The Confessions of Nat Turner (6 page)

31

confidence in me; in fact, I had no cause to complain of his
treatment to me!’
That’s the item! That’s the item, Reverend!” I found him staring at me. “How do you explain that? That’s what I want to know, and so does everyone else. A man who you admit is kind and gentle to you and you butcher in cold blood!”

For a moment I was so surprised that I couldn’t speak. I sat down slowly. Then the surprise became perplexity, and I was silent for a long time, saying finally even then: “That—That I can’t give no reply to, Mr. Gray.” And I couldn’t—not because there was no reply to the question, but because there were matters which had to be withheld even from a confession, and certainly from Gray.

“For see here, Reverend, that’s another item the people can’t understand. If this was out and out tyranny, yes. If you was maltreated, beaten, ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed—yes. If any of these things prevailed, yes. Even if you existed under the conditions presently extant in the British Isles or Ireland, where the average agricultural peasantry is on an economic level with a dog, or less—even if you existed under these conditions, the people could understand. Yes. But this ain’t even Mississippi or Arkansas. This is
Virginia
in the year anno Domini 1831 and you have labored under civilized and virtuous masters. And Joseph Travis, among others, you butcher in cold blood! That—” He passed his hand across his brow, a gesture of real lament. “
That
the people can’t understand.”

Again I had the impression, dim and fleeting, of hallucination, of talk buried deep in dreams. I stared long and hard at Gray. Little different from any of the others, nonetheless it was a matter of wonder to me where this my last white man (save one with the rope) had come from. Now, as many times before, I had the feeling I had made him up. It was impossible to talk to an invention, therefore I remained all the more determinedly silent.

Gray looked at me narrowly. “All right, if you won’t open up about that, I’ll skip ahead to this other item. Then I’ll come back and read the whole thing.” He thumbed through the papers. Watching him, I again felt dizzy from hunger. Off in the town, the courthouse clock dropped eight jangling chimes on the morning and the stir and bustle, the sound of hoofbeats and voices, became louder and louder. Somewhere I heard a Negro’s voice, a woman’s, shrill with mock fury: “I gwine knock you to yo’ knees directly!” And then a little black girl’s young laughter, ashiver with equally mock panic and fright. Then a second’s stillness, then The Confessions of Nat Turner

32

the hoofbeats and voices again. I began to nurse and coddle the pain of my hunger, folding my arms over my belly, standing guard over its emptiness like a sentinel. “Here we are,” said Gray. “Now listen to this, Reverend. It’s right after you’ve left the Bryants’ place—remember, you yourself haven’t killed anybody yet—and gone to Mrs. Whitehead’s. I quote: ‘I returned to commence the work of death, but they whom I left had not been idle: all the family were already murdered but Mrs. Whitehead and her daughter Margaret. As I came round to the door I saw Will pulling Mrs. Whitehead out of the house, and at the step he nearly severed her head from her body with his broadax. Miss Margaret, when I discovered her, had concealed herself in the corner formed by the projection of the cellar cap from the house; on my approach she fled but was soon overtaken, and after repeated blows with a sword I killed her by a blow on the head with a fence rail.’ Unquote. Right so far?”

I said nothing. I felt a prickling at my scalp.

“Very well, we now skip down, oh, maybe ten, fifteen sentences, and what I have written here is this. Now listen careful, because this is more or less the sequence you told me it. I quote: ‘I took my station in the rear, and as it was my object to carry terror and devastation wherever we went, I placed fifteen or twenty of the best armed and most to be relied on, in front, who generally approach the houses as fast as their horses could run; this was for two purposes, to prevent their escape and strike terror to the inhabitants.’ Now listen careful: ‘
On this account I never got to
the houses, after leaving Mrs. Whitehead’s, until the murders
were committed.
I sometimes got in sight in time to see the work of death completed, viewed the mangled bodies as they lay, in silent satisfaction, and immediately started in quest of other victims. Having murdered Mrs. Waller and ten children, we started for Mr. William Williams’s; having killed him and two little boys that were there,’ et cetera, et cetera. Now of course, Nat, this here like all the rest is a rough paraphrase of your actual words, and subject to your own correction. But the main point is this, which you didn’t tell me in so many words, but which I’m going to bring out now by deductive reasoning, as it were. The main point is that in this whole hellish ruction involving dozens upon dozens of the slain, you, Nat Turner, were personally responsible for
only one death
. Am I right? Right? Because if I’m right it seems passin’ strange indeed.” He halted, then said:

“How come you only slew one? How come, of all them people, The Confessions of Nat Turner

33

this here particular young girl? Reverend, you’ve cooperated with me right down the line, but this here line of goods is hard to buy.

I just can’t believe you only killed one . . .”

Foot-thuds and a rattling at the bars and Kitchen entered, carrying cold cornmeal mush on a plate, along with a tin cup of water. With jittery hands he put plate and cup down on the plank beside me, but for some reason now I was no longer very hungry. My heart had begun to pound, and I felt sweat in rivulets beneath my arms.

“Because it ain’t as if you had been
disinvolved
in these proceedings—a field general runnin’ the whole show from way behind the lines, like the Little Corporal standin’ aloof and pompous on the heights above Austerlitz.” Gray halted, slanting an eye at Kitchen. “Ain’t you got any bacon for the Reverend?”

he said.

“The niggers over to Mrs. Blunt’s place fix it,” the boy replied.

“The one that fetched it over here said they done run out of bacon.”

“Pretty pissy kewzine for a distinguished prisoner, I’ll vow, cold mush like that.” The boy hurried from the cell, and Gray turned back to me. “But you
wasn’t
disinvolved from the very beginning.

Yes—You have to look at—this reluctance. Videlicet . . . Les’see

. . .”

There was a shuffling of pages. I sat motionless, sweating, aware of the pounding of my heart. His words (mine? ours?) came back in my brain like a somber and doleful verse from Scripture itself: . . .
came round to the door I saw Will pulling Mrs.

Whitehead out of the house, and at the step he nearly severed
her head from her body with his broadax.
So easy in the telling, why now, uttered by Gray, did it cause me such panic and discomfort? Suddenly, savage lines crashed againstmy memory:
After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a beast, dreadful
and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth:
it devoured and brake in pieces. I beheld then because of the
voice of the great words: I beheld even till the beast was slain,
and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame
. For an instant I saw Will’s skinny self, Will’s hatchet face black as night with bulging eyes, mashed-in nose, loose pink minutely creviced lips, and white teeth flashing a smile murderously fixed, The Confessions of Nat Turner

34

dim-brained, remorseless, pure; I felt myself shudder, not from the day’s cold but as if from chill fever coursing through the marrow of my bones.

“An overall reluctance. Videlicet . . . And I quote from back near the beginning, which has to do with the murder of none other than your late owner—the aforesaid and, I might add, the benevolent Mr. Joseph Travis. ‘It was then observed that I must spill the first blood. On which, armed with a hatchet and accompanied by Will, I entered my master’s chamber, it being dark I could not give a deathblow, the hatchet glanced from his head, he sprang from the bed and called his wife; it was his last word,
Will
laid him dead with a blow of his ax,’ and so on.” He paused again, regarding me gloomily out of his flushed face with blotches and spidery veins. “Why?” he said. “’Twarn’t any less dark in there for Will than for you, less’n he was a cat. All I mean is this, Reverend. You haven’t come out and so much as stated it, but the implication here, as I have said, is that you personally killed only one person. Furthermore, the implication if I read it rightly is that the act of killing or trying to kill got you so rattled that Will had to come in and do all the dirty work. Now, it is curious indeed, but Will was one of the few niggers actually slain during the course of this ruction. So it is your word alone I’ve got to take. And that you killed only one and were reluctant to kill more is a line of goods mighty hard to buy. Come on, Reverend, after all, you were the
leader
. . .”

I thrust my head into my hands, thinking: Then I would know the truth of this beast, which was diverse from all the others, exceeding dreadful, whose teeth were of iron and his nails of brass; which devoured, brake in pieces . . . And barely listening now to Gray, who was saying: “Or this, Reverend, later on that night after the Travises and the Reeses and old Salathiel Francis. You’ve gone on across the fields and now: ‘As we approached, the family discovered us and shut the door. Vain hope! Will, with one stroke of his ax, opened it, and we entered and found Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Newsome in the middle of a room, almost frightened to death. Will immediately killed Mrs.

Turner with one blow of his ax. I took Mrs. Newsome by the hand, and with the sword I had when I was apprehended, I struck her several blows over the head’ —now listen careful—

‘but not being able to kill her. Will, turning around and discovering it, dispatched her also . . ’”

Suddenly I was on my feet in front of Gray, stretched to the limit of the chain. “Stop!” I yelled. “Stop! We done it! Yes, yes, we The Confessions of Nat Turner

35

done it! We done what had to be done! But stop recitin’ about me and Will! Leave off studyin’ about all this! We done what had to be done! So stop it!”

Gray had drawn back in alarm, but now as I relaxed and grew limp, my knees rattling in the cold, and as I looked at him as if to regret this sudden fury, he too composed himself, settling himself on the plank and saying finally: “Well, if that’s the way you feel about it. It’s your funeral. Figger I can’t get blood from a turnip noways. But I got to read it and you got to sign it. That’s the edict of the court.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Gray,” I said. “I truly didn’t mean to get impudent.

It’s just that I don’t think you understand about this business, and I don’t know but whether it’s too late to make it all plain.”

I moved slowly over to the window again and gazed out into the morning. After a silence Gray commenced to read once more in a subdued, monotonous voice; he shuffled pages inmild confusion. “Hem.‘. . . Viewed the mangled bodies as they lay,
in
silent satisfaction
’. My emphasis. Well, that last item—gildin’ the lily, maybe?” I made no reply. Off in the other cell I could hear Hark chuckling, muttering jokes to himself. The fragile dustlike snow was still falling; it had begun to cling to the earth, the thinnest film of white like hoarfrost, no more substantial than breath blown frosty against a pane of glass.

“Encore, as the Frenchies put it,” Gray was saying, “meaning, that is,
re-peat
: ‘. . . and immediately started in quest of other victims.’ But let’s skip ahead now . . .” The voice droned on.

I raised my eyes toward the river. Across the stream, beneath the trees on the far bank, I saw the procession I had seen each morning, though this time it was late for them—the children usually came at dawn. As always there were four of them, four black children; the oldest could not have been older than eight, the smallest was younger than three. Dressed in shapeless clothing which some troubled mammy had fashioned for them out of cotton sacking or the poorest odds and ends, they picked their way along beneath the trees on the far bank, gathering twigs and fallen branches for some cabin fireplace. Pausing, stooping down, suddenly scampering forward, they moved with quick and sprightly motions beneath the clumsy flapping of their formless little sacks, piling twigs and sticks and fagots high in their arms against their bodies. I heard them call out to each other. I couldn’t make out their words, but on the cold air their The Confessions of Nat Turner

36

voices were shrill and bright. Black hands and feet and faces, bobbing, swooping, dancing shapes silhouetted like lively birds against the white purity of the forest and the morning. I watched them for a long time as they moved, all unknowing doomed and hopeless, across the clean space of snow and finally vanished with their burdens, still sweetly chattering and shrill, upriver past the limit of my sight.

Suddenly I thrust my face into my hands, thinking of Daniel’s beast again in the burning visions of the night, thinking of Daniel’s cry: O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things?

But the answer was not the Lord’s. It was Gray’s. And in the imprisoned space of my mind it seemed to come back amid a tumult and murmuration of flowing waters, wild waves, rushing winds. Justice. Justice! That’s how come nigger slavery’s going to last a thousand years!

Hark always declared that he could distinguish between good white people and bad white people—and even white people who lay between good and bad—by their smell alone. He was very solemn about all this; over the years he had worked out many subtleties and refinements upon his original philosophy, and he could talk endlessly as we worked alongside each other—

advising me at the top of his voice, assigning exact, marvelous odors to white people like Moses handing down the law. About much of this he was deadly serious, and as he jabbered away his broad, bold face would become furrowed in the most worrisome thought; but Hark’s nature was basically humorous, outward-going, beneficent, serene, and he could not long sustain a somber mood, even though many horrible things had happened to him.