The Confessions of Nat Turner (30 page)

Whenever in later times I recollected that day and thought of my first eighteen years, it seemed to me that all that long while it was as if I had been mounting a winding and pleasant slope toward the distant hills of the Lord, and that that day was a kind of promontory on the way. Not knowing the future, I had expected to pause at this lofty place and then go on, proceeding upward by gentle stages to the remote, free, glorious peaks where lay the satisfaction and fulfillment of my destiny. Yet as I say, whenever I reflected upon that eighteenth year of mine and that day and the events which quickly followed, it was plain to me that this promontory had been not a restful way station but an ending: beyond that place there was no gentle, continuing climb toward the great hills but a sudden astonishing abyss into which I was hurled like a willow leaf by the howling winds.

One long weekend late that spring there was to be a Baptist camp meeting just outside of Jerusalem. A wellknown revivalist named Deacon Jones would be the leader, coming all the way down from Petersburg, and Baptists for miles around were expected to meet there—hundreds and hundreds of planters and farmers and their families from a dozen counties, some traveling from as far away as the coast of North Carolina. Tents would be pitched, for four days and nights there would be singing and praying and feasting from wild turkey and barbecue. There would be a laying-on of hands and organ and banjo music, and general salvation for all lucky enough to attend. Some of the slaveowners, I knew, would bring what Negroes they owned and these privileged souls too might partake of the spirit of the revival, and would be welcome just like the white people to approach the holy bench, even though few of
them
would get a taste of the turkey or the barbecue. When I learned of the camp meeting I became greatly excited, and I asked Marse Samuel if I might be permitted to go for the Saturday gathering, taking several of the servants in one of the wagons. I intended to include Willis and Little Morning, who had gotten religion many years before and who, ailing now and feeble and with a pitiful wandering mind, might be going to his last revival. Although Marse Samuel was an Episcopalian he had long ago put churchgoing out of his head; yet he did not scorn the Bible and often sought ways that his Negroes might be led into religious The Confessions of Nat Turner

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instruction—I myself of course being the chief example. Thus when I asked him if I might go on this Saturday expedition he readily gave his permission and said that he would write out a pass for the group, warning me only that I should return before nightfall and that I must keep an eye on the other Negroes, who might fall into the hands of the wise and knowing darkies from some James or Blackwater River plantation; these were smart darkies who had been exposed to white rivermen and traders and thus to vice, and they would literally swindle our innocent backwoods Negroes out of their trousers or their shoes.

Ever since the day I baptized Willis, I had begun to teach him to count and also to read, using my Bible as a primer and spelling out the words on the back wall of the shed next to the carpenter’s shop, with a cattail dipped in lampblack as a kind of brush to write the letters. It pleased me to see how quickly he responded to my instruction; if I persevered, and took advantage of every opportunity, I was sure that it would not be long before he knew the alphabet and would be able to see the connection between the letters and the words in such a simple line as the third verse of the entire Bible, which of course goes:
And God
said, Let there be light: and there was light
. Willis too was excited at the prospect of going to the camp meeting. Although I myself had never been to such a revival, I knew from tales told long ago by my mother and Little Morning just what sort of colorful bustle and activity might be expected, and thus I was able to tell Willis all about it and infect him with my own anticipation. On the afternoon before the day of the camp meeting I borrowed two juicy pullets from Goat’s brood, promising to pay him back in extra work, and I made up a large and festive meal for us Negroes who were going—fried chicken, a rare treat, and a couple of loaves of shortening bread I was able to wheedle out of Abraham’s wife, who had become cook at the big house—and I put the chicken and bread in a small pine box together with a jug of sweet cider, placing all in the carpenter’s shed where it would be safe from pilfering black hands, and then went to bed at a very early hour since we would be leaving for Jerusalem long before dawn the next morning.

At along about midnight I was awakened by a soft whisper and, suspended like clinking bells above my face, the tinkling of a lantern in whose sudden yellow glow the eyes of a little Negro girl were as round as eggshells. It was one of Wash’s younger sisters—another of Abraham’s numberless children—and she mumbled that I must come down to the cabin right away, her The Confessions of Nat Turner

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daddy had sent her, her daddy was miserable sick. I dressed and followed the girl down the slope through the moonlit, frog-filled, balmy night and there in the cabin found Abraham as the girl had said, feverish and in bed, coughing and hacking away, his broad black chest glistening with streams of sweat in the glare of the lamp.

“’Tain’t nothin’, Nat,” he said weakly. “Hit jes’ de misery I gits ev’ry springtime. I gwine be awright come next week.” After a pause he went on: “But nem’mine dat. Marse Samuel done told me I gots to take dem four boys up to whar de trace begins at two in de mawnin’. What time hit now?”

“I just heard the clock ring twelve,” I said. “What boys you talking about, Abe?”

“Marse Samuel done hired out four boys to chop tobacco fo’ two weeks over to de Vaughans’ place. Vaughan’s got a wagon dat’s gwine meet our wagon up whar de trace commences. I uz supposed to carry dem boys up dere but now I got dis misery, so you got to carry ’em, Nat. Dat’s at two o’clock, so git on now an’

let dis po’ sick man rest his bones. I gwine be awright.”

“But I’m goin’ to the camp meeting, Abe,” I started to protest, “all this time I figured on the camp meeting—”

“You kin
still
go to de camp meetin’, boy.” he insisted, “you jes’

ain’t gwine git a whole lot of sleepin’, dat’s all. Now git on, Nat, and carry dem boys on up dere in de wagon. Dey waitin’ right now behin’ de stable. Here, you got to take dis yere paper.”

Of course Abraham was right about the camp meeting: I might still make it to the beginning of the trace and back, pick up Willis and Little Morning and the others and be off to Jerusalem just as I had planned—provided only that I was willing to do without sleep, a minor burden. What I had not counted on, however, was that among those four Negro boys I must take to meet the Vaughans’ wagon, among those sleepy black faces upturned to the moonlight in the hushed luminous space of ground behind the stable’s lowering wall, was that of Willis himself, and my heart gave a sickening heave as I caught sight of him and as there came over me a chill, clammy sense of betrayal.

“But he said you could go to the camp meeting!” I fumed while I harnessed up the two mules, shortening their traces amid the manure-sweet stable gloom. Willis padded drowsily about barefooted in the darkness, helping me, saying not a word.

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“
Daggone
, Willis!” I whispered urgently. “He didn’t mention
nothin
’ at all about bein’ hired out to Major Vaughan.
Nothin
’!

Now daggone it, you goin’ to be over at the Vaughans’ for two weeks choppin’ tobacco and maybe it’ll bea whole ’nother year before you get to go to a camp meetin’.” I was nearly frantic with disappointment, and the radiant globe of pleasure and anticipation in which I had buoyantly dwelt for so long cracked and fell away from me like shattered glass as I yanked the mules out onto the moon-drenched lawn and, wildly impatient, urged the boys up into the wagon. “Daggone it,” I said, “I fixed fried chicken and there’s
cider
too! C’mon, nigger boys, move yo’

butts!” The three other boys scampered up over the tailgate; young field hands of fifteen or sixteen, they giggled nervously as they clambered into the wagon; all three of them wore rabbits’

feet attached to a leather bracelet on the left ankle—that year a plantation fashion; one boy was able to disgorge at will large bullfrog belches and this he began to do without ceasing, bringing forth from the other boys squeals of childish laughter.

Willis climbed onto the seat beside me. “Git up, mules!” I said angrily. It was the first time I had ever felt even the trace of disillusionment with Marse Samuel and this strange new feeling itself added to my distress. “Daggone Marse Samuel anyway!” I said to Willis as we set forth down the lane. “If he was going to hire you out to the Vaughans for two weeks, how come he didn’t tell me and you first so we wouldn’t get all prepared about goin’

to the camp meeting?”

In a little while my chagrin and anger drained away, fading off into that mood of resignation to which most Negroes become accustomed sooner or later, no matter what the occasion. After all, there were worse blows, I figured as we rocked along slowly through the moon-white woods; suppose Willis could not go to
this
camp meeting, did it really matter? Certainly there would come along other revivals I could take him to, and his failure to attend this one would make but a tiny gap in his spiritual education. I looked at him tenderly as the moon spread a pale light over his features; nodding next to me, he was half asleep, his delicate lips apart and his eyelids fluttering in a fight against slumber. I aroused him with a nudge and a question: “What’s two and three?”

“Five,” he said after a pause, rubbing his eyes.

“And three and four?”

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“Seven.” He began to say something else, hesitated, then went on: “Nat, how come you figures Marse Samuel done hired
me
out? I’se a ‘prentice carpenter.”

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully, “I reckon they need extra hands over there. But that’s all right. Marse Samuel only hires out to good people, I know that, and the Vaughans are quality folk, treat you well. Anyway, listen, it ain’t but for two weeks, no time at all. Then you’ll be back and we’ll have more teaching. What’s three and eight?”

“Fo’teen,” he said, yawning hugely.

Behind us in the cart the three boys had gone to sleep, sprawled against each other lifeless and limp in the moonlight. The night was clamorous with frogs and katydids, warm, fragrant with cedar, clear like day, the moon powdering the trees in light as starkly white as the dust of bone. The lop-eared mules, plodding along with a crushed rasping sound against the dewy weeds, found their way ahead as if they knew the road by heart, and I let the reins go slack in my hand, drowsing too, and fitfully slept until the end of the trace, roused only once and then dimly by the high wail of a bobcat miles off in the swamp, its distant scream echoing through some perplexed strange dream like the sound of claws scraped in anguish across the bare face of the heavens.

Presently I felt Willis stir on the seat and sensed the other boys moving about behind me; then I woke with a start and realized that the mules had stopped. Here in the moonlight at the end of the trace I saw the log road stretching east and west through the weeds and now against the trees the outline of the Vaughans’

wagon, huge and canvas-covered and motionless, the floppy white roof making it look like the picture of a sailing ship, foundered now upon the edge of the forest. The figures of two white men disengaged themselves from the shadows of the wagon, and one of them—a portly gentleman with a plump aging face beneath a shiny wide-brimmed planter’s hat—approached as we sat there, and said to me in a not-disagreeable voice: “You Abraham?”

“Nawsuh,” I said. “I’se Nat. I’se de numbah-two driver. Abraham he done took sick, yassuh, ’deed he took real sick.” Nigger gabble.

He drew closer to the wagon and all of a sudden a tinkling The Confessions of Nat Turner

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musical sound and a jaunty little tune interrupted the silence, sending a spooky chill up my back, and then I saw that the man had taken from his vest a silver watch and had opened it, and that it was from this watch that the music was coming, in miraculous plinkety notes, as if he held a tiny spinet piano and tiny pianist—I thought of one of the beribboned Turner ladies—imprisoned in his hand. My wonderstruck eyes must have betrayed me, for the man said then: “Quite a little timepiece, no? A triumph of the watchmaker’s art. That, my boy, is Loodwig van Beethoven.” He snapped the watch shut, strangling the music in mid-passage. “And you are no more than ten minutes late and deserve praise for your promptitude. Look alive, boy!” He tossed up at me a plug of chewing tobacco, which I caught in midair. “Now then, Abe—or what’s your name—you have four young hands for the Vaughans here, right? And a paper for me to sign which you will take back to your master.” He turned aside from me for an instant and called in a breezy, amiable voice toward the back of the wagon: “All right, boys! Up now into the other wagon! Hop to, lads! We’ve nearly to Greensville County to go tonight.” Willis and the other boys scrambled down off their perch and moved somnolently toward the Vaughans’ great white wagon across the road.

“Sleepyheads, I see!” he said with a chuckle. “Well, you’ll find the Major’s wagon a cozy enough place for a snooze. Hop to now, me young bucks! Hurry up and we’ll be on our way!”

“Good-bye, Nat,” Willis said, starting across the road.

I made a silent, parting wave to Willis and watched as the man spread the paper which Abraham had given me against the footboard beneath my legs and scratched something across it with a stubby quill, humming to himself in a breathy, hoarse voice the same tune he had just let loose from his watch. “
Todd
,”

he whispered, “
Jim, Shadrach, Willis
. . . There, boy,” he added finally, “You take that receipt back to your master, and mind that you don’t lose your way. Go home straight away, do you hear me? Good night, laddie.”