our slaves to recognise that he is part Hausa. Ovid reminds me of the statue of an ancient Greek athlete carved out of black marble that my father kept on a pedestal in his study. Sometimes I wondered why my father had this statue; it was at odds with his otherwise almost puritanical beliefs. Could it be that he too was a secret admirer of the naked, male human form? Was this why he always insisted that his male slaves work stripped to the waist? Ostensibly, this was to save unnecessary wear and tear on their clothing. Father issued cheap, cotton shirts to our slaves once a year and, if worn, they were perpetually sweat-soaked and prone to rotting in the fierce summer sun. And of course, a naked back felt the cut of the overseer's lash more keenly. Or did he - like me - secretly relish the erotic sight of so much naked male muscle? The statue is of a classically proportioned nude youth and its nakedness would affront the genteel values of our virtuous Southern womanhood. But Father's study was his private domain and strictly out of bounds to everyone other than the slave responsible for keeping the room in order. Certainly, neither Yves nor I ever ventured into the room unless summoned there by our father; something we both dreaded. Either we were to be punished or told of some decision he'd made concerning our futures. It was in this study that he told me I was being sent to the North for my education. Given my background those first two years at my Northern school were difficult ones for me, but my subsequent ones saw a gradual change in my attitudes toward slavery. By a system of osmosis I began to absorb Northern values and Yankee attitudes and these wrought some changes in my thinking. I still supported slavery as an institution and I do to this day. After all slavery is a big contributor to the wealth of the South and to my mind its abolition would have disastrous effects on the economy for both whites and blacks. It's true we whites profit greatly from the sweat and toil of our black slaves. But they too receive many benefits and for the most part our slaves flourish under the paternalistic benevolence of their white owners. Hadn't we gathered them from the barbarity and harshness of their primitive tribal existences and exposed them to the civilising influences of the white race? Hadn't we rescued them from their sloth and wasteful indolence and given their lives purposeful meaning? We feed, clothe and house them but this is only made possible by the profits of their labour. The relationship between a slave-owner and his slave is a symbiotic one. Each gives the other something and each benefit from that. So why wouldn't I support slavery. And it isn't just the South that profits from its slaves. The North too enjoys a cheap supply of raw Southern cotton, sugar and tobacco for its mills and factories which keep Northern workers in paid employment. As these workers collect their wage packets, do they give any thought to the hard- pressed black slaves toiling under the lash to produce the raw materials which guarantee their employment? Does the Boston merchant ever question the source of the bolts of cotton that line the shelves of his shop? Or does the New York banker worry about the suffering of the black slaves labouring in the tobacco fields as he enjoys an after dinner cigar while his womenfolk sweeten their tea or coffee with slave produced sugar? And what about the wily investor; does he ever wonder about the blood, sweat and tears that pay him his dividends? I doubt it very much! And don't Northern insurance brokers profit directly from the South's slaves in providing the insurance cover against loss or injury of a slave for the Southern slave-owner? I know my late father insured his slaves with a New York insurer and had done so for many years. The Northern critics also overlook that fact that most in the South don't own slaves. Given that prime, male slaves could sell for $1,500 and females for $800 places the ownership of a slave way beyond the reach of the average Southerner. The owning of slaves is largely restricted to the plantation owner and the well-to-do. These things irk me mightily as I listen to my Northern teachers and classmates pontificate on the 'evils of Southern slavery'. Their own hypocrisy is breathtaking! However, there have been subtle changes in my attitude towards our slaves. On each succeeding visit to "Belvoir", I see them less as livestock and more as human and I no longer refer to them as bucks or wenches. In other words, I am beginning to see their humanity and I now regard them as people although the colour of their skin still make them very much inferior to the whites. I know some slave- owners disparagingly refer to their slaves as 'talking monkeys' who'd only recently left the safety of the tree-tops for a precarious earth bound existence which saw them continually at war with one another. More and more my Northern education rejects this unsubstantiated view of the evolutionary journey of the African and I now regard the black African more as a "noble savage" rather than a mere 'beast- of-burden'. I listened in silence as these bigots tried to legitimise their spurious arguments with ill-founded logic. I can recall discussions at the dinner table when my father entertained guests from neighbouring plantations. No matter how the conversations began they inevitably reverted to the ones that mattered most to them. These were the institution of slavery in general and their slaves in particular. I have lost count of how many times I heard the comment that slavery of the black race is sanctioned by God and His church. The argument that this is so ran along the lines of 'after all if the Almighty didn't approve of slavery it is within His power to prevent it.' That legitimised it in the eyes of my father and his friends. And until I attended school in the North, I'd acquiesced with their views. There were however more honest arguments over the dinner table. Usually these were about the undeniable benefits of slavery to our society. These discussions were without rancour and not at all contentious as all the participants were of the one mind. The value of a slave as a unit of labour was discussed as dispassionately as the cost of a good milch cow or a bag of corn seed. If there was debate it was about the hidden costs in a slave's value. New Orleans is a major import centre for the slave trade with an active market - it's estimated there are two hundred registered slave-dealers operating within the city - where newly arrived slaves from Africa are bought and tamed, domestic slaves from the plantations change hands. There are, of course, considerable costs in all this which adds to a slave's purchase price. I once heard a neighbour of my father's say that this hidden cost could account for as much as thirty per cent of the slave's value. My father and his slave-owning friends saw this hidden cost as a deplorable impost on their business activities and debated it long and passionately. I've never been to a slave auction either in New Orleans or to a local one. For some reason, my father never included me with Yves and Hiram Pettigrew when they'd accompanied him to either sell some of our slaves or to buy new ones. Several times, I'd asked to go with them but always my father's reply was the same; I was too young and the slave market was no place for a boy of my tender years. Therefore slave auctions remain a mystery for me. However, I have heard lurid descriptions of what takes place behind the respectable facades of the slave clearing houses on Baronne, Chartres and Gravier Streets in New Orleans. I have heard of - but never seen - the inhumane overcrowding where as many as 150 slaves are confined in small pens and I have never experienced the stench of the slaves' unwashed bodies, excrement and vomit. Nor have I heard their shouts of protest and pitiful pleading as families are split up; husbands and wives parted and slave children torn from the arms of their parents. Perhaps these were the things that my father felt I was too young to witness and he was protecting me from the true horrors of the slave market. My journey home is nearly at an end. It has been a long, arduous one involving an overland trip from New England to a Mississippi River port where I joined a riverboat for my slow journey south to New Orleans. This morning, I have arrived back in my beloved La Nouvelle-OrlＢns and I stand at the rail of the riverboat observing as it carefully nudges itself into the Toulouse Street Wharf. From the heights of an upper deck I look down on the crowded pier. I see gangs of brawny slaves, under the strict control of their overseers, waiting to run out the gangplanks to allow us to disembark. Then, they'll begin the unloading of the riverboat's cargo of manufactured goods from the North. On her return journey, she will carry the rich, primary produce of the South northwards to the industrial heartlands of the great Northern powerhouse. Excited groups of white folk - men in their fine suits and wide brimmed hats and parasol shaded ladies in their billowing crinolines - wait to welcome arriving family members or friends and there is much jocularity, calling out and the waving of arms to attract each other's attention. This is in sharp contrast to the slaves who stand mute with their heads bowed. Despite the sadness of my homecoming, I am excited to be back in New Orleans. Already, I am being seduced by my Francophone roots. I thrill to hear my beloved French spoken proudly and loudly around me and I have slipped back into using the language of the Creole. I love the colour and creativity of the Creole tongue; my father strongly disapproved of Creole as being uncultured and the language of the uneducated and he would never permit me to speak it in his presence. However, I've always disagreed with him on this. To me, Creole is so full of the life that allows its speaker to express himself in ways that 'correct' language doesn't. I contrast the warmth and spontaneity of 'French' New Orleans to the cold reserve and 'Englishness' of the North and I am so happy to be home. How I long to be with Yves. We'd never been close - the twelve years age gap always kept us apart - but he is my only sibling and I want to share my grief at our father's death with him. Perhaps in our common grieving we will find the bond to truly unite us as brothers. I scan the crowd standing on the wharf looking for him. He'd summoned me home and I am certain that we will be here to welcome me but I can't see him. Disappointed, I walk down the gangplank and wait; possibly he has been unexpectedly delayed and will be here soon. I watch as my fellow passengers disembark and leave the wharf until I am the only one remaining. Perplexed, I wonder what has delayed Yves and what my next course of action should be. Perhaps, I'll need to hire a horse and trap to take me out to the plantation. I grow anxious and then, after fifteen minutes or so, a four wheeled cart approaches and pulls up alongside of me. I recognise the driver as one of Belvoir's black overseers, Brutus and the passenger as Hiram Pettigrew. Hiram's greeting is brusque and given from the seat of the cart. He informs me that he is to take me to meet my brother, Yves at the offices of Bellamont and Arceneau, attorneys at law and the executors of my father's estate. Both Hiram and Brutus remains seated and I am left to manhandle my luggage into the rear of buckboard and to find a seat there for myself. I am annoyed by this gross disrespect from both overseer and slave. I, as a free man, shouldn't have had to do this. I will certainly complain to my brother about their behaviour. Once I am seated, Brutus, acting on Hiram Pettigrew's instructions, flicks the reins and tells the horse to 'walk on'. Finally, I am on my way home to my beloved Belvoir Plantation. To be continued ..........