Chapter 39: Historical Fiction

It was lunch time.

It was also a good time to start explaining our new story. This is a story we would all take turns telling, telling it over and over again at every meal. This was the story which would make up the first of the kids writing and math lessons. We would repeat this story until even we believed it to be fact.

Luckily the kids were still fairly young and that would make it easier, but this was still something we needed to get handled anyway. Starting with them would make it a lot easier to get our own story straight, as well. To get them to focus on the most important part, I started the story on the Barbary Coast.

I tried to keep the story as close to our backgrounds as possible, it would be easier to avoid mistakes that way. So to start the story I was, and am, Sergeant Zachariah Ebenezer Narrater recently of the United States Marine Corps; having served under Lt. Presley O’Bannon on the USS Argus. I had participated in the March on Tripoli and the Battle of Derna. I mustered out after that campaign and took a commission providing personal protection to Señor Abello and his family. The Abello Family Trade House was a minor trade endeavor moving goods between Spain, the Barbary Coast and the Spanish Empire in Central America; they also made occasional runs to the Orient; Sonya Abello was the treasured daughter of Señor Abello. There was a grain of truth to both of those back stories, Sonya’s father did work at the Port of Los Angeles and I had been a Marine who had fought in campaigns in that part of the world.

Sonya had been headed to Veracruz on a sensitive business matter and I was escorting her; so far so good. Sonya did have a vacation scheduled for Veracruz later that year. We purchased Esther and Amos at the giant slave bazaar in Algiers to serve as pesonal servants during the journey, and that was where I bought Michelle also.

The purchase of Amos and Esther was fairly straight forward, they were young, healthy and ready to be trained as personal servants. The trader was proud of the fact that the whip wasn’t required with these two young ones. Back in the real world, Sonya didn’t like this at all and protested quite loudly, I told her to ask Amos.

Amos only had to relate his and his families experience briefly. “T’ain’t no fun being a slave ma’am,” he quietly said, “the massa he liked the drink and the cards. When he’d lose at the cards he’d whip my pa fer sure the next day. When he drank he liked to do mean things to my ma.”

Tears were on Sonya’s and Michelle’s cheek and Matilda sat in stony faced silence; I had expected a story something along these lines.

Amos went on, “Massa lost us to the trader man playing the cards, he was surely angry about that. Ruth and me run one night when we was in St. Jo with the trader man.”

I interrupted then, “That’s not the story any more Amos, you can remember that and we’ll teach you how to write it down but this new story is important. You can’t be run-aways anymore, we purchased you in Algiers which is far across the ocean. Remember only the new story for it’s important if you want to stay free. You may never speak the true story again until you are an old, old man, your Momma and your Papa want you to be safe and be free; this is how you can give them their wish.”

Conflicted feelings raged on Amos and Esther’s faces but they nodded their heads in agreement.

We took a bathroom and drinks break, I had hoped to make this quick but it was apparent that the rest of our day would be spent on grinding through this. Matilda picked up her sewing, I think she was finishing up the clothes for the kids. I grabbed a beer.

“So,” I continued, “Amos and Esther we bought in Algiers. They had been taken from their village during a raid one night. They walked a long way in a line with other people from other villages until they were put on a ship and taken to Algiers. They don’t know what happened to their mother and father.”

I stopped and quizzed each of the children on that until they got it right. Amos, bless his heart, seemed to understand and he promised to help Esther.

I motioned to Michelle and she took over telling her portion of the tale, we had discussed this at length in our tent at night and did a lot of research to back up our story.

Michelle began, “I’m from Pennsylvania, I was raised on my father’s horse ranch there; we specialized in those fine Morgan steeds you see in the corral over there. We sold our horses at auction and to private parties in Philadelphia and New York City, we had an excellet strain and we trained them well. We got top dollar with many sales overseas, usually to England and France; we delivered in person to insure the health of the animal. The delivery fee was always part of the payment collected up front.”

She paused for a sip of tea before going on, “This particular delivery was going to Constantinople...”

Another interruption from Sonya, “It’s Istanbul, everyone knows that!”

“No,” I replied, “it didn’t become Istanbul until 1930, that’s one hundred and ten years from now.”

Sonya still refused to fully accept our situation; I’m not sure any of us truly did, but we were a lot further down that road than she was.

Michelle restarted, “This particular delivery of one stallion and three mares was going to Constantinople. We never made it there, we were taken by pirates before we could make it safely to Ibiza; head winds slowed us. We were boarded; some of the men including my father tried to fight and were killed. The rest of us were chained together and put in the hold. The young women were kept separately and nobody touched us, but horrible things happened to the other passengers.”