The divine spirit! Seek ye the kingdom of heaven! My wisdom came from God! All that hogwash, what I mean. And what’s that line you told me the heavenly spirit said to you when you were about to embark on this bloody course of your’n? For he who knows—What?”
“For he who knoweth his Master’s will,” I said, “and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes, and thus have I chastened you.”
“Yeah, hogwash like that, what I mean. Divine guidance. Holy will. Messages from up above. Durndest slop ever I heard of.
And what did it get you? What, Reverend?”
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I made no reply, even though now I had begun to understand what he was trying to say. I stopped looking at him and thrust my head into my hands, hoping that he would not find it necessary to go on.
“Here’s what it got you, Reverend, if you’ll pardon the crudity. It got you a pissy-assed record of total futility, the likes of which are hard to equal. Threescore white people slain in random butchery, yet the white people still firmly holdin’ the reins. Seventeen niggers hung, including you and old Hark there, nevermore to see the light of day. A dozen or more other nigger boys shipped out of an amiable way of life to Alabama, where you can bet your bottom dollar that in five years the whole pack of ‘em will be dead of work and fever. I’ve seen them cotton plantations. I’ve seen them rice layouts too, Reverend—niggers up to their necks in shit from day clean to first dark, with a big black driver to whip
‘em, and mosquitoes the size of buzzards. This is what you brung on them kids, Reverend, this is what Christianity brung on them boys. I reckon you didn’t figure on that back then, did you?”
I was silent for a moment, considering his question, then I said:
“No.” For indeed, to be most truthful, I had not figured on it then.
“And what else did Christianity accomplish?” he said. “Here’s what Christianity accomplished. Christianity accomplished the mob. The mob. It accomplished not only your senseless butchery, the extermination of all those involved in it, black and white, but the horror of lawless retaliation and reprisal—one hundred and thirty-one innocent niggers both slave and free cut down by the mob that roamed Southampton for a solid week, searching vengeance. I reckon you didn’t figure on that neither back then, did you, Reverend?”
“No,” I said quietly, “no, I didn’t.”
“And furthermore, you can bet your sweet ass that when the Legislature convenes in December they’re goin’ to pass laws that make the ones extant look like rules for a Sunday School picnic.
They goin’ to lock up the niggers in a black cellar and throw away the key.” He paused, and I could sense him leaning close to me. “Abolition,” he said in a voice like a whisper. “Reverend, single-handed you done more with your Christianity to assure the defeat of abolition than all the meddlin’ and pryin’ Quakers that ever set foot in Virginia put together. I reckon you didn’t figure on that either?”
“No,” I said, looking into his eyes, “if that be true. No.”
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His voice had risen to a mocking, insistent monotone.
“Christianity! Rapine, plunder, butchery! Death and destruction!
And misery and suffering for untold generations. That was the accomplishment of your Christianity, Reverend. That was the fruits of your mission. And that was the joyous message of your faith. Nineteen hundred years of Christian teaching plus a black preacher is all it takes— Is all it takes to prove that God is a God durned lie!”
He rose to his feet, moving briskly now, his voice softer as he spoke, pulling on his dingy gloves. “Beg pardon, Reverend. I’ve got to go. No offense. All in all you’ve been pretty fair and square with me. In spite of what I said, I reckon a man has to act according to his own lights, even when he’s the victim of a delusion. Good night, Reverend. I’ll look back in on you.”
When he had gone Kitchen brought me a pan of cold pork and hoe cake and a cupful of water, and I sat there in the chill dusk, eating, watching the light fall and fade away against the gray sky to the west. Presently I heard Hark on the other side of the wall, laughing softly. “Dat man sho give you down de country, Nat.
What dat man so sweat up about?”
But I didn’t reply to Hark, rising instead and shuffling the length of the chain to the window.
Over Jerusalem hung a misty nightfall, over the brown and stagnant river and the woods beyond, where the water oak and cypress merged and faded one into the other, partaking like shadows of the somber wintry dusk. In the houses nearby, lamps and lanterns flickered on in yellow flame and far off there was a sound of clattering china and pots and pans and back doors slamming as people went about fixing supper. Way in the distance in some kitchen I could hear a Negro woman singing—a weary sound full of toil and drudgery yet the voice rich, strong, soaring: I knows moonrise, I knows star-rise, lay dis body down .
. . Already the dusty fall of snow had disappeared; a rime of frost lay in its place, coating the earth with icy wet pinpricks of dew, crisscrossed by the tracks ofsquirrels. In chilly promenade two guards with muskets paced round the jail in greatcoats, stamping their feet against the brittle ground. A gust of wind swept through the cell, whistling. I shivered in a spasm of cold and I closed my eyes, listening to the lament of the woman far off, leaning up against the window ledge, half dreaming in a half slumber of mad weariness and longing: As the heart panteth after the water The Confessions of Nat Turner
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brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me …
For what seemed a long time I stood leaning near the window, my eyes shut tight against the twilight. Maybe he is right, I thought, maybe all was for nothing, maybe worse than nothing, and all I’ve done was evil in the sight of God. Maybe he is right and God is dead and gone, which is why I can no longer reach him … I opened my eyes again, looking out into the gloaming light, above the woods where wild ducks skimmed southward against a sky as gray as smoke. Yes, I thought, maybe all this is true, otherwise why should God not heed me, why should he not answer? Still the woman’s rich sweet voice soared through the gathering dusk: I walks in de moonlight, walks in de starlight; to lay dis body down … Grieving, yet somehow unbending, steadfast, unafraid, the voice rose through the evening like memory, and a gust of wind blew up from the river, dimming the song, rustling the trees, then died and became still. I’ll lay in de grave and stretch out my arms … Suddenly the voice ceased, and all was quiet.
Then what I done was wrong, Lord? I said. And if what I done was wrong, is there no redemption?
I raised my eyes upward but there was no answer, only the gray impermeable sky and night falling fast over Jerusalem.
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Part II
Old Times Past:
Voices, Dreams, Recollections
Once when I was a boy of twelve or thereabouts, and living with my mother in the big house at Turner’s Mill, I remember a fat white man who stopped one night and had supper with my owner of that time, Samuel Turner. This traveling man was a bluff, hearty soul with a round red face, cruelly pockmarked, and a booming laugh. A dealer in farm implements—ploughs and harrows, shares and cultivators and the like—he traveled up and down the country with several huge wagons and a team of dray horses and a couple of boys to help him, stopping for the night at this or that farm or plantation, wherever he happened to be peddling his wares. I no longer recall the man’s name (if I ever knew it) but I do remember the season, which was the beginning of spring. Indeed, it was only what this man said about the weather and the season that caused me to remember him at all.
For that evening in April, I was serving at the supper table (I had just recently begun this chore; there were two older Negroes in atte
ndance, but it was my apprentice duty alone to replenish the glasses with cider or buttermilk, to pick up whatever fell to the floor, and to shoo away the cat and the dogs) and I recollect his voice, very loud but genial, as he orated to Marse Samuel and the family in the alien accent of the North: “No, sir, Mr. Turner,”
he was saying, “they is no spring like it in this great land of ours.
They is nothing what approaches the full springtide when it hits Virginia. And, sir, they is good reason for this. I have traveled all up and down the seaboard, from the furtherest upper ranges of New England to the hottest part of Georgia, and I know whereof I speak. What makes the Virginia spring surpassing fine? Sir, it is simply this. It is simply that, whereas in more southern climes the temperature is always so humid that spring comes as no surprise, and whereas in more northerly climes the winter becomes so prolonged that they is no spring at all hardly, but runs smack into summer—why, in Virginia, sir, it is unique! It is The Confessions of Nat Turner
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ideal! Nature has conspired so that spring comes in a sudden warm rush! Alone in the Virginia latitude, sir, is spring like the embrace of a mother’s arms!”
I remember this moment with the clarity of a great event which has taken place only seconds ago—the breath of spring still in my nostrils, the dusty evening light still vivid and golden, the air filled with voices and the gentle clash of china and silverware. As the traveling man ceases speaking, the clock in the far hallway lets fall six thudding cast-iron notes, which I hear through the soft yet precisely enunciated cadences of Samuel Turner’s own voice: “You are perhaps too complimentary, sir, for spring will soon also bring us a plague of bugs. But the sentiment is well taken, for indeed so far Nature has been kind to us this year.
Certainly, I have but rarely seen such ideal conditions for planting.”
There is a pause as the sixth and final chime lingers for an instant with a somnolent hum, then dwindles away dully into infinity, while at this same instant I catch sight of myself in the ceiling-high mirror beyond the far sideboard: a skinny undersized pickaninny in a starched white jumper, the toes of one bare foot hooked behind the other leg as I stand wobbling and waiting, eyes rolling white with nervous vigilance. And my eyes return quickly to the table as my owner, for the traveling man’s benefit, gestures with his fork in a fond, circular, spacious motion at the family surrounding him: his wife and his widowed sister-in-law, his two young daughters around nineteen or twenty, and his two nephews—grown men of twenty-five or more with rectangular, jut-jawed faces and identical thick necks looming above me, their skin creased and reddened with sun and weather. Samuel Turner’s gesture embraces them all; swallowing a bite, he clears his throat elaborately, then continues with warm humor: “Of course, sir, my family here can hardly be expected to welcome such an active time of the year, after a winter of luxurious idleness.” There is a sound of laughter, and cries of “Oh, Papa!”
and I hear one of the young men call above the sudden clamor:
“You slander your industrious nephews, Uncle Sam!” My eyes wander to the traveling man; his red, evilly cratered face is crinkled in jollity, and a trickle of gravy threads its way down the side of his chin. Miss Louisa, the elder of the daughters, smiles in a vague and pretty way, and blushes, and she lets drop her napkin, which I instantly scurry to retrieve, replacing it upon her lap.
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Now in the twilight the merriment slowly subsides, and the conversation proceeds in easy ruminative rhythms, the women silent, the men alone chatting garrulous and fullmouthed as I circle the table with the china pitcher of foaming cider, then return to my station between the two thicknecked nephews, resume my one-legged heron’s stance and slowly turn my gaze out into the evening. Beyond the veranda the pasture slopes away green and undulating toward the pinewoods. On the coarse weedy grass a score of sheep munch placidly in the yellow light, trailed by a collie dog and a small, bowlegged Negro shepherdess. Past them, far down the slope where a log road separates the lawn and the looming forest, I can see an empty cart drawn by two flop-eared mules, making its last trip of the day from the storehouse to the mill. On the seat of the cart sits a Negro man, a yellow straw hat raked down upon his head. As I watch, I see that the man is trying to scratch his back, first his left arm snaking up from his waist, then his right arm arching down over his shoulder as the black fingers grope in vain for the source of some intolerable itch. Finally, as the mules plod steadily down the slope and the cart ponderously rocks and veers, the man stands up with a lurching motion and scrapes his back cowlike up and down against the sidepost of the cart.
For some reason, I find this wonderfully amusing and I suddenly am aware that I am giggling to myself, though not so loudly that the white people may notice. Long moments pass as I watch the cart drift rocking across the margin of the woods, the man seated again as cart and mules pass with a distant drumming of hooves and creaking axles over the little bridge then around the murky lower rim of the millpond, where two white swans glide stately and soundless, finally vanishing behind the forest-shadowed white shape of the sawmill with its dull and sluggish rasp of metal-tortured timber drifting up faintly through the dusk: hrrush, hrrush. Closer now, the yap of the collie dog starts me out of my daydream, and I turn back to the table and the bright tinkling collision of china and silver, the traveling man’s voice broadly ingratiating as he speaks to Marse Samuel: “… a new line of sundries this year. Now for instance, I have some pure sea salt from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, for preserving and table use only, sir … They is nothing better in the market … And so you say they is ten people here, including the overseer and his family? And sixty-eight grown Negroes? Presuming it goes mostly for salt pork then, sir, I should say five sacks will do you nicely, a splendid bargain at thirty-one dollars twenty-five cents .
. .”
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Now again my mind begins to wander. My thoughts stray outdoors once more where the brilliant fuss of chattering birds intrudes in the fading day—blackbirds and robins, finches and squawking jays, and somewhere far off above the bottomlands the noise of some mean assembly of crows, their calls echoing venturesome and conniving and harsh. Again the scene outside captures my attention, so now slowly and with irresistible pleasure I turn to gaze at the coarse green slope with its slant of golden light and its nimble bustle of many wings, the flower bed only feet away ferny and damp with the odor of new-turned earth. The little black bowlegged shepherdess has vanished from the pasture, sheep and collie too, leaving behind a haze of dust to tremble in the evening light. Rising on fat whirlpools of air, this haze fills the sky like the finest sawdust. In the distance the mill still rasps with a steady husking noise above the monotonous roar of water from the sluiceway. Two huge dragonflies dart across the evening, wild and iridescent, a swift flash of transparency. Springtime. Worried that my excitement will show, I feel my limbs stretch and quiver with a lazy thrill. A sense of something quickening, a voluptuous stirring courses gently through my flesh. I hear the blood pulsing within me like some imagined wash of warm oceanic tides. In my mind I echo the traveling man’s words— Full springtide, spring, spring, I find myself whispering to myself—and this awakening brings to my lips the shadow of a grin. I feel half stunned, my eyes roll like marbles. I am filled with inexplicable happiness and a sense of tantalizing promise.
As the traveling man’s voice drifts back into hearing, I turn again and feel the gaze of my mistress, Miss Nell, upon me, and I look up then and see her mouth forming the whispered word “cider.” I grasp the heavy pitcher with two hands and again make my circuit of the table, filling the glasses of the women first, taking pains that not a drop is spilled. My care is meticulous. I hold my breath until the edge of the table swims dizzily before my eyes.
Now finally I am at the elbow of the traveling man, who, as I serve him, ceases his talk of commerce long enough to look do
wn at me and good-naturedly exclaim: “Well, I’ll be durned if that crock ain’t bigger than you are!” I am only half aware that he is addressing these words to me, and I am unconcerned as I pour the cider, replace the glass, and continue my tour around thetable. “Cute little nipper too,” the traveling man adds in an offhand tone, but again I make no connection between myself and what is said until now, drawing near to Miss Nell, I hear her voice, gentle and indulgent as it descends from the rare white The Confessions of Nat Turner
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prodigous atmosphere above me: “And smart, you wouldn’t believe! Spell something, Nat.” And then to the traveling man:
“Ask him something to spell.”
Suddenly I am fastened to my tracks and I feel my heart beat wildly as I realize that I am the focus of all eyes. The pitcher in my hands is as heavy as a boulder. He beams down at me; the radish-red broad cheeks are all benevolence as the man pauses, reflects, then says: “Can you spell ‘lady’?” But abruptly, before I can reply, I hear Samuel Turner interrupt, amused: “Oh no, something difficult!” And the traveling man scratches the side of his pitted face, still beaming: “Oh well,” he says, “let’s see, some kind of flower … ‘Columbine.’ Spell ‘ columbine.’” And I spell it, without effort and instantly but in a pounding fury of embarrassment, the pulse roaring in my ears as the letters tumble forth in a galloping rush: “… i-n-e, spells columbine! ”
And the laughter at the table that follows this, and a shrill echo from the walls, makes me realize in dismay that I am yelling at the top of my lungs.
“It is I am sure a kind of unorthodoxy, and considered thus by some,” I hear my master say (I resume my station, still flustered and with a madly working heart), “but it is my conviction that the more religiously and intellectually enlightened a Negro is made, the better for himself, his master, and the commonweal. But one must begin at a tender age, and thus, sir, you see in Nat the promising beginnings of an experiment. Of course, it is late for this child, compared with white children, yet …” As I listen to him speak, not completely comprehending the words, my panic and embarrassment (which had been made up in equal parts of childish selfconsciousness and terror at the thought that I might publicly fail) diminish, fade away, and in their place I feel stealing over me a serene flow of pride and accomplishment: after all, I may have been a loudmouth, but I did know the word, and I sensed in the sunny laughter a laurel, a tribute. All of a sudden the secret pleasure I take in my exploit is like a delectable itch within, and though my expression in the mirror is glum, abashed, and my pink lips are persimmon-sour, I can hear my insides stirring. I feel wildly alive. I shiver feverishly in the glory of self.
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