The Resurrection of Nat Turner, Part 2: The Testimonial (36 page)

They worshipped the wrong their fathers did and called it righteous. “You captors will shoot a starving man who steals an apple off your land. But you are surprised that a captive will kill so that you cannot steal his spirit, his humanity, his children, and his wife. You will draw blood for what you believe. You raised us; why should we be any different?” It felt good to speak the truth. It felt good to call the lie a lie.

Trezvant raised an eyebrow. “Captives? Why do you keep saying captives? You are slaves.”

“Shakespeare was wrong.”

“Shakespeare?” Trezvant looked at the other white men and laughed. “What does a jig like you know about Shakespeare?” Trezvant held his stomach as he laughed. He waved his hand for Nat Turner to continue.

Nat Turner would not let Trezvant's ridicule stop him from speaking the truth. “Shakespeare was wrong: Names do matter. You call us slaves because it soothes your consciences—it sounds as though that is what we were meant to be, as though we had no beginning without you, as though slavery is who we are. The name does not acknowledge that you stole us and keep us against our will.

“You call yourselves masters and not captors. You want the power and the authority without accepting judgment for how you claimed it.

“You call us slaves, but we are free people you hold captive. You use
your guns, your armies, and your laws to keep us captive. All that you have is built on the backs of our stolen labor.”

Nat Turner's voice cut through the increasing darkness. “Bend your knee before God and acknowledge who you are and what you have done. We are captives, like the Israelites. You are thieves—captors, like the Egyptians of old—and you hold us against the will of God.”

“Why do you provoke me, Nat? We are not here to debate slavery.”

“If not for slavery, we would not be here.”

Trezvant looked to his fellow captors for agreement. “We are here, Nat, because you are a murderer. Because you and your kind are thieves and wanted your masters' possessions.”

“You are the thieves!”

“Shut your mouth!”

“God sees, He knows, He hears our cries. We are here because it is a man's duty to protect and defend his family. If he does not, he is not a man.

“You pretend not to understand because it does not suit your purses and it does not suit your pride. You dare to moan about what has been stolen? You steal men's families. You are the thieves, liars!”

Trezvant leapt from his chair again. Rage choked him and reddened his face.

His fists pounded Nat Turner like hammers. Heat swept through Nat Turner and he could not breathe.

T
here was no woman more beautiful than Cherry, black against the midnight sky, sweet among the clover. How could he leave her? How could he say good-bye?

Nat Turner draped a garland of white honeysuckle he had braided around her waist. He was not a good singer, he never sang for others, but he hummed the tune he had heard drifting from the ships harbored in the Chesapeake. He whispered the words in her ear.

O Shenandoah,

I long to hear you,

Away you rolling river.

Cherry pulled him to her and wrapped her arms around his neck. If he never saw her again, they would still have this moment. Her lips on his face were soft and sweet, blackberries.

How could he not have known all along how much he loved her? Why had it taken Hark and springtime to show him? He plucked a honeysuckle blossom from her garland and squeezed the sweet nectar into her mouth.

O Shenandoah,

I love your daughter,

Away you rolling river.

How could he have left her those years ago? They swayed together with the great oak as their only witness. The moon and stars
above them, the fireflies drifted around them, the moon garden glowed at their feet.

I'll not deceive you.

Away, I'm bound away.

When he was finished, they lay down among the tall grass and flowers. Nothing but death would make him leave her.

NAT TURNER AWOKE, choking, again.

“Wake up, you scoundrel! I warned you your life is in my hands.”

The wooden floor beneath Nat Turner was soaked with water. Trezvant ordered a servant to drag him onto the stool again. Through his own swollen eyes, he looked at the servant's downcast expression. He felt the servant's arm about him, lifting him. He could not fail the captives. There was a family debt he owed.

He was not in the orchard with Cherry. There was no night, no fireflies. He would never see her again. This was the last good work he would do for her, for his son, for the other captives. The stool rocked beneath him, or maybe he was tottering himself.

Trezvant looked to Parker and Edwards. “This is a waste of time. He is a lying beast.”

He would not be still. What good was living without freedom, without respect? “Why do you take me to court if I am a beast? You will take me to court because it is the will of God Almighty!”

“As though He would talk to you, a nigger! I will have you skinned alive!” Trezvant's eyes were feverish.

“God has made me free; it is you who hold me captive. God, who is love, loves us both. We are brothers, His children, and He does not want to choose one brother over another. But you give Him no choice.”

“Don't you lie on God Almighty, Nat Turner—I am not your brother and He would never defend a monster like you!”

“You captors put lies in the mouth of God! You hold us against His will!”

Trezvant removed his hands from the papers and eased his left hand down to his side. From a scabbard, he removed a long-bladed knife. Casually, he wiped the blade on the tablecloth and then laid the knife on the table in front of him.

The movement was a threat, but Nat Turner could not stop. He could not live without freedom or respect. “You mistake God's patience. You think His long-suffering means that what you do is right.

“But He heard our cries. Our Father loves us both, but you gave Him no choice. We love you, but you gave us no choice.

“I had no choice; I was defending my flock, as any shepherd or even any animal would.” He could not stop; there was a family debt he owed.

“You have raped our wives. You have starved our children; their feet bleed. What did you expect us to do? Did you expect us to dance? To sing for you?”

Trezvant leaned forward, his eyes flashing. He touched the knife handle. “Don't go too far, boy.”

W
hat was too far? There had been too many threats in Nat Turner's life—they had lost their power. Nothing could be done to him that his Father did not allow. “You say what you do is a natural thing, but does the red rose serve the white rose? Does the night surrender to the day and the day not to the night?” Trezvant inched closer, his fingers wrapped loosely around the knife, but Nat Turner did not pause. “In God's plan there is a harmony. He loves us all. We are all blessed. But you are greedy and say all blessings are for you.

“It is all a lie and you teach the lie to your children, so that they are blinded and cannot find their way.”

Trezvant lifted the knife from the table. “I warned you—”

“You have taken a whole race captive to work for, and even amuse, you and your families. Are you saying that God has given the wolf the right to protect its offspring, but not to my people?

“What would make you believe that you are great enough to own another man, woman, or child? You do not have money enough to pay for the life of my son. You cannot count high enough to reach a price worthy of my wife.” Cherry, his beautiful Cherry. He would never see her again. How could any man have hoped to pay for such a woman? He could never have paid a bride-price worthy of her. Her love was the sweetest gift. “It is a lie.”

Trezvant continued to finger the knife. “I could take your life right now and no one would care. In fact, everyone would cheer and call me a hero.”

“My life is already over. Slice me here, hang me on the tree, slavery's slow death; it is all the same.”

The two judges looked at each other.

“But you won't kill me. I am here because God sent me. I go to Jerusalem because God has chosen me to pick up the yoke of Christ.”

“Madman, are you saying that you are Jesus?”

“No. I am no different than you, brother. He asks us all to pick up His yoke.”

It would be over soon. He would not see his mother again. He would not see his family. But their freedom was worthy of his life. “Our Father has said you will not kill me now, neither will you repent or atone for your sins.

“God has sent me to warn you: War is coming.

“You will take me to Jerusalem. And there you will hang me because of a lie.”

Trezvant sneered. “Oh, we will hang you! We will hang you and I will cheer!”

“You put yourselves first, above and never beneath. But Jesus said the one who would be master is the one who would serve his brothers.”

“Then we white men have done you a favor, nigger.” Trezvant snickered.

“You laugh, but you speak curses over your own head.”

Trezvant looked at the other white men. “Listen to how he rambles. Who can make heads or tails of this?” He turned back to Nat Turner. “You are a lunatic!”

“We are not murderers. We are your brothers. We are heroes. We fight against armies with not much more than bare hands. You think I am mad, but I am only the first, the first to call the lie a lie. More will come. War will come.

“You and the other slavery men are fanatics and your foolishness infects even many of those who believe they are well.

“God called you to judgment because there was no other choice. He loved, but you murdered. We loved, but you murdered.

“You have murdered the land, you have murdered us, as the wisteria vine chokes the tender tree.

“And for what cause? For thirty more coins in your purse? For a title? To hear others call you ‘master'?

“We are not thieves. You steal—you stole our lives, our future, our hope. Look with your hearts. You are the predators. Wealth and power without love breed mad, beastly men.”

Knife in hand, Trezvant again leapt from his chair.

His sudden move jerked the tablecloth askew. Glass and fruit crashed from the table. Nat Turner's back slammed to the floor, bare bones and wasted flesh against hard wood, Trezvant's knee pressed Nat Turner's chest, making it difficult to breathe. His blade pressed against Nat Turner's throat. “You are dirty, stinking cowards, stealing upon people in the middle of night, murdering them as they slept!”

Nat Turner grunted, the knife pressing into his flesh. “Brave men. God's men.” He squeezed out the words, hardly any air in his lungs. Trezvant's breath smelled of corn liquor and cigars. His sweat and spittle dropped onto Nat Turner's face. Trezvant pressed the tip of the blade so a crimson bead appeared. “Despicable cowards!” He breathed the words like fire, his face closer still.

Nat Turner grunted again. “It takes great courage to love those who hate you. Courage to fight against those you love. We had courage to fight. To fight those we loved!” He felt the burning slash of Trezvant's knife down the side of his face.

H
is beautiful mother's hair was graying; her hands wrinkled and knotted from too much work. He bent and whispered in her ear. “Is it all true? We are people of Ethiopia? There is a God who loves us? There is another place besides here?”

So many years had passed since she had washed up on the shores of this New World. Nancie looked up at him and placed one of her warm hands on each side of his face. “We are Egzi' abher's children, His children from Ethiopia. We are sojourners in a strange Nineveh, but we know that He was, He is, and He will be.”

Her eyes looked deeply into his and he felt that she was seeing his soul. She reminded him of all that she had taught him, of the saints, the churches, and the highlands. “Nathan, my Negasi!” She called him by his Ethiopian name.

“And you are Nikahywot, my source of life.” She smiled at him, and when she looked at him he saw the highlands, he heard the roar of Tis Isat Falls. “I am your mother and I would not lie to you. Our Father is waiting to welcome us home.”

NAT TURNER AWAKENED. He had drifted in and out of consciousness, in and out of his mother's embrace. He did not know how much time had passed. He could not recollect how many times he had been beaten. The cut on his face burned and his shirt was stiff now with dried blood. He had been at Peter Edwards's table for what felt like days but must have been hours. The sun would set soon.

Trezvant's questioning came back to the same thing: “Why?”

Nat Turner held a hand to his jaw. “Only a fool would tell himself
this day would never come. You would not listen.” His jaw ached and both his eyes were almost closed. “For thirty-one years I have bowed and obeyed. Thirty-one years—even as my child was sold, as my wife was sold, as my mother and my wife were raped. I have prayed the prayers, and worshipped God, and pleaded with you men to change your ways.”

As Nat Turner sat at the table before Congressman Trezvant, he heard the sadness in Mother Easter's voice as she sang. He saw his mother shivering and all the cracked, bleeding bare feet standing in icy, muddy water—the boys, Davy and Moses.

The slavery men in the room with him knew nothing about suffering. They knew nothing about sorrow. Thirty-one years. “In all that time, against my own will, I have been obedient, a goodly servant to man. Thirty-one years, my hand trembled with anger rather than strike back when white men struck me. Thirty-one years I forced my feet and hands to stay in the furrows raising another man's crops, even when I wanted to run away.” Nat Turner felt the rough wood of the plow handles in his hands, the splinters. Felt the hot sun on his neck, the sweat running down his face. He saw the oxen pulling the plow, felt the earth beneath his feet and the soreness in his strained muscles. “Thirty-one years I willed my tongue not to speak. Thirty-one years I allowed other men to steal from me—and served man as God told me to.