The Resurrection of Nat Turner, Part 2: The Testimonial (26 page)

You shall not die but live and declare

The works of the Lord!

His people came to him by night when no one could see them. They—his mother; Cherry; and Charlotte, the sad-eyed girl held captive by Nathaniel Francis—came with broth and bits of corn bread and mashed greens soaked in pot liquor. They kneeled beside him on a bed of hay in the Travis barn. “Don't leave us. We need you, Prophet Nat. You must live!”

The men visited him—Hark, Sam, Yellow Nelson, and Dred. “We will pick a new date. You'll see. Vengeance will come.”

Slowly, Nat Turner felt himself returning to life. He began to distinguish, again, night from day. The witnesses came back to him and told him he should await a sign in the heavens.

He spoke to the men who secretly visited him, “My body is mending.” Then he told them about the sign the witnesses said they should look for in the sky. He could not describe it, but they would recognize it when it appeared, he told them. It would not be an eclipse. It would not be an ordinary thing. “When it appears, we will gather at Cabin Pond.”

August 1831

S
weat trickled down Nat Turner's neck as he stood in the field among the corn. It had been unbearably hot and there was no breeze to cool him. The wounds on his back and on his legs still ached, sometimes itched, but he was able to work, and he watched for the sign.

He hacked at the corn with the scythe in his hands. Back and forth, gliding, and the stalks fell before him. Back and forth, back and forth. He lost himself in the rhythmic motion.

Like the scythe, Nat Turner's mind swung back and forth. Weeks had passed. He had watched people all his life in an effort to figure it out. What was it that made some people comfortable exploiting other people? What made them believe that others existed only to serve their needs? Nat Turner used his arm to wipe the sweat dripping from his forehead. If he could find the one thing, then he could fix it. If he could find the one thing, then he might better reason with the ones who took advantage.

Though he knew it was senseless, he still hoped it would all end. Back and forth. Back and forth. Yet it seemed the captivity would never turn.

Since his illness on the Fourth of July, since the beating two weeks later, nothing about the captors had changed. If anything, they seemed to consider his beating a victory.

Was it white skin that made them aggressive and unfeeling? The white people around him had built institutions with racial superiority as their foundation. The exploitation they created was
based on color. It would have been easy to follow the path they created and believe it was whiteness that made them ruthless.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

But not all white men were ogres. Some, like Phipps, refused to play along, even at their own peril. There were some, like white abolitionists he'd heard of, who openly took a stand against slavery. While others, like Gray, had troubled consciences but not the courage to take a stand.

In truth, there were cruel black men who exploited fellow slaves to make their own lives easier. And his mother had told him stories of the slavers on the ships—men of all tongues and colors.

And in his Ethiopian homeland there were many who made slaves of their own kin. His mother had been
chewa
once, master over her cousin Misha. She had not beat Misha; she had not physically bound her in chains. But Nat Turner knew. He knew firsthand the heartbreak of hopelessness, the shame of misuse, and the despair of rejection—pain greater and longer-lasting than whips or chains. Because of slavery in his own Ethiopian family, there was a family debt he owed.

Thomas Gray said it was religion that made men cruel, that made men believe that others were created simply for their profit and pleasure. There were cruel preachers who were manstealers, fornicators, murderers, and rapists like Richard Whitehead. But religion also made some men better men, better versions of themselves, called to noble visions and to serve.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

Indifference. Some men thought it was their right to lord it over others. Though sometimes it seemed that the lords thought others were lording it over them. They used any excuse to get their way and to convince others to follow them. Men and women, like children, gave themselves permission to be bombastic, to be cruel, to be bullies, or even to be kind.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

Finally, it was just a choice, free will. And some used their will to steal the will and gifts of others.

Back and forth. Hunger burned his stomach. Sweat dripped in his eyes.

Lurking behind it all was fear. Fear and something more—insecurity, doubt. Behind the captors' behaviors were baseless thoughts of not being good enough. The solution was to force someone else to be less, to be the scapegoat.

Nat Turner reached for the thought, hoping to capture it, to understand. The twisted solution of bullies, of those who felt unloved, was to force others to be less, to dim their light in hope that the bullies' own would shine brighter. The irrational solution seemed to be to box others in, to chain them.

Though the captors felt less, they would be pharaohs; they would force themselves into the place of best and force others to serve them. Every bright light had to be dimmed or extinguished. Everyone capable of exposing the lie of their superiority had to be captured, chained, and hidden away.

Nat Turner wiped his arm across his forehead. Back and forth.

The unloved, the captors, secretly believed, behind their pretense of superiority, that God despised them—their bodies, their thoughts, their spirits. He could not bear to look upon them. The captors believed that instead of mercy, the invisible God waited, numbering their sins, waited with glee until He could punish them. They believed in a loveless God who saw them as monsters, a God who lorded His superiority over them, forcing them into servanthood.

Though they felt unloved and despised, they believed they were created in His image. To earn His approval, they must be like Him and treat others as mercilessly as their merciless God treated them.

The solution was hate. The solution was oppression—oppression hidden behind color, academics, religion, economics, and theories of power. The captors would treat others as their God treated them. They would hate others and make them their despised servants.

It was an irrational solution that required the oppressed to be at peace with and desire the solution: The only good slave was the
quiet, obedient slave—one who mindlessly submitted to captivity, even craving it and demeaning himself. The bad slave was one who desired his freedom, to be more, to be a light in the world. The solution required boundless attention and energy, constant vigilance to keep the oppressed, the captured, in place beneath them. Steely control was required. More hate. Violence. Each act of oppression took both the captor and the captive further from what they both desired.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

The solution was no solution. It was impossible to keep control—a flower, a son, a thought might break out anywhere. God-given, by the One True God, whose name is Love, there was no way to contain them.

The solution was no solution, no medicine real medicine for their disease, because the only true antidote for the problem of insecurity and fear was love.

Back and forth. A drop of sweat dripped from his nose and made a dark dot in the dust where it landed. How long? He saw discouragement on the faces of his people and didn't know how much longer the captives would have faith to believe. They all had been waiting for what seemed like forever.

He heard the mournful prayers and songs. He saw the anger building. He saw them on bended knee. He saw the hopelessness.

Nat Turner preached to them, when they gathered, to be patient. “Be patient, brothers and sisters. The day of the Lord's harvest is coming. Only He knows when the yield is ripe. We must wait for His sign.” Only those who knew of the coming revolution understood the true interpretation of his words. “The Lord is full of mercy, even for our captors, but He has promised the harvest will come. ‘Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.'”

But the captive people he spoke to had not been to the Great Dismal Swamp. They had not heard the voice of God. It was August, most of the corn harvest was over, and still nothing
had been seen in the heavens. They were losing patience. They were losing hope. They were losing faith.

Nat Turner prayed as he worked culling the weeds from among the corn that remained, prayed as he had so many times. This time he prayed without words.

Back and forth. Back and forth. The suffering seemed forever, endless. Nat Turner hoped and waited for God.

THOUSANDS OF MILES away, in Ethiopia—in Lalibela, in Aksum, in Gondar—the old ones prayed, prayers that shook mountains and made clouds weep.

A small storm began in the highlands there. It continued to grow. The old men and women—toothless, ancient, gnarled, and wrinkled—said it was God blowing; the storm had a special mission. As in the time of Moses, God had heard the captives' cries, they said.

The storm left Ethiopia and traveled over the Sahara, picking up warmth. Weeks after the tiny storm began, gaining strength as it traveled, it spread its enormous fury out over the Atlantic Ocean, expanding into a great hurricane.

ON AUGUST 12, 1831, waters off the Caribbean coast, blown by the Ethiopian winds, battered the slave-holding state of Barbados. Back and forth. St. John's Church and Bridgetown Synagogue were swiftly turned to rubble. People, before the water and wind swept them away, pointed at the blue sun in the sky.

Sailors pointed at blue sails before their ships tumbled end over end in the ocean. The wind shook slave shackles in Puerto Rico and Cuba, including Guantánamo Bay. The hurricane, led by the smoldering indigo sun, killed people in the American slave states of Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana and battered the shores with hail and water. Men, horses, houses, and ships crumpled, tumbling like dried leaves. Back and forth. The waters of Lake Pontchartrain flooded the slave port of New Orleans.
The auction blocks were swept to sea. The Great Barbados Hurricane, the hurricane of the blue sun, left more than twenty-five hundred people dead.

BACK AND FORTH. The corn fell before his scythe.

Nat Turner had read all the scriptures, had sung all the songs to himself, and whispered a lifetime of prayers. Just once, this once, he begged to see a prayer answered. He needed it before he died. He thought of all the people he had preached to in Southampton and beyond. He saw their faces, their scars, their broken hearts, and the tears in their eyes. He breathed the scriptures instead of speaking them.

Righteous art thou, O
L
ORD
,
when I plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?

Nat Turner held the scythe at his side, closed his eyes, and prayed to his Father. He wiped the sweat from his face again. “Abba, help us.”

Back and forth.

There was eeriness in the air in Southampton. In the still, in the heat, Nat Turner thought he smelled death. He raised his head from where he had bowed it. A small, cool breeze kissed the back of his neck and he opened his eyes. His arm stilled.

The sun, as he stared, turned from yellow to green to blue—bluish-gray, the color of death, and then to an ominous indigo.

God had been forced to choose and He had chosen. It was August 12, 1831, the year and day of the Lord's judgment. Gripping his scythe, Nat Turner left the field where he worked.

Running, he headed for Cabin Pond.

H
e could not turn around. He would not turn around. Nat Turner waded through the corn headed for the woods. He took no thought of overseers. This was the moment. God had sent him back for His people, for the children, for their dreams. He would blind the overseers and stop their ears.

Again, as he ran, Nat Turner heard the voice of God.

Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west; I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring My sons from far, and My daughters from the ends of the earth; Even every one that is called by My name: for I have created him for My glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him.

As he ran, God's words filled his ears and encouraged his heart for battle.

Yea, before the day was I am He; and there is none that can deliver out of My hand: I will work, and who shall let it? For your sake I have brought down all their nobles, whose cry is in the ships.

Nat Turner's bare feet pounded the ground. What was before him seemed like a dream.

I am the Lord, your King, which maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters; which bringeth forth the chariot and horse, the army and the power—they shall lie down together, they shall not rise: they are extinct, they are quenched as tow.

Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert to give drink to My people, My chosen.

Though he charged ahead, Nat Turner felt slowed, as if he ran through some thick substance like honey. It must have been the same for Washington, Nathan Hale, and Crispus Attucks. Each step forward brought him closer to the beginning. Each step forward brought him closer to the end. Nat Turner's feet touched familiar grass, took him past trees he had grown with since a boy. Branches he had touched a lifetime ago reached out to touch him.

Going to Cabin Pond meant people, people he knew, people he was raised with, people he loved, were going to die. It was the price of freedom, revolution, and war.