Confessions of Nat Turner Read online

  The Confessions of Nat Turner

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  The chill and damp of the morning began to spread out like ooze through my bones. Hark’s breathing came through the wall like the sound of an old dog dying, all gurgles and shudders and unholy vibrations, stitched together by a sickly thread of air.

  A person who has lived as I have for many years—close to the ground, so to speak, in the woods and the swamp, where no animal sense is superior to another—eventually comes to own a supremely good nose; thus I smelled Gray almost before I saw him. Not that the odor that Gray put out demanded great sensiblity: suddenly the cold dawn was a May morning, rank with the odor of apple blossoms, his sweet fragrance preceding him as he approached the cell. Kitchen was carrying two lanterns this time. He put one down on the floor and unlocked the door. Then he came in, holding both lanterns high, followed by Gray. The slop bucket was inside by the door and Kitchen jarred it with one of his uncertain, nervous feet, setting the whole bucket to gulping and sloshing. Gray caught a hint of Kitchen’s terror, because at that instant I heard him say: “Calm yourself, boy, for pity’s sake!

  What on earth do you think he can do to you?” It was a round, hearty voice, jovial even, booming with voracious good will. At this hour I was unable to tell which I resented more, that doughty voice or the honeyed, overpowering perfume. “Lawd amercy, you’d think he was going to eat you alive!” Kitchen made no reply, set a lamp down on the other plank which stuck out, like the one I was sitting on, at right angles from the opposite wall, then picked up the slop bucket and fled, banging the door behind him and throwing the bolt home with a slippery chunking noise.

  For a moment, after Kitchen was gone, Gray said nothing, standing near the door and blinking slow, tentative blinks past me—I had already noticed he was a bit near-sighted—then he eased himself down on the board beside the lantern. We would not need the lantern long: even as he seated himself morning was pouring with a cool white glow through the window, and I had begun to hear outside beyond the jail a slow-moving fuss and clatter of creaking pumps and banging windows and yapping dogs as the town came awake. Gray was a fleshy, red-faced man—he must have been fifty or a little more—and his eyes were hollow and bloodshot as if he needed sleep. He stirred about to find a comfortable resting place on the plank, then threw open his greatcoat abruptly, revealing beneath a fancy brocaded waistcoat, now more grease-stained than ever and with the lower button unloosened to accommodate his paunch. Again he gazed toward me, blinking past me as if still unable to see or find his focus; then he yawned and removed, finger by delicate pudgy The Confessions of Nat Turner

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  finger, his gloves, which must once have been pink but now were seedy and begrimed.

  “Mornin’, Reverend,” he said finally. When I made no reply, he reached inside his waistcoat and took out a sheaf of papers, unfolding and flattening them against his lap. He said nothing more for a bit as he held the papers close to the lantern, shuffling them in and out, humming to himself, pausing from time to time to stroke his mustache, which was gray and indecisive, a faint shadow. His jaw was in need of a shave. With such an empty feeling in my stomach the over sweet smell of him almost made me puke as I sat there watching him, saying nothing. I was worn out from talking to him and seeing him, and for the first time—

  perhaps it was my hunger or the cold or a combination of both, or my general frustration about prayer—I felt my dislike of him begin to dominate my better nature, my equanimity. For although I had disliked him at the very beginning five full days before, disliked the mode and method of the trickery behind his very presence, despised his person and the mellifluous sugarplum stench of him, I quickly understood how foolish it would be not to yield, not to be acquiescent and blab everything now that it all was over—fully aside from his bribery and threat, what else had I to lose? Thus even at the outset I figured that hostility would avail me nothing and I managed if not completely to stifle my dislike (and dislike it was, not hatred, which I have only once felt for any single man) then to mask it, to submerge it beneath the general polite compliance which the situation demanded.

  For I had said nothing when first I laid eyes on him, and he had slouched there in the yellow autumnal light (an afternoon, hazy with smoke; I recall the curled and brittle sycamore leaves drifting through the window bars), sluggish and sleepy-eyed, the words coming wearily deliberate while with pink-gloved fingers he scraped at his crotch: “Well now, looky here, Reverend, ain’t nothin’ good goin’ to come of you shuttin’ up like a old walnut.”

  He paused, but again I said nothing. “Except maybe—” And he hesitated. “Except maybe a pack of misery. For you and the other nigger.” I remained silent. The day before, when they had brought me up by foot from Cross Keys, there had been two women—banshees in sunbonnets, egged on by the men—who had pricked my back deep with hatpins a dozen times, perhaps more; the tiny wounds along my shoulders had begun fiercely to itch and I yearned to scratch them, with a hopeless craving which brought tears to my eyes, but I was prevented from doing so by the manacles. I thought if I could get off those manacles The Confessions of Nat Turner

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  and scratch I’d be able to think clearly, I’d be relieved of a great affliction, and for an instant I was on the verge of capitulating to Gray if he’d allow me this concession—nonetheless, I kept my mouth shut, saying nothing. This immediately proved wise.

  “Know what I mean by a pack of misery?” he persisted, deliberately, patiently, not unkindly, as if I were the most responsive of company, instead of a worn-out and beaten sack.

  Outside I could hear the thudding and clash of cavalry and a dull babble of hundreds of distant voices: it was the first day, the presence of my body in custody had been verified, and hysteria hung over Jerusalem like thunder. “What I mean about a pack of misery is this, Nat. Is two items. Now listen. Item in the first part: the con-tin-u-ation of the misery you already got. For example, all that unnecessary junk the sheriff got wound around you there, those chains there around your neck and them quadruple leg irons, and that big ball of iron they hung onto your ankle there.

  Lord God Almighty, you’d think they’d figured you was old Samson himself, fixing to break down the place with one big mighty jerk. Plain foolishness, I call it. That kind of rig, a man’d die settin’ in his own, uh, ordure long before they got around to stretching his neck.” He leaned forward toward me, sweat like minute pale blisters against his brow; in spite of his easy manner I could not help but feel that he exhaled eagerness and ambition.

  “Such things as that, what I might call, as I have already stated, the con-tin-u-ation of the misery you already got. Now then …

  Of two items, the item in the second part. Namely, the pro-mul-gation of more misery over and above and in addition to the misery you already got—”

  “Excuse me.” For the first time I spoke, and his voice abruptly ceased. He was of course working up to the idea that if I did not tell him everything, he would find a way of getting at me through some sort of villainous monkey business with Hark. But he had misjudged everything. He had at once misinterpreted my silence and unwittingly anticipated my most nagging, imminent need: to scratch my back. If I was to be hung come what may, what purpose could be served by withholding a “confession,”

  especially when it might augment in some small way my final physical relief? Thus I felt I had gained a small, private initial victory. Had I opened up at the outset it would have been I who had to ask for indulgences, and I might not have gotten them.

  But by remaining quiet I had allowed him to feel that only by small favors could he get me to talk; now already he had expressed the nature of those favors, and we had each taken the first step toward getting me unwound from my cocoon of iron and The Confessions of Nat Turner

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  brass. There is no doubt about it. White people often undo themselves by such running off at the mouth, and only God knows how many nigger triumphs have been won in t
otal silence.

  “Excuse me,” I said again. I told him there was no reason to go any further. And I watched his face flush and his eyes grow round and wide with sudden surprise, also with a glint of disappointment, as if my quick surrender had scattered all the beautiful possibilities of threat and cajolery and intimidation he was spoiling for in his tiresome harangue. Then I told him quite simply that I was most willing to make a confession.

  “You are?” he said. “You mean—”

  “Hark’s the last one left, except for myself. They tell me he is mighty bad hurt. Hark and I growed up together. I wouldn’t want anybody to hurt a hair on his head. No sir, not old Hark. But that ain’t all—”

  “Well sir,” Gray broke in, “that’s a right intelligent decision, Nat. I thought you’d come round to that decision.”

  “Also, there’s something else, Mr. Gray,” I said, speaking very slowly. “Last night, after they carried me up here from Cross Keys and I sat here in the dark in these chains, I tried to sleep.

  And as I tried to sleep, the Lord seemed to appear to me in a vision. For a while I didn’t feel it was the Lord, because long ago I thought the Lord had failed me, had deserted me. But as I sat here in these chains, with this neck iron and these leg irons and these here manacles eating at my wrists, as I sat here in the hopeless agony of the knowledge of what was going to befall me, why, Mr. Gray, I’ll swear that the Lord came to me in a vision. And the Lord said this to me. The Lord said: Confess, that all the nations may know. Confess, that thy acts may be known to all men.” I paused, gazing at Gray in the swarming, dusty fall light. For a brief instant I thought the falsity of these words would reveal itself, but Gray was lapping it up, intent now, even as I spoke scrabbling at his waistcoat for paper, groping for the walnut writing box at his knee, all fussy anxiety now, as if he risked being left in the lurch. “When the Lord said that to me,” I continued, “Mr. Gray, I knowed there was no other course. Now sir, I’m a tired man, but I’m ready to confess, because the Lord has given this nigger a sign.”

  And already the quill pen was out, the paper laid flat on the lid of The Confessions of Nat Turner

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  the writing box, and the sound of scratching as Gray hastened to get down to business. “What’d the Lord say to you again, Nat?

  ‘Confess your sins, that’—what?”

  “Not confess your sins, sir,” I replied. “He said confess. Just that.

  Confess. That is important to relate. There was no your sins at all. Confess, that all nations may know …”

  “Confess, that all nations may know,” he repeated beneath his breath, the pen scratching away. “And what else?” he said, looking up.

  “Then the Lord told me: Confess, that thy acts may be known to all men.”

  Gray paused, the quill in midair; still sweating, his face wore a look of such pleasure that it verged on exaltation, and for an instant I almost expected to see his eyes water. He let the pen fall slowly to the writing box. “I can’t tell you, Nat,” he said in a voice full of emotion, “I honestly can’t tell you what a splendid—

  what a really splendid decision you’ve made. It’s what I call an honorable choice.”

  “What you mean by honorable?” I said.

  “To make a confession, that is.”

  “The Lord commanded me,” I replied. “Besides, I ain’t got anything to conceal any more. What have I got to lose by telling all I know?” I hesitated for a moment; the desire to scratch my back had driven me to the edge of a kind of tiny, separate madness. “I’d feel like I could say a whole lot more to you though, Mr. Gray, if you’d get them to take off these here manacles. I itch up along my neck somethin’ powerful.”

  “I think that can be arranged without too much trouble,” he said in an amicable voice. “As I have already intimated at some length, I have been authorized by the court to, within reason, ameliorate any such continuation of present misery that might obtain, providin’ you cooperate to a degree as would make such amelioration, uh, mutually advantageous. And I am happy—

  indeed, I might say I am overpowered with delight—to see that you feel that cooperation is desirable.” He leaned forward toward me, surrounding the two of us with the smell of spring and blossoms. “So the Lord told you: Confess, that all nations may know? Reverend, I don’t think you realize what divine justice lies in that phrase. For near about onto ten weeks now there’s been The Confessions of Nat Turner

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  a mighty clamor to know, not onlyin the Virginia region but all over America. For ten weeks, while you were a-hidin’ out and a-scamperin’ around Southampton like a fox, the American people have been in a sweat to know how come you started a calamity like you done. All over America, the North as well as the South, the people have asked theirselves: How could the darkies get organized like that, how could they ever evolve and promulgate not to say coordinate and carry out such a plan? But the people didn’t know, the truth was not available to them. They were in the profoundest dark. Them other niggers didn’t know.

  Either that or they were too dumb. Dumb-assed! Dumb! Dumb!

  They couldn’t talk, even that other one we ain’t hung yet. The one they call Hark.” He paused. “Say, I’ve been meanin’ to ask.

  How’d he ever get a name like that?”

  “I believe he was born Hercules,” I said. “I think Hark is short for that. But I ain’t sure. Nobody’s sure. He’s always been called Hark.”

  “Well, even him. Brighter than most of the others, I reckon. But stubborn. Craziest nigger I ever saw in my life.” Gray bent closer to me. “Even he wouldn’t say anything. Had a load of buckshot in his shoulder that would of felled an ox. We nursed him along—I’ll be frank with you, Nat, frank and level. We thought he’d tell where you were hidin’ out at. Anyway, we nursed him along. He was tougher’n rawhide, I’ll have to hand him that. But ask him a question and he’d set there right here in this jail, he’d set there crackin’ chicken bones with his teeth and just rare back and laugh like a hoot owl. And them other niggers, they didn’t know nothin’.” Gray drew back for an instant, silent, wiping his brow, while I sat there listening to the humming and murmuration of people outside the jail—a boy’s call, a whistle, a sudden thudding of hooves, and beneath it all a rise and fall of many voices like the distant rushing of water. “No sir,” he resumed, slower, softer now, “Nat and Nat alone had the key to all this ruction.” He paused again, then said in a voice almost a whisper:

  “Don’t you see how you’re the key, Reverend?”

  Through the window I watched the curled and golden sifting of sycamore leaves. The immobility in which I had sat for so many hours had caused oblong shadowy images to flutter across the margin of my consciousness like the dim beginning of hallucinations. I began to get these mixed up with the leaves. I didn’t reply to his question, finally saying only: “Did you say there was a trial for the others?”

  The Confessions of Nat Turner

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  “Trial?” he said. “Trials, you mean. Hell, we had a million trials.

  Had a trial pretty near every day. September and this past month, we had trials runnin’ out our ears.”

  “But trials? Then you mean—” An image came to mind like an explosion of light: myself, the day before, hurried toward Jerusalem along the road from Cross Keys, the booted feet thudding into my back and behind and spine and the fierce sting of the hatpins in my shoulders, the blurred infuriated faces and the dust in my eyes and the gobs of their spit stringing from my nose and cheek and neck (even now I could feel it on my face like an enormous scab, dried and encrusted), and, above all, one anonymous wild voice high and hysterical over the furious uproar: “Burn him! Burn him! Burn the black devil right here!” And through the six-hour stumbling march my own listless hope and wonder, curiously commingled: I wish they would get it over with, but whatever it is they’re going to do, burn me, hang me, put out my eyes, why don’t they get it over with right now? But they had do
ne nothing. Their spit seemed everlasting, its sourness a part of me. But save for this and the kicks and the hatpins, I had come out unharmed, wondrously so, thinking even as they chained me up and hurled me into this cell: The Lord is preparing for me a special salvation. Either that, or they are working up to some exquisite retribution quite beyond my power of comprehension. But no. I was the key to the riddle, and was to be tried. As for the rest—the other Negroes, as for their trials—

  suddenly as I gazed back at Gray it became more orless clear.

  “Then it was to separate the wheat from the chaff,” I said.

  “Bien sure, as the Frenchies put it. You couldn’t be more correct.

  Also you might say it was to protect the rights of property.”

  “Rights of property?” I said.

  “Bien sure again,” he replied. “You might say it was a combination of both.” He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat and drew out a fresh plug of dark brown tobacco, examined it between the tips of his fingers, then gnawed off a cheekful.

  “Offer you a chaw,” he said after a moment, “except I imagine a man of the cloth like you don’t indulge in Lady Nicotine. Very good idea too, rot the tongue right out of your head. No, I’ll tell you somethin’, Nat, and that somethin’ is this. Speakin’ as a lawyer—indeed, speakin’ as your lawyer, which to some degree I am—it’s my duty to point out a few jurisprudential details which it might be a good idea to tuck under your bonnet. Now, of two The Confessions of Nat Turner

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  items, item in the first part is this. Namely: rights of property.”

  I stared at him, saying nothing.

  “Allow me to put it crudely. Take a dog, which is a kind of a chattel. No, first take a wagon—I want to evolve this analogy by logical degrees. Now let’s take some farmer who’s got a wagon—a common, ordinary dray wagon—and he’s got it out in the fields somewhere. Now, this farmer has loaded up this wagon with corn shucks or hay or firewood or somethin’ and he’s got it restin’ on a kind of slope. Well, this here is a rickety old wagon and all of a sudden without him knowin’ it the brake gives way. Pretty soon that old wagon is careerin’ off down the road and across hill and dale and before you can say John Henry—