After the shootout I was trusted by Les with a permanent gun. In my mind that made me more free than a slave. No one even said Roscoe your not a slave anymore, but I was promoted into Les’ 2nd in command.

I felt sorry for this Buddy Excel, he got left out to dry by the Lucerno’s. Really he was just caught inside the Lucerno’s store. Les actually drove in Buddy’s car to Buddy’s house. I went with him to this fabulous house. I mean the midget lives in a great apartment, with lots of small furniture to fit him — but it’s not like Buddy’s mansion. Really it must be forty or fifty rooms that I had to search and drag out family members.

Les had no problem about putting them all in chains.  Buddy even showed us where e hid money in his bedroom — we even found more mony when we stripped his wives and daughters.  Some of his daughters looked like Buddy, and that wasn’t good.  Mostly it was an overweight family.  They cried quietly as I chained them up.  I didn’t have enough collars for the all and Buddy showed me where there were others and more chain.  In his house were many interesting things like clock collections and old books.  In the garage were three more cars.

Buddy’s slave women were not short and dumpy like his wives, and they weren’t wearing chains and rings on every finger like his wives and daughters.  I stripped all that stuff off and filled up a bucket.

It was about then that I began seeing the thin thread there was between being a slave or free.  The midget treated me all right most of the time but I had been all right because I acted slavish.  He never trusted me with a gun and neither had Les until everything was on the line.  The gun made me feel more like a man again.  I was afraid of what I would do if Les wanted it back.

That day we locked up everything and everybody at Buddy’s house and then Les and I took Buddy to his jewelery store, which also belonged to Les now.  At the store Buddy began acting more of a slave than you could imagine, bowing and scraping around Les.  For some reason he didn’t want to belong to the midget.  Maybe they were somehow enemies.

The Buddy jewelry store was not so finished looking as the Lucerno store.  The glass cases didn’t seem made for exactly that kind of merchandise.  There was no one to stop us as we went in and took over.  There were armed guards which I disarmed with Buddy telling them to surrender their guns.  Also  there were four ‘watch men’ as Buddy told us — working at their benches as if we weren’t there.  Buddy called them, “Neutered slaves”  and that was a real slave, because the six shop girls at the counter were knock out beautiful.

I guess the counter girls had been strictly for Buddy

I didn’t feel so  sympathetic for Buddy when I found out that he had cut the nuts off the watch repairers.  The slave girls behind the counters saw me leading Buddy around on a leash and assumed they belonged to me now.  Women may say nothing, but they give off non-verbal signals.  Buddy was not as old a guy as me, but he was short and dumpy.  He and Sam Lacerno had given up their freedom and gotten down on their knees without a fight, or even a bit of wrestling.

When I became a slave it was a real fight, and then in chains I had to know I would be killed, before I begged for someone to buy me in the slave  store.  Big difference in me, and the jewelery shop guys who bowed their heads, and maybe had a tear or two trickle down their faces.

I had to know death was certain, and coming quick before I decided being the midget’s slave was better.  If I wasn’t sold then there was a piece of wire that was wrapped around your neck and pulled tight.  I had seen other slaves get that treatment, and knew it was beg hard to be someones slave, or that was just certain.

At the jewelery store Les was mostly interested in the diamonds, gold and credit notes, and there was a lot of that.  I had to get my mind around that the little guy, Buddy, who was now leashed and a total slave had owned all the things we saw, and gave it up without a fight.

Buddy did really want us to go quickly to the Lucerno house to pick up the ones who caused the attack on Les’ slave business.  I guess misery wants others to suffer with him.  He didn’t want any of his friends to get away from the slavery that was just starting for him.  Capturing the Lucernos seemed to be the only thing on Buddy’s slavish mind.

At the Lucerno’s house the doors were open and it looked as if the place had been left in a hurry.

They all had gotten away with their money and merchandise it seemed, all but Sam and of course Monica.  We spent all that afternoon locking  up the place.  In Gainesville Florida  possession is title to property.  Les had acquired much property that day. 

Les and I ate lunch at a restaurant called the Pigly Palace.  We both had quick sandwiches, but it was my first food as a sitting in a chair, looking free man, since I met the midget in chains.  That to my calculation was maybe forty years ago.  It’s hard to count when you are being a slave.

The deal was that Les got all the property, and jewels and Samford Pembrooke (the midget) got Buddy and Sam.  We went next after a late lunch to see the midget who had a fit of glee when I handed Buddy’s leash to him.  I saw that gleeful jumping energy of extreme fun on the midget’s face when he had won a game, and his foe had really, really lost.  Buddy had sunk to the very bottom when I handed over that leash.

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Links to other stories can be found at the end of the story ‘Teeth’ at: http://unsightlyteeth.wordpress.com