The Resurrection of Nat Turner, Part 2: The Testimonial (8 page)

Watching them, Nat Turner remembered that it was not long ago that he was the same.

THOMAS GRAY, A boy with peach fuzz around his lips and in his armpits, lay back in the grass. “My father is going to apprentice me to a lawyer so I can be an attorney like him or maybe a judge like my grandfather.” He pulled a dandelion and blew it. “I think sometimes I would rather be a writer instead.”

The boys laughed, most of them twelve years old or so. They were from scattered farms but sometimes got together to play, as they'd done since they were smaller children.

John Clarke Turner shook his head at Thomas Gray's words. “A writer?”

Richard Whitehead ran his hands over his hair to smooth his cowlick into place. “I'm going to be a preacher.”

Young Salathiel chewed a blade of grass. He laughed. “Ha! You? A preacher?”

“I am going to be a farmer, too. Maybe I'll try my hand at cotton. But my mother, Caty, says that I would make a fine preacher.”

Salathiel laughed again. “You have what it takes—full of gas and hot air.” Whitehead punched him in the shoulder. Salathiel shook it off. “I'm going to be a landowner. The land as far as I can see is going to be mine.” He turned to John Clarke Turner. “What about you?”

“A tobacco planter or cotton. I'll own a great plantation. I will be a wealthy man, smoke cigars, and have a beautiful wife and lots of children.”

Salathiel laughed. “And make lots of slaves.” He raised and lowered his eyebrows. “Make lots of money.” The boys laughed, punching one another.

They looked at Benjamin Phipps. He shrugged. There was silence and then Thomas Gray, looking at the other free boys, spoke up. “Maybe our children will marry one another.”

“Maybe.” John Clarke Turner laughed.

Nat Turner and Hark stood off to the side, listening. The other boys weren't looking at them; the two of them weren't included in the conversation. He spoke up anyway. “I have been thinking that I would like to be a general, like Washington, and Hark could be my colonel.”

Hark, who was a young slave on the Moore farm, struck a jester's pose. “That's me! Colonel!” The other boys laughed. Hark's eyes pleaded with Nat to stop.

“My mother wants me to be a preacher. She says God has smiled on me and that I am a prophet.” Nat Turner looked at Salathiel and Richard Whitehead. “But maybe I'll also be a farmer or a plantation owner with a farm next to yours.”

It was a joke to them that he, a slave, might have dreams. The free boys laughed again.

“One day I will be a freeman, like the great Bishop Allen from Philadelphia. I will pay the price for my mother's freedom. My mother will dress in fine clothes, wear a warm coat, and sit on the pew next to yours.”

Salathiel stood, strode over to Nat Turner, and hit him in the mouth. “You will take care how you speak about my mother.”

Nat Turner tasted salty blood on his lips. He would not let them kick him aside. He would not let them make him less.

THROUGH THE CABIN window, Nat Turner watched the boys tramping back inside from the snow. Davy trailed behind them.

“Kick the snow off your feet,” one of the women warned them. “Act like you got good sense. Act like you got home training or you'ah be sorry.” Better her threats than a hangman's noose; angry words spoken out of love.

Nat Turner looked at the mothers and the sons, then across the room at his own mother. This would be his last Christmas. The God Who Provides for All had told him to watch for a sign in the heavens.

Hathcock and the Artis brothers had resumed talking. “We are just farmers. We only want peace. They force our hands.”

The dreams that the captors had for the captive farmers were not enough. What they wanted for him was not enough. What they dreamed for the boys and girls was not enough—there were no dreams.

God sent him back to ransom their dreams.

Cherry, his wife, rubbed a warm hand on the side of his face and he turned to her. He kissed her hand. “Dinner soon.” He had been focused on the boys and the men and had not heard her slip up behind him. In her eyes he saw she loved him. In her eyes he saw she worried. It was always worry mixed with love—strawberries and rhubarb, bitter turnips mixed with sweet greens—between black men and women.

She knelt before him and rubbed her warm hands gently over his feet. Nat Turner looked at the people sitting around him. He smelled the Christmas dinner cooking.

“Don't worry,” she said. Brown eyes framed with black eyelashes, the love between them was unfair to her. Without him, there was less danger for her. He should let her go. Then Cherry would smile and he melted to her. “No worries now, Nathan.” She smiled. “At least for today.” When she was sure no one was watching, she leaned over and shyly kissed his palm.

He had never intended to marry.

E
ven when they were boys, each direction Hark's head turned, he saw a girl or a woman he desired. But Nat Turner's plan, even as a boy, had been to never have a wife. Most of the priests in Ethiopia were married men with families, his mother had told him. There were just a few who kept themselves apart, and he thought he would be like the few. Marriage would keep him bound.

Nat Turner did not want to wait for freedom. If he never had a wife, he could escape. If the others were too afraid, let them stay behind. If they were content, let them live the way they wanted. Unencumbered, he would be free.

He would escape one day to the Dismal Swamp, then to Norfolk, the Chesapeake, then the ocean, and finally make his way to Ethiopia. Then to the Nile. A wife was just a part of the Master's plan to hold him down.

Since the age of twelve, when his father died, his mind had been fixed on running away. His mother was the only thing that held him, but his plan was to free himself and then come back for her.

Five springs came and went after his twelfth, the year he was turned out to the fields as a slave. When the sixth came, there was more hard work behind the plow.

But even for slaves there were flowers everywhere. And that spring all Hark talked of—when they were not working, and even when they were—was girls. Yellow ones, black ones, thin ones, fat ones—he was like a bee drawn to all kinds of flowers.

The night before, there had been a storm. Though the air was clear now and the sky blue, the ground was wet. A dead tree had
fallen across the road with no name, and the two of them had been sent to clear it away.

As they chopped the tree in pieces so they could haul it away in the wagon, Nat told his friend about his plan.

Girls would only get in the way. “You think it is passion, but it is strategy—women for men and men for women to keep us pacified and chained so we won't leave. But they breed lust in us, not love, so we won't make war to free the ones we bed, so we won't be attached to our children and make war to free them. It is all calculated.”

The two of them hacked at the dead tree. “They teach us new customs so we will forget our homeland and never leave. The captors rape our mothers, then deny their paternity. They hide their relationship to us, but then use it against us so we will feel allegiance to them, so we will long for them to acknowledge us, so we won't make war—like the Babylonians and Romans among the Jews. So we won't kill what is part of us. So we will never ever leave.

“Whiskey at Christmas, the only time we have to rest and clear our minds. So they give us whiskey to pacify us and stupefy us. Women and whiskey to give us pleasure—to dull the ache—to keep us bound.” Nat swung his axe, then grabbed three firewood-size pieces and threw them in back of the wagon near them.

Hark was the calm one, the one easy to laugh. He survived because he took it all as it came. Hark nudged him and winked. “I can turn down the whiskey, brother, but not women. If that's the plot, then they have me. I have no food, no clothes, but keep feeding me women and I won't ever leave!” Hark chuckled. He grabbed six large sections and with no effort tossed them on the wagon pile.

“Is that all we are? Breeders?” Nat Turner wanted to convince his friend. Each baby born was one more slave—like they were.

And it was easier to keep his vow if he was not alone. “We are just animals to them that breed more livestock that they can sell or use in the field. Is that what we will allow them to make us? Just
studs who leave our children like calves scattered here and there? No thought for them or their lives and futures? That is not who we are.” Nat Turner raked his arm across his sweaty forehead. Lifting the wood was not easy for him.

“We could be like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. We could be like Daniel and refuse to get drunk on what our captors offer us. We could fast from pleasant things—temporary pleasures that kill us and our people while they grow rich. We can fast from pleasant things that keep us slaves.”

Hark leaned on his axe, laughing out loud. “Fast from pleasant things? You expect me to give up the one thing that makes my life tolerable?” His face sobered. “I didn't make this world or this life I suffer. Am I not entitled to some comfort? I couldn't live without women. You wouldn't want to know me if I lived without women.” He lifted his axe and began to chop again. “Maybe being alone is why you brood too much. It's not safe for a black man to think too much.”

Nat wiped his face with his arm again. “Well, I will do it alone then. I would rather die a man with honor, alone, than to live as a beast they use. I will take the vow to live alone.”

“No women?” Hark threw more wood on the wagon. “I am not as strong-willed as you, my friend. Not for the rest of my life”—Hark chuckled—“not until next week even. I am just doing what I have to do to stay alive.” Smiling, he shook his head and threw more wood on the pile.

Nat Turner looked at his friend, his brother. Hark had grown to look like a warrior, as Nat imagined St. Moses the warrior saint, like a giant statue carved from onyx.

“You are my friend, Nat Turner, and I believe you have good intentions. I believe you are a holy man if ever I saw one. But I think you should have made your vow in winter.” Hark looked at the sky, the grass, and the wildflowers around them. “Let's see what spring has to say about your plans.”

They finished their task in silence. Nat felt safe telling most of
his thoughts to Hark. But there were some things kept private. A man's mind was a secret place.

There was truth that people held to themselves about the people they lived with—secret thoughts that mothers held about daughters, sons about their fathers, and husbands about their wives. There were thoughts kept behind a veil, thoughts that even lovers did not share.

In his life, at the end of his life, he wanted his mother's secret, sacred thoughts of him to be that he was a good man. He did not want her to see him become a breeder, he did not want her to see him grow into a man with no self-control, but he also did not want to risk his heart.

He did not believe he could know a woman's mind—not enough to trust his heart and thoughts, his insecurities to her. He did not believe he could share all he was, and all he was not, with her. He had seen too many women who frowned when their men weren't looking, too many sisters who grimaced when their brothers' backs were turned. He didn't want to live his life with a wife who secretly hated him, or bed with a woman whose sacred thoughts of him were that he was a weakling or a coward. Marriage between slaves was not really marriage—the masters could separate them or rape the women when they chose. What woman could respect a man who could not protect her and her children?

But then, there was something even more.

Hark said that Nat was strong-willed, but they really were not so different. Like his friend, Nat found women—all women—fascinating. Their singing, their dancing, their washing, their kneeling—there was no end to what intrigued him. And so that he would not be a glutton, he decided he would have none.

“I won't make it easy for the captors, Hark. I won't make it comfortable for them to keep me in captivity, to pretend that I am not who I am. I won't get drunk on their whiskey. I won't sing songs to entertain them when I work in the fields. But most of all, I won't let them use women against me. I won't marry.”

Hark tossed the last piece of wood on the wagon and laughed. “We'll see what spring says.” He pointed at the sun and the flowers. “Let spring have the last word.”

Not more than two weeks later they heard girls' voices, voices like birds singing or water dancing over smooth stones. The sounds drifted to them from the pond, not far from their secret place.

H
ark ran first, Nat Turner followed. The two of them ran as though they were being called, like the work bell was calling. Peeking through branches around the pond, they saw the girls floating in the water, giggling, washing away winter's skin layers.

He and Hark watched them through the leaves. Nat Turner staggered, intoxicated. He and Hark tried not to giggle.

They had seen girls before: worked with them in the fields, and there was no privacy for slaves, neither in the fields nor in the barns. But they had not seen them this way, not in spring, not without rags, not with their hair undone floating in the water… not with the sun kissing their brown skin.

He and Hark knew the girls, had seen them all before. Teased them, jostled with them—at least Hark had while Nat Turner watched. But this way—with birds singing while they floated on the water, among the sweet perfume of spring flowers—was something more.

Cherry dived into the water, her head first, then hips, and finally her feet. He had known her since she was a little girl. The water closed around her, and Nat realized that he had forgotten to breathe. Beautiful, he thought, and finally understood the word. When her head gently parted the water and she reappeared, the first thing he noticed were her full, dark lips.