From the time he reached puberty, Ezekiel Morgan had been the punching bag for Sydney Powell III. As a slave on the Powell Plantation in north Mississippi, he couldn’t muster much of a defense. The beatings didn’t stop until “Trey” was exhausted from raining blows on the undersized teenaged boy. Ezekiel’s salvation was occasionally provided by his sister, Rose. Although she was statuesque and old enough to be with men, she showed little interest in the opposite sex. But when she saw the Master looking for her little brother, she would sidle up to the man and lure him to a secluded spot. After the seduction, Ezekiel was safe for the rest of the day. Such was the pattern of the young man’s life until Captain Powell was commissioned into a Confederate infantry regiment and sallied forth to face the “Northern oppressors.”

With his tormentor gone, Ezekiel gained self-confidence and physically grew into a man’s body while the North and South engaged in their prolonged battle. However, Rose could hear him sobbing on the nights when he remembered his impotence in the face of Master Powell. After Gen. Grant captured Vicksburg and destroyed the Powell cotton crop on his way east, Zeke began working in the kitchen of the main house. On Sundays, Mrs. Powell liked to cook for her extended family. Zeke was allowed to attend the slaves’ church and “dinner on the grounds” with the other members before returning to clean up for the “Missus.” It was the first Sunday in October of 1863 he found her weeping in the dining room, holding a letter in her lap. “Mrs. Powell?” he asked, without asking.

“Captain Powell has been captured,” she said between sobs. “He’s in a Union prison called Camp Chase. They tell me the armies stopped doing prisoner swaps, so I don’t know when he’ll be coming home…if ever.”

The Ohio prison wasn’t the worst, but it was typical in that it was overcrowded with 8,000 men when it was designed for about half that number. Although the prisoners were not starved intentionally, food supplies were sparse and unpredictable since the top priority was feeding the fighting troops. The congested camps were also susceptible to outbreaks of smallpox and other deadly diseases. By the war’s end, 2,200 Confederates would be buried in the Camp Chase Cemetery.

When an anxious Ezekiel told Rose about the Captain’s plight, she asked him, “Zeke, what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking I need to settle accounts with him before he’s gone—for you and me. You tried, but you couldn’t hide all those bruises he gave you when you were protecting me. I’m going to Ohio.”

It took a month, but Zeke reached the camp just before winter brought its own brand of misery to the prisoners. On his arrival, Zeke was welcomed as a worker in the camp kitchen. When Captain Powell shuffled through the chow line the next day, Zeke saw a man who had one foot in the grave. The sallow complexion could have been from any number of illnesses or dietary deficiencies. Looking into his empty eyes did not produce the hate Zeke had expected—had in fact wanted. Someone else had beaten him to beating down the man he had hated for years. What now? There was still a score to be settled, but would it give him any satisfaction?

Zeke devoted a week to surveying the camp routine. After a breakfast of biscuits and thin gravy, the men were dispatched to work on a number of projects: barracks cleaning, sewage removal, or construction. The afternoon was devoted to recreation or time alone to write letters or read the few dog-eared books circulating among the prisoners. A new game called baseball was introduced to the southerners; unfortunately, after a month on the camp’s “starvation diet,” most were incapable of the physical exertion required. The men retired to their barracks after supper. Their only entertainment consisted of card games or music provided by harmonicas that had survived the conflict. Most of them had escaped to the arms of slumber within a few hours after sunset.

Camp Chase was originally designated to house Confederate officers but had been forced to accept enlisted soldiers as well as civilians from West Virginia and Kentucky who had supported the South. Most of the officers had been former slaveholders, and Zeke noticed they still called him “Boy” with the familiar accentuation.

Zeke realized that the majority did it without malice; they just didn’t know any better. That prejudice had been bred through two hundred years of slave ownership. Never mind that President Lincoln had freed them all in January of that year. The more religious liked to quote from their Bibles, citing Paul’s letter to the Colossians when he said, “Servants, obey in all things your masters….” They seemed to have stopped reading there and missed the admonition a few verses later, “Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal.”

A rainstorm one night provided the cover Zeke needed to enter Powell’s room undetected. The stench of sweat and soiled sheets assaulted his senses as he silently eased the door shut. He held a large kitchen knife next to the Captain’s throat and thought about his life of mistreatment. Somehow, it didn’t feel right; he might actually be doing the man a favor by saving him this term of misery. He wanted to take something from Powell, and his former master had nothing at that moment.

A large clap of thunder suddenly sent the prisoner into convulsions—probably remembering a prolonged artillery shelling during the war. As he curled into a ball and covered his head, Zeke saw for the first time the man’s right hand was missing! Amputations were a common operation by surgeons during the Civil War, and the hand that had formed the fist of torment was buried in a mass grave of body parts on a battlefield of defeat. Zeke wasn’t ready to forgive the man, but a part of him felt sorrow. He slipped the knife inside his boot and stepped quietly into the soaking rain.

The missing hand had now deprived Zeke of his favorite daydream. In it, he was strong enough to withstand the blows of Captain Powell, then begin his own barrage that would bring the bully to his knees. But how threatening was a man with just one fist? Confused about a course of action, Zeke embarked on a campaign to keep Powell alive until he could decide how to avenge his family’s honor.

From that day forward, the Captain’s tray received the largest portions the serving spoon could hold. If there were any morsels of meat in a watery stew, Zeke found one for the shrinking man. The irony was not lost that Southern slaves—although they had been given the worst cuts of meat and near-rotten produce—had eaten better than these imprisoned landowners.

When the war was over and the surviving prisoners were released, Zeke watched his nemesis walk out the gate and wondered if Powell would make it home. He felt barely a trace of animosity toward the shriveled skeleton he had nursed for two years. The man’s flesh hung on him like a cheap hand-me-down suit.

Zeke was offered a job on the crew dismantling the camp buildings, using the materials to build a veterans’ home in Dayton that opened in 1867. During that time, he would discover “colored people” were not treated much better there than in the south. Folks were just more discreet with their prejudice. So, when the project was completed, he journeyed south, primarily to see his sister.

There is no longer a Powell Plantation. The land is populated with sharecroppers, some black, some white. Zeke begins visiting the unpainted, rickety shacks, asking his sister’s whereabouts. He’s getting mostly shoulder shrugs until his favorite aunt reluctantly tells him, “Rose works in a…a brothel in Memphis for Captain Powell.” The news is a gut punch to Zeke who stumbles from the rundown house.

As he starts the walk to Memphis, the suppressed hate, and shame, returns with a vengeance. Reason tells him the first priority is to rescue Rose before seeking his own retribution. And he treats himself to the old familiar daydream where he thrashes Powell—one fist or not.

It’s not hard to find Powell’s business. His customers have probably never heard the word brothel; most are working men along the riverfront. To scout out the situation, Zeke takes a job at a nearby warehouse. He overhears conversations about a prostitute called the “Black Pearl.” From the description, it is obviously Rose. One man says, “The owner told me you can rough her up if you want because he broke her in that way. Just don’t mark her face—bad for business.” Zeke’s sadly remembers images of the dark bruising on Rose’s body when she sacrificed herself for his safety.

Zeke decides to rescue his sister on a Monday night, the slowest time in the brothel trade after everybody has spent their pay over the weekend. From outside, he signals Rose with a bird call they practiced in childhood. A lantern appears in a second-floor window, and Rose holds a finger to her lips as she raises the sash.

Climbing up into the room, he notices another woman in the rumpled bed. After a long silent embrace with Rose, he whispers, “I’m taking you out. Pack a bag.”

“I’ve tried to leave before, Zeke,” she protests. “Powell just accuses me of stealing something, and the police hunt me down. He bails me out into his custody, and I’m in worse shape than before.”

“Does he still…?”

“No,” she says, “he hasn’t been able to do that with a woman since he came home from the war.” There’s a pause before she adds, “If we go, we need to take Gladys, too.”

Zeke nods agreement, then suggests, “They’ll be looking for a man and two women. Let’s change that. Gladys, can you find some clothes and dress like a man?”

Without hesitation, the sleepy-eyed woman replies, “Sure. I’ve been wanting to do that my whole life!”

“Don’t worry about Powell finding you this time,” Zeke says to his sister. “We’re not staying around here. We’ll take a ferry across to Arkansas. I’ve got two horses waiting over there. You two will need to ride double till we can buy a third. We’re going to Indian Territory. There’s whole towns of nothing but black people starting up out there. They call it the Promised Land.

“Wait for me outside.”

Powell’s living quarters don’t have the same stench Zeke remembered from prison, but the man obviously still suffers from night sweats and fear. His eyes open slowly as he becomes aware of someone standing by the bed. “Powell, it’s Zeke Morgan. I kept you alive in Camp Chase for this moment. You and I have a fight to finish.” Zeke sees the look of recognition on Powell’s face change to humiliation and anger as the man jumps up to administer another beating to his former slave. His wild swing is dodged, and Zeke rocks him back on his heels with two stiff jabs. While Powell is momentarily dazed, Zeke surrenders to the hate he had borne for so many years—he’s living the daydream. Hooves from a runaway team of horses could not have inflicted more damage as Zeke feels ribs cracking from the blows he delivers with unbridled fury.

Powell is barely conscious, and Zeke stands over him with the same blade from Camp Chase. Tears stream down his cheeks as he squeezes the handle. He turns abruptly as the door opens, but it’s only Gladys. “I can’t forgive him,” Zeke tells her, “But I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Give me the knife,” Gladys says. “Go wait with Rose. You’ll never know all the ways he hurt her.”

– Dick Daniels