Zakes Mda - Cion

“You saw I didn’t let ’em, you ninny!” said Quigley still laughing. “But you must admit it was damn funny.”

“I’m gonna do it to you one of them days and you tell me if it’s funny.”

The fellow was not able to sit for a few days. But the show had to go on. Every day they went out on the streets to perform, and then to the taverns to partake of the good life. Once in a while they went to the bordellos and Quigley treated his slave to more good life with either the Negro or Irish prostitutes; those who were so destitute that they accepted any customer.

It was at the bordellos that Quigley was struck by a brilliant idea. There were many stray white children in the street. Abandoned by women of the town. Some not quite abandoned but neglected by mothers who had to spend days and nights servicing customers. These children had to fend for themselves in the streets or even follow their mothers’ profession before the age of ten. At night Quigley discussed the welfare of these children with his slave. There could be good business here.

“All we need is to transport ’em down to Virginia,” he said.

“And then set up a house for orphans for them down in Virginia,” said the slave with a sarcastic chuckle.

“Sell ’em as slaves, you ninny.”

“I ain’t gonna kidnap nobody’s child,” said the slave.

“We lure ’em, man, we don’t kidnap ’em. We promise ’em a better life and jobs and the like.”

“Who’s gonna buy white slaves, you ninny?” asked the slave.

“Oh, they buy ’em all the time! You call ’em mulattos they buy ’em. No questions asked. They know pretty damn well they ain’t no mulattos. I hear Irish girls make excellent slaves as if they had nigger blood running in their dear li’l souls.”

It was easy to capture stray Irish and German girls in the streets of Five Points and other New York slums. When Quigley could not sell them at the House of Reception on West 13th Street because of the competition of more professional slave traders, he loaded them on a wagon and drove for days to Richmond, Virginia. He invested a lot of resources in treating the children very well, feeding them the kind of meals they would never even have dreamed of in the streets or at their bordello homes, and made sure that their clothes were clean even though most were tattered. The reason for this generosity was that healthy-looking slaves fetched a better price. But also it helped to keep the girls from ever thinking of escaping. If the journey to the South was this comfortable, what of the life that awaited them? Only a foolish girl would even think of escaping from such a prospect.

Quigley and his slave never used the children for any nefarious purposes. They were not unscrupulous at all. When it was necessary to satisfy their manly needs they went to the auction rooms. No, not to auction their children. Those were going to be sold directly to specific customers at the plantations that had placed previous orders. Each child was earmarked for a specific owner even as she was being captured or lured by the two. Quigley and his slave went to the auction rooms to rent women for the night. Slave dealers who were entrusted with girls to sell at the auction earned some extra money by hiring the girls out for the night. Whenever Quigley heard a new batch of female slaves had arrived he whispered in his slave’s ear, “Let’s go get some fresh pussy from the auction rooms.” And they tittered like two naughty schoolboys.

So, the children in their care were never in any danger of being used for the gratification of the two kindly gentlemen who were taking them for wonderful jobs with kind-hearted employers. Through most of the journey they sang happy songs and dreamed beautiful dreams. They were happy to have Quigley’s slave at their beck and call, for they did not know that soon they would themselves be slaves and would be used for the pleasure of their new masters.

Sometimes there were women among the children. Irish and German women who had had enough of destitution and were quite willing to walk into servitude and even slavery with their eyes open. Most of these were sold to rich Negroes who kept white slaves. In Virginia and Maryland there were a number of free blacks who were quite wealthy and were slave owners. Some of these were happy to keep white women both as slaves and concubines. It was a better life for the women than the cold and hunger at Five Points, and Quigley was always ready to rescue them from that life and transport them to the South. Some of the women — denounced as depraved by white society — ended up marrying their black masters.

Things were looking up for Quigley and he wondered why he had wasted so many precious months begging with his performing Negro instead of engaging in such a lucrative business. At ten dollars cash per slave, and the cost of transporting it, he was making a killing. Even his slave seemed to be gaining more flesh on his bones. But alas, Quigley couldn’t stay away from the gaming dens. The wealthier he became the more he stayed for nights on end losing money, and then staying for more hours hoping to recoup his losses. His slave was always by his side, still on his leash, or sometimes in chains in order to emphasize to the onlookers that the fellow was a slave and he was indeed the master. This enhanced his status. Or so he thought.

Sometimes he won a few dollars but most times he lost everything he had in his purse that night at the roll of a die. The gambling binges became frequent and he began to neglect the business. This worried the slave and he tried to talk to his master about it. But Quigley was too stubborn to listen to a mere slave. He made the money through his brilliant ideas; he had the right to enjoy it. The fountain would never run dry as long as indigent women continued to manufacture babies.

They had moved from the church basement to one of the tenements, and sometimes Quigley forgot to pay the rent. The landlord would come knocking and threatening to evict them without notice. The slave, who had taken to hiding some of the money under his own mattress, would pay the rent. Quigley would then ransack the house for more hidden money, which he would promptly take to the gaming dens.

That was how Niall Quigley and his slave fell on hard times. Creditors took everything he owned, including his precious wagon and horses that he used to transport slaves to the South. With only his clothes wrapped in a bundle Quigley and his slave trekked down South with the hope of finding new ventures in Virginia, perhaps with the assistance of the rich men he used to provide with fresh supplies of slaves. But none of them wanted to know him. Even the wealthy black landowners who had bought one or two white women from him and were now living with them in holy matrimony or blissful concubinage did not want to have anything to do with him. In cities like Richmond and Norfolk he tried to revive the old act of a “performing Negro” but it just didn’t get off the ground. There were no takers, and more often than not property owners drove them away from the sidewalks with whips.

The slave was now sickly and a burden to keep. Quigley tried to sell him. He took him to the auction rooms but the auctioneers would have none of him. Putting a scrawny fellow like that under the hammer would destroy their reputation as auctioneers of quality slaves. In any event no one in his right mind would bid for him. “A scurvied Negro like this ain’t good for nothing,” they said.

“He’s good for breeding,” Quigley insisted. “Like all men of his race he’s more robust in love than any white man.”

At this he displayed his penis, which was quite sizeable.

But the auctioneers and prospective buyers dismissed the whole idea. They didn’t think the children sired by the slave would be big and strong.