This first appeared, unedited, in the "Story/Plot Ideas" section of Katie Smith's "Tracey Stories Archive," 2 November 2010. CHICKEN TRACY by Joe Doe Once upon a time, in the Antebellum South, the wealthy plantation owner, Judge Chambers, had developed a fierce hatred for the town's English schoolmarm, Tracy Smith, a beautiful and outspoken Abolitionist. Infuriated by her righteous editorials and sanctimonious sermons about his "immoral" activities with his female slaves, he dubbed Tracy a "nosy little hen, always pecking her nose where it doesn't belong." When he uncovered proof that she was running the underground railroad station that has been leading his wenches to freedom, he decided that jail was insufficient punishment for his "property loss" and decided to make an example of Tracy at the town picnic. She was arrested in front of everyone and was booed lustily by the crowd. Since Tracy helped one of Judge Chambers's slaves escape, he sentenced her to the punishment the nigra would have received if she had been recaptured. In front of all her cheering neighbors, Tracy was stripped naked and hung by her ankles from an old live oak tree. The Judge's crony and protégé, the Sheriff, strapped her bottom with gusto until she "confessed" to the bogus charge that she was running the underground railroad because her great-great-great grandmother had escaped from a plantation and then migrated to England. Of course! Tracy was helping the slaves because she was in fact 1/32nd black. The Judge signed the papers, and the Sheriff put the "unclaimed runaway" on the auction block. Tracy was well-displayed to all her neighbors during a humiliating "Sheriff's sale" with the Sheriff himself acting as auctioneer. Chambers bought Tracy, and declared that his "new white-breasted chicken" needed a lesson in humility before she could serve as a "proper bed wench, and a breeder hen." Tracy is horrified to see her beautiful clothes thrown into the fire used to heat a gigantic tub of tar, but things got worse when Chambers ordered several of his laughing, harpy wenches to shave Tracy bald, on top and below, since "chickens have feathers, not hair." She was covered in the stinking tar and was then sealed into a huge wine barrel filled with feathers. The barrel was playfully rolled around in a "barrel race" at the town picnic. Everyone was delighted when the dazed Tracy was finally removed from the barrel, since she did resemble a chicken, covered from head to toe with feathers. She was brought back to the auction platform, where she was made to squawk and do a humiliating "chicken dance," flapping her arms and jumping about as the Sheriff played a lively tune on his fiddle, and the Judge "tenderized her bottom" with a hickory switch. Next was the rail parade, where Tracy, her hands and feet bound, was made to straddle a log rail that the Judge jokingly referred to as "her chicken spit." The men lifted the rail up onto their shoulders and paraded Tracy around the picnic. They made the trip especially bouncy, since they knew that her weight was resting on her delicate "chicken pot pie" as the Judge put it. The crowd heckled the "chicken abolitionist" and the "strange English bird" as she rode her rail in shame. Tracy was forced to squawk and flap her arms on the long walk back to the plantation, but the Judge, following in his elegant carriage, didn't mind a bit. Tracy, still feathered, was sent to work in the cotton fields, to toil until her hair grew back, and she could audition for a role as one of the Judge's frisky bed wenches. Edited by C. Lakewood