The Resurrection of Nat Turner, Part 2: The Testimonial (17 page)

But as he walked farther in, the trees began to thicken so that there was less light. Tangled, he tripped over roots and had to stop until his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

As he moved even farther in, the trunks of the trees were wider, the leaves denser. The grass and the weeds from the ground seemed to mesh with the tree branches and leaves, almost like a net.

Deeper still, the vines, leaves, and boughs became a wall, and Nat Turner had to hack his way through. The softness of the light that did filter through changed the color of things—so that the trees, the leaves, and the grass darkened in hue. The ground beneath his feet softened, turning to wet sponge, and sucked at his shoes.

The trees engulfed him and gave him refuge. He was more than twenty-one and now, at last, his first taste of freedom. No landmarks. Alone with his thoughts, he walked among the trees, a primordial cathedral.

He smelled green plants, he smelled musk, and then suddenly sweetness. He heard sounds he recognized—the screech of an owl, the scampering of a squirrel up a tree. But he also heard animal calls that he had never heard before—far away—and then just over his head. He heard rustling on the ground beside him and thought he heard wings flapping. Nat Turner gripped his axe tightly.

The trees engulfed him. Nat Turner looked around for a bent
tree or a branch that would orient him, but this was not the forest he knew. There was no way to know left from right, and for all he knew, he was walking in circles. He moved forward, only stopping from time to time so that his eyes could adjust.

He had to hack his way through now, to fight for every inch, had to fight to untangle his feet. The leaves rubbed his face and his hands. He wanted to stop to examine them, to wipe off the moisture and whatever else clung to him. But Nat Turner knew he must keep moving and he knew why white men were afraid.

The Great Dismal Swamp was a dark, wild place, an untamed place, maybe as it was in the Garden of Eden. There was little difference between day and night. He saw plants and shapes he did not recognize. The Dismal was magnificent and menacing.

The swamp seemed to breathe, the air felt as though it was expanding and contracting around him. It was alive, beautiful, but it was dangerous. The trees whispered to one another, and the animals had no fear of man. It was lush and exotic. And he was certain that serpents watched, crawling near each footstep that landed.

He made his way over marshy ground, into deeper greenness that was blackness, until he was in the belly of the swamp. He found comfort in the darkness away from all other men he had known. He found healing in the green, the brown, and the blackness.

In the belly of Hebron he found a clearing. From high overhead, gentle light filtered through the tree boughs and leaves. There were fallen trees waiting for him and he made himself a lean-to shelter. There was a narrow bubbling stream of brown water. The birds sang to him in the morning and frogs croaked and crooned to him at night. There were salt-marsh mallow flowers and morning glories growing wild around him. He had expected to find it all blackness, but he soon adjusted and found that he could see. He used his axe to cut wood and used a flint that he had brought with him and sticks he found to make a fire.

He would follow the old ways, as in Ethiopia. He would fast some days and he would eat no pork.

Nat Turner learned to see.

It was a strange place, but there was comfort for him in the darkness, away from all the others he knew. Healing in the green, the brown, the blackness.

The Great Dismal Swamp was a place of refuge, his Hebron, his hiding place. Nat Turner did not ask God any questions and he ignored the answers that drifted down from the sky, sifting through the leaves and riding to him on the breezes.

At first Nat Turner saw no one else, but in a few days, his eyes and ears acclimated. Again, he learned to see.

February 1831

W
hen they arrived at the Whitehead farm, Nat Turner looked out at the fields. It was cold, but the captives were still at work—Richard Whitehead's make-work: moving stones and logs. They sang the mournful songs of suffering people, the praise of the brokenhearted.

Just as the sun fought to rise each day, Nat Turner saw the courage of those who worked in the fields. Each morning they rose to bend their backs at work. They prayed to endure and for their suffering to end. Each day they found the courage to find some reason to hope and endure in spite of their circumstances.

Nat Turner pulled the wagon into an open space beside a leafless tree, away from the fancy carriages. “Don't you get into any trouble, now, Nat Turner. You hear me?” Sallie said it loudly to show off to the other white women, so that they could see she had a slave she controlled.

“Yes, ma'am.” He helped Sallie from the wagon and then spoke to some of the other captive men gathered at the Whitehead farm, men who had driven the wagons and carriages for their captors.

He saw Yellow Nelson, Hubbard, and Tom. The farms they worked on were far apart and weeks might pass, especially in the winter and during harvest, before they saw one another.

Nat Turner nodded at Mother Easter when he saw her arrive with Lavinia Francis. Another broken heart. He looked at her captor, Lavinia. Two.

But his gaze was drawn back to the fields. The captives sang, but beneath the words and the melody he heard sorrow—and an inexplicable enduring hope. No one sang the story of God's love more than someone despised, grateful for the tiniest sign of God's love. It seemed as though he had seen the same people in the Great Dismal Swamp.

The Great Dismal Swamp

1821

T
he runaways, the Maroons in the swamp, were invisible to him at first. Then he began to see other black people—individuals, families, groups—walking by, keeping the silence of the Great Dismal Swamp.

Nat Turner understood as he watched the swamp people moving without sound, without disturbance; they had finally allowed him to see them.

There was a gray-haired man among them who kept his face hidden. The man seldom spoke, only nodded or pointed. He directed Nat Turner to places along the stream where fish waited, ready to be taken. He showed him places to catch small animals for his supper.

The gray-haired man led him through the swamp and showed him the slaves who worked there, chained so they would not escape. There were slaves working even at the edge of the Dismal Swamp and some slavers who made their places there. The man showed him that others, the refugees, the escapees, worked and earned money, no questions asked.

He could use his axe to cut and collect shingles and sell them for a price. The money Nat Turner earned would be his own to use as he pleased.

Soon Nat Turner learned of flatboats that traveled the shallow canal waters carrying goods up and down the Chesapeake. In a short time he talked a boat owner into hiring him. The owner
didn't care and didn't want to know whether Nat Turner was a runaway slave. The owner did not even want to know his name.

There was joy for him on the water that splashed his face and wet his feet. He learned quickly, and other boatmen taught him that the Chesapeake Bay flowed into the Atlantic Ocean. Freedom called to him from the water.

The canal water was brown, darker brown than the water that flowed at the stream near where he slept. As he moved along he saw fish leaping from the water, sometimes felt something in the water nudge his boat. Overhead the trees—reaching high into the sky—arched from each shore, joining hands to make a green lace canopy above him.

The flatboat, rising and falling, felt like a living thing beneath his feet. Each journey he took by flatboat, carrying supplies to different places along the Dismal Swamp Canal, Nat Turner poled his way a little farther, a little closer to the bay. Making deliveries along the canal, along the way that led to the bay, he met men who told him how he could go about being hired onto a ship at the bay or in Norfolk. It seemed that the great ships, like the ones he'd dreamed of as a boy, were always looking for hands.

Each day Nat Turner rode the canal was revelation. Each night he fell asleep quickly and refused to listen or pray to God.

IN JUST SHY of a month's time came the opportunity he hoped for, a load that was to be ferried all the way to the bay. Nat Turner forced himself to be calm, so that anyone standing on the shore wouldn't know—wouldn't know that each time he plunged the pole into the water, each time the tip of the pole touched down, each time he pushed against pressure points underneath the currents, he was moving forward and away. He didn't want any casual observers—slavers, slaves, or Maroons—to know that he was inching closer to his dream, to freedom, to Ethiopia.

He wanted observers to look at him and believe it was just another
run. It was not an escape, only a delivery. It was a dream he did not want stolen away.

He trembled at his first sight of the Chesapeake Bay. The great expanse opened before him, inviting him to sail away. The water stretched out before him—water that could not be held in place by two shores. The sky arched above him, stretching until it met the water at a distant horizon. He saw them, the great ships, first appearing as dots. Nat Turner had trouble distinguishing them from the land or the water. But as he drew closer, he recognized them.

T
he vessels were just as people along the canal had told him. The wharf was crowded with great ships—greater than the ones he had imagined as a boy—with enormous masts like great trees that reached up toward the sky. As large as the ships were, they bobbed in the endless water like leaves on a pond. Sailing to and fro were ships bigger than any house he had ever seen, bigger than five houses. Ships big enough to sail to Philadelphia. Big enough to sail around the world.

Ships big enough to carry him home.

There were ropes and riggings he had not imagined. There were sails that caught the sunlight. Like Southampton breezes fluttering wildflowers, great invisible bay winds effortlessly rippled the immense stretches of canvas. There was a snapping sound like fresh, wet linens hung out to dry, wet sheets snapping in the wind.

Birds cried overhead. He saw black men among white men, brown men, and yellow men, clambering on the ships. He would blend in; others would take no special notice of him.

He paused to listen to the sailors singing.

O Shenandoah! I hear you calling!

Away, you rolling river!

Yes, far away I hear you calling,

Ha, ha! I'm bound away, across the wide Missouri.

 

My girl, she's gone far from the river,

Away, you rolling river!

An' I ain't goin' to see her never.

Ha, ha! I'm bound away, across the wide Missouri.

Nat Turner breathed in the song. It was a song of freedom. He was bound away.

O Shenandoah! I hear you calling!

Away, you rolling river!

Yes, far away I hear you calling,

Ha, ha! I'm bound away, across the wide Missouri.

He inhaled the air. Sea air. Free air. Nat Turner filled his lungs again and then laughed out loud. Dreaming. His heart pounded. He steadied himself so that in his excitement he would not lose his pole, or his cargo, or his head.

He drew nearer. The men boarding the boats carried few belongings—unencumbered by what had or had not been. Nat Turner promised himself he would join them.

He pulled his flatboat, still loaded with supplies, aground. The Chesapeake waters foamed like gray chargers racing into the shore. Clam and crab shells mixed with rocky gray sand. He pulled off his shoes so that his feet touched the water—ebbing and retreating, baptizing his feet. He inhaled, smelling distant shores. He would sail away to those distant places and forget everything that was behind.

He saw terrapins swimming near the shore. He would sail away. He would not look back.

He inhaled the smell of crab-filled waters and then remembered a promise he had made as a boy to his mother.
“When you make it to great waters, you must speak to your grandmother across the sea in Ethiopia. She was a doting mother and I know she still waits for me. I know she is still by Tis Isat Falls searching for me.”

The waters called to him, the ancestors' call, and though he had promised that he would not, Nat Turner raised his arms to pray the ancient prayers his mother had taught him—the prayers that
his people had prayed for more than a thousand years. “Our Father in heaven, Your name is Holy and Righteous. You are the Living God, Father of us all.”

Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, and lead us lest we wander into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one, for Thine is the kingdom and the power and glory unto ages of ages. Amen.

He prayed the prayer to honor Maryam, the Kidane Mehret, “the Covenant of God's Mercy” with Africa, as his mother had taught him.

As Gabriel greeted you, Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you though virgin in conscience as well as body. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Holy Mary, the God-bearer, pray that your beloved son, Jesus Christ, may forgive us our sin. Amen.

Nat Turner spoke across the water to the grandmother and grandfather he had never known. He introduced himself to them. He used his Ethiopian name. “I am Negasi.” He knew that his grandmother was a worrier, and he knew that he must not upset her. He could not add to his grandmother's burden, to her broken heart, so he told his grandmother that her daughter, his mother, was fine. “I will board a ship and I will come to Ethiopia, and one day she will also return.”