“Massa Sherman, they have took her to the block, I thought you should know Massa, Sir.”
Sherman closed his eyes and waved her away. She had never seen this room nor this contraption … bastinado he called it … put to real use. “I’m … She was still trying to deny the inevitable, but already her breathing was coming in short, pained gasps as she tried to anticipate when the next blow was going to fall. This brute was what her mama would have called ‘white trash’. The burley soldier now standing by the space that had been exposed when the crowd of people parted under instruction from lieutenant Sampson. Who is WQ?” His words were formed into a noxious question before he spat the words out. Acting like the elder characters from the recently published novel about Tom Brown, he and his friends would frequent the backwater places of ill-repute, and pay handsomely for the female trash that plied their trade there to be tied and beaten.
