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Now in the twilight the merriment slowly subsides, and the conversation proceeds in easy ruminative rhythms, the women silent, the men alone chatting garrulous and fullmouthed as I circle the table with the china pitcher of foaming cider, then return to my station between the two thicknecked nephews, resume my one-legged heron’s stance and slowly turn my gaze out into the evening. Beyond the veranda the pasture slopes away green and undulating toward the pinewoods. On the coarse weedy grass a score of sheep munch placidly in the yellow light, trailed by a collie dog and a small, bowlegged Negro shepherdess. Past them, far down the slope where a log road separates the lawn and the looming forest, I can see an empty cart drawn by two flop-eared mules, making its last trip of the day from the storehouse to the mill. On the seat of the cart sits a Negro man, a yellow straw hat raked down upon his head. As I watch, I see that the man is trying to scratch his back, first his left arm snaking up from his waist, then his right arm arching down over his shoulder as the black fingers grope in vain for the source of some intolerable itch. Finally, as the mules plod steadily down the slope and the cart ponderously rocks and veers, the man stands up with a lurching motion and scrapes his back cowlike up and down against the sidepost of the cart.

For some reason, I find this wonderfully amusing and I suddenly am aware that I am giggling to myself, though not so loudly that the white people may notice. Long moments pass as I watch the cart drift rocking across the margin of the woods, the man seated again as cart and mules pass with a distant drumming of hooves and creaking axles over the little bridge then around the murky lower rim of the millpond, where two white swans glide stately and soundless, finally vanishing behind the forest-shadowed white shape of the sawmill with its dull and sluggish rasp of metal-tortured timber drifting up faintly through the dusk:
hrrush,
hrrush
. Closer now, the yap of the collie dog starts me out of my daydream, and I turn back to the table and the bright tinkling collision of china and silver, the traveling man’s voice broadly ingratiating as he speaks to Marse Samuel: “. . . a new line of sundries this year. Now for instance, I have some pure sea salt from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, for preserving and table use only, sir . . . They is nothing better in the market . . . And so you say they is ten people here, including the overseer and his family? And sixty-eight grown Negroes? Presuming it goes mostly for salt pork then, sir, I should say five sacks will do you nicely, a splendid bargain at thirty-one dollars twenty-five cents .

. .”

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Now again my mind begins to wander. My thoughts stray outdoors once more where the brilliant fuss of chattering birds intrudes in the fading day—blackbirds and robins, finches and squawking jays, and somewhere far off above the bottomlands the noise of some mean assembly of crows, their calls echoing venturesome and conniving and harsh. Again the scene outside captures my attention, so now slowly and with irresistible pleasure I turn to gaze at the coarse green slope with its slant of golden light and its nimble bustle of many wings, the flower bed only feet away ferny and damp with the odor of new-turned earth. The little black bowlegged shepherdess has vanished from the pasture, sheep and collie too, leaving behind a haze of dust to tremble in the evening light. Rising on fat whirlpools of air, this haze fills the sky like the finest sawdust. In the distance the mill still rasps with a steady husking noise above the monotonous roar of water from the sluiceway. Two huge dragonflies dart across the evening, wild and iridescent, a swift flash of transparency.
Springtime
. Worried that my excitement will show, I feel my limbs stretch and quiver with a lazy thrill. A sense of something quickening, a voluptuous stirring courses gently through my flesh. I hear the blood pulsing within me like some imagined wash of warm oceanic tides. In my mind I echo the traveling man’s words—
Full springtide, spring, spring
, I find myself whispering to myself—and this awakening brings to my lips the shadow of a grin. I feel half stunned, my eyes roll like marbles. I am filled with inexplicable happiness and a sense of tantalizing promise.

As the traveling man’s voice drifts back into hearing, I turn again and feel the gaze of my mistress, Miss Nell, upon me, and I look up then and see her mouth forming the whispered word “cider.” I grasp the heavy pitcher with two hands and again make my circuit of the table, filling the glasses of the women first, taking pains that not a drop is spilled. My care is meticulous. I hold my breath until the edge of the table swims dizzily before my eyes.

Now finally I am at the elbow of the traveling man, who, as I serve him, ceases his talk of commerce long enough to look down at me and good-naturedly exclaim: “Well, I’ll be durned if that crock ain’t bigger than you are!” I am only half aware that he is addressing these words to me, and I am unconcerned as I pour the cider, replace the glass, and continue my tour around thetable. “Cute little nipper too,” the traveling man adds in an offhand tone, but again I make no connection between myself and what is said until now, drawing near to Miss Nell, I hear her voice, gentle and indulgent as it descends from the rare white The Confessions of Nat Turner

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prodigous atmosphere above me: “And smart, you wouldn’t believe! Spell something, Nat.” And then to the traveling man:

“Ask him something to spell.”

Suddenly I am fastened to my tracks and I feel my heart beat wildly as I realize that I am the focus of all eyes. The pitcher in my hands is as heavy as a boulder. He beams down at me; the radish-red broad cheeks are all benevolence as the man pauses, reflects, then says: “Can you spell ‘lady’?” But abruptly, before I can reply, I hear Samuel Turner interrupt, amused: “Oh
no
, something difficult!” And the traveling man scratches the side of his pitted face, still beaming: “Oh well,” he says, “let’s see, some kind of flower . . . ‘Columbine.’ Spell ‘
columbine
.’” And I spell it, without effort and instantly but in a pounding fury of embarrassment, the pulse roaring in my ears as the letters tumble forth in a galloping rush: “. . . i-n-e, spells
columbine!
”

And the laughter at the table that follows this, and a shrill echo from the walls, makes me realize in dismay that I am yelling at the top of my lungs.

“It is I am sure a kind of unorthodoxy, and considered thus by some,” I hear my master say (I resume my station, still flustered and with a madly working heart), “but it is my conviction that the more religiously and intellectually enlightened a Negro is made, the better for himself, his master, and the commonweal. But one must begin at a tender age, and thus, sir, you see in Nat the promising beginnings of an experiment. Of course, it is late for this child, compared with white children, yet . . .” As I listen to him speak, not completely comprehending the words, my panic and embarrassment (which had been made up in equal parts of childish selfconsciousness and terror at the thought that I might publicly fail) diminish, fade away, and in their place I feel stealing over me a serene flow of pride and accomplishment: after all, I may have been a loudmouth, but I did know the word, and I sensed in the sunny laughter a laurel, a tribute. All of a sudden the secret pleasure I take in my exploit is like a delectable itch within, and though my expression in the mirror is glum, abashed, and my pink lips are persimmon-sour, I can hear my insides stirring. I feel wildly alive. I shiver feverishly in the glory of self.

But I seem to be quickly forgotten, for now the traveling man is again talking of his wares: “It is the Carey plough, sir, of stout cast iron, and I calculate it will supplant all ploughs presently in the market. They has been a big demand for it in the Northern states . . .” Yet even as he talks and my thoughts wander astray again, the proud glow of achievement hangs on, and I am The Confessions of Nat Turner

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washed by a mood of contentment and snug belonging so precious that I could cry out for the joy of it. Nor does it go away.

It is a joy that remains even as the pinewoods begin to crowd ragged trembling shadows into the deserted pasture, and a horn blows far off, long and lonesome-sounding, summoning the Negroes from the mill and the distant fields. As abruptly as some interrupted human grumble, the sawmill ceases its harsh rasp and husk, and for a moment the silence is like a loud noise in my ears. Now twilight deepens over the meadow, where bats no bigger than sparrows are flickering and darting in the dusk, and I can see through the evening shadows in the distance a line of Negro men trooping up from the mill toward the cabins, their faces black and barely visible but their voices rising and falling, wearily playful with intermittent cries of laughter as they move homeward with the languid, shuffling, shoulder-bent gait of a long day’s toil. Snatches of their talk rise up indistinctly across the field, sounds of gentle, tired skylarking in the twilight:

“
Hoo-dar
, Simon! . . .
Shee-it
, nigger! . . . Cotch you, fo’ sho!”

Quickly I turn away (could there have been a whiff of something desperate and ugly in that long file of sweating, weary men which upsets my glowing childish housebound spirit, disturbs the beatitude of that April dusk?) and circle the table with my pitcher one last time while the two other Negro house servants, Little Morning and Prissy, clear away the dishes and light thick candles on pewter candelabra that fill the darkening room with a pumpkin-hued glow.

My master is talking now, his chair pushed back, the thumbs of both hands hooked in the pockets of his vest. He is in his early forties (to be precise, he will be forty-three at five-thirty in the morning on the twelfth day of the coming June, according to one or another of the old house servants, who know more about the events in white people’s lives than white people do themselves) but he looks older—perhaps only to me, however, since I hold him in such awe that I am forced to regard him, physically as well as spiritually, in terms of the same patriarchal and venerable grandeur that glows forth from those Bible pictures of Moses on the mount, or an ancient Elijah exploding in bearded triumph at the transfiguration of Christ. Even so, the wrinkles around his mouth are early; he has worked hard, and this accounts for those lines and for the cheek whiskers which end in small tufts whiter than a cottontail’s butt. “Ugly as a mushrat,” my mother has said of him, and perhaps this is true: the angular face is too long and horselike, the nose too prominent and beaked, and, as my mother also has observed, “Lawd didn’t leave Marse Sam a The Confessions of Nat Turner

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whole lot of jawbone.” So much for my master’s chin. But his eyes are kindly, shrewd, luminous; there is still strength in his face, tempered by a curious, abiding sweetness that causes him ever to seem on the verge of a rueful smile. At this time, my regard for him is very close to the feeling one should bear only toward the Divinity.

“Let us adjourn to the veranda,” he says to the traveling man, pushing back his chair. “We usually retire more or less promptly at eight, but tonight you and I will share a bottle of port while we make out a requisition for my needs.” His hand falls lightly on the shoulder of the traveling man, who is rising now. “I hope you will forgive me if it sounds presumptuous,” he continues, “and it is a most unusual thing for me to say, but for a peddler who has the difficulties of so much travel, you sell an extremely reliable line of wares. And this, sir, as you must be aware, is of the greatest importance in a region like ours, removed so far from the centers of commerce. Since last year I have taken the opportunity of commending you to my friends.” The traveling man shines with pleasure, wheezing a little as he bows to the women and the young men, then moves on toward the door. “Well, thank you, sir

. . .” he begins, but my owner’s voice interrupts, not rude, not even abrupt, but in continuation of his praise: “So that they shall be as satisfied as I have been in the past. And what did you say was your tomorrow’s destination? Greensville County? Then you must stop by Robert Munson’s place on the Meherrin River . . .”

The voices fade, and while I busy myself around the table, helping the old man Little Morning and the young woman Prissy clear the dishes, the rest of the family rises, slowly scattering in the last brief hours before bedtime: the two nephews to attend to a mare ready to foal, Miss Nell to take a poultice to a sick Negro child in the cabins, the three other women—all astir with gay anticipation as they bustle toward the parlor—to read aloud from something they call
Marmion
. Then these voices too fade away, and I am back in the kitchen again amid the clumping of crudely shod Negro feet and the sharp stench of a ham hock steaming on the stove, back with my tall, beautiful mother banging and grumbling in a swirl of greasy smoke—” ’Thaniel, you better get dat butter down in de cellar lak I told you!” she calls to me—back in my black Negro world . . .

But that evening in the early darkness while I lie awake on my straw bed, the word
columbine
is like a lullaby on my tongue. I caress the word, whispering it over and over again, letting each letter form its own shape, as if suspended magically above me in The Confessions of Nat Turner

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the night. I lie at the drowsy edge of sleep, listening to the sounds of evening, to the feathery fuss and clumsy stir of chickens in their shed, a far-off howling dog, and from the millpond a steady passionate shrilling of frogs numberless as stars. All around me the smell of manure is rank and strong like the earth itself. Presently I hear my mother’s footsteps as she moves with a tired
slat-slat
of bare calloused feet from the kitchen, enters our tiny room, and lies down beside me in the dark. Almost at once she is fast asleep, breathing in a gentle rhythm, and I reach out and lightly touch the rough cotton shift above her ribs, to make certain that she is there. Then at last the spring night enfolds me as if with swamp and cedar and with drowsy remembrance, and dimly I hear a whippoorwill call through the dark, the word
columbine
still on my lips as I sink away into some strange dream filled with inchoate promise and a voiceless, hovering joy.