Taterskin & The Eco Defenders: Book 2, Chapter 16
Book 2 ("Tell It to Future Generations"), Chapter 16 of 56
CHAPTER 16
We were ready for him, though. We fully expected the plantation owner to have a gun, and that he would resort to it at the first sign of trouble. As he emerged from his house, Rory and Jubatus were standing on the porch to his left (our right), and Stripes to his right (with Marmalade behind him, enjoying the show).
The owner (Bobby Lee McLeod by name) didn’t see them at first. But he heard them almost immediately. The roars of the two big Cats, combined with the chirrup of the Cheetah and Marmalade’s miaow, probably set a new world record for combined volume — indubitably a South Carolina record at the time, anyway (as this was well before Hootie & the Blowfish “hit the scene”).
Bobby Lee first stared to the right, and practically jumped out of his stockings when he saw the crouched Bengal Tiger baring his teeth and eyeing him with raw vitriol. McLeod began to tremble violently, and then, realizing there had been two roars, looked to his left and saw Rory and Jubatus, gazing stonily back at him with most menacing glares and disconcerting tail swishings.
The Cats strode slowly toward Bobby Lee. He dropped his gun and, as it rattled on the porch, sailed off it with surprising alacrity for a man of his age, eschewing the steps altogether.
The startled geezer was shivering and shaking when he stumbled his way over to his friends. He immediately noticed that they weren’t in an enviable situation, either.
“Where are my dogs?!?” Bobby Lee wailed. “Baggins! Tracker! Where are you, boys?”
The planter was afraid the big Cats had eaten his Dogs, or at least maimed them. He was hoping they were around somewhere and that they would respond to his call. Maybe, just maybe, they could scare the Cats away. He considered them to be fearless.
“Your Dogs are safe,” Albert assured him. “We have them in protective custody. Once things are arranged here as they should be, they will be allowed to return to you.”
“How did ya catch ‘em? They’re the greatest Watchdogs this hyar county has ever seen!” Bobby Lee wondered.
“Two Elephants grabbed them,” Albert answered. “That’s all I can tell you for now. They’re fine. They’re being looked after. But they will not be able to help you.”
Being surrounded by several large animals, Jefferson and Bobby Lee and their compatriots didn’t stand a chance. Resistance was not only futile but would have been foolhardy in the extreme. All they could do was say, “Yes, sir” with their hats in their hands to each command Albert gave them.
By noon, the former slaves had been told they were free, and that they could leave whenever they wanted, if they so desired. However, if they wished to remain, their new residence was to be the main house. Conversely, the former residents of the house had been given the ultimatum of either relocating into what had been the slave quarters or leaving the property altogether — with the shirts on their back, what they could carry in the way of clothing and food, and nothing else.
“How can you do this? This is my house! This is my property!” McLeod complained to Albert.
“Not anymore it isn’t. You forfeited it when you stole these people’s freedom,” Albert said, gesturing at the former slaves. “The house and property now belong to them. They paid for it through the work they have put in over the years. I prefer that you leave, but you will be permitted to remain here — in the quarters you supplied the new owners — if you agree to work for your bread in the sweat of your face, as they had done for much too long.”
There was a lot of grumbling, but Albert was adamant that the property was to change hands in perpetuity. There would be no right of appeal. Things had changed, and they had better get used to it; that was all there was to it.
Jefferson and those who had come with him turned to go. There was nothing more that they could do to help Bobby Lee McLeod, but they were highly upset (to put it mildly) over how things had turned out.
“We’ll get you for this, you, you ... who do y’all think you are, anyway?”
“Eco Defenders,” Alexis said.
Jefferson glared first at the Bird, then at Albert, before turning to his old friend and comrade. “Don’t worry, Bobby Lee — we’ll be back, with reinforcements,” he said. “You’ll have your plantation back in no time. And you,” he pointed at the former slaves, “Will get what’s coming to you, you uppity” —
A scorpion stung Jefferson before he could get the next word out, which caused him to swallow his tongue (so to speak).
Those threats turned out to be mere bluster, anyway. For every plantation in the South, there were thousands upon thousands of animals who were willing to help convert ownership to the former slaves and give the owners the boot, or at best the opportunity to work the land themselves for a while and see how they liked it.
All throughout the southern States, starting with South Carolina and spreading through Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and all the other places where slavery was imposed, an upheaval and reversal of that peculiar institution was implemented.
It was a win-win for almost everyone. The common people of the South didn’t have much to fight for in the Civil War, anyway — they weren’t the ones making money off enslaving their fellow men; rather, it was the plantation owners, who had wanted their fellow landsmen to fight for them to uphold the ‘Southern way of life’ and so that their accustomed standard of living would be perpetuated. In other words, their way of life — that of the slaveholders — was to be preserved.
The end result of this (the prevention of the Civil War) was the preservation of hundreds of thousands of human lives and millions of animal lives.
The trip to 1861 had been a resounding success.
As we turned to go, the former slaves thanked us, and the former owners expressed their disdain for us — but only with their eyes and physical attitude, or posture. They dared not say anything, much less attempt to oppose us physically.
As we were leaving, a young man approached us. “Thank you for what you’ve done. My name is Ravelle. I have been a slave all my life, and this place is all I know. I lost all my family here: my parents, and all my siblings. I want to get away and start a new life. Will you allow me to come with you? I would like to be a part of what you all are doing.”
We agreed to take Ravelle aboard. Alexis asked him what his last name was.
“They gave all of us the same surname, after our former owners. So I was known as Ravelle McLeod, or McLeod’s Ravelle. I no longer want to be known by that name, though. I am nobody’s Ravelle but my own, and God’s.”
“Will you replace McLeod with something else?” I asked.
“Yes, X”
“X?”
“That’s right; I don’t know what my family’s last name was in Africa, so I will use ‘X’ as a placeholder: I have a rightful last name, sure as you’re born — or, sure as I was born, I should say — but I don’t know what it is.”
Albert extended his hand to him. “Ravelle X, welcome to the Eco Defenders. You can ride with me, along with Alexis the Parrot, Taterskin here and his family, and a few others, while the rest fly in the second aircraft, which Ooga the Gorilla flies. Our next stop is Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890.”
Ravelle knew there was something special, or strange, about us, but this was almost too much for him.
“An aircraft? Do you mean like a flying buckboard, or wagon? You can travel forward in time? A flying Gorilla?”
We explained it all to him, in a nutshell at least, as we walked the couple of miles together back to the outskirts of Charleston where we had stashed the Zephyr and the Androcles.
Ravelle was given Alexis’ co-pilot seat, and Alexis moved between Albert and Ravelle, on the console.
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