Shades of Blac & White

My mind was still spinning like a top with that evening's incredible events when my head hit the pillow, but I slept like the dead. I found Wilson in the kitchen in the morning. He shot me a hard look and said, "I hear you met up with Harriet last night?"

I nodded my head, "You are right, she is amazing."

"Any other comments...questions?"

I got the feeling that my response could make or break my entire career at the bank. Why should I care what he gets up to with his girls? Gina is twenty, I have learned, and Harriet is eighteen months older. They are both adults, able to make up their own minds whether to go or stay, and they have obviously chosen to stay. Thus far, I had seen no evidence to indicate that Wilson unduly influences their lives.

I shook my head, "None, Sir, none at all."

"Good!"

Wilson looked neither pleased nor relieved. In fact he showed no emotion whatsoever. He was a man completely in control of his life. A man who didn't really give a fuck what anyone else in the world might think about the relationship between his daughters and himself.

Gina and Harriet came into the room in a storm of feminine chatter and saved their father and I from further exchanges. They obviously had a day at the beach planned, wearing bikinis underneath brightly coloured, loose tank tops and almost see-through wrap-around sarongs. They looked simply breathtaking. And seeing them together for the first time, I couldn't help wondering how one sister came to look so different to the other one.

Wilson and I got a good morning kiss on the cheek from each of them, then mayhem broke loose as the four of us combined to prepare breakfast. No matter what happens later in my life, I shall never forget that morning. The sunlight poured through the windows painting those two lovely young women with rays of gold. There were laughter and gentle nudges to move to one side from smooth-skinned bare shoulders. Harriet's soft breast pressed briefly against my arm causing a sudden stirring in my loins. Gina wormed between the bench and me and then pushed me out of the way with her ass. I tickled her waist in retaliation and with a shriek, she nearly dropped the jug she was filling with milk. Breakfast smells of toast and coffee and eggs filled the room, as did the warm feeling of wellbeing and companionship. It was absolute magic, especially for me.

Harriet proved she was her father's daughter immediately after the meal by leaning back in her chair and letting out a huge burp. "Daddy, Gina and I aren't going to let you take Jon off to golf today," she announced, "we're going to show him that there's more to the Hamptons than that stuffy club."

Wilson feigned a protestation, but it was clear that he knew he would lose. More proof to me that Gina and Harriet were not totally in his thrall.

"But," said Gina, eyeing me up and down, "you're not coming with us dressed like that, Jon. Haven't you got something more casual?"

I thought I looked pretty good in my newly purchased Arnold Palmer golf shirt and pants, but they were evidently not 'cool' enough for these two.

"We know a good store in Bridgehampton. Hope you've got your credit card with you?"

An hour later I was 'more suitably' clad in a Nautica T-shirt and Rip Curl surfing shorts, with Arnold Palmer securely stowed in a box under the back seat of the beach buggy. The storeowner wasn't too rapt that Gina and Harriet joined me in the booth while I was trying things on, but that was too bad as far as they were concerned. And the booth was kind of small, which made changing into and out of shorts a very interesting exercise. Especially when certain people became inquisitive about the growing bulge inside my Calvin Klein briefs.

For a while the Gina and Harriet drove around and showed me the Suffolk County sights and then we decided to take a stroll along the wide, white, sand on one of the ocean beaches. As events transpired, it was a bad mistake, but we were not to know that at the time.

The summer season was still a long way off. Apart someone walking a dog about a mile away, we were the only people on the beach; one black guy hand in hand with two young white women in warm early spring sunshine under a boundless blue sky. If it was possible to ignore the pretentious rich-bitch houses that peeked from behind the dunes, you could imagine you were the first people ever to walk this beach. Both girls agreed that spring and the fall are the best times, and they hate the summer crowds. "Even though some of the parties are amazing," Gina observed.

"Jon, you're very different from all the black guys we have ever met before, especially the ones at Julliard." That was Harriet.

"But some of them are reeeally cute!" Gina grinned.

"You mean because I don't talk like a 'bruthuh' and act like I come from 'da hood'?" I answered. "I can do that stuff if I want to, but I guess in most ways I'm simply a white guy living inside a black skin."

"How come...just because you work at the bank?" Gina asked.

"Nah... Long, long story..."

"Do tell..."

"Well, first of all my full name is Jonathan Matthew Senzangakona Buxton...quite a mouthful isn't it...ethnically I am a full-blooded Zulu from South Africa..."

"Wow! But, you talk like an American..." Harriet again.

"That's because I grew up here. When I was a small child, I was called Senzangakona. He was a tribal chief in the old days, the father of Shaka, who created the Zulu nation and conquered half of Southern Africa. My mother and I lived in KwaZulu, the so-called Homeland under the white apartheid government that ruled South Africa at the time.

"Stephen and Cheryl Buxton, my 'parents', were English people, missionaries working in KwaZulu for an American Baptist Church group out of Oklahoma. How that came about is an even longer story and I won't go into it now. The names Jonathan and Matthew came from their fathers' names. Anywise, the Buxtons upset the South African authorities rather badly with their support for the overthrow of apartheid and were ordered to leave the country. At about the same time the, mainly Bantu, African National Congress and the Zulu were in a political dogfight over who should rule the country when the white government fell, as it eventually had to. And, as often happens in Africa, things between tribes got violent; to the extent that a war party of ANC supporters raided our township one day and my mother was one of those killed. I was her only child and about two at the time. She covered me with her body and let them kill her to save me."

"Ohhh, how awful!" That was Gina. "But, what about your father?"

"I don't know who he is. He and my mother weren't married. I think he was...probably still is...working in the goldmines in the Transvaal. He probably doesn't even know he has a son.

"The Buxtons took me in and looked after me. When things got too hot for them to stay in The Republic, they fled through Mozambique taking me with them. That was the safest route for them although the civil war was still going on in that country. They went to England for a short time, where they formally adopted me, and then came to America to work at their missionary organisation's headquarters. They have been here ever since and became US citizens along the way. They can't have any children of their own so I am their 'only child'.

"As you can imagine, I led a very sheltered life with them, in a kind of rural, very religious environment. University life and then New York blew me away! Mom and Dad started training me to become a missionary with the idea of sending me back to Africa when I was old enough. But, I disappointed them. I became fascinated with math and computers, and then in the way business systems work and I switched my university courses without telling them. That caused a bit of a ruckus I can tell you! But, they are good, kind people and they let me go my own way in the end. I love them both very much."

Harriet asked, "Daddy says you have an Aunt in New York."

"Oh, she is a nice lady. But in reality, she's only a person my parents knew for years in Oklahoma, who moved to New York when her daughter came here to work. The daughter is married now, so there's a spare room in Mrs Jerome's apartment."

"Have you ever been back to Africa?"

"Only the once; before I came to New York. I thought I would get a buzz from going back to my roots, you know, a feeling of homecoming. But they treated me like an alien and I felt like one as well. I'm not in a hurry to go back. Believe it or not, I felt more at home with you guys and your dad this morning than at any time in Africa."

That got me two pairs of bikini clad breasts pressed against my bare arms and kisses on each cheek.

"Tell me, has your dad ever brought Abe Zimmerman down here?"

Harriet answered, "Yes, of course. Why do you want to know?"

"Just curious..."

The two young women exchanged amused looks.

"Well, I just wondered why Wilson asked me down here in the first place," I continued, "and it occurred to me that he might be into the 'WASP being nice to minorities' scene...you know, 'let's be sociable with Jews and blacks, etcetera.'

Both of them thought what I'd just said was quite amusing, but at the same time, I got a roasting from Harriet for selling Wilson short. "Daddy doesn't think that way. He wouldn't have asked you down here if he didn't like you! In fact, he must like you more than a little bit...none of the others he's invited has gotten this close to us."

I knew what that meant and I mumbled an apology.

"And as for us being WASPs! Shit! Gina and I are half-breed Wops! Mom is Sicilian! When daddy was in the Airforce, one of his best buddies was an Italian guy. Daddy got invited to Carlo's home one time, where he met mom. She was Carlo's second cousin, or something like that. She and dad fell in love on the spot and started seeing each other whenever he was on furlough. It didn't go down well with her family; she, of course, being Catholic and him a Protestant. But, mom and daddy were determined and ended up getting married. Sad to say, mom's family disowned her and we have had nothing to do with them; even after she fell ill. They are quite poor, but Sicilian proud, and daddy surreptitiously helps them out with money via Carlo; they don't know to this day that it comes from us..."

It must have been the mention of money, but just then, I realised that I had left my credit cards and wallet with all my cash in the pocket of the Arnold Palmer pants. We had been walking for a good fifteen minutes and it would be a pain in the butt to have to go back and get them. But that box under the buggy's back seat wasn't locked and the risk of having the cash and cards stolen was too great. Gina and Harriet said it was ok and that they would sit on the beach and wait for me to get back. So, I set off at a steady trot along the harder sand at the edge of the surf.

My run back was at a considerably higher pace. When I got back down to the beach I saw in the distance that eight or nine people surrounded Gina and Harriet and the body language did not look good. When I got closer, I made out that there were seven guys and two females, all of them around twenty years old. And Gina and Harriet were being hassled physically as well as verbally.

The group parted like the Red Sea when I arrived on the scene leaving me facing the one who was clearly their leader. From Wilson's description, and the very similar-looking girl standing close by him, I didn't need rocket science to figure out that these two were the Tremaine twins. Tremaine and I stared at each other. Hostility crackled in the air.

It was a sneak attack. Who hit me or what he or she hit me with was academic. All I got to hear was Tramaine's sardonic, "So, the big black stud has arrived to..." when my head exploded with stars. My next memory was slowly waking up face down with jackhammers taking my skull apart from the inside and a steady trickle of blood dripping from above my left ear onto the sand. I staggered to my knees. The world turned upside down wildly and I ended up eating sand again. It was then that I dumped my breakfast onto the beach.

I climbed upright again. This time I almost made it to my feet before I fell over, but managing to stumble for a couple of paces so that I didn't land in my own vomit. On the way down the realisation sunk in that Gina and Harriet had disappeared. And so had the people who had been bothering them.

I lay on my face for a few more minutes assimilating this information as best as I could through the manic pounding in my head. Then I had another go at standing up. This time I made it, swaying like a drunk to be sure, with the sky spinning around my head. But I was upright!

I saw the tracks leading up through the dunes where Gina and Harriet had been dragged off. It looked as though they had put up a good fight. My blood began to boil. For the first time in my life, my Zulu warrior heritage took me over.

Visions of massed black-skinned regiments stripped for battle flooded though my mind, distinguishable from each other only by their different coloured ox hide shields and feathered head-dresses. They stamped the African earth in unison until the dust clouds became an all-enveloping red fog and chanted their paean to Shaka their king, "Bayete! Bayete! Bayete!"

I found myself running, following my enemy's tracks. Zulu Impi often ran for fifty miles and more and then went straight into battle. As they ran they beat the backs of their shields with their short stabbing spears in such unison that the first Europeans to hear them thought that they were listening to an approaching steam train. At the last second the warriors would fall silent as if turned off by a switch and their enemies' guts would turn to water in the certain knowledge that they were about to die.

My ancestors' very essence surged through my veins. Jonathan Matthew Senzangakona Buxton went to war.

I followed the spoor to the back of a large house that was set back from the beach. There was no mistaking the signs of people being dragged against their will. Close to the house, I found Harriet's sarong where it had been ripped from her body and cast aside. I heard voices. They seemed to come from a complex of rooms that led off from a garage that had a Porsche 911 parked to one side. There was enough space in there for another five like that one. Blood still poured from the wound on my head, staining my shirt and plopping softly onto the concrete floor. I made my way silently towards the voices, searching for a suitable weapon along the way. I found it leaning against the wall just inside the passageway. Not an assegai, but a wooden baseball bat. This would do!

I found the first group in what appeared to be a recreation room. Harriet was spread-eagled naked on a billiards table with a guy holding her down by the wrists. Justin Tremaine was knelt between her legs with his ass rapidly pumping as he raped her. His sister Wendy stood by Harriet's side holding the cutting edge of a long knife to her right nipple. The other girl stood close up behind Wendy. It looked as though she had both of her hands inside the waistband at the front of Wendy's skirt, fondling her lower belly. A big blonde guy stood on the other side, stroking his hard cock in his fist whilst he watched Tremaine's sliding in and out of Harriet's pussy. Blondie was obviously set to be next in line. All five were so intent on what they were doing; not one of them noticed me slip around the door behind them.

I fell upon my foes in silence, just like my forefathers did with their victims nearly two centuries before. Justin Tremaine took the full force of the baseball bat across his lower back and kidneys. Groaning and writhing in agony, he fell away from Harriet and toppled from the billiards table onto the floor. Bayete!

His sister turned on me with the knife and I slammed her just under the sternum with the heel of the bat handle. She dropped the knife and reeled away into a corner spewing her heart out. Bayete!

Wendy's girlfriend tried to come at me with that Kung Fu crap. The meat of the bat took her on the forearm and there was the snap of breaking bones followed by a shrill scream of pain and horror. I gave her another tap, this time on the point of the shoulder. She went down. Bayete!

The big blonde guy tried to make a run for it, but I brought him down with a hefty ankle trip and then crunched both of his kneecaps for good measure. Bayete!

The one that had been holding Harriet's wrists made a break for freedom as well. When Shaka Zulu went into battle, he fought to totally annihilate his enemies. His spirit drove me now. I smashed the son of a bitch to the floor and broke his bones mercilessly. Bayete!

Harriet opened her tightly clenched eyelids and stared at me in amazement. I must have been quite a sight with the streams of blood pouring from my head and spraying the room as I wielded the baseball bat. "They took Gina upstairs!" she cried. "Go and help her Jonathon, I'll take care of these bastards!"

The steady creak of bedsprings led me to where the four remaining guys had taken Gina. The creaking stopped for a few seconds as I crept silently up the stairs and then resumed. I peered around the door. Gina had apparently decided that resistance was hopeless and had lain there like a piece of dead meat while the men took her.

One guy had clearly just finished as he was stood to one side wiping his genitals with a handkerchief. The other three were raping Gina. She was lying face down on top of one of them, who had his cock thrusting deep up in her pussy. A second one was trying to force his cock into her ass. Her slack-jawed, cum streaked face hung over the side of the bed where the fourth guy was trying to make her suck his softening cock back to life.

The tableau froze as I burst into the bedroom. The guy trying to fuck Gina's ass got the bat between his legs, pulping his nuts. Bayete!

A two-handed backhand Andre Agassi would have been proud of caught the one cleaning his dick right under the jaw and there was a satisfying crunch of breaking teeth. Bayete!

The brave man who had fucked Gina's mouth once and was trying for a second go almost made it to the top of the stairs before I caught up with him and helped him on his way with a slam between the shoulder blades. He lay in a still, crumpled heap where he landed at the bottom of the flight. Bayete!

Gina had rolled away from the last of her attackers when I re-entered the room. He cowered on the bed begging me not to hit him. I stood over him for a few moments slapping the baseball bat into the palm of my hand, letting him squirm. Was this the cowardly fuck that hit me from behind? I beat him without pity until he passed out from the pain. Bayete!

I helped Gina down the stairs, supporting her with one arm around her waist. They guy I had given flying lessons to was moving feebly. One of his ankles was at a strange angle and he appeared to have a couple of broken ribs. Gina kicked him in the chest on her way past. Bayete!

Harriet, a naked Amazon queen ready to deal out pain to anyone who made a wrong move, stood in the midst of the carnage in the games-room swinging a golf driver she had found. Her magnificent chest heaved and her eyes glowed with blood lust. When she saw that I had Gina with me, she smiled a fierce smile. "Time I practised my swing!" she announced, kicking Tremaines's legs apart. Then she let him have it. "Fore!" she cried and then spat in his face. Tramaine was lucky his inner thigh took most of the force, or she would have killed him.

"Bayete!" I murmured.

"Now for you Miss Wendy!" Harriet snarled grabbing Tremaine's sister by the hair and dragging her over to the billiards table. Gina helped her sister throw the girl up onto the table where between them they ripped her skirt and panties off. Her pussy was totally bare, without a vestige of hair. Taking one ankle each, they pulled Wendy's legs wide open. Harriet looked at my crotch; "It is your right, Senzangakona, as a victorious warrior!"