The Confessions of Nat Turner (5 page)

laughter, and my own, anticipated, expected, and the question repeated—“
Right
, Nat?”—more insistent now, and my reply, with customary chuckling: “Yes sir, Marse Tom, that’s right, sure enough.” And indeed I had to admit to myself, as I thought more deeply about it, that I had never known of a Negro who had killed himself; and in trying to explain this fact I tended to believe (especially the more I examined the Bible and the teachings of the great Prophets) that in the face of such adversity it must be a Negro’s Christian faith, his understanding of a kind of righteousness at the heart of suffering, and the will toward patience and forbearance in the knowledge of life everlasting, which swerved him away from the idea of self-destruction.
And
the afflicted people thou wilt save, for thou art my lamp, O Lord;
and the Lord will lighten my darkness
. But now as I sat there amid the sunlight and the flickering shadows of falling leaves and the incessant murmur and buzz of the flies, I could no longer say that I felt this to be true. It seemed rather that my black shit-eating people were surely like flies, God’s mindless outcasts, lacking even that will to destroy by their own hand their unending anguish . . .

For a long while I sat motionless in the light, waiting for Gray to return. I wondered if he would get them to bring me some food, after they took off the manacles and chains. I also wondered if I could persuade him to bring me a Bible, which I had begun to hunger for far down inside me with a hunger that made me ache.

I shut out the clamor of the crowd from my mind, and in the The Confessions of Nat Turner

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stillness the flies buzzed round me with an industrious, solemn noise, like the noise of eternity. Soon I tried to pray, but again as always it was no use. All I could feel was despair, despair so sickening that I thought it might drive me mad, except that it somehow lay deeper than madness.

When dawn broke on that first morning, and cool white light began to fill the cell, Gray blew the lantern out. “Mercy, it’s gotten cold,” he said, shivering, buttoning his greatcoat. “Anyway—”

And he paused, gazing at me. “You know, first thing today after the trial’s over I’m going to try to requisition you some winter clothes. ’Tain’t right for a body to set in a cell like this and freeze half to death. I didn’t pay it any nem’mine before, them clothes of your’n, it being so warm until now. But what you’ve got on there—what’s left of it—that’s plain old summer issue, ain’t it?

Cotton? Osnaburg cloth? Pity, rags like that in this kind of weather. Now, about the confession, Nat, I got everything down that’s important; worked durn near all night on it too. Well, like I already hinted, this confession will, I’m afraid, comprise the evidence for the prosecution and there won’t be any other issue or issues at stake. I expect that I or Mr. W. C. Parker—that’s your defense attorney—will get up and make some kind of formal statement, but under the circumstances it can’t be much more than a plea that the judges carefully consider the evidence placed before them—in this case your full, free, and voluntary confession. Now, as I’ve already told you, before you sign it this mornin’ I wanted to read it out to you—”

“You mean, this Mr. Parker—” I put in. “You mean
you’re
not my lawyer?”

“Why sure. He’s my what you might call associate.”

“And I ain’t even seen him? And you tell me today?” I paused.

“And you’re taking this all down for the
prosecution?
”

Impatience flashed across his face, curtailing a yawn. “Eyaw!

The prosecutor’s my associate too. What difference does it make, Reverend? Prosecution, defense—it don’t make a hair’s difference one way or the other. I thought I made that perfectly clear to you—that I am a, uh, delegate of the court, empowered to take down the confession. Which I’ve gone and done. But your goose is cooked already.” He looked at me intently, then spoke in a cajoling, hearty voice: “Come on now, Reverend. Let’s be realistic about this matter! I mean—well, to call a spade a The Confessions of Nat Turner

27

spade—” He halted. “I mean—Hell, you know what I mean.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know I’m going to be hung.”

“Well, since this is a priori and foregone there’s not too much use standing on the legal niceties of the matter, is there?”

“No sir,” I said, “I reckon not.” And there wasn’t. I even felt a kind of relief that logic, at last, had flown completely out of the window.

“Well then, let’s get down to business, because I want to have this written out as sensible as I can before ten o’clock. Now, as I said, I’m going to read the whole thing out to you here. You’ll sign it, and then it’ll be read out again in court as evidence for the prosecution. But while I recite the entire thing out, there are a few items that I haven’t gotten entirely straight in my own mind and I want you to clarify them for me if you can. So while I read I’ll probably have to stop every now and then and make one or two minor amendments. Ready?”

I nodded, convulsed with a shivering cold.

“Sir—you have asked me to give a history of the motives which induced me to undertake the late insurrection, as you call it. To do so I must go back to the days of my infancy,and even before I was born . . .’” Gray had begun to read slowly and with deliberation, as if relishing the sound of each word, and already he interrupted himself, glancing up at me to say: “Of course, Nat, this ain’t supposed to represent your exact words as you said them to me. Naturally, in a court confession there’s got to be a kind of, uh, dignity of style, so this here’s more or less a reconstitution and
recomposition
of the relative crudity of manner in which all of our various discourses since last Tuesday went.

The essence—that is, all the quiddities of detail are the same—

or at least I hope they are the same.” He turned back to the document and resumed: “ ‘To do so,’ et cetera, ‘before I was born.’ Hem. ‘I was thirty-one years of age the second of October last, and born the property of Benjamin Turner of this county. In my childhood a circumstance occurred which made an indelible impression on my mind, and laid the groundwork of that enthusiasm which has terminated so fatally to many, both white and black, and for which I am about to atone at the gallows. It is here necessary to relate—’ ” And he broke off again, saying: “Do you follow me so far?”

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I was cold, and my body felt drained of all energy. I could only look back at him and murmur: “Yes.”

“Well then, to go on: ‘It is here necessary to relate this circumstance; trifling as it may seem, it was the commencement of that belief which has grown with time and even now, sir, in this dungeon, helpless and forsaken as I am, I cannot divest myself of. Being at play with other children, when three or four years old, I was telling them something, which my mother, overhearing, said had happened before I was born. I stuck to my story, however, and related some things which went, in her opinion, to confirm it. Others, being called on, were greatly astonished, knowing that these things had happened, and caused them to say in my hearing: I surely would be a prophet, as the Lord had shown me things that hadhappened before my birth. And my mother strengthened me in this my first impression, saying in my presence that I was intended for some great purpose . . .’ ” He halted again. “Fair enough so far?”

“Yes,” I said. And this was true; at least the essence, as he put it, of what I had told him seemed to be no wrench of the truth.

“Yes,” I repeated. “That’s fair.”

“All right, to continue—I’m glad you feel I’ve done justice to your own narrative, Nat: ‘My mother, to whom I was much attached, my master—who belonged to the church, and other religious persons who visited the house, and whom I often saw at prayers, noticing the singularity of my manners, I suppose, and my uncommon intelligence for a child—remarked that I had too much sense to be raised, and if I was, I would never be of any service to anyone, as a slave . . .’ ” As he continued to read, I heard a muffled clatter of rattling chains and shackles on the other side of the wall, and then a voice, also muffled, bubbling with phlegm—Hark’s: “Cold in here! Watch-man! I’se cold! Cold!

He’p a poor nigger, watch-man! He’p a poor freezin’ nigger!

Watch-man, fetch a poor freezin’ nigger somep’n to kivver up his bones!” Gray, unperturbed by the racket, continued to read. Hark kept up his hollering, and at that moment I slowly rose from the plank, stamping my feet to keep warm. “I’m listenin’,” I said to Gray, “don’ mind me, I’m listenin’.” I moved my shackled feet toward the window, paying less attention to Gray now than to Hark’s howls and moans beyond the wall; I knew he had been hurt, and it was cold, but I also knew Hark: this was bogus suffering, Hark at his rarest. The voice of the only Negro in Virginia whose wise flattery could gull a white man out of his very britches. I stood at the window, not listening to Gray but to Hark.

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The voice grew faint, weak, aquiver with the most wretched suffering: he seemed ready to expire, his voice would have melted a heart of brass. “Oh, somebody come he’p this pore sick freezin’ nigger! Oh, massah watchman, jes’ one little rag to kivver up his bones!” Presently, behind me, I heard Gray get up and go to the door, calling out to Kitchen. “Get some kind of a blanket for that other nigger,” he ordered. Then I heard him sit down again, resume reading, while beyond the wall I was certain I heard Hark’s voice trail off in something like a stifled laugh, a gurgle of satisfaction.

“ ‘I was not addicted to stealing in my youth, nor have ever been.

Yet such was the confidence of the Negroes in the neighborhood, even at this early period of my life, in my superior judgment, that they would often carry me with them when they were going on any roguery, to plan for them. Growing up among them, with this confidence in my superior judgment, and when this, in their opinions, was perfected by divine inspiration, from the circumstances already alluded to in my infancy, and which belief was ever afterward inculcated by the austerity of my life and manners, which became the subject of remark by white and black. Having soon discovered to be great, I must appear so, and therefore studiously avoided mixing in society, and wrapped myself in mystery, devoting my time to fasting and prayer. . .’”

The voice droned on. For a long while I ceased listening. It had begun to snow. The tiniest, most fragile flakes flew past like springtime seed, dissolving instantaneously as they struck the earth. A cold wind was blowing up. Above the river and the swamp beyond, a white rack of cloud hovered, covering the heavens, impermeable, its surface crawling with blackish streaks of mist like tattered shawls. Jerusalem had burst awake. Four more cavalrymen came at a canter over the cypress bridge, filling the air with a noisy cobbling of hooves. Singly, in pairs, in clusters, men and women bundled against the cold had commenced to hurry up the road toward the courthouse. The road was rutted, brittle with frost, and as they picked their way along they murmured together and their feetmade a crunched and crusty sound. It seemed early for such a procession, but then I realized what it was, thinking: They are going to make sure of getting seats, they don’t want to miss anything this day. I gazed across the narrow sluggish river to the forest wall: a long mile of swamp, then the flat fields and woods of the county. It would be the time of year now to lay up firewood: my thoughts moved, as in a daydream, out across cold space to some coarse The Confessions of Nat Turner

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thicket of beech or chestnut where already in the chill morning light a pair of slaves would be out with ax and wedge; and I could hear the
chuck, chuck
of the ax and the musical
chink
of the wedge and see the Negroes’ breaths steaming on the frosty air, and hear their voices ahowl as they labored against the timber, blabbery voices forever innocently pitched to be heard by someone a mile away: “Ole mistis, she say she kain’t find a sartin’ fat turkey pullet!” And the other: “Don’ look at me, brother!”

And the first: “Who I goin’ look at, den? Ole mistis, she fine out, she break ev’y bone in yo’ black head!” And then their big-mouthed laughter, childishly loud and heedless in the morning, echoing from the dark woods, from bog and marsh and hollow, and a final silence save for the
chuck, chuck
of the ax and the
chink
of the wedge and, far off, a squalling of crows in wheeling descent over cornfields blurred with specks of flying snow. For a moment, despite myself, something wrenched painfully at my heart, and I had a brief blinding flash of recollection and longing. But only for an instant, for now I heard Gray say: “That’s the first item I’m curious about, right there, Reverend. I wonder if you might not clarify that a bit.”

“Which one is that?” I said, turning back to him.

“It’s that part right there in the passage I just read. See, now we’re windin’ up out of the groundwork material and into the insurrection proper and I want to get this part straight especially.

I’ll repeat: ‘It was intended by us to have begun the work of death on the fourth of July last. Many were the plans formed by us,’ et cetera, et cetera. Les’see: ‘And the time passed without our coming to any determination how to commence. Still forming new schemes and rejecting them, when the sign appeared again, which determined me not to wait longer,’ et cetera, et cetera. Now then: ‘Since the commencement of 1830, I had been living with Mr. Joseph Travis, who was to me a kind master, and placed the greatest confidence in me; in fact, I had no cause to complain of his treatment to me . . .’” I saw Gray stir uncomfortably, then raise one haunch up off a fart, trying to slide it out gracefully, but it emerged in multiple soft reports like the popping of remote firecrackers. Suddenly he seemed flustered, discomfited, and this amused me: Why should he feel embarrassed before a nigger preacher, whose death warrant he was reading? He began to speak in a kind of roar, compounding his fluster and stew: “
I had been living with Mr. Joseph Travis,
who was to me a kind master, and placed the greatest
The Confessions of Nat Turner