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| Another installment in Harry Whittington’s plantation porn saga. |
If one were asked to name an especially horny time in American history, the 1850s likely wouldn’t come up, yet SECRET OF BLACKOAKS, the second installment in Lance Horner’s plantation porn series by Harry Whittington writing as Ashley Carter, describes the antebellum South like it was the height of the sexual revolution. From its first chapter, when the new master of the Blackoaks plantation, Styles Kenric, gives his hunky young slave Moab a morning hummer before starting his day, to its last, when Moab, having since fled the plantation, lifts the skirt of his fellow escapee to remove a bullet from her leg and feels an “acute stirring in his loins” upon seeing her bare ass, sex is at the forefront of people’s minds.
At the end of 1976’s Master of Blackoaks, the titular master Ferrell Baynard dies. However, his oldest son Ferrell-Junior, wracked with guilt over his failure to stop the gang rape of his girlfriend Lorna June, has entered a monastery to become a priest, leaving the door open for his scheming brother-in-law Styles Kenric to seize control of the plantation. In this 1978 follow-up, Styles realizes he fought to become captain of a sinking ship. Blackoaks has massive debts, its cotton crops aren’t bringing in the money like they used to, and the one product sustaining the plantation, Ferrell Baynard’s famous corn liquor, can’t be produced since the distillery burned down. Making matters worse, Ferrell Baynard’s widow, Miz Claire, showing signs of dementia (she frequently urges Styles and others to wait for her dead husband to return before making any decisions), has elected to host the wedding of her “big breasted cousin from Charleston,” piling on more debt on top of the debt incurred from Ferrell Baynard’s funeral.
But Styles isn’t going to let the plantation’s shaky finances stop him from his dream of turning Blackoaks into a premier slave breeding operation. By quickly—and coldly—selling off slaves and arranging a line of credit at the local bank (run by Lorna June’s husband Luke Scroggings), Styles stabilizes Blackoaks’ finances in the short term, with enough capital left over to fund future investments, i.e., slaves. Specifically, Styles wants to purchase women of Fulani origin to mate with his two prized male Fulani slaves, Blade and Moab, the whole plan discussed like he’s breeding purebred dogs. This is not comfortable reading.
His plans are almost derailed when Jamie Lee, the aforementioned big-breasted cousin from Charleston, is caught fucking Moab by her fiancé Link Tetherow (yes, Link Tetherow), described as handsome and muscular, but walking “slightly spraddled-legged, as if he were for some reason tender of crotch.” She accuses Moab of rape, but the Baynards don’t readily buy her story since Jamie Lee has not-so-discreetly been sampling all the cocks of Blackoaks, including the one attached to Morgan, the learning-impaired youngest Baynard son, the experience turning the teenager into a compulsive masturbator. The Baynards manage to hold off a lynch mob, headed by the vile Gil Talmadge who instigated the gang-rape of Lorna June, while a visiting Ferrell-Junior convinces Link to tell the gang of bloodthirsty rednecks that it was all a misunderstanding, implying that he might out Link as one of the Lorna June’s rapists to her husband—and the Tetherows’ creditor—Luke Scroggings. Nevertheless, it’s not until Miz Claire, in one of her more lucid moments, shoots Gil Talmadge’s prize slave Arthur that the lynch mob backs down. The wedding goes on as planned, and Jamie Lee and Link exit the book.
With the wedding out of the way, Styles puts his energy into turning Blackoaks into a premier slave breeding operation. To do that, he travels to Tallahassee to purchase a female slave of Fulani origin. Enter Ahma, who is tall, beautiful, barely 16 years old and very angry, with a history of running and fighting enslavement at all costs, even killing a man to get away. “You’ll never break her,” warns fellow plantation owner Cleatus Dennison. But Styles, already miffed that he’s not treated with proper deference as the new master of Blackoaks, is determined to prove all the naysayers wrong and buys Ahma anyway. The trip back to Alabama is a long one, made longer by Ahma’s behavior, starting with her attempting to flee Styles’s carriage (or kill herself):
Luckily, the
carriage was moving at a slow clip or the girl would have been dead. Though she
was shackled, wrists and ankles, she had lunged over the tailboard of the
converted carriage. She hung there, head down, her black hair dragging on the
rutted road.
Her face was pallid
and she was fighting for breath, almost unconscious when Laus, Perseous [slaves traveling
with Styles] and Styles ran back and lifted her again into the carriage.
Styles poured her a cup of water from the canteen. She stared at him, refused
to touch it. “Why do you want to kill yourself?” he demanded.
She did not answer,
merely stared at him, her eyes bleak with hatred.
Later, they stop at
a rundown farm to buy some food from the owners who can barely feed themselves.
After Ahma spits a mouthful of clabber into his face,
Styles, struggling to keep his composure, tries to sell her on life at
Blackoaks, as if she has a choice in the matter.
“Two beautiful
Fulani boys are waiting for you up at Blackoaks, Ahma. Blade and Moab. They
will belong to you alone. You’ll live with them. You’ll have good food—none of
this cracker hog-swill. Good food, a nice soft bed. Long nights with Blad in
your arms. You’ll want him, Ahma. No matter how much you hate me, that’s how
much you’re going to love Blade. Why don’t you behave and eat so you’ll look
beautiful for Blade? You’ll make babies together, Ahma. You and Blade.
Beautiful pure blood Fulani children.”
Now she spoke,
moaning, a savage sound of heartbreak. “Babies? For you to sell, white Masta?
Sell like you bought me yesterday?” She raged, fighting at her bonds, tears
streaming down her cheeks….
Styles’s shoulders
sagged. He walked slowly around the carriage and swung up into the seat,
waiting for the [B]lack men to climb in. It looked like a long, hard journey
home….
However, Ahma’s resistance to slavery melts—or at least temporarily subsides—the moment she meets Blade. Suddenly, fucking Blade is more important than a life of servitude, conveniently allowing Secret of Blackoaks to put a pin in Ahma’s fiery resistance until the novel’s finale.
Styles isn’t entirely reassured, however. It seemed to him that women were bitches. Some of them were violent bitches. Ahma had already proved her violence. She needed a good fucking—the kind the Mt. Zion louts called “a good horse-fucking.” But Styles soon learns he’s got bigger problems than a slave that may/may not be tamed by Blade’s formidable cock. While he was in Florida, his wife Kathy ran off with Hunt Campbell.
Sex, Booze and Yellow Fever
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| The British edition of Secret of Blackoaks. The U.K. version of Blade is closer to what one would expect, though still smaller than the Michael B. Jordan-esque physique I’d imagined. |
That Kathy would run off with Hunt Campbell is hardly a surprise. Their eventual affair was heavily teased near the end of Master of Blackoaks, and in couple’s interactions in Secret of Blackoaks make their affair inevitable. Hunt, already fired once when Styles deemed tutoring Morgan a waste of money, only to be hired by Kathy as her French teacher, is again sent packing by Styles, told that he needs to be gone by the time he returns from Florida. What’s surprising is Kathy finding the courage to leave with him (she’d resolved she could pay the price of living unmarried as Hunt’s mistress; she could not endure losing him and remaining suffocated and starved as Styles’s wife).
They end up in New
Orleans, spending most of their time boning in their hotel suite. Kathy is shy,
easily embarrassed when Hunt disrobes in front of her (“I’m proud of my
manhood. I’ve nothing to hide,” Hunt tells her) but is suddenly as uninhibited
as a Bourbon Street prostitute a few orgasms later (“Do you want to—fuck me?”).
Their days and nights are all fun and cum until they leave their hotel room one
day and are spotted by the Bretherton sisters, old maids who live at a
plantation 10 miles away from Blackoaks.
It doesn’t take long for news of Kathy and Hunt being spotted in New Orleans to reach Styles. Styles, determined to maintain his honor, explains that the Bretherton sisters must be mistaken, Kathy is away visiting family in Charleston, but then immediately plans to track her down. Instead of traveling to New Orleans himself, though, he decides to prepare Blade to make the trip. Here’s where the book really strains credulity. Styles’s plan to manipulate Blade into seducing or, better still, raping Kathy by feeding him stories about how she has always secretly desired Blade, is diabolical, but sending Blade to travel across Alabama unaccompanied in the 1850s, with nothing more than a letter of introduction, a purse full of coins and newly acquired basic reading skills, sounds like a death sentence. Still, I was entertained by the descriptions of Blade getting prepped for his journey, with Whittington always sure to keep the reader apprised of Blade’s huge dick, be it through Styles’s grooming (“[Kathy] told me she kept thinking about that big staff of yours, Blade.”), Blade getting scrubbed down by three houseboys (“Let them wash you down there, Blade—gets sweated.”) or when Blade tries on a freshly tailored suit, which shows off “the outline of Blade’s manhood at the crotch of the skintight trousers.”
Styles could, of course, just leave well enough alone as Kathy and Hunt’s relationship is rapidly disintegrating. Hunt quickly comes to the realization that life with Kathy, a woman used to being cared for by others, is an expensive proposition. His savings are rapidly dwindling, especially now that he’s rented an apartment and hired a servant for them, and he’s been unsuccessful in securing another tutoring gig, an unfortunate consequence when your approach to job hunting consists of sitting back and hoping word of mouth marketing pays off. Furthermore, Hunt becomes increasingly paranoid, certain Styles is close to finding them. He already suspects (correctly) that he’s being followed. Hunt starts drinking more to soothe his jangled nerves. It’s not long before he prefers getting drunk to getting laid.
Adding to Hunt’s
stress is the yellow fever
epidemic sweeping through New Orleans, killing thousands. Hunt may be hot, but he’s
a coward, wanting to avoid physical pain at all costs. He knows staying in New
Orleans means risking disease or, worse, being murdered by Styles. Staying with
Kathy means financial ruin. So, early one morning, he leaves a letter and $500
for Kathy and flees the city.
Kathy spends the
first few days of Hunt’s abandonment in denial. Then she contracts “yellow jack,”
whereupon her housekeeper says fuck no! and bolts, taking the $500 Hunt
left for Kathy on her way out the door. Shortly after the housekeeper exits the
apartment, Joe Bullock, a sleazy P.I. hired by Styles and the man following
Hunt earlier, enters. He discovers Kathy asleep in bed, covered in her own vomit.
“You poor little bitch,” he remarks before leaving her for dead.
Styles Loses his Shit
Blade does eventually make his way to New Orleans, and while his journey isn’t easy, he isn’t mistreated as badly as one would expect. As one would expect, Styles’s letters of introduction have no sway over the pervading racism of the time, the only courtesy innkeepers extend is allowing Blade to park his carriage behind their establishment and camp out there (Blade still gets a blowjob from a kitchen slave because the demands of smut override believability).
There’s a long stretch devoted to Blade’s misadventures upon arriving in New Orleans, including his meeting a flamboyant pimp, having a night of fun on Congo Square and tangling with a vengeful cop, but let’s skip ahead. Blade finds Kathy nearly dead of yellow fever and enlists the help of a Marie Laveau-esque character to nurse her back to health, or at least healthy enough to travel. They stop at the same inn that had previously refused Blade a room, but as Kathy’s slave he is grudgingly allowed to sleep indoors, though his being permitted to sleep in her room just doesn’t track. Were she accompanied by a female slave, I could believe it. A big strapping Black man sleeping in the same room as a white lady in the antebellum South? Not so much.
The sleeping
arrangement is a plot contrivance, of course, employed to facilitate Blade’s
seduction of Kathy. While their eventual hooking up is consensual, it kind of
plays out like a guy putting the moves on his best friend’s ex while she’s
still crying about being dumped. I’ll admit I lost patience with this particular
chapter, largely because Whittington draws out the will-they-or-won’t-they way longer
than he should. By the chapter’s midpoint I was mentally screaming JUST FUCK
ALREADY!
Long story short,
Kathy gives in, has some of the most mind-blowing orgasms of her life—so powerful
that she forgets the lovin’ Hunt put on her—and immediately regrets what she’s
done, whereupon she kills herself by stabbing herself in the heart with Blade’s
knife, holding the knife’s hilt reminding her—I shit you not—of “the way Blade
had drawn her clasped hand up and down the rigidity of his own staff.” Even
when a character is committing suicide, sex remains top of mind.
Remarkably, Blade manages to hide the wound and convince the innkeeper that Kathy passed away from yellow fever. On his return trip to Blackoaks it dawns on Blade that he was used. Kathy had never desired him (Styles was actually describing his own desires for Blade’s body). Styles had used him. By the time he returns to the plantation he’s good and pissed and hungry for vengeance.
Everyone at Blackoaks is grief stricken when Blade returns with Kathy in a box, except Styles, who is described as having “the stony look of a man who has been cheated.” What pushes him over the edge is seeing the note Kathy wrote to him, revealing that she did, in fact, take her own life. Worse, is the letter’s tone, which isn’t contrite but defiant, ending with the line: I found ecstasy only with your Negro slave.
And then Styles
loses his shit. He accuses Blade of murdering Kathy, and Blade accuses Styles
of lying to him, and that Styles is guilty of her death. Styles orders Blade shackled
and whipped, at which point Blade, out of fucks to give, punches the unhinged
master and attempts to strangle him. Now an apoplectic Styles isn’t just
content with having Blade whipped, he wants him branded as well, leading to the
following harrowing scene:
Styles lifted the
branding iron and advanced toward Blade. Ahma screamed and tried to fight free.
Perseus and Moab held her. But Blade did not move. When the huge R [for “runner”]
was inches from Blade’s face, Styles hesitated, waiting for Blade to whimper,
to plead.
Suddenly Styles
thrust the branding iron with all his strength into Blade’s face. Ahma’s
raging, animal screams were the only sound. It was as if not a man or woman
breathed while that branding iron seared Blade’s face. The sharp, sizzling
sound of fried flesh was loud in the silence. Blade’s left eye melted under the
heat., its socket seared, red hot and empty. The flesh was burned away to the
bone from his forehead, foreskull, and nose. His mouth cooked and split like broiled
meat. His teeth were bared through the break in his lips in a permanent
horrible grimace. His right eye broiled, gray, lying like an oyster in the
heat-seared socket. He was completely blind.
The savage branding
of Blade triggers an uprising, though the revolt is not led by Ahma. The other
slaves think her inaction is because she’s distraught over losing Blade, who was
killed—mercifully—shortly after he was branded, shot by Miz Claire at his
insistence. However, Ahma reveals to Moab her real reason for not participating
in the uprising: “You let them go….They scairt...they stupid n[ope!]…they don’t
know they got to kill all the whites or they dead….They let one white alive to
say they name—they gets killed.” Instead, she plans to escape during the
ensuing melee, urging Moab to run with her.
Once Styles hears
the commotion and sees most of Blackoaks up in flames (only the main house is
spared), he goes outside to investigate and is immediately jumped by four men,
led by Perseus, stripped and raped. They hadn’t killed him because they
wanted him alive, the object of their raging scorn and ridicule, the white man
who screamed like a woman as he was being sodomized in the grass.
The distasteful
coda to that scene is when Styles, having mostly recovered from his gang-rape, spares
Perseus’s life on the condition that “give it to me—like did that night of the
revolt.” Not only does this conflate rape with sex, it also perpetuates a myth
that bottoms are into pain. Then again, what was I expecting from plantation
porn, political correctness?
Meanwhile, Ahma and Moab are desperately trying to stay one step ahead of a search posse—involving many of the same men who were part of the lynch mob in the first part of the book—as they make their way north. Ahma is shot, nevermind that Styles strictly instructed members of the posse that he wanted the escaped slaves brought back alive. Ahma’s wound isn’t fatal, but it will seriously impede her ability to travel. She urges Moab to keep going without her, but he refuses to leave her. They’re situation seems hopeless, until they encounter an abolitionist ex machina.
Less N-words
than Django Unchained, at Least
Like its
predecessor, Secret of Blackoaks was difficult to put down, no matter
how uncomfortable it got. And though it takes a few side trips from its main
storyline, it’s got a more cohesive plot than Master of Blackoaks.
That said, I must
admit—guiltily—that I liked Master of Blackoaks more. Though Secret
of Blackoaks is fairly well-paced, there are moments where the book seems
stuck in place, such as Blade cajoling Kathy into having sex. Other parts seem
like padding, included as just another a way to work in a few more gratuitous sex
scenes, even when they ultimately serve the plot, like Blade’s adventures on Congo
Square in New Orleans or Moab’s continued affair with the field boss’s wife
Florine.
But perhaps the
book’s biggest missed opportunity—and Whittington’s biggest stumble—is the
handling of the Ahma character. The story would have been more interesting had
she been the driving force behind the uprising, convincing the complacent
slaves of Blackoaks that even though they’re treated relatively well by the
Baynards, they’re still slaves. Instead, her anger is immediately soothed by
Blade’s huge dick. I know this isn’t Roots, but it would’ve been more satisfying
in some instances if Whittington aimed higher than between his characters’ legs.
Though Secret of
Blackoaks doesn’t pack the same punch as its predecessor, it’s still engrossing
and appalling, and if nothing else, features slightly fewer n-words than Django
Unchained. Recommended for Harry Whittington completists. Everyone else can
be assured that they won’t be bored, but they will be judged if they dare read
it in public.
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| I’ve only read a few books by Lance Horner (Rogue Roman, The Mahound), but I always got a gay vibe from his writing. So, maybe it’s not a surprise that Whittington borrowed the name “Kenric” as the last name of Blackoaks’ sole gay character. |
