............. "Take good care of Rainbow and the niggers. Especially that young buck Kumi. They will produce massive wealth for you as -" he coughed uncontrollably for several seconds - "they have for me." As he lay on his deathbed, Saul Bartholomew Thomas, southern aristocrat and wealthy plantation owner, spoke his last words of fatherly advice to his son and heir, Jonathan. The 'French pox' - the inevitable legacy of his sexual carousing in the slave quarters - had quickly gotten the better of him and he was fading fast.
............. How could such a great and powerful man end up in such a state? Jonathan thought to himself. He and his father had never been close. They had often disagreed, never really trusted one another, and had sometimes gone for several months without speaking. Still, an overwhelming sense of remorse overtook the young man. The pathetic summation of his father's life seemed unjustified and unfair. No one else in South Carolina has reached the heights of power and glory as my father. And Rainbow plantation is the envy of the South!
............. The thought of it all was too distressing for Jonathan. He reached for his violin. "I'll play the violin for you, father. Perhaps it will comfort you."
............. "Yes. Please do. It's been a blessing from heaven to have a prodigious son."
............. "You're so kind, but I hardly think myself prodigious. My skill is not entirely innate. I've spent many years in practice, remember?"
............. "Yes, I remember. I still believe you have a bit of natural aptitude. Please begin, son. I would love to hear you one last time."
............. Certainly of extraordinary talent, Jonathan glided his bow a cross the strings without ever having to look at sheet music. He played Bach and Beethoven, making it seem as easy as walking or talking, eating or sleeping. He even kept a few original compositions of his own creation in his head. Everyone who heard him play marveled at his ability and was shocked to discover he did not play professionally in the New York Symphony or in Europe. In spite of his "gift," he did not really care about music. It was merely a relaxation tool and something to do. He had other interests. He was educated in constitutional law, versed in Elizabethan and Periclean history and he spoke fluent French.
............. Jonathan played for his father. While he did so, he thought about his home, Rainbow. Ah, Rainbow. The family pride for two generations was certainly spectacular. Walking along the one-mile-long carriageway lined with thirty oak trees, fifteen on each side, there was not a blade of grass out of place. He was always elated when the pure white, two-story mansion appeared, with its majestic Ionic columns surrounding the entire house and its sparkling windows. At the center of the circular driveway, at the main entrance, rose bushes surrounded a small, man-made pool. A miniature replica of Michelangelo's famous statue of David, stood in the center of the pool. When the season ended, the rose petals fell into the pool and floated on the surface like a quilt across the water. Thomas senior had named his plantation "Rosewater" for the first year he and his family had occupied it. But one day, when he had been walking the grounds after a rainstorm, he noticed a huge rainbow arcing over his mansion. It had so moved him that he decided to change the plantation's name to "Rainbow."
............. Upon entering the twenty-nine-room house, which guests sometimes referred to as "the little Parthenon," the visitors saw nothing but the most exquisite early Victorian furnishings. Beautiful frescoes lined the walls of the hallways. They depicted idealized scenes of a tranquil, normal family life for Saul Thomas from boyhood through the creation of his own family and Rainbow Plantation. A fifteen-foot crystal chandelier, imported from Paris, hung at the center of a grand, spiral staircase. Rainbow sat on a four-hundred-acre estate surrounded by lush greenery and immaculate gardens as far as the eye could see.
............. Hidden behind a row of trees, just off the manor house, sat three rows of twenty-four small, dilapidated, windowless shacks. Ten to twelve slaves were crowded into each shack. Saul Thomas and his overseers had often called this area "nigger town" or "niggers row." Their proximity to the manor house helped "Massa Thomas" - as the slaves called him - keep an eye on his chattel. The trees that concealed "nigger town" helped the Thomas family and any guests forget the squalor of the South's "peculiar institution."

............. Rainbow, our beloved Rainbow, the young man thought as he played. He had a romantic gleam in his eye and a slight peevishness in his heart. Suddenly the old man gasped frantically for air, waking Jonathan from his daydream. Panic-stricken, he stopped playing. "Father! Father!" he screamed. "What's the matter, father?" He turned to an elderly slave woman cowering in a corner. "Go get help, Nay-Nay! Quickly! Don't dawdle!"
............. "Yes, Massa," Nay-Nay nervously muttered, and stumbled out of the bedroom.
............. Not knowing what else to do, the young man knelt at his father's deathbed to pray. Within seconds, the coughing and gasping stopped. Without looking up, Jonathan knew the end had come. His father was dead at sixty-seven. Jonathan stood up and stared at the corpse. The old man's eyes were open with fixed pupils. With an eerie feeling, Jonathan reached out and pulled his father's eyelids shut. Then he pulled the covers over Saul's face. His lifelong tension-filled relationship with his father prevented Jonathan from crying, but he did feel a hint of genuine sorrow. Mostly, he thought about what his father's death would mean for his own life.
............. A few minutes later, Nay-Nay came rushing back into the bedroom with Isabelle Thomas, his mother. The widow and the slave woman stood together in the doorway speechless, realizing they were too late. Young Jonathan was standing over the covered body playing his violin.

............. Saul Thomas's funeral was held shortly thereafter. People from all over the South came to pay their respects. High profile business leaders and their wives, along with members of the national and state legislatures attended. President Zachary Taylor sent a message of condolence. Isabelle gave a command performance as the grieving widow, but secretly, she wanted to spit upon her husband's lifeless body in plain view of the other mourners. The emotional wounds he had inflicted upon her were that deep, and the scars would never heal.
............. "My dear friend and former colleague, Saul Thomas, was a brave, virtuous, moral and god-fearing soul," said the handsome Senator Johnson in his eloquent eulogy. "This earth has lost a benign spirit, but heaven has acquired an angel!"
............. Most of his listeners shared his views. But many other people shared Isabelle's.

............. "I shall not fail to carry on the proud and honorable legacy of my father." Jonathan was in Columbia to see Mr. Anthony Taylor, his late father's estate
............. "Your will to do so is the least of my worries, young man. But you haven't been in residence at Rainbow for quite some time. Are you sure you're -"
............. "You have my word," Jonathan said, annoyed. "I'm well aware of your long history with my father and Rainbow Plantation. I will respect that and not disappoint you."
............. In his early teens, Jonathan had been sent up North to Phillips Exeter Academy preparatory school in New Hampshire, and then on to Yale University in Connecticut. He had arrived back home permanently just weeks before his father's death. After so many years away, he was hardly recognizable to anyone who had known him as a boy.
............. Much like the perfect male beauty personified in the David statue adorning the entrance to Rainbow Plantation, Jonathan was now a living example of Michelangelo's ideal of male physical perfection. He was five-foot, ten-inches tall. He had thick dark hair, hazel eyes, a generous mustache, a clear olive complexion and a smooth muscle-toned physique. His pleasant baritone speaking voice, his good manners, and his raceful masculinity complemented his physical appeal. In public, the female sex constantly fawned over him. "Well, I do declare, Mr. Thomas. You are an irresistible target for the charms and affections of the gentler sex," they had often said.
............. Even some Rainbow slaves could not help but notice. "Massa Thomas, you show done come up to bees a mighty handsome man, Sir! The missus ought be real proud," Nay-Nay had said.
............. Jonathan was uncomfortable with so much attention. He was quiet and rather shy, some said like his father. He did not have a natural urge to flirt back or to even acknowledge a compliment from a belle or a slave. He just smiled, tipped his hat to the belles, and moved on about his business.

............. "I shall be in touch with you, Mr. Taylor, in reference to matters regarding my father's estate," Jonathan said as he entered his coach for the long ride back to Rainbow.
............. The ride from Columbia to Rainbow took him through the quiet and serene South Carolina countryside, but Jonathan's inner world was not so peaceful. His exposure to the ideas of Northern abolitionism and liberal politics had greatly affected his already shaky outlook on slavery, the South's "peculiar institution." Could one man's bread and butter be born of another man's blood and sweat and still be totally ethical? He often thought to himself.
............. He had attended the popular Negro minstrel shows in the North in which white men dressed in torn and tattered clothes, blackened their faces with burnt cork and portrayed the slaves as happy, singing and dancing "sambos" on stage. These images were permanently etched in his mind. But so were the messages of emancipation and freedom he had read in the abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator.
............. Sometimes some of his abolitionist classmates had talked him into attending anti-slavery meetings. The heated debating and fiery oratory he had heard made a lasting impression on him: "Whites must compete with slave labor under these conditions all over the country. It drives our wages down and makes it harder for us to find work."
............. "Never mind all of 'at, Sir," had said a man with a cockney accent. "We don't 'ave no slavery back in me merry ol' Englan'! An 'onest day's pay for an 'onest day's work is what we 'ave, Mates! Black, white, or what 'ave you!"
............. Jonathan had also met plenty of Northern whites who were just as pro-slavery as any Southern planter. In the end, he realized that attitudes in the North about slavery, emancipation, and Negroes were mixed. He suspected that the same was true in the South and in England. However, the Southern establishment had a greater stranglehold on public opinion than did the North. So any opposition to slavery was effectively silenced, creating an atmosphere of fear, taboo and even shame around the idea of emancipation.
............. Another disturbing topic for Jonathan was his father. I wish I knew more about him, he had thought. Maybe that would help me to understand myself better.
............. "We's here, Massa Thomas, Sir," Jonathan's frail and aging slave-coachman, Goobie, said as he opened the door for his new owner. Jonathan sat staring blankly ahead. It was as if his soul had left his body and only a hollow shell remained.
............. Old Goobie gently shook Jonathan's shoulder. "Massa Thomas, Sir. We's here, Sir," he whispered.
............. Jonathan snapped out of his trance. "Oh, don't mind me, Goobie. My mind was elsewhere. Put the carriage away and take the horses to the stables. I'm going to walk the grounds."
............. "Yes Sir," old Goobie replied dutifully. The blazing hot South Carolina sun was still beating down and the plantation's daily operations were in high gear. The atmosphere resembled that of a small town. Slaves scurried about doing various chores. Very young black children laughed and giggled, jumped and played, oblivious to the impending plight of their life-long servitude. Whip-toting, tobacco-chewing Appalachian overseers with foul tongues patrolled the grounds.
............. Sometimes, the slaves sang as they worked. Their songs had a spiritual undertone and almost always had hidden messages:

............. Tobacco and cotton had always been Rainbow's chief crops. Slaves toiled nonstop from dawn till dusk in the fields, rain or shine, producing all the wealth the Thomas family enjoyed. The overseers were always ready and willing to flog any slave perceived as not working to standard. Saul Thomas had become a well-known and respected South Carolinian and had won several terms in the state's legislature. But Thomas had been a brutal master. When home from the capital at Columbia, he had liked to go secretly to "Nigger town" in the middle of the night to watch his slaves fornicate in front of him while he masturbated and ejaculated onto their sweaty bodies. He had especially liked to watch Jesse and Nia, a young married slave couple he owned. Their bodies were still firm and productive and Jesse could perform with several different "wenches" in one night.
............. "That seed ox will breed herds of slaves for my plantation," Saul had occasionally bragged - while puffing on a cigar - to the overseers and his colleagues at the legislature. "That nigger boy of mine sure likes his snatch."
............. Jesse's forced sexual activities at night had always left him exhausted in the fields during the day, so he had gotten more than his share of the lash from the overseers. Most Rainbow slaves welcomed the death of "ol' Massa Thomas" as a merciful providence from "da Lord."

............. "Hello, Massa Thomas, Sir."
............. "Good day, Sir," said some slaves as Jonathan - their new owner - strolled past them as they worked in the sweltering heat.
............. As Jonathan watched the slaves work, he remembered that, as a boy, he had not thought much of or about the Negroes. He certainly had not thought of them as "people."
............. Most of the adults around him had not thought of slaves as people either. "Cattle, chickens, hogs, niggers, horses, mules, what's the difference," was what he constantly had heard from his father and the overseers. However, as a child, he had played with the pickaninnies, the black children, frequently. Slave children at Rainbow did not receive shoes or clothing until the age of eight or ten, when they were ready to begin working. They ran and played around the plantation completely naked. They were dirty and unkempt from sleeping on the dirt floors of their shacks, and their parents, having to toil relentlessly, had little or no time for them. They were fed food scraps, mixed with corn meal paste, out of pig troughs. Their young souls, along with those of the white children, were unaware of the harsh world around them. They still laughed and played innocently, reveling in their curiosities, just as they had done during Jonathan's boyhood.

............. "Bet you can't catch me, Boy," little Jonathan had said.
............. "I bet I cain," little Kumi had said.
............. Those were the games they had played as they giggled and ran after each other on the plantation grounds and in the woods.
............. Kumi had been a slave boy who was the same age as Jonathan. His actual date of birth, as with most slave children, had been recorded in the plantation's livestock journals. When Nia, his mother, had gone into labor with him, she was toiling in the cotton field. The overseers had forced her, and all pregnant slave women, to squat and give birth right then and there, in plain view of everyone else, and in the boiling heat. The minute her maternal labor was over, her manual labor had resumed without a moment's rest and without a second thought.
............. Kumi and little Jonathan had been very fond of each other and had played together the most. Little Jonathan had thrown rocks or sticks and commanded Kumi to "fetch" them. Or, he had told Kumi to get on his hands and knees and then rode his back like a horse.
............. In between their child's play, they sometimes had sat under a tree in the woods while little Jonathan read biblical passages to Kumi
............. He had known that South Carolina law forbade teaching blacks how to read. Lawmakers feared that literate slaves would be unmanageable and would soon begin to demand their emancipation. Little Jonathan had not equated reading to Kumi as the same thing as teaching slaves to read, however.

............. "Mr. Thomas! Mr. Thomas!" A young overseer on horseback galloped toward Jonathan as he stood remembering the past.
............. Jonathan looked about to see who was calling him. The man heading towards him was a stranger. Nonetheless, he addressed the man politely. "Good day, Sir," he said, tipping his hat.
............. "Pleasure meetin' you, Mr. Thomas! Your father hired me few
............. "That's very kind of you to say, Mr. - uh?"
............. "My name's Sanders, Sir. Robert Sanders, Sir. I make sure these damn niggers do their work! If they don't, you best believe I got somethin' for 'em," he said in his Appalachian accent, as he cracked his whip on the dirt. He spat a slimy piece of chewing tobacco onto the ground, barely missing his employer's boots.
............. Jonathan, taken aback by Sanders' coarse language and bad manners, quickly changed the subject. "I've been informed that production and profits are high this year. Who are our most efficient chattel, Mr. Sanders?"
............. "Efficient, chattel, Sir?" Sanders said.
............. "Yes."
............. "Oh! You mean which niggers work the hardest!"
............. "If you must put it that way," Jonathan snapped.
............. "Well, that one over there," Sanders said, pointing his finger. "He don't never give me no trouble. And that one over there, with the big bosoms, her name is Hester. And well, Sir, I'll just say that black wench is real satisfyin', Sir!" He nudged Jonathan in the ribs with his elbow and winked. He leered, "You get my meanin'? Sir."
............. Jonathan's irritation with Sanders was mounting by the second. He struggled to control his temper. "I was speaking in terms of productivity, Mr. Sanders," he said sternly.
............. "Oh, well, let's see." Sanders paused to think a minute. "There's this young buck nigger named Kumi. He can plow 'bout ten acres in one day all by his-self. And he can haul 'bout anything anywhere!"
............. Jonathan had not thought much about Kumi over the years, but hearing his name brought back instant recollections.
............. Sanders looked about the area trying to locate Kumi. "He should be 'round here somewheres. Oh! There he is, Sir! There's the buck nigger over there! See him?" Sanders was pointing again, off in the distance. "The tall one?"
............. Kumi, like Jonathan, was now grown into a man. Unlike Jonathan, Kumi had spent his teen years, and early twenties, in harsh, unrelenting, and backbreaking toil. He had witnessed many brutal and bloody whippings of other slaves. He had seen his mother, Nia, sold away, and he had found his father, Jesse, dead in their shack.
............. The pressures of Jesse's brutish life had finally broken his body and sprit. He could no longer endure the strenuous and endless physical labor, the sexual abuse, the beatings, and the callousness toward his wife, his family, his people, and his basic humanity. "If day is a Lord, he din't put me here fo' dis," he often had confided to other slaves.
............. When Nia was sold away she was nine months pregnant with her eighteenth child. The child may or may not have been Jesse's, since she had been routinely raped by "ol Massa Thomas" and some of his overseers. Her merciless sale was the last straw for Jesse. That night, Kumi had found his father dead and bloodied. He had slit his own wrists.
............. By the time Jonathan had returned to Rainbow, Kumi was hardened but unbroken. He had learned to trust no one. He knew how and when to speak. He knew to whom and to whom not to speak. Though he understood his father's agony, he was determined not to suffer the same fate no matter how difficult his life became. Unlike his father, he knew instinctively how to survive as a slave, but survival was not nearly enough for him. Freedom was his dream and he knew in his heart he would attain it one day.
............. Jonathan had not anticipated such a physical transformation of his former childhood playmate. The sight of him was breathtaking. At six-feet-three-inches tall, Kumi had become an Adonis. His head was shaved completely bald. He wore only a pair of ragged, coarse burlap trousers. His dark brown muscular body, covered with sweat, gleamed in the sunlight. Thick eyebrows set off his deep-set, almond-shaped, ebony eyes. He had an oval-shaped hairless face, high cheekbones, and full luscious lips. His upper body muscles - biceps, triceps, chest, back, and shoulders - were chiseled to perfection, massive and rock-solid. He had firm washboard-abs, and his waist was tight and trim.
............. "Yeah, he's a mighty fine buck nigger," Sanders broke into Jonathan's thoughts. "Mighty strong too, Sir. Ain't never caused no ruckus neither. Don't 'spect he ever will, Sir! Everybody likes him -"
............. Sanders' babble fell on deaf ears. Jonathan was captivated by the sight of his scrawny boyhood playmate turned Greek god.
............. "Sir? Sir? Somethin' the matter, Sir?" Sanders said, baffled by Jonathan's statue-like stiffness
............. Utterly unable to speak or move, Jonathan was transfixed on Kumi, beautiful Kumi - the man.