The Confessions of Nat Turner (23 page)

“Wonderful, Nat! Oh, wonderful, wonderful! Oh, Sam, there you The Confessions of Nat Turner

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are! You should just
hear
Nat coming along! Come here, Sam, sit beside us for a moment and listen, sit here by the fire! Listen to our little darky recite out from the Bible! He can speak it from memory as well as the Reverend Eppes! Isn’t that so, Nat, you smart little tar baby, you?”

“Yessum.”

But suppose again that it had been Marse Samuel who had died, instead of Brother Benjamin. What then would have happened to that smart little tar baby?

Maybe you will be able to form your own judgment from some things I overheard on the veranda one sultry, airless summer evening after supper, when the two brothers were entertaining a pair of traveling Episcopal clergymen—“the Bishop’s visitants,”

they called themselves—one of them named Dr. Ballard, a big-nosed, long-jawed bespectacled man of middle years garbed entirely in black from the tip of his wide-brimmed parson’s hat to his flowing cloak and gaiters buttoned up along his skinny shanks, blinking through square crystal glasses and emitting delicate coughs behind long white fingers as thin and pale as flower stalks; the other minister dressed like him in funereal black but many years younger, in his twenties and bespectacled also, with a round, smooth, plump, prissy face which at first glimpse had caused me to think of him as Dr. Ballard’s daughter or maybe his wife. Not as yet advanced to the dining room, I labored in the kitchen as Little Morning’s vassal, and it was my duty at the moment to fetch water from the cistern and to keep the smudge pot going: positioned upwind in the sluggish air, it sent out small black-oily clouds of smoke, a screen against mosquitoes. Across the meadow, fireflies flickered in the dusk, and I recall from within the house the sound of a piano, the voice of Miss Elizabeth, Benjamin’s wife, breathless, sweet, in quavering, plaintive song:

“Would you gain the tender creature,
Softly, gently, kindly treat her . . .”

Though usually the sedulous snoop, I had paid no attention to the conversation, fascinated instead by Benjamin, wondering if this would be one of those evenings when he fell out of his chair.

As Marse Samuel and the ministers chatted, I watched Benjamin stir in the chair, heard the wickerwork crackling beneath his weight as he let out a sigh despairing and long, raising his The Confessions of Nat Turner

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brandy glass on high. While Little Morning came forward to serve him he sighed again and the sound was aimless, distracted, dwindling off into a little
uh-uh-uh
like the tail end of a yawn. I think I recall Dr. Ballard glancing at him uneasily, then turning back to Marse Samuel. And the
uh-uh-uh
sound again, not loud, still pitched between yawn and sigh, glass half filled with sirupy apple brandy extended negligently in midair, the other hand clutching the decanter. I watched his cheeks begin to flush, blooming tomato-pink in the twilight, and I said to myself: Yes, I think again tonight he might fall right on out of that chair.

But even as I watched him I heard him suddenly exclaim: “Ha!”

Then he paused and said: “Ha! Ha! Jesus bloody Christ! Come out and say it!” And then I realized that despite his yawns and rude noises, he was listening to Dr. Ballard and so then I too turned and gazed at the minister, who was explaining: “—and so the Bishop is marking time, as he says. We are at the crossroads—that is the Bishop’s own expression—we are at the crossroads, marking time, awaiting some
providential wind
to guide us in the right direction. The Bishop is so gifted in his choice of expressions. At any rate, he is aware that the Church all too soon must make some decision. Meanwhile, as his visitants, we are able to send him reassuring news as to the condition of the slaves on at least
one
plantation.” He paused, with the bleak and wintry suggestion of a smile.

“It will be so reassuring for the Bishop,” said the younger minister. “He will be interested, too, in knowing your general views.”

“General views?” Marse Samuel inquired.

“General views on the institution itself,” Dr. Ballard explained.

“He is greatly concerned to know the general views held by—

how shall we say it?—the more
prosperous
landowners of the diocese.”

For a long moment Marse Samuel was silent, his face drawn and reflective as he sucked at a long clay pipe. It was becoming dark.

A mild gust of wind, feather-light upon my own brow, sent an oily curl of smoke across the veranda. In the distant swamp, frogs sang and throbbed in a wild, passionate monotone. Little Morning approached Dr. Ballard with a silver tray balanced on the tips of black fingers. “Is you gwine have some mo’ port wine, mastah?” I heard him ask.

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Still Marse Samuel remained silent, then finally he said in a slow and measured voice: “Doctor, I will be as direct with you as I can.

I have long and do still steadfastly believe that slavery is the great cause of all the chief evils of our land. It is a cancer eating at our bowels, the source of all our misery, individual, political, and economic. It is the greatest course a supposedly free and enlightened society has been saddled with in modern times, or any other time. I am not, as you may have perceived, the most religious of men, yet I am not without faith and I pray nightly for the miracle, for the divine guidance which will somehow show us the way out of this terrible condition. It is evil to keep these people in bondage, yet they cannot be freed. They must be educated! To free these people without education and with the prejudice that presently exists against them would be a ghastly crime.”

Dr. Ballard did not immediately answer, but when he did his voice was detached and indistinct. “How interesting,” he murmured.

“Fascinating,” said the other minister, sounding even more far away.

Suddenly Benjamin lurched erect from his chair and walked to the far edge of the veranda. There in the shadows, unfastening himself, he commenced to piss into a rosebush. I could hear the noise of a lordly stream of water, urgent, uninterrupted, a plashing cascade upon leaf and thorn and vine, and now Benjamin’s voice above the spatter: “Oh, my beloved brother!

Oh, my brother’s bleeding heart! What a trial, what a tribulation to dwell with such a saint, who would try to alter the mechanism of history! A
saint
he is, reverend visitants! You are in the presence of a living, breathing saint! Yas!”

Dr. Ballard blushed, murmuring something I could not understand. Watching from behind the smudge pot, I was suddenly tickled and I had to smother my amusement behind my hand. For the minister, in a desperate fidget, was obviously unaccustomed to conversing with anyone who was in the process of taking a piss, which Benjamin did without a flicker of a thought and in the most public way whenever he drank in the company of men. Yet now Dr. Ballard, though agitated, had to pay even more deference to Benjamin than he did to Marse Samuel, for distant and apart as Benjamin may have been this evening he was still the older brother and the plantation’s titled owner. I watched joyfully as the minister’s lips became puckered The Confessions of Nat Turner

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and bloodless, bespectacled eyes gazing in wild discomfort at Benjamin’s back. Suddenly the torrent ceased and Benjamin wheeled about, languidly lacing up his fly. Weaving a little, he crossed the porch, drawing near Marse Samuel and letting his hand fall upon the back of his brother’s neck; as he did so, Marse Samuel glanced up at him with a sour-sweet look, rueful, glum, yet touched with quiet affection. Although they were so dissimilar as to seem born of different families, even the most unobservant house servant was aware of the strong bond between them. They had quarreled many times in the past in their fraternal and peaceable way, seeming oblivious of all eavesdropping (or more likely they did not care) and many a black servant gliding around the dinner table had divined enough of their talk to know where each brother stood, philosophically, at least about his body if not his soul.

“My brother is as sentimental as an old she-hound, Doctor,”

Benjamin said in an amiable voice. “He believes the slaves are capable of all kinds of improvement. That you can take a bunch of darkies and turn them into shopowners and sea captains and opera impresarios and army generals and Christ knows what all.

I say differently. I do not believe in beating a darky. I do not believe, either, in beating a dog or a horse. If you wish my belief to take back to the Bishop, you can tell him that my belief is that a darky is an animal with the brain of a human child and his only value is the work you can get out of him by intimidation, cajolery, and threat.”

“I see,” Dr. Ballard murmured, “yes, I see what you mean.” The minister was paying Benjamin close attention, with a squint-eyed look yet still very deferential. “Yes, I do see clearly what you mean.”

“Like my sentimental and most gentle-hearted brother,” Benjamin continued, “I am against the institution of slavery too. I wish to Jesus it had never come to these shores. If there was some kind of steam engine you could invent to plant corn or cut timber, another to pull suckers, another fine machine to set out in the field and chop tobacco, still another big grand machine to come chugging through the house, lighting the lamps and setting the rooms in order—”

There was an attentive burst of laughter from the two ministers, the younger one tittering behind his fingers while Dr. Ballard made small chuckles and Benjamin himself continued, appreciatively grinning, with one hand resting friendly and The Confessions of Nat Turner

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familiar on his brother’s shoulder. Still the soursweet expression lingered on Marse Samuel’s face and the faintest outline of a sheepish little smile. “Or a machine, I fancy,” Benjamin went on,

“that when the mistress of the household prepared herself for an afternoon’s outing, would harness up the mare and bring Old Dolly and the gig around to the front entrance, and then with its strange mechanism set the lady down on one seat and itself on another and prod Old Dolly into a happy canter through the woods and fields—Invent a machine like that, I vow, invent a machine like that, furthermore, that won’t eat you out of house and home, that won’t lie and cheat and thieve you blind, that is efficient instead of being a paragon of blockheadedness and sheer stupidity, that you can lock away at dark in its shed like a pumping engine or a spinning jenny without fear that this machine is going to get up in the dead of night and make off with a prize goose or your fattest Guinea shoat and that when this machine is worn out and beyond its usefulness, you can discard it and buy another instead of being cursed with a no-account old body that conscience dictates you’ve still got to supply with shoes and molasses and a peck of corn a week until the age of ninety-five— Hey! Invent a machine like any of these, gentlemen, and I will say a happy adieu to slavery the moment I can lay my hands on the likes of such a mechanism!” He paused for a moment, taking a swallow from his tumbler, then he said:

“Needless to say, I do not see in the near future the possibility of such a machine eventuating.”

There was a brief spell of silence among the company. Dr.

Ballard continued to chuckle faintly. Miss Elizabeth had ceased singing, and now in the deep shadows of evening I could hear only the whine of mosquitoes at bay beyond the cloud of dark smoke, and nearby the soft insistent cooing of a mourning dove, a dull fretful sigh—
weehoo-hoo-hoo
—like a sleepy child in pain.

Dr. Ballard crossed his legs abruptly, then said: “Well, from the general tenor of your remarks, Mr. Turner, I presume—well, how shall I say it?—I presume that you feel that the institution of slavery is—well, something we must
accept
. Would that be a proper interpretation of your remarks?” When Benjamin failed to reply immediately, still gazing down with a crooked bemused smile at Marse Samuel, the minister went on: “And would it also be accurate to discern in what you have just said a conviction that perhaps the Negro lags so far behind the rest of us—I mean, the white race—in
moral
development that, well, for his own welfare it might be best that he—well, be kept in a kind of benevolent subjection? I mean, is it not possible that slavery is The Confessions of Nat Turner

131

perhaps—how shall we say?—the most
satisfactory
form of existence for such a people?” He paused, then said: “
Cursed be
Canaan. A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren
.

Genesis, ninth chapter, twenty-fifth verse. Certainly the Bishop is not completely disinclined to take this viewpoint. I myself—”

But he hesitated, falling silent then, and the whole veranda was quiet, disturbed only by the creaking of chairs. As if his mind for a moment had wandered far away, Benjamin stood there and made no reply, gazing gently down at Marse Samuel, who sat very still in the gathering dark, calmly chewing on his pipe but with a woebegone expression, strained and pinched. He made a movement with his lips, thought better of it, said nothing.

Then Benjamin looked up and said: “You take a little slave like that one there—” And it was an instant before I realized he was speaking of me. He made a gesture toward me with his hand, turning about, and as he did so the others turned too and suddenly I could feel their eyes upon me in the fading light.

Nigger, Negro, darky
, yes—but I had never heard myself called a
slave
before. I remember moving uneasily beneath their silent, contemplative gaze and I felt awkward and naked, stripped down to bare black flesh, and a wicked chill like cold water filled the hollow of my gut as the thought crashed in upon me:
Yes, I am a
slave
.

“You take a little slave like that one there,” Benjamin went on,

“my brother here thinks he can take a little slave like that and
educate
him, teach him writing and arithmetic and drawing and so on, expose him to the masterpieces of Walter Scott, pour on the Bible study, and in general raise him up with all the amenities of learning. Gentlemen, I ask you, in all seriousness, ain’t that a
whangdoodle
of a notion?”