Mark Townsend - White captive

And now, now she could picture Duke and the others tormenting in the same way from a ghetto street corner someone much like the goateed and horn-rimmed negro now twisting and leading them into an oblivion that could set their cause back a thousand years. She could hear them throwing crude obscenities at his dress and perhaps tearing the books from his hands in a cruel gesture of superiority. And now, now he had returned with a vengeance to cage them in their own ignorance of the world outside the ghetto that only he had visited and could compete with. They had no choice, the new breed were the catalysts around which their cause had become centered, the black power, the militants, because no one else had a plan to lead them from their misery that promised anything else but a vague hope in the future. At least the promise they received was a promise of action… where that action would lead was another matter… but it was action. That was all that mattered now.

"So what's gonna happen to all those people, man, once we git 'em in the street and all fired up?" Duke spoke defensively now. He had conceded by his own primitive logic the point he had lost a moment ago.

"Some will die," the well-dressed negro answered matter-of-factly. "They have to, it's a war."

"I got brothers down there in them streets," Duke said, attempting to regain a small bit of the prestige he had lost in the eyes of the others. "You mean you gonna let them honkies shoot 'em down."

"They may not, but we will," the other said coldly. "It's the only way to get them fired up enough to take the law into their own hands. We've got to alienate them completely from the honkies and all their one hundred years too late programs for curing the ills of our people. The man has instructed our snipers to fire on the mob. The honky cops will be blamed and there'll be no holding them back after that."

"Man, we cain't kill our own people. Let's git them honkies, I kin do that, but not our kind," Duke objected with an almost pleading tone to his voice.

"You've got no choice, you've taken the pledge to follow the decisions of the group and this is the decision of the group. Besides, I said this was a war and people must die in wars. We need martyrs to unite our people as one against the honkies and for what they stand for, otherwise, they'll never get mad enough to take what belongs to them. That's the way it's going to be and you're coming along or be left behind, so take your choice right now. I'm sure the others are with me."

Duke looked around the table at Coke, Shorty, and Stitch. They did not look back at him but kept their eyes lowered to the map on the table. There was no doubt which way they would go if he put the choice to them.

"Okay, man," he said after a few minutes. "Let's get on with the plan."

There were no other objections after Duke had had his say and Susan sat in stunned and helpless silence as the whole horrible plot was outlined before her eyes that would leave a major part of downtown Chicago a gutted and useless city. It was a military operation, pure and simple, which even she as a girl could understand. Gone were the days of the peaceful freedom marches through Mississippi. Gone were the days when whites marched alongside them in their quest for a better world for themselves. It was color now, black against white, not human being working with human being and could only lead to a senseless and vain slaughter in the end that would accomplish nothing but the building of a barrier between them that could never be breached ever again.

It was dark when the meeting was over and the visiting negro folded his maps and packed them away in the brief case. Duke had followed the complicated plan all the way through even though the others had lost interest long ago and had had to be prodded awake several times as a reference to their part in the operation would come up. Susan had maintained her alertness through-out, even forgetting for short stretches of time, her precarious position with the gang. Again, she had caught the others at various times glancing over at her with obvious remembrance of the pleasure her young virginal body had given them last night. All, that is, except the still sulking Stitch. His glances were of pleasures yet to come from that body that had been denied him by the others at the command of the leader. Brutal pleasures he would tear from her at any cost if he were given the slightest of chances.

"They's gonna be a lotta mad honkies when this things ovah," Duke said without enthusiasm as the other negro prepared to leave.

"That's the point," he smiled. "If they don't like the black man, then they won't do a thing to help him. And, if in a so-called democracy, the majority doesn't do it, then it doesn't get done. That makes the naggers madder and they really blow up."

Duke winced slightly at the term "snigger" applied by one of their own kind and it suddenly became clear to Susan that this man did not consider himself as one with them. He, and the others he worked with, had placed themselves in a category aside and did not identify themselves at all with those they were using as so much cannon fodder to get their so-called people's revolution under way. Civil rights, beginning as a wonderful and legitimate cause for the rights of man, had fallen to the enemy as a bitter and uncontested gift of history that would change the direction of man kind for all time to come.

"We'll be down to see ya tomorrow, man, to set it oh." Duke said, standing at the door and then asked quizzically, "But one other thing, man, if you got all them guerrilla fighters, how come ya need us?"

"It's got to look local," he answered simply and then added with a half contemptuous smile. "Re member, it's you people that are unhappy and causing all this."

"Yeah, man, you're right," Duke said half under his breath and closed the door behind him without waiting for him to turn and leave.

Susan was glad when she heard the sound of the car engine leaving the house even though she knew it only brought the time closer when she would be without a doubt, subjected to more indignities at the hands of her captors. But, the well-dressed negro created a greater and far more terrifying fear in her of the picture he had suddenly presented of the chaotic and explosive world she was going to have to live in for a long time to come if she lived. Right now, the wanton abuse of her body and senses seemed like such a trivial thing although she knew when the moment came again she would react with as much revulsion and horror as she had before because it was happening to her, here and now, and was not something of tomorrow.

"D'ya want something to eat, honey," she heard the negro girl ask Duke in an obsequious tone. "I know you're hungry after all that."

"Shut up," he answered gruffly, indicating the bitter mood the meeting with the educated negro had left him in. "Jist bring me the whiskey."

The others remained quiet, knowing full well they dare not cross their leader at this moment. They had seen him in moods of this nature before and knew the violence he was capable of when aroused as he was now. He had been humiliated and defeated in front of them in a contest not of his own choosing and this did not sit lightly with one of his pride and position. He was accustomed to leading and not being led and this world had ended for him this afternoon. Ended with a sudden and cruel realization that now he was one of them, a Shorty, a Stitch, a Coke, with no more control over his own kind than the new breed chose to allow him.

Susan sat and watched him drink, growing more alarmed at his increasing intoxication as the evening wore on. The others sat quietly at the table in the corner playing cards for matches and talking in low whispering tones that were not audible from across the dimly lit room. They too were drinking heavily from another bottle on their table. The negress, Jodie, sat patiently by Duke's side, periodically filling his empty glass and drinking along with him. Stitch tended the fire that filled the almost silent room with eerie flickering shadows and created an unreal atmosphere that hung over the tiny shack like death itself. It reminded Susan of the silent and thoughtful campfires of the civil war that she had read about when men knowing they would die tomorrow in a planned attack busied themselves as best they could. Some in thought, some in other small ways that kept their mind from what was ahead on the all too near tomorrow. She could see it affected Duke that way and perhaps the others too but they did not show it except in their silent concentration on the game before them which she knew belied their real thoughts. They had plans for her tonight again. She could tell by their sudden muffled chatter and the furtive glances they would then cast her way as she sat in the chair at Duke's side away from the negress. She was grateful for the tall glass of whiskey he had silently poured her earlier and drank heavily from it, periodically refilling it as it emptied. It helped and she knew she could not have stood the awful waiting and strain until Duke made some kind of move to indicate what her fate was going to be for the evening. She knew too that the thought had been on his mind. If he took her tonight he would have the wrath of the negress to deal with, but if he didn't, he knew he would have to give her to the others. Her eyes had wandered once to the far corner of the room to the filthy bed where they had raped and ravished her so long and so brutally last night and she found herself muttering a silent prayer that he wouldn't let them do that to her again. She just could not stand it, no matter what she had to do.