Dove and Mrs.

After Theo defaulted on his land and his person I rode with him in his truck to the farm near Lakeland. I saw that morning as the best piece of my life so far, it was in my mind the ultimate revenge, because when my father had died in Leesburg on the Fiestbrand Farm, where he was foreman, then the father of Theo had forced my mother into a indenture contract. I was in the 6th grade when my mother was terrorized and coerced into slavery and we moved to the storage shed behind the Fistbrand house with the cases of can goods and one bed, no bathroom. We had to walk to the back door and go in the kitchen to do that business.

So I escaped, did well at age 17 and hitched a car ride to the the University of Florida, working as a dorm janitor doing student small loans, invested the little I had, and at age 42 owned a bank in Lakeland Florida. When you invest and move money around as a job then it grows about as fast as your clear ideas do. Knowledge is truly power. I knew more about things I put money in than most of those who created the companies. My mother had always warned me against trying to contact her after I ran away. She said, “You won’t be able to change anything dear, and these people who think of us as their property will find ways to drag you back and make you their slave farmer. Mother had discussed with me various professions and she had hit on the banker profession and won me over. Her plan made sense, it was a way to be free of Fistbrand forever. I was 42 before I saw an opportunity for revenge in their farm bankruptcy.

Theo didn’t know the banker was his once slave Lennie Monroe. I now went by Lennie Fletcher and was fifty pounds fatter, had a beard, and I don’t think he ever looked into my eyes, even when we went to school together every day in high school, I was just the slave he wanted to be far away from. So when he got in his truck to drive back to my new farm he had no clue that I was ever connected to him before. I didn’t bring it up. I knew that I planned to do that morning and had a dog leash in my pocket that I attached to his neck and had him ride on his knees on the floorboard. It was a long ride and I asked him about his wives. Really he had signed lifetime indentures for himself and them in my office and the paper said ‘Fifty years’ and he knew that that was life. I said, “Do you think I need to use the strap on them a little to calm them down?”

“No master,” he said, “just show them the papers, and reason with them. They will probably want you to contact their relatives to free them, but their folks have little money or I would have tapped that source. I tried about everything before I got here.”

“I think you came here from a farm in Lake County, couldn’t you borrow from your kin up there?” I said.

“There not alive now master,” he said, “by the time I was out of college most of them had moved away or were dead.”

I drove directly on the farm to the foreman’s house and his name was Harris. I walked Theo in the house on his leash. He said, “It’s where I spend most of my time.

I was just inside the door when a pretty girl feeding a baby said, “I imagine you want to see Bob?”

“Bob Harris, right I do” She went to the porch and rang a bell. I sat in a chair and motioned for Theo to squat beside me on the floor. Some men, no matter how powerful they were, have the inner slave within them. When you have subdued them then they just give up. I had slapped Theo’s face in my office to see if there was a smidgen of rebellion in him. When he was bowing on the floor in the foreman’s house I just reached over and pulled his hair. He bowed lower on the floor and I said, “Good dog”. A real dog might bite you, but a man will think about the consequences and decide to accept his condition or probably die, or worse.

About 10 minutes after the bell rang I head a tractor pull up in the yard. A very large red-headed bow-legged guy came in the room and stood near the door. It was a nice roomy house with open windows and fans.

The young woman who rang the bell was very good looking, and the center of attraction for me because she was breast feeding her baby, she had her blouse off. She didn’t attempt to put it back on.

“Look Bob, I’m Lennie,” I said, “and I own the farm now, and also I own Theo. Would you still like to remain foreman?”

“Yes master.”

“Good do you have 5 or 6 men you can trust?”

“Ten, and they’ll do exactly everything you want.”

“Good go over to the main house with all ten and chain all those who were once free to furniture in one room, and don’t allow them to talk.”

“The children aren’t home from school yet master.”

“Chain them up also as they come home,” I told him.

“What about him?” he pointed to Theo.

“Oh I want him trained as a body servant for a gentleman. Metal collar, slave clothes and shoes. Oh don’t mess up his skin so any whipping you need to do in his training, do it with his clothes on.”

“Yes sir, it will be a pleasure.”

“Maybe he’ll be easy to train and can be serviceable without neutering. I’ll let you try your training methods first.”

I saw that as Theo trotted out the door on his leash he was crying. It is about the ultimate punishment to find yourself the slave of your slave.

The girl was putting away her baby in it’s crib, and she was getting ready to button her blouse, and I said, “Really honey you don’t need to put them away. She walked across the room then and I said, “Who are you beautiful?”

“Violet sir.”

“And is that baby by Harris?”

“No sir, it’s by my former master, Harris is my father.”

“Come sit on the couch with me and tell me all about the situation here, you can do that can’t you Violet?”

“I’ll do anything,” she said.

“I like that, so tell me you had to probably sleep with Theo quite a bit to have his child. So did you go up to his house near the lake or stay here?”

“Always here, I don’t work up there ever.”

“Why not?’

“The wives only wanted older women as servants, and after the master’s first two wives ran away together, well he didn’t want his young daughter and son to see his mistresses right around him. He mostly stayed down here.”

“Then where did the foreman Harris sleep?”

“Mostly in the barn. If the master wanted him here we rang the bell. The former master sometimes said, “I know the children down here are mine, but up at the other house they could belong to any Tom, Dick or Harry.”

“Do you think his wives were sleeping around with the male servants?”

“No I don’t, at least not with anyone on the farm, people talk, but maybe somewhere else. They don’t go to town much, but they have cars and can come and go as they please.”

“What are the wives like?” I said.

“Miss Drema is about my age, but she went to the University of Florida for two years.”

“But you can’t be more than 17 years old?”

“I was 16 when I got pregnant, a junior in high school.”

“So does Drema have babies?”

“No”

“Did the other wife have all the children? Cause I know he has 6 children.”

“No Miss Sandra also has no chil

dren, the two wives who had the children ran away together, and left all their children here.”

“That seems unusual?” I said.

“The story on the farm is that they were both his age and had his six children and split.”

“Still strange, where did they go?”