Once more I made my request. He regarded me with unblinking eyes, then he said: “What you are asking is ludicrous. How can a darky claim to be an ordained minister of the gospel? Pray tell me where you acquired your background in divinity. Washington College? William & Mary? Hampden-Sydney? What you are asking—”
“I don’t have to be ordained, mastah,” I put in. “In God’s sight I am a preacher of His Word.”
He pursed his lips and I could tell that his incredulity was being slowly converted into anger. “I’ve never heard of such tomfoolery from a darky in my life,” he exclaimed. “What are you up to, anyway? What sort of white gentleman do you propose to baptize in church?”
“Mr. Ethelred T. Brantley,” I said.
“Brantley!” At the name he seemed to go ashen with outrage. “A The Confessions of Nat Turner
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gentleman! I know of that scum! Jailed in Carolina for an abominable, unnatural crime against nature! He has been turned out of one congregation in this county, and now he would pollute the sacred altar of a Methodist temple through seeking baptism by the likes of you! What did he pay you to solicit me for such blasphemy?”
“Brantley is a poor man,” I said. “He hasn’t got ten cents. And he is very sick. And lost. Doesn’t the Bible say that the Son of man is come to save that which was lost?”
“Get out of here!” Richard Whitehead cried, his voice shrill now. I hopped sideways as he aimed a kick at me through the door.
“Get your devilish black self off of this property, and don’t come back! And tell that Brantley I have better things to do than be made a fool of by a degenerate and by an uppity nigger! Your master will hear of this, I promise you-u-u!”
His reedy voice trailed me as I departed by the way I came, a hysteric wail upon which my imagination played while I walked—the sound changing from that of a young woman to something else, a trapped rabbit, a bird, and finally to the scream a man emits at that last instant before the club descends and obliterates together prim mouth and scream.
That week I decided that Brantley and I would be baptized in Persons’ millpond, which lay on an abandoned plantation a few miles from Moore’s. I sent this word to Brantley by a Negro going into Jerusalem, and late in the afternoon on the following Sunday he met me near the pond, where I was waiting with Hark, Sam, and Nelson. Although obviously weak from his fast, Brantley looked somehow healthier: a pink glow of anticipation suffused his face, and he confided to me that his bowels, for the first time in years, were notably under control. “Oh, I’m so happy!” he whispered as the five of us walked down the wooded lane toward the millpond. Rumor of the baptism had, however, spread throughout the county, and when we arrived a mob of forty or fifty poor white people—including some pie-faced females in sunbonnets—rimmed the far banks, waiting for the show. When we reached the water’s edge they began to hoot and jeer at us but kept their distance. Brantley shivered with excitement. “Oh Lordy,” he whispered over and over again, “I’m goin’ to be saved!” While my followers looked on from the near bank I waded out with Brantley, fully clothed, to a place in the pond where the water was chest-deep. There I recited the passage The Confessions of Nat Turner
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from Ezekiel about the resurrection of the dry bones: “I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live, and ye shall know that I am the Lord . . .”
I pushed Brantley down. He slid under like a wet sack of beans; after he came up, spluttering and choking, his face took on a look of bliss such as I have rarely seen on any man, of any shade.
“I baptize you,” I said, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
“Oh Lord God Almighty!” Brantley cried. “Saved at last!”
Something struck the back of my head. The white people on the bank had begun to pelt us with stones and sticks from fallen trees. A thick chunk of wood bounced off Brantley’s neck but he did not flinch, aware of nothing but the glory.
“Oh Lord God!” he gasped. “I’m truly saved! Hallelujah!”
Another stone hit me. I immersed myself with a prayer, then rose. Beyond the white faces blooming dimly on the far bank, heat lightning whooshed up in faint green sheets. Dusk had come down like the shadow of a great wing. I felt a sharp premonition of my own death.
“Brantley,” I said as we struggled back through the water toward my followers on the bank, “Brantley, I advise you to leave the county soon, because the white people are going to be destroyed.”
But I’m sure that Brantley heard nothing. “Lordy, Lordy!” he shouted. “Saved at last!”
Toward the latter part of the decade, as I approached my thirtieth year, it was apparent that a measure of prosperity had come back to the region. Not wealth, by any means. Not luxury, not abundance, but a respectable atmosphere of security accompanied by the feeling that no longer were people threatened with starvation. For one thing, the long drought wore itself out, and periods of steady rain allowed the land to be restored to a state of modest fertility. For another, the log turnpike leading up to Petersburg and Richmond had been The Confessions of Nat Turner
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recently improved, and so opened up a market for the bonanza which, as if by remarkable oversight, the local gentry had failed to realize was stored up in their own backyards. This was the estimable brandy distilled from apples growing so plentifully throughout the county. For if the soil of Southampton was utterly wrecked for tobacco and could produce cotton in quantities adequate only for subsistence, a cornucopia of apples ripened on every hand—wild and in cultivated orchards, in bramble-choked groves on dead plantations, by the wayside of each land and road. They grew in all sizes and colors and varieties, and what had once lain in wormy, decaying heaps on the ground were now dumped by the wagonload into the stills which had become each farmer’s most valued asset. There converted into high-quality applejack, the metamorphosed fruit was shipped in barrels to Jerusalem, where groaning carts drawn by mules and oxen hauled it off north to Petersburg and Richmond—hustling, optimistic, pleasure-seeking communities filled with citizens possessed of fat pocketbooks and serious thirsts. Considerable revenue was thus returned to the county, so although it was plain that Southampton would never wax as rich as Nineveh, the region had become, as I say, fairly prosperous, and it was in the midst of this prosperity that I gradually laid my plans for annihilation and escape.
One of the results upon me of this burgeoning affluence was that the professional skill I had gained at Turner’s Mill—and which for so long had lain aslumber amid Moore’s dismal enterprises—became quite an attractive matter to some of the neighboring landowners, especially those already a notch or two higher on the economic ladder. Prosperity fosters expansion, expansion breeds construction—barns, stills, stables, fences, sheds. Once I had detected the brisk new activity going on around me, it did not take me long to begin to energetically promote my talents as a carpenter. I suddenly found myself in great demand. Moore for his part could not have been happier—as hired-out property I became his chief source of income—and only I could have been happier than he, since I was now pretty well shut of his woodpile and his slop buckets and his cotton patch. Life for a time was provisionally tolerable.
In my new routine I helped convert Travis’s barn to a wheel shop (this only a year or so before Moore died and I became Travis’s chattel through the matrimonial arrangement mentioned already); lent my hand to the construction of at least three barns and two stills in the vicinity of Cross Keys; designed and built for Major Ridley near Jerusalem an ingenious arrangement for his privy The Confessions of Nat Turner
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consisting of wooden sluiceways that led from a dammed creek, the pent-up water of which, at the yank of a chain, merrily whisked the product of one’s visit into another stream down below—a triumph of plumbing that earned for me inordinate hurrahs from the Major and a serviceable second-han
d pair of cordovan boots; participated in the building of a new armory in Jerusalem for the Southampton militia (by the purest chance allowing me knowledge of entry to the place—front, back, and side—and to the general location of each gun rack and ammunition store); and spent more days than I can recollect hired out to Mrs. Catherine Whitehead, who, in spite of her son Richard’s continual resentment of my ministerial pretensions, valued my gifts so highly that she was willing to pay Moore, and later Travis, a premium for my services. She had me design a barn for her prize oxen—which I also helped erect—a stable, and a
privy-flusher fed by water from her windmill and based on the same principles as the celebrated mechanism I had put together for Major Ridley. Often too I filled in there as coachman and butler. Mrs. Whitehead was an austere woman, very cool and withdrawn, and she minced few words in dealing with her pet architect. She was, however, completely fair and honest, and brooked no mistreatment of her Negroes. Several times she patted my arm and risked a wan, faraway smile, connoting praise. At last I felt as neutral toward her as I might feel toward a soon-to-be excavated stump.
Yet all through this time I lived as if straddling two worlds of the mind and spirit—a part of me dwelling in the humdrum sphere of daily events and things, of hammer and saw and plane and adze, responding “Yassuh!” with as much cheer as I could muster to some white master’s jibe or sally or observation, playing always the good nigger a little touched in the head with religion but, you know, by dad, a durned black wizard with nails and timber; the other part of me haunted still without ceasing by that forest vision, which as it receded into the past became not less meaningful but swelled in portent from day to day. This part of me fasted and prayed and beseeched the Lord earnestly for revelation, guidance, a further sign. I was in an agony of waiting.
I knew that God had told me what I must do, yet I had no means of deciding how to accomplish my bloody mission, nor where, nor when.
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Then one morning in the late winter of 1829, not through a vision but by a spell of inspiration so beatifically simple that I knew that the Lord must have ordained it, I determined on the how and the where—so that only the when remained.
That day in Mrs. Whitehead’s library, while ostensibly engaged in repairing a table, I happened upon a surveyor’s map of Southampton County and the region lying eastward. I had plenty of time to study the map and several hours later found the occasion to sit down and begin to make a tracing, using a large sheet of clear parchment and Mrs. Whitehead’s best quill pen—the latter borrowed, the first stolen. The map made plain to me what had previously been in my mind only hopeful speculation: a break for freedom, in terms of geography alone, was perfectly feasible. Given the propitious resolution of all the other factors involved, such a break for freedom should meet with every success. It would not be easy. I knew I must consecrate every shred of my intelligence and passion to the fulfillment of these events I was so manifestly called to by God and by destiny.
This afternoon I locked myself in the library. Although Richard was out riding among his parishioners, Mrs. Whitehead was home. Danger. That I might be surprised behind fastened doors and the fact of the ensuing scene ( “What were you doing locked in there like that?” “’Deed, Miss Caty, that ole lock he jest snap shut all by hisself”—her dark suspicion then, doubts, creepy surmise) were chances I was forced to take. As the map took shape beneath my fingers, the details of my grand scheme began to come miraculously clear. I could hardly wait to get off by myself and write it all down.
In a fever, I finished the map and replaced the original in the book where I had found it, then folded the tracing so that it fitted flat against my stomach underneath my shirt and belt band. At last I knelt on the carpet by the window for a while, praying, giving thanks to God for this revelation; finally I arose and unlocked the door and left.
I was crossing the yard toward the groom’s quarters in the stable (a tolerably comfortable room, with fireplace and straw tick, that I usually occupied during my stays at the Whiteheads’) when I heard Miss Caty call me from the side porch. It was the lackluster hazy oppressive weather between winter and spring—damp, leafless, with a raw chill in the air. She stood huddled in her shawl, a gaunt once-pretty white, white female, The Confessions of Nat Turner
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middle-aged, shivering a little, regarding me with her widow’s somber dispirited eyes. Her hair was parted at the middle and fell toward her shoulders in graying ringlets. I was still excited by the map and by my plans, and was vexed at the sight of the woman, who I felt had no right to intrude on my thoughts at such a crucial time. “Yessum?” I said.
“Did you fix the table as I told you?” she asked.
“Yessum.”
“It was Captain Whitehead’s favorite table. He used to write on it.
It kept collapsing no matter how many times I’d try to get it fixed.
Are you sure it won’t break again? I should be able to get a fancy price for it.”
“Yessum.”
“How did you fix it?”
“I put three dowels in it made of oak. Whoever fixed it before used plain old bone glue and some thin wire, so no wonder it broke. Nice walnut table like that, you have to use strong dowels.
It won’t break no more, I can promise you that, Miss Caty.”
She was by no manner the worst of white people, yet for some reason—perhaps only this interruption of my thoughts —my hatred for her now was like a sharp rock in the pit of my stomach. I could barely return her gaze and wondered if somehow she might not be able to detect my hatred, which had begun to pop out on my brow in little pinpoint blisters of sweat.
“Did you get around to the chair yet?” she said.
“No’m,” I replied, “I spent all my time on that table.”
“Well then, tomorrow instead of working with Jack and Andrew on those stall doors you can put the legs back on that chair. Jack is sick anyway. That darky has been sick half the winter.”
Annoyance passed over her face, her lips drew thin. “Also tomorrow—”
“Miss Caty,” I put in, “tomorrow I’m supposed to go back to Mr.
Moore’s. It’s the end of my hire.”
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“The end of your hire?” she exclaimed. “Why, it couldn’t be! I hired you until the eighteenth.”
“Yessum,” I replied, “and today’s that date—the eighteenth.”
“Why, I—” Perplexed, she began to say something, then halted, her voice a sigh. “Oh yes, I reckon you’re right. It is the eighteenth. And you—” Again she paused and then after several moments said: “I wish you didn’t have to go back. You’re the handiest young darky anywhere around. I suppose there’s someone waiting to get you next, as usual.”
“Yessum,” I said, “Marse Tom told me Major Ridley’s fencing in a lot of grass for his new stock and has got me for a fortnight to build fences. Before full spring comes.” I had begun to find it difficult to keep the hatred from quivering in my voice. Why did she have to trespass on my thoughts like this?
“Well,” she sighed, “I certainly wish I could have you for my very own. I’ve offered Mr. Tom Moore a lot of money to buy you but I expect he knows a gold mine when he sees it. It is hard enough to get darkies to work, and I don’t mind saying that you turn out an honest day’s work like no darky I’ve ever come across.”
“I do my best, Miss Caty,” I replied. “Paul said every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor, for we are laborers together with God. I do believe that.”
“Pshaw!” she exclaimed. “Don’t blandish me with Scripture.
Though indeed I’m sure you’re right. I wish I hadn’t mistaken the date,” she went on. “I wanted that chair fixed and I had so hoped you would take the carriage tomorrow afternoon and fetch little Miss Peg from Jerusalem. It’s her vacation. She’s coming by stage from the Sem
inary in Lawrenceville. I so hoped you would be here to fetch her. I cannot trust any of the other darkies with those two horses.”
“Yessum,” I said, “I’m sorry.”
“But I shall have you back before long, you may be sure ofthat.’
She essayed one of her distant, pallid smiles. “I expect you eat considerably better here than you do at Mr. Moore’s, don’t you?”
“Yessum,” I said, speaking the truth.
“Or even at Major Ridley’s, I’ll vow.”
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“Yessum,” I said again, “that’s right.”
“Oh, I wish I hadn’t mistaken that date. Are you sure today is the eighteenth?”
“Yessum, on that calendar in your library.”
“You’re the only darky I would ever trust to drive Miss Margaret or Miss Harriet or Miss Gwen or any of the grandchildren anywhere. I shudder to think of Hubbard or Andrew or Jack driving and that carriage going helter-skelter with all my children up and down the countryside.” She paused for an instant, regarding me closely; I shifted my gaze. Then she went on: “Mr.
Tom Moore’s so stubborn in not selling you to me. Wouldn’t you agree?”
I felt I had to compose some kind of answer. “Well, Miss Caty,” I said, “Marse Tom makes a bit more money hiring me out, I reckon. In the long run.”
“Well, I expect that he will eventually have to bow to the inevitable and sell you to a person with money and position, if not me then somebody else. You’re too bright a darky to live down in that quagmire, as respectable as your owner may be.
How old are you, Nat? About twenty-five?”
“I’m twenty-eight, Miss Caty,” I said.
“Then at your age you should think of yourself as lucky. Consider the young darkies who lack your ability and can do almost nothing except push a hoe or a broom, hardly even that. I expect you will go far. I mean, for instance, you are actually able to comprehend all I am saying to you. Even if you aren’t sold to someone like me, you will be hired out to people like me who value you enough to feed you well and clothe you warmly and take care of you. Certainly you have no reason to fear that you will ever be sold south, even now when there is a humming market in darkies for Alabama and Mississippi, and there are so many extra mouths to feed—”
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