The Confessions of Nat Turner Part 12

There were two other white people in residence: Moore's father, whom the family knew as "Pappy," and cousin Wallace. The old man, who had been born in England, was over a hundred years old, white-bearded, paralyzed, half deaf, blind, and incontinent in both bladder and bowel-a misfortune that became my misfortune too, since in the early days of my stay it fell my lot to clean up the mess he made, which was frequent and systematic.

To my vast relief, on a quiet spring afternoon a year later, he produced a great and final evacuation in his chair, shuddered, and expired.

Wallace was practically a replica of Moore in body and spirit-a k.n.o.bby-limbed benighted illiterate, filthy of tongue, blasphemous, maladroit even at such unskilled tasks as the ploughing and hoeing and wood-chopping which Moore extracted from him as recompense for board and keep. He treated me as Moore did, without any especial rancor but with watchful, guarded, unflagging resentment, and (since he is unimportant to this account) the less said about Wallace the better.

217.

So my years at Moore's, particularly the early years, were far from happy ones but the opportunities I had for contemplation and prayer allowed them to become at least endurable. Most Sat.u.r.days I had several long free hours to myself in Jerusalem.

In all weathers I found the chance to steal away from my cupboard and out in the woods and commune with the Spirit and read from the great prophetic teachings. Those first few years made up a time of waiting and uncertainty, yet I know that even then I had begun to sense the knowledge that I was to be involved in some grand mission, divinely ordained. The words of the Prophet Ezra were of consolation during that strange period; like him I felt that now for a little s.p.a.ce grace hath been shewn now for a little s.p.a.ce grace hath been shewn from the Lord my G.o.d, to give me a little reviving in my bondage from the Lord my G.o.d, to give me a little reviving in my bondage.

And soon I discovered a secluded place in the woods, a mossy knoll encircled by soughing pine trees and cathedral oaks no more than a short walk from the house, hard by a brook that sang and bubbled in the stillness. In this sanctuary I kept a weekly vigil from the very beginning, praying and reading, and after I became a little bit at ease at Moore's and my trips to the woods were more frequent I built a shelter out of pine boughs and used it as my secret tabernacle. Whenever work was slack and the opportunity arose I began occasionally to forsake eating altogether for as long as four or five days at a stretch, having been especially moved and troubled by those lines from Isaiah which go: Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? During these fasts I often grew dizzy and weak, but in the midst of such spells of deprivation a mood of glory stole over me and I was filled with a strange radiance and a languid, blissful peace. The cras.h.i.+ng of deer far off in the woods became an apocalyptic booming in my ears, the bubbling stream was the River Jordan, and the very leaves of the trees seemed to tremble upon some whispering, secret, many-tongued revelation. At these times my heart soared, since I knew that if I continued praying and fasting, biding my days patiently in the Lord's service, I would sooner or later receive a sign and then the outlines of future events-events perhaps terrible and wrapped in danger-would be made plain.

Like mine, Hark's misfortune had been that he was only a small item among a man's total capital, and so he was instantly and easily disposable when the economy foundered. A Negro as 218.

fantastic as Hark could always command a lovely price. Like me, he too had been born and reared on a large plantation-his in Suss.e.x County, which borders on Southampton to the north.

This plantation had been liquidated at about the same year as Turner's Mill, and Hark had been bought by Joseph Travis, who at that time had not developed his wheel-making craft but was still engaged in farming. Hark's former owners, people or monsters named Barnett, proposed to develop a new plantation down in a section of Mississippi where field labor was at that moment abundant and female house labor scarce. And so they took Hark's mother and his two sisters with them and left Hark behind, the money gained from his sale financing the rather difficult and expensive overland trip to the delta. Poor Hark. He was devoted to his mother and his sisters-indeed, he had never spent a day in his life apart from them. Thus began one of a series of bereavements; seven or eight years later he was separated forever by Travis from his wife and his little son.

Hark was never (at least until I was able to bend him to my will) an obstreperous Negro, and for much of the time I knew him I lamented the fact that as with most young slaves brought up as field hands-ignorant, demoralized, cowed by overseers and black drivers, occasionally whipped-the plantation system had leached out of his great and n.o.ble body so much native courage, so much spirit and dignity, that he was left as humble as a spaniel in the face of the white man's presence and authority.

Nonetheless, he contained deep within him the smoldering fire of independence; certainly through my exhortations I was later able to fan it into a terrible blaze. Certainly, too, that fire must have been burning when shortly after his sale to Travis-stunned, confused, heartsick, with no G.o.d to turn to-he decided to run away.

Hark once told me how it all happened. At the Barnett plantation, where life for the field Negroes had been harsh, the matter of running away was of continual interest and concern. All of this was talk, however, since even the stupidest and most foolhardy slave was likely to be intimidated by the prospect of stumbling across the hundreds of miles of wilderness which lay to the north, and knew also that even to attain the free states was no guarantee of refuge: many a Negro had been hustled back into slavery by covetous, sharp-eyed Northern white men. It was all rather hopeless but some had tried and a few had almost succeeded. One of the Barnett Negroes, a clever, older man 219.

named Hannibal, had vowed after a severe beating by the overseer to take no more. He "lit out" one spring night and after a month found himself not far from Was.h.i.+ngton, in the outskirts of the town of Alexandria, where he was taken prisoner by a suspicious citizen with a fowling piece who eventually returned Hannibal to the plantation and, presumably, collected the hundred-dollar reward. It was Hannibal (now a hero of sorts to many of the slaves, though to others a madman) whose advice Hark remembered when he himself became a runaway. Move in the night, sleep by day, follow the North Star, avoid main-traveled roads, avoid dogs. Hannibal's destination had been the Susquehanna River in Maryland. A Quaker missionary, a wandering, queer, distraught, wild-eyed white man (soon chased off the plantation) had once managed to impart this much information to Hannibal's group of berry pickers: after Baltimore follow close by the highway to the north, and at the Susquehanna crossing ask for the Quaker meeting house, where someone was stationed night and day to convey runaways the few miles upriver to Pennsylvania and freedom. This intelligence Hark memorized with care, particularly the all-important name of the river-rather a trick for a field hand's tongue-repeating it over and over in Hannibal's presence until he had it properly, just as he had been told: Squash-honna, Squash-honna, Squash-honna, Squash-honna, Squash-honna Squash-honna.

Hark had no way of knowing that Travis was at heart a more lenient master than Barnett had been. He understood only that he had been separated from all the family he had ever had and from the only home he had ever known. After a week at Travis's his misery and homesickness and his general sense of loss became insupportable. And so one summer night he decided to light out, heading for that Quaker church over two hundred miles away in Maryland which Hannibal had told him about months before. At first it was all very much a kind of lark since stealing away from Travis's was a simple matter: he had only to tiptoe out of the shed in which he was kept after Travis had gone to sleep and-with a flour sack containing some bacon and cornmeal, a jackknife, and flint for starting fires, all stolen, the entire parcel slung over his shoulder on a stick-make his way into the woods. It was easy as it could be. The woods were quiet. There he paused for an hour or so, waiting to see if by any chance Travis might discover his absence and raise an alarm, but no sound came from the house. He crept out along the edge of the trees, took to the road north, and sauntered along in high spirits 220.

beneath a golden moon. The weather was balmy, he made excellent time, and the only eventful moment of that first night came when a dog ran out from a farmhouse, furiously barking, and snapped at his heels. This proved Hannibal correct in his advice about dogs, and caused Hark to resolve that in the future he would give all dwellings wide berth, even if it meant losing hours by moving to the woods. He met no one on the road, and as the agreeable night pa.s.sed he began to feel a tingling sense of jubilation: running away seemed to be no great undertaking after all. When dawn came he knew he had made good progress-though how far he had traveled he could not tell, lacking any notion of the size of a mile-and with the sound of roosters crowing in some distant barnyard he fell asleep on the ground in a stand of beech trees, well away from the road.

Just before noon he was aroused by the sound of dogs barking to the south, a quavering chorus of yelps and frantic howls which made him sit up in terror. Surely they were after him! His first impulse was to climb a tree but he quickly lost heart for this endeavor because of his fear of heights. Instead he crept into a blackberry thicket and peeked out at the road. Two s...o...b..ring bloodhounds followed by four men on horseback came out of the distance in a cloud of dust, the men's faces each set in a blue-eyed, grim, avenging look of outrage that made Hark certain that he was the object of their pursuit; he s.h.i.+vered in fright and hid his head amid the black-berries, but to his amazement and relief the baying and yelping diminished up the road, along with the fading clatter of hooves. After a bit all was still. Hark crouched in the blackberry patch until late afternoon. When dusk began to fall he built a fire, cooking over it a little bacon and some hoecake he made with water from a stream, and upon the onset of darkness, resumed his journey north.

His difficulties about finding the way began that night and plagued him all the long hours of his flight into freedom. By notches cut with his knife on a small stick each morning, he calculated (or it was calculated for him by someone who could count) the trip as having lasted six weeks. Hannibal had counseled two guides for the trip: the North Star and the great plank and log turnpike leading up through Petersburg, Richmond, Was.h.i.+ngton, and Baltimore. The names of these towns Hark too had memorized approximately and in sequence, since Hannibal had pointed out that each place would serve as a milestone of one's progress; also, in the event that one got lost, 221.

such names would be useful in asking directions from some trustworthy-looking Negro along the route. By remaining close to the turnpike-although taking care to stay out of sight-one could use the road as a kind of unvarying arrow pointing north and regard each successive town as a marker of one's forward course on the journey toward the free states. The trouble with this scheme, as Hark quickly discovered, was that it made no provision for the numberless side routes and forks which branched off the turnpike and which could lead a confused stranger into all manner of weird directions, especially on a dark night. The North Star was supposed to compensate for this and Hark found it valuable, but on overcast evenings or in those patches of fog which were so frequent along swampy ground, this celestial beacon was of no more use to him than the crudely painted direction signs he was unable to read. So the darkness enfolded him in its embrace and he lost the road as a guide. That second night, as for so many succeeding nights, he made no progress at all but was forced to stay in the woods until dawn, when he began to cautiously reconnoiter and found the route-a log road in daytime busy with pa.s.sing farm wagons and carts and humming with danger.

Hark had many adventures along the way. His bacon and cornmeal ran out quickly but of all his problems food was the least pressing. A runaway was forced to live off the land, and Hark like most plantation Negroes was a resourceful thief. Only rarely was he out of sight of some habitation or other and these places yielded up an abundance of fruit and vegetables, ducks, geese, chickens-once even a pig. Two or three times, skirting a farm or plantation, he imposed upon the hospitality of friendly Negroes, whom he would hail at twilight from the trees and who would spirit him a piece of bacon or some boiled collard greens or a pan full of grits. But his great hulking prowling form made him conspicuous. He was rightly fearful of having his presence known to anyone, black or white, and so he soon began keeping strictly to himself. He even gave up requests for simple directions of the Negroes: they seemed to grow more ignorant as he progressed north and filled his ears with such an incoherent rigmarole of disaways and dataways that he turned from them in perplexity and disgust.

Hark's spirit took wing when at sunrise, a week or so after leaving Travis's, he found himself in the wooded outskirts of what, according to Hannibal's schedule, would be Petersburg.

222.

Having never seen a town of any any size or description, he was flabbergasted by the number of houses and stores and the commotion and colorful stir of people, wagons, and carriages in the streets. To pa.s.s around the town without being seen was something of a problem but he managed it that night, after sleeping most of the day in a nearby pine grove. He had to swim a small river in the early darkness, paddling with one hand and holding his clothes and his sack in the other. But he moved without detection in a half-circle about the town and pushed on north somewhat regretfully, since he had been able to pluck from some back porch a gallon of b.u.t.termilk in a wooden cask and several excellent peach pies. That night in a wild rainstorm he got hopelessly lost and to his dismay discovered when morning came that he had been walking east toward the sunrise, to G.o.d knows where. It was bleak, barren pine country, almost unpopulated, filled with lonely prospects of eroded red earth. The log road, fallen into sawdust, petered out and led nowhere. But the next night Hark retraced his steps and soon had negotiated the short leg of his journey to Richmond-like Petersburg, a lively community with a cedarwood bridge leading to it over a river and abustle with more black and white people than he had ever imagined existed. Indeed, from his pinewoods view down on the town he saw so many Negroes moving in and out and across the bridge-some of these doubtless free, others on pa.s.ses from nearby farms-that he was almost emboldened to mingle among them and see the city, taking a chance that he might not be challenged by a suspicious white man. Prudence won out, however, and he slept through the day. He swam across the river after nightfall and stole past the dark shuttered houses as he had at Petersburg, leaving Richmond like that other town poorer by a pie or two. size or description, he was flabbergasted by the number of houses and stores and the commotion and colorful stir of people, wagons, and carriages in the streets. To pa.s.s around the town without being seen was something of a problem but he managed it that night, after sleeping most of the day in a nearby pine grove. He had to swim a small river in the early darkness, paddling with one hand and holding his clothes and his sack in the other. But he moved without detection in a half-circle about the town and pushed on north somewhat regretfully, since he had been able to pluck from some back porch a gallon of b.u.t.termilk in a wooden cask and several excellent peach pies. That night in a wild rainstorm he got hopelessly lost and to his dismay discovered when morning came that he had been walking east toward the sunrise, to G.o.d knows where. It was bleak, barren pine country, almost unpopulated, filled with lonely prospects of eroded red earth. The log road, fallen into sawdust, petered out and led nowhere. But the next night Hark retraced his steps and soon had negotiated the short leg of his journey to Richmond-like Petersburg, a lively community with a cedarwood bridge leading to it over a river and abustle with more black and white people than he had ever imagined existed. Indeed, from his pinewoods view down on the town he saw so many Negroes moving in and out and across the bridge-some of these doubtless free, others on pa.s.ses from nearby farms-that he was almost emboldened to mingle among them and see the city, taking a chance that he might not be challenged by a suspicious white man. Prudence won out, however, and he slept through the day. He swam across the river after nightfall and stole past the dark shuttered houses as he had at Petersburg, leaving Richmond like that other town poorer by a pie or two.

And so he made his way on north through the dark nights, sometimes losing the road so completely that he was forced to backtrack for several days until he regained the route. His shoes wore out and collapsed and for two nights he walked close to the road on bare feet. Finally one morning he entered the open door of a farmhouse while its people were in the fields and made off with a pair of patent leather boots so tight that he had to cut holes for the toes. Thus shod, he pushed through the gloomy woods toward Was.h.i.+ngton. It must have been August by now and the chiggers and sweat flies and the mosquitoes were out in full swarm. Some days on Hark's pineneedle bed were almost impossible for sleep. Thunderstorms rumbling out of the west drenched him and froze him and scared him half out of his wits.

223.

He lost sight of the North Star more times then he could count.

Forks and turnings confused him. Moonless nights caused him to stray away from the road and lose himself in a bog or thicket where owls hooted and branches crackled and the water moccasins thrashed drowsily in brackish pools. On such nights Hark's misery and loneliness seemed more than he could bear.

Twice he came close to being caught, the first occasion somewhere just south of Was.h.i.+ngton when, traversing the edge of a cornfield before nightfall, he nearly stepped on a white man who happened at that moment to be defecating in the bushes.

Hark ran, the man pulled up his pants, yelled and gave chase, but Hark quickly outstripped him. That night, though, he heard dogs baying as if in pursuit and for one time in his life fought down his fear of high places and spent the hours perched on the limb of a big maple tree while the dogs howled and moaned in the distance. His other close call came between what must have been Was.h.i.+ngton and Baltimore, when he was shocked out of his sleep underneath a hedge to find himself in the midst of a fox hunt. The great bodies of horses hurtled over him as if in some nightmare and their hooves spattered his face with wet stinging little b.u.t.tons of earth. Crouching on his elbows and knees to protect himself, Hark thought the end had come when a red-jacketed horseman reined in his mount and asked curtly what a strange n.i.g.g.e.r was doing in such a dumb position-obtaining in reply the statement that the n.i.g.g.e.r was praying-and believed it a miracle when the man said nothing but merely galloped off in the morning mists.

He had been told that Maryland was a slave state, but one morning when he happened upon a town which could only have been Baltimore he decided to risk exposure by creeping out to the edge of the hayfield in which he had concealed himself and calling in a furtive voice to a Negro man strolling toward the city along the log road. "Squash-honna," Hark said. "Whichaway to de Squash-honna?" But the Negro, a yellow loose-limbed field hand, only gazed back at Hark as if he were crazy and continued up the road with quickening pace. Undaunted, Hark resumed the journey with growing confidence that soon it would all be over.

Perhaps there were five more nights of walking when at last, early one morning, Hark was aware that he was no longer in the woods. Here in the gathering light the trees gave way to a gra.s.sy plain which seemed to slope down, ever so gently, toward a stand of cattails and marsh gra.s.s rustling in the morning breeze.

The wind tasted of salt, exciting Hark and making him press forward eagerly across the savanna-like plain. He strode boldly 224.

through the marsh, ankle-deep in water and mud, and finally with pounding heart attained a glistening beach unbelievably pure and clean and thick with sand. Beyond lay the river, so wide here that Hark could barely see across it, a majestic expanse of blue water flecked with whitecaps blown up by a southerly wind. For long minutes he stood there marveling at the sight, watching the waves lapping at the driftwood on the sh.o.r.e. Fishnets hung from stakes in the water, and far out a boat with white sails bellying moved serenely toward the north-the first sailboat Hark had ever seen. In his patent leather boots, now split beyond recognition, he walked up the beach a short distance and presently he spied a skinny little Negro man sitting on the edge of a dilapidated rowboat drawn up against the sh.o.r.e. This close to freedom, Hark decided that he could at last hazard a direct inquiry, and so he approached the Negro confidently.

"Say, man," said Hark, remembering the question he was supposed to ask. "whar de Quakah meetin' house?"

The Negro gazed back at him through oval spectacles on wire rims-the only pair of gla.s.ses Hark had ever seen on a black man. He had a friendly little monkey's face with smallpox scars all over it and a crown of grizzled hair s.h.i.+ning with pig grease. He said nothing for quite some time, then he declared: "My, you is some big n.i.g.g.e.r boy. How old is you, sonny?"

"I'se nineteen," Hark replied.

"You bond or free?"

"I'se bond," said Hark. "I done run off. Whar de Quakah meetin'

house?"

The Negro's eyes remained twinkling and amiable behind his spectacles. Then he said again: "You is some big big n.i.g.g.e.r boy. n.i.g.g.e.r boy.

What yo' name, sonny?"

"I'se called Hark. Was Hark Barnett. Now Hark Travis."

"Well, Hark," the man said, rising from his perch on the rowboat, "you jes' wait right here and I'll go see about dat meetin' house.

You jes' set right here," he went on, placing a brotherly hand on Hark's arm and urging him down to a seat on the edge of the rowboat. "You has had some some kind of time but now it's all over with," he said in a kindly voice. "You jes' set right there while I go see about dat meetin' house. You jes' set right there and rest The Confessions of Nat Turner kind of time but now it's all over with," he said in a kindly voice. "You jes' set right there while I go see about dat meetin' house. You jes' set right there and rest 225.

you'self and we'll take care of dat meetin' house." Then he hurried up the beach and disappeared behind a copse of small stunted trees.

Gratified and relieved to be at last so close to the end of his quest, Hark sat there on the rowboat for a long moment, contemplating the blue windy sweep of the river, more grand and awesome than anything he had ever seen in his life. Soon a lazy, pleasant drowsiness overtook him, and his eyelids became heavy, and he stretched out on the sand in the warm sun and went to sleep.

Then he heard a sudden voice and he awoke in terror to see a white man standing over him with a musket, hammer c.o.c.ked, ready to shoot.

"One move and I'll blow your head off," said the white man. "Tie him up, Samson."

It was not so much that Samson, one of his own kind-the little Negro with the gla.s.ses-had betrayed him which grieved Hark in later times, although that was bad enough. It was that he had really journeyed to the ends of the earth to get nowhere. For within three days he was back with Travis (who had liberally stickered the countryside with posters); he had walked those six weeks in circles, in zigzags, in looping spirals, never once traveling more than forty miles from home. The simple truth of the matter is that Hark, born and raised in the plantation's abyssal and aching night, had no more comprehension of the vastness of the world than a baby in a cradle. There was no way for him to know about cities, he had never even seen a hamlet; and thus he may be excused for not perceiving that "Richmond"

and "Was.h.i.+ngton" and "Baltimore" were in truth any of a dozen nondescript little villages of the Tidewater-Jerusalem, Drewrysville, Smithfield-and that the n.o.ble watercourse upon whose sh.o.r.e he stood with such trust and hope and joy was not "the Squash-honna" but that ancient mother-river of slavery, the James.

Since the practice was common in the region to hire out slaves from one farm to another, it was only natural that Hark's and my paths should cross not long following my sale to Moore and after Hark had been returned to Travis. Negroes were hired out for numerous jobs-plowing, chopping weeds, clearing land, helping to drain swamps or build fences, dozens of other ch.o.r.es-and if 226.

memory serves me right I first encountered Hark when he moved in to share my cupboard after Moore had borrowed him from Travis for a few weeks of wood-chopping. At any rate, we quickly became fast and even (when the pressures of our strange existence permitted) inseparable friends. At that time I had begun to retreat deeply into myself, into the vivid, swarming world of contemplation; a sense of dull revulsion bordering on an almost unbearable hatred for white people (I can only describe it as a kind of murky cloud which no longer allowed me to look directly at white faces but to perceive them sideways, as distant blurs, a m.u.f.fling cloud of cotton which also prevented me from hearing any longer their voices save for the moments when I was given a command or was drawn to what they said by some distinct peculiarity of occasion or circ.u.mstance) had commenced to dominate my private mood, and since for a long stretch I was Moore's solitary Negro and had only white faces to consider, I found this situation gloomy and distracting. Hark's abrupt black presence helped to remedy this: his splendid good nature, his high spirits, his even-tempered and humorous acceptance of the absurd and, one might add, the terrifying-all of these things in Hark cheered me, easing my loneliness and causing me to feel that I had found a brother. Later of course, when I became Travis's property, Hark and I became as close as two good friends could ever be. But even before then, even when I was not working for Travis or Hark for Moore, the proximity of the two farms allowed us to go fis.h.i.+ng together and to set up some traplines for rabbits and muskrat and to take our ease in the deep woods on a Sunday afternoon with a jug of sweet cider and a chicken Hark had stolen, juicily broiled over a sa.s.safras fire.

Now late in 1825 what began as a simple dry spell developed into a searing drought that lasted far into the next year. Winter brought neither rain nor snow, and so little moisture fell during the springtime that the earth crumbled and turned to dust beneath the blade of the plow. Many wells ran dry that summer, forcing people to drink from muddy streams reduced to trickling rivulets. By early August food had become a problem since the vegetables planted in the spring yielded nothing or grew up in leafless stalks; and the cornfields, ordinarily green and luxuriant in rows higher than a man, displayed hardly anything but withered little shoots that were quickly eaten up by the rabbits.

Most of the white people had laid up cellar stores of potatoes and apples from previous seasons, or had small quant.i.ties of pickled fruits, so there was no risk of actual famine, at least imminently; besides, supplies of n.i.g.g.e.r food like salt pork and 227.

cornmeal still existed in moderate amounts, and as a last resort a white man could always partake of these victuals, allowing his palate to experience what every slave had endured for a lifetime.

But the free Negroes of the region were not so lucky. Food for them was bitterly scarce. They had no money to buy pork and meal from the white people, who in any case, mildly panicked, had h.o.a.rded such provisions for their slaves or themselves, and the little gardens of sweet potatoes and kale and cowpeas upon which they depended for sustenance year after year brought forth nothing. By late summer the dark rumor pa.s.sed among the slaves that a number of the free Negroes in the country were starving.

For some reason I date the events of 1831 from this summer, five years earlier to the very month. I say this because I had my first vision then, the first intimation of my b.l.o.o.d.y mission, and these were both somehow intricately bound up with the drought and the fires. For on account of the dryness, brushfires had burned unchecked all summer throughout the woods and the swamps and the abandoned fields of the ruined plantations.

They were all distant fires-Moore's wood lot was not threatened-but the smell of their burning was constantly in the air. In the old days, when dwellings might have been in danger, white men with their slaves would have gone out and fought these fires with shovel and ax, setting backfires and creating long swaths of cleared land as defense against the encroaching flames. But now most of that remote land was in spindly second-growth timber and great tracts of bramble-choked red earth gone fallow and worthless, and thus the fires smoldered night and day, filling the air with a perpetual haze and the scorched bittersweet odor of burnt undergrowth and charred pine. At times, after a spell of feeble rain, this haze would disappear and the sunlight would become briefly clean, radiant; shortly thereafter the drought would set in again, interrupted by vagrant thunderstorms more wind and fury than rain, and the sawdust mist would begin its pungent domination of the air, causing the stars at night to lose their glitter and the sun to move day after day like a dulled round s.h.i.+mmering ember across the smoky sky. During that summer I commenced to be touched by a chill, a feeling of sickness, fright, an apprehension-as if these signs in the heavens might portend some great happening far more searing and deadly than the fires that were their earthly origin. In the woods I prayed often and searched ceaselessly in 228.

my Bible for some key, brooding long upon the Prophet Joel, who spoke of how the sun and the moon shall be darkened and the sun and the moon shall be darkened and the stars shall withdraw their s.h.i.+ning the stars shall withdraw their s.h.i.+ning, and whose spirit-like mine now, stirred, swept as if by hot winds, trembling upon discovery-was so constantly shaken with premonitions and auguries of a terrible war.

Then late that summer I had the opportunity to go on a five-day fast. Hark and I had together chopped several wagonloads of wood, because of the drought there was nothing to be done in the fields; and so Moore gave us five days of absence-a fairly common dispensation during August. Later we would cart the wood into Jerusalem. Having just stolen a plump little shoat from the Francis farm nearby, Hark declared that he would have nothing to do with fasting himself. But he said he was eager to accompany me to the woods and hoped that the odor of barbecued pork would not prove too much of a trial for my spirit or stomach. I a.s.sented to his company, adding only that he must let me have time for prayer and meditation, and to this he was cheerfully agreeable: he knew the fis.h.i.+ng was good along the little stream I had discovered and he said that while I prayed he'd catch a mess of ba.s.s. Thus we pa.s.sed the long hours-I secluded within my little thicket of trees, fasting and praying and reading from Isaiah while Hark splashed happily in the distance and warbled to himself or went off for hours in search of wild grapes and blackberries. One night as we lay beneath the smoky stars Hark spoke of his disappointment with G.o.d. "Hit do seem to me, Nat," he said in a measured voice, "dat de Lawd sho must be a white man. On'y a G.o.d dat was white could figger out how to make n.i.g.g.e.rs so lonesome." He paused, then said: "On'y maybe he's a big black driver. An' if de Lawd is black he sho is de meanest black n.i.g.g.e.r bastid ever was born." I was too tired, too drained of strength, to try to answer.

On the morning of the fifth day I awoke feeling sickly and strange, with an aching emptiness at the pit of my belly and a giddiness swirling about in my brain. Never had a fast affected me with such weakness. It had grown wickedly hot. Smoke from the distant wildfires hung sulphurous in the air, so thick that the myriad s.h.i.+fting piney motes of it were nearly visible like dust, all but obliterating the round unwinking eye of a malign and yellow sun. Tree frogs in the oaks and pines joined with great legions of cicadas to set up an ominous shrilling, and my eardrums throbbed at the demented choir. I felt too exhausted to rise from 229.

my pine-needle bed and so stayed there reading and praying as the hot morning lengthened. When Hark came up from the creek I bade him go back to the house since I wanted to remain alone.

He was reluctant to leave. He tried to force me to eat and said I looked like a black ha'nt and clucked over me and fussed; but he finally did go, looking morose and apprehensive. After he had left I must have dropped off again into a deep slumber, for when I awoke I had lost all sense of time: great oily clouds of smoke coursed across the heavens and the sun had disappeared as if behind a rack of flaxen haze, leaving me with no notion of the hour of day. A languor like the onset of death had begun to invade my bones, an uncontrollable trembling seized my limbs; it was as if my spirit had slithered out of my body, letting the flesh sink away like a crumpled rag on the ground, all but lifeless, ready to be s.h.i.+vered, flayed, blown apart by divine remorseless winds.

"Lord," I said aloud, "give me a sign. Give me the first sign."

I rose to my feet with infinite difficulty and la.s.situde, clutching at a tree trunk, but hoisted myself no more than a foot or so from the ground when the sky began to whirl and spots of fire like minute blossoms danced before my eyes. Suddenly a calamitous roaring sound filled the heavens, touching me with awe and fright, and I slid to the earth again. As I did so, lifting my gaze upward, it was plain that a vast rent appeared in the boiling clouds above the treetops. I had become drenched in sweat and the droplets swarmed in my eyes yet I was unable to turn away from the great fissure yawning in the sky, seeming to throb now in rhythm to the roaring noise overwhelming all, drowning out even the shrilling forest din. Then swiftly in the very midst of the rent in the clouds I saw a black angel clothed in black armor with black wings outspread from east to west; gigantic, hovering, he spoke in a thunderous voice louder than anything I had ever heard: "Fear G.o.d and give glory to Him for the hour of His judgment is come, and wors.h.i.+p Him that made heaven and earth judgment is come, and wors.h.i.+p Him that made heaven and earth and the sea and the fountains of waters and the sea and the fountains of waters." Then there appeared in the midst of the rent in the clouds another angel, also black, armored like the first, and his wings too compa.s.sed the heavens from east to west as he called out: "If any man wors.h.i.+p the beast and his image and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his and his image and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of G.o.d, and hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of G.o.d, and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever and ever."

230.

I started to cry out in terror, but at this moment the second black angel seemed to pour back into the clouds, faded, vanished, and in his place came still another angel-this angel white yet strangely faceless and resembling no living white being I had ever known. Silent, in glittering silver armor, he smote the remaining black angel with his sword, yet as in a dream I saw the sword noiselessly shatter and break in two; now the black angel raised his s.h.i.+eld to face down his white foe, and the two spirits were locked in celestial battle high above the forest. The sun suddenly became dark and the blood ran in streams against the churning firmament. For a long time, or no time-what time?-the two angels struggled on high amid the blood-streaked billows and the noise of their battle mingled with the roaring sound within my senses like a hot wind until, half fainting, I felt as if I were about to be blown heavenward like a twig. Yet so quickly that it seemed but a heartbeat in s.p.a.ce, the white angel was vanquished and his body was cast down through the outermost edges of the sky. Still I gazed upward where the black angel rode triumphant among the clouds, saying aloud now, and to me: "Wherefore didst thou marvel? These shall make war with the Lamb and the Lamb shall overcome shall make war with the Lamb and the Lamb shall overcome them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and they that are them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful. Such is your luck, with him are called, and chosen, and faithful. Such is your luck, such you are called to see, and let it come rough or smooth you such you are called to see, and let it come rough or smooth you must surely bear it." must surely bear it."

Instantly then the black angel was swallowed up into the empyrean and the great rent in the clouds melted at the edges and became one, leaving the sky murky and sulphurous as it had been before. An odor of burnt pine scorched and seared my nostrils, I felt surrounded by the flames of h.e.l.l. I pitched forward on my hands and knees and vomited into the pine needles, vomiting without issue, retching in prolonged pained spasms that brought up only spittle and green strings of bile. Sparks as if from some satanic forge blew in endless windrows before my eyes, a million million pinp.r.i.c.ks of catastrophic light.

"Lord," I whispered, "hast Thou truly called me to this?"

There was no answer, no answer at all save the answer in my brain: This is the fast that I have chosen, to loose the bonds of This is the fast that I have chosen, to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke free, and that ye break every yoke.

I might not have interpreted such a vision as a mandate to destroy all the white people had there not taken place soon after 231.

this, and in quick order, a couple of ugly events which had the effect of further alienating me from white men and consolidating in me the hatred of which I have already spoken. My memory of these events begins shortly after I left the woods. I did not recover from my fast as readily as I had at other times. I was left feeling vacant and dizzy, with a continuing weakness which even ample portions from the leftovers of Hark's barbecued pig could not dispel; nor was I strengthened by a jar of preserved plums which he had stolen, and my la.s.situde hung on along with a feeling of somber melancholy, and I returned to Moore's the next morning with aches and agues running up and down my limbs and with the recollection of my terrible vision lurking at the back of my brain like some unshakable grief. Early as it was, the heat from the sun, trapped beneath a blanket of haze, had become almost intolerable. Even the cur dogs in Moore's barnyard sensed something gone wrong in the atmosphere; they snuffled and whimpered in their limitless misery, and the pigs lay snout-deep amid a stinking wallow, while the chickens squatted inert like swollen feather dusters in the steaming pen. Upon mounds of wet manure blowflies in mult.i.tudes greenly festered and buzzed. The farm smelled oppressively of slops and offal. A scene such as this, as I approached it, seemed timeless in its air of desolation; I thought of a hateful encampment of lepers in Judea. The lopsided weatherworn farmhouse stood baking in the sun, and when from within I heard a childish voice, Putnam's, call out, "Dad! The n.i.g.g.e.r's back from the woods!" I knew I was truly back.

I could hear Hark in the barn with the mules. The oxen that Moore once owned he had replaced with mules, partially because mules-unlike oxen and certainly horses-would sustain almost any punishment handed out by Negroes, a people not notably sweet-natured around domestic animals. (Once I overheard Ma.r.s.e Samuel lament to a gentleman visitor: "I do not know why my Negroes make such wretched husbandmen of horses and cattle." But I I knew why: what else but a poor dumb beast could a Negro mistreat and by mistreating feel superior to?) Even Hark for all his tender spirit was brutal with farm stock, and as I came near the fence I heard his voice in the barn, loud and furious: "G.o.d dang yo' dumb mule a.s.ses! I gwine knock de livin' knew why: what else but a poor dumb beast could a Negro mistreat and by mistreating feel superior to?) Even Hark for all his tender spirit was brutal with farm stock, and as I came near the fence I heard his voice in the barn, loud and furious: "G.o.d dang yo' dumb mule a.s.ses! I gwine knock de livin' mule s.h.i.+t mule s.h.i.+t clean on out'n you!" He was harnessing a team of four to the wagons-two huge vehicles known as dray carts, linked together by a tongue-and this I knew meant I had returned just in time, for like Hark, I would be needed to ride into Jerusalem and spend a sweaty two days delivering and The Confessions of Nat Turner clean on out'n you!" He was harnessing a team of four to the wagons-two huge vehicles known as dray carts, linked together by a tongue-and this I knew meant I had returned just in time, for like Hark, I would be needed to ride into Jerusalem and spend a sweaty two days delivering and 232.

unloading a small mountain of wood.

As we started out toward town-Moore and Wallace on the seat together in the lead wagon, Hark and I behind sprawled on the great pile of lightwood logs, the timber alive with ants and pine-smelling in the heat-Moore essayed an attempt at some humor involving me. "G.o.d durn if hit don't rain soon, Wallace," he said, "I'm goin' to git the preacher back there to bring me to religion and learn me to pray and such all. G.o.d durn sweet corn in Sarah's lot, I done took a look this mornin' and them ears ain't no bigger than a puppy dog's peter. How 'bout it, preacher," he called back to me, "how 'bout askin' the Lord to let loose a whole lot of water? Lemme suck on some of that lightnin', Wallace."

The cousin handed him a jug and for a moment Moore fell silent.

"How 'bout it, preacher," he said again, with a belch, "how 'bout rattlin' off a special prayer and tell the Lord to unplug his a.s.shole and git the crops growin' down here."

Wallace guffawed and I replied in tones ingratiating, ministerial-the accommodating comic n.i.g.g.e.r: "Ya.s.suh, Ma.r.s.e Tom, I sure will do that. I sure will offer up a nice prayer for rain."

But although my voice was compliant and good-natured it took all the self-restraint I had not to retort with something raw and surly, dangerously more than insolent; a quick flash of rage, blood-red, bloomed behind my eyes, and for an instant my hand tightened on a log and I measured the s.p.a.ce between it and the back of Moore's s.h.a.ggy dirt-crusted red neck, my arm tensed as if to knock the little white weevil from his perch. Instantly then the rage vanished and I fell back into my thoughts, not speaking to Hark, who presently reached for a banjo he had made out of fence wire and some pine strips and began to plunk out the lonesome strains of one of the three tunes he knew-an old plantation song called "Sweet Woman Gone." I still felt sick and shaken and a weariness was in my bones. With the memory of my vision lingering in the recesses of my mind, it seemed that the visible world around me had changed, or was changing: the parched fields with their blighted vegetation and the wood lots on either side painted like the fields with dust, now utterly windless and still, drooping near death with yellowing leaves, and over all the cloud of smoke from remote fires burning unbridled beneath no man's eyes or dominion-all of these combined with my hangdog mood to make me feel that I had been transported to another place and time, and the bitter taste of dust on my lips caused me to wonder if this countryside might not in a strange manner resemble Israel in the days of Elias, and this barren road 233.

the way to some place like Jerusalem. I shut my eyes and drowsed against the logs while Hank softly sang and the words of "Sweet Woman Gone" invaded my dreaming, unutterably sorrowful and lonesome; then I sharply awoke to a low moaning sound from the side of the road and to the accents of my own troubled voice whispering in my brain: But you are going to But you are going to Jerusalem Jerusalem.

My eyes opened upon a strange and disturbing sight. Back from the road stood a tumbledown house which in previous trips I had barely noticed: nothing more than a hovel constructed of rough pine logs, windowless, half caved in, it was the home of a dest.i.tute free Negro named Isham and his family. I knew very little about this Negro, indeed, had laid eyes on him only once-when Moore had hired him one morning and within short hours had sent him packing, the miserable Isham being possessed of some deep indwelling affliction (doubtless caused by a long-time insufficiency of food) that turned his frail limbs into quivering weak pipestems after no more than five minutes of labor with the broadax. He had a family of eight to support-a wife and children all under twelve-and in easier times he managed barely to survive through his pitiful efforts at work and by tending a little garden, the seeds and seedlings for which he obtained through the good will of nearby white men more charitable than my present owner. Now, however, in this time of perilous drought it was quickly apparent that Isham dwelt close to the brink, for around the shanty in its sunbaked clearing where once had grown corn and peas and collards and sweet potatoes all was withered and shrunken and the rows of vegetables lay blasted as if devoured by wildfire. Three or four children-naked, the ribs and bones showing in whitish k.n.o.bs beneath their skin-fidgeted spiritlessly around the crumbling doorstep. I heard the soft plaintive moaning sound at the roadside and gazed down and saw squatting there Isham's wife, bony and haggard, gently rocking in her arms the fleshless black little body of a child who appeared to be close to death.

I had only a glimpse of the child-a limp, shapeless tiny thing like a bundle of twigs. The mother cradled it close, with infinite and patient grief, pressing it next to her fallen b.r.e.a.s.t.s as if by that last and despairing gesture she might offer it a sustenance denied in life. She did not raise her eyes as we pa.s.sed. Hark had ceased his tune and I looked at him as he too caught sight of the child; then I turned and glanced at Moore. He had briefly halted the team. His little puckered face had the sudden aspect of a man 234.

overcome by revulsion-revulsion and shame-and instantly turned away. In past time he had shown no charity to Isham at all; unlike one or two of the other white men in the vicinity-sorely beset themselves-who had nonetheless helped Isham by a little cornmeal, some preserves, or a pound of fatback, Moore had parted with nothing, turning Isham out after his brief stint of work without paying him the few cents which was his due, and it was plain now that the sight of the dying child had caused even his adamantine heart to be smitten by guilt.

Moore gave the lead mule a stroke with his whip, but just as he did so a gaunt Negro man appeared at the side of the team and yanked at the traces, causing the wagon to stop its lurching forward movement. This Negro I saw was none other than Isham-a sharp-faced, brown, hawk-nosed man in his forties with bald ringworm patches in his hair and with eyes ravaged and l.u.s.terless, filmed over with aching hunger. And immediately I sensed madness roving through his soul. "Ho, white man!" he said to Moore in a garbled, crazy voice. "You isn't give Isham ary bit to eat! Not ary bit! Now Isham got a dead chile! You is a white f.u.c.kah! Das all you is, white man! You is a sonab.i.t.c.hin'

c.u.n.tlappin' f.u.c.kah! What you gwine do 'bout some dead baby now, white f.u.c.kah?"

Both Moore and his cousin gazed down at Isham as if dumbstruck. Never in their lives, I am sure, had they been addressed in such a fas.h.i.+on by a Negro, bond or free, and the words which a.s.sailed them like a bullwhip left them with jaws hanging slack, breathless, as if they had found themselves in some sudden limbo between outrage and incredulity. Nor had I ever heard raw hatred like this on a Negro's lips, and when I glanced at Hark, I saw that his eyes too were bright with amazement.

"White man eat!" Isham said, still clinging to the traces. "White man eat! n.i.g.g.e.r baby she stahve! How come dat 'plies, white f.u.c.kah? How come dat 'plies dat white man eat bacon, eat peas, eat grits? How come dat 'plies like dat an' li'l n.i.g.g.e.r baby ain't got ary bit? How come dat 'plies, white c.u.n.tlappin' f.u.c.kah?"

Trembling, the Negro sought to spit on Moore but seemed disadvantaged by the intervening height and distance and by the fact that he could bring up no spit; his mouth made a frustrated smacking noise, and again he tried in vain, smacking-a defeated effort awful to watch. "Whar de twenny-fi' cents you owes me?" he shouted in his bafflement and rage.

235.

But now Moore did a curious thing. He did not do what a few years of proximity to such an impa.s.sioned n.i.g.g.e.r-hater made me think he would do: he did not strike Isham with his whip nor shout something back nor clout him on the side of the head with his boot. What he did was to turn toadstool-white and in a near-frenzy give the lead mule a vicious, quick lash which started the wagon to rumbling swiftly forward, tearing the mules' harness from Isham's hands. And as he did this and as we moved ahead as fast as the wagon's ponderous bulk would allow, I realized that Isham's unbelievable words had at first thrust Moore into a strange new world of consciousness which lacked a name-so strange an emotion indeed that a long moment must have pa.s.sed while voice called to voice across the squalid abysm inside his skull and finally named it: Terror. Furiously he lashed the beasts and the brindle wheel-mule gave a tormented heehaw heehaw that echoed back from the pines like crackbrained laughter. that echoed back from the pines like crackbrained laughter.

I learned later that after the drought had broken within a few months, Isham and his family somehow survived their plight, having been restored from a state of famine to the mere chronic dest.i.tution that was their portion in life. But that is another matter.

Now such an event along the road on this ominous morning, seen through the prism of my mind's already haunted vision, forced me to realize with an intensity I had never known before that, chattel or unchained, slave or free, people whose skins were black would never find true liberty- never never, never so long as men like Moore dwelt on G.o.d's earth. Yet I had seen Moore's terror and his startled insect-twitch, a pockmarked white runt flayed into panic by a famished Negro so drained of life's juices that he lacked even the spittle to spit. This terror was from that instant memorialized in my brain as unshakably as there was engrafted upon my heart the hopeless and proud and unrelenting fury of Isham-he who as the wagon fled him through the haze shouted at Moore in an ever-dimming voice, "Pig s.h.i.+t! Some-day n.i.g.g.e.r eat meat, white man eat pig s.h.i.+t!" and seemed in his receding gaunt contour as majestic as a foul-tongued John the Baptist howling in the wilderness. Some-day n.i.g.g.e.r eat meat, white man eat pig s.h.i.+t!" and seemed in his receding gaunt contour as majestic as a foul-tongued John the Baptist howling in the wilderness.

O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come wrath to come?

I think it may have been seen by now how greatly various were the moral attributes of white men who possessed slaves, how different each owner might be by way of severity or benevolence.

They ranged down from the saintly (Samuel Turner) to the all 236.

right (Moore) to the barely tolerable (Reverend Eppes) to a few who were unconditionally monstrous. Of these monsters none in his monsterhood was to my knowledge so bloodthirsty as Nathaniel Francis. He was Miss Sarah's older brother, and although in physical appearance he resembled her slightly, the similarity ended there, for he was as predisposed to cruelty as she was to a genuine, albeit haphazard, kindness. A gross hairless man with a swinish squint to his eyes, his farm lay several miles to the northeast of Moore's. There on middling land of about seventy acres he eked out a spa.r.s.e living with the help of six field slaves-Will and Sam (whom I have mentioned earlier in this narrative), a loony lost young wretch, one of G.o.d's mistakes, named Dred, and three even younger boys of about fifteen or sixteen. There were also a couple of forlorn female house servants, Charlotte and Easter, both of them in their late fifties and thus too old to be the source of any romantic tumult among the younger men.

Francis had no children of his own but was the guardian of two nephews, little boys of seven or so, and he did have a wife, Lavinia-a slab-faced brute of a person with a huge goiter and, through the baggy men's work clothes she customarily wore, the barely discernible outlines of a woman. A winning couple.

Perhaps in reaction to the wife or (it seems more persuasive to believe) goaded by her after or before or during whatever unimaginable scenes took place upon their sagging bedstead, Francis achieved pleasure by getting drunk at more or less regular intervals and beating his Negroes ruthlessly with a flexible wooden cane wrapped in alligator hide. When I say "his Negroes," however, I should point out that this meant Will and Sam. I cannot tell why it was these two who became the victims of his savagery, unless it was only a matter of simple elimination-the three younger boys perhaps not possessing yet the stamina to take such killing abuse, the two women being likewise invulnerable on account of their advanced age.

As for poor Dred, his brains were all scrambled and he could barely speak. It may be that like a man stalking swamp bear who turns up only muskrat, Francis felt that young Dred was too lacking in distinction to be suitable prey for his ferocity. At any rate, he was able to invent for Dred other means of degradation.

Dred was nineteen years old, so brainless that he was barely able to go to the privy without help. The condition of his poor addled head had been recognized by Francis only after he had bought him, sight unseen, from a trader with no more scruples 237.