The Confessions of Nat Turner (1968 Pulitzer Prize) Page 4
“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
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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
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confidence in me; in fact, I had no cause to complain of his treatment to me!’ That’s the item! That’s the item, Reverend!” I found him staring at me. “How do you explain that? That’s what I want to know, and so does everyone else. A man who you admit is kind and gentle to you and you butcher in cold blood!”
For a moment I was so surprised that I couldn’t speak. I sat down slowly. Then the surprise became perplexity, and I was silent for a long time, saying finally even then: “That—That I can’t give no reply to, Mr. Gray.” And I couldn’t—not because there was no reply to the question, but because there were matters which had to be withheld even from a confession, and certainly from Gray.
“For see here, Reverend, that’s another item the people can’t understand. If this was out and out tyranny, yes. If you was maltreated, beaten, ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed—yes. If any of these things prevailed, yes. Even if you existed under the conditions presently extant in the British Isles or Ireland, where the average agricultural peasantry is on an economic level with a dog, or less—even if you existed under these conditions, the people could understand. Yes. But this ain’t even Mississippi or Arkansas. This is Virginia in the year anno Domini 1831 and you have labored under civilized and virtuous masters. And Joseph Travis, among others, you butcher in cold blood! That—” He passed his hand across his brow, a gesture of real lament. “That the people can’t understand.”
Again I had the impression, dim and fleeting, of hallucination, of talk buried deep in dreams. I stared long and hard at Gray. Little different from any of the others, nonetheless it was a matter of wonder to me where this my last white man (save one with the rope) had come from. Now, as many times before, I had the feeling I had made him up. It was impossible to talk to an invention, therefore I remained all the more determinedly silent.
Gray looked at me narrowly. “All right, if you won’t open up about that, I’ll skip ahead to this other item. Then I’ll come back and read the whole thing.” He thumbed through the papers. Watching him, I again felt dizzy from hunger. Off in the town, the courthouse clock dropped eight jangling chimes on the morning and the stir and bustle, the sound of hoofbeats and voices, became louder and louder. Somewhere I heard a Negro’s voice, a woman’s, shrill with mock fury: “I gwine knock you to yo’ knees directly!” And then a little black girl’s young laughter, ashiver with equally mock panic and fright. Then a second’s stillness, then The Confessions of Nat Turner
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the hoofbeats and voices again. I began to nurse and coddle the pain of my hunger, folding my arms over my belly, standing guard over its emptiness like a sentinel. “Here we are,” said Gray. “Now listen to this, Reverend. It’s right after you’ve left the Bryants’ place—remember, you yourself haven’t killed anybody yet—and gone to Mrs. Whitehead’s. I quote: ‘I returned to commence the work of death, but they whom I left had not been idle: all the family were already murdered but Mrs. Whitehead and her daughter Margaret. As I came round to the door I saw Will pulling Mrs. Whitehead out of the house, and at the step he nearly severed her head from her body with his broadax. Miss Margaret, when I discovered her, had concealed herself in the corner formed by the projection of the cellar cap from the house; on my approach she fled but was soon overtaken, and after repeated blows with a sword I killed her by a blow on the head with a fence rail.’ Unquote. Right so far?”
I said nothing. I felt a prickling at my scalp.
“Very well, we now skip down, oh, maybe ten, fifteen sentences, and what I have written here is this. Now listen careful, because this is more or less the sequence you told me it. I quote: ‘I took my station in the rear, and as it was my object to carry terror and devastation wherever we went, I placed fifteen or twenty of the best armed and most to be relied on, in front, who generally approach the houses as fast as their horses could run; this was for two purposes, to prevent their escape and strike terror to the inhabitants.’ Now listen careful: ‘ On this account I never got to the houses, after leaving Mrs. Whitehead’s, until the murders were committed. I sometimes got in sight in time to see the work of death completed, viewed the mangled bodies as they lay, in silent satisfaction, and immediately started in quest of other victims. Having murdered Mrs. Waller and ten children, we started for Mr. William Williams’s; having killed him and two little boys that were there,’ et cetera, et cetera. Now of course, Nat, this here like all the rest is a rough paraphrase of your actual words, and subject to your own correction. But the main point is this, which you didn’t tell me in so many words, but which I’m going to bring out now by deductive reasoning, as it were. The main point is that in this whole hellish ruction involving dozens upon dozens of the slain, you, Nat Turner, were personally responsible for only one death. Am I right? Right? Because if I’m right it seems passin’ strange indeed.” He halted, then said:
“How come you only slew one? How come, of all them people, The Confessions of Nat Turner
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this here particular young girl? Reverend, you’ve cooperated with me right down the line, but this here line of goods is hard to buy.
I just can’t believe you
only killed one . . .”
Foot-thuds and a rattling at the bars and Kitchen entered, carrying cold cornmeal mush on a plate, along with a tin cup of water. With jittery hands he put plate and cup down on the plank beside me, but for some reason now I was no longer very hungry. My heart had begun to pound, and I felt sweat in rivulets beneath my arms.
“Because it ain’t as if you had been disinvolved in these proceedings—a field general runnin’ the whole show from way behind the lines, like the Little Corporal standin’ aloof and pompous on the heights above Austerlitz.” Gray halted, slanting an eye at Kitchen. “Ain’t you got any bacon for the Reverend?”
he said.
“The niggers over to Mrs. Blunt’s place fix it,” the boy replied.
“The one that fetched it over here said they done run out of bacon.”
“Pretty pissy kewzine for a distinguished prisoner, I’ll vow, cold mush like that.” The boy hurried from the cell, and Gray turned back to me. “But you wasn’t disinvolved from the very beginning.
Yes—You have to look at—this reluctance. Videlicet . . . Les’see
. . .”
There was a shuffling of pages. I sat motionless, sweating, aware of the pounding of my heart. His words (mine? ours?) came back in my brain like a somber and doleful verse from Scripture itself: . . . came round to the door I saw Will pulling Mrs.
Whitehead out of the house, and at the step he nearly severed her head from her body with his broadax. So easy in the telling, why now, uttered by Gray, did it cause me such panic and discomfort? Suddenly, savage lines crashed againstmy memory: After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces. I beheld then because of the voice of the great words: I beheld even till the beast was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame. For an instant I saw Will’s skinny self, Will’s hatchet face black as night with bulging eyes, mashed-in nose, loose pink minutely creviced lips, and white teeth flashing a smile murderously fixed, The Confessions of Nat Turner