The Letter Writer (3 page)

"Is it true that Mother offered Mr. Travis a premium amount of money to hire Nat Turner to work for us?"

I was almost afraid to answer. "I don't know."

"Liar. You write the letters. What did she offer? Do you know that Turner considers himself a minister? Can you imagine? How would you like him baptizing you?"

"He is said to be a genius with furniture making," I told her. "He learned when he was about sixteen. He was apprenticed out. And you know how Mother wants new tables for the parlor and the hallway."

She just stood there. "So Mother did ask for him."

"I'm not supposed to talk about any of her private correspondence," I said.

"Well, she'd best be careful. He can read and write. One of his previous masters taught him in an experiment. And now nobody knows quite what to do with him! So Mr. Travis hires him out and uses the money he brings in."

"Well, that's one thing to do with him, I suppose," I said.

"Well, what would you do, Miss Holier-than-thou? You think you're so all-count better than the rest of us because you sympathize with the darkies. Well, you think Richard doesn't?"

"I can hear, right now, how he does," I said.

"Well somebody has to keep them in line or they'd kill us all in our beds at night. You think Richard enjoys doing it? But he knows he has to. He's a minister, for heaven's sake. A man of God. He knows his earthly responsibilities, taking care of us. You think he hasn't considered what's to become of the slaves in Virginia, even before you put foot on the place? You think Mother, sitting out there on the veranda, isn't thinking of it right now?"

I sighed. "If I'm wrong, I'm sorry," I said. "But I just don't think this is the way."

"If you come up with a better one, let us know. And go on now to Mother." She went out the door, leaving me alone in the room.

Nat Turner. I had heard of him even before Mother wrote asking to hire him. I had heard Turner was a fanatical minister, a man who went about telling people
he'd seen visions in his dreams, who baptized people in ponds. How could he take orders from Richard, who believed ponds were only for fishing in? And if he had a vision in his dreams, would he wake up and tell his wife it was because he'd had too many fresh oysters for supper?

I sighed again, sensing trouble, and went to see to Mother Whitehead.

"Would you like any more lemonade, Mother White-head?" I came upon her on the veranda, just where I'd left her, only now her head was back against the flowered cushion and she was dozing. The piercing blue eyes opened. "I want dinner. When is dinner?"

"Connie said in half an hour."

"What are we having? I'm about starved. Where is Violet? Why isn't she fanning me? Where is Owen? I need these wicker shades pulled down."

"Owen ran off, Mother. Two weeks ago now. Don't you remember?"

The negro boy in question was fifteen. She'd raised him up since he was two. He was the son of Jack and
Charlotte, who'd been with her forever, as had most of her people. Of a sudden Owen had felt the call of being free, and one day a couple of weeks ago he simply could not be found anywhere.

Richard was furious. Because Mother wanted Owen back so badly, he'd spent forty dollars already on travel expenses, meals, newspaper ads, and rewards trying to find the boy.

NOTICE FOR A NEGRO BOY NAMED OWEN. Source: The
Richmond Constitutional Whig.
Runaway from the subscriber living near Jerusalem in Southampton County. June 2, 1831, a negro boy age 15, five feet two inches high, slim, well built, active, and likely, wears his hair in two plaits, smokes segars when he thinks nobody is watching, and walks with considerable confidence when he thinks people are. He can cook eggs, make coffee, wait the table, answer the door, fetch and carry, and do all other houseboy duties with admirable grace. Wearing a cotton shirt and pantaloons and good homemade shoes when he ran. May be headed for the Canadian border. Fifteen
dollars in gold coin will be rewarded the finder for giving over the above-described negro.
Mrs. Catharine Whitehead
Owner of Whitehead Farms
Southampton County, Virginia

***

It must appear in the
Richmond Whig.
No other paper would do. Richard was furious because his mother made him take the buggy on the fifteen-mile trip across the Sussex County line to the Sussex County Courthouse, where Evans and Blanding, the slave auctioneers, did their business. She made him watch at the pen where negroes were likely auctioned off, to make sure Owen hadn't been already captured and wasn't being resold again into bondage for four hundred and sixty dollars, or some other outrageous sum.

Violet told me she knew where Owen was. I believed that she did. Food was missing from the pantry. Exactly the kind of food that could be spirited out in a napkin or cabbage leaves without making a mess. Sometimes when I was about the place, I had the feeling that Owen was about, too. Watching us. Here all the time and laughing at us.

"I want another drink," Mother said. "And I want liquor in it. No sissy-boots lemonade. And I don't want Richard to know it." She handed me the glass and I took it into the house, to the sideboard in the dining room where the liquor was kept, and mixed her a mint julep, exactly as she liked it. She drank. I couldn't blame her. If I were husbandless with a plantation and sixty slaves to worry about and a son like Richard and a dizzy daughter like Margaret who went to an expensive girls' school and learned nothing, I'd drink, too.

I brought the glass out to her and she accepted it. "We have time for one letter before dinner," she said.

I set myself up at the small ladies' desk next to her. It could be moved from room to room by a servant, and it held her fancy stationery and all her accoutrements for writing.

She dictated a letter to her dressmaker in Jerusalem.

Dear Mrs. Ord: I hope this finds you and yours in the best of health. In answer to your last question, I have decided that for my new gown I shall need at least twenty-five yards of fabric. I would like it to be of violet taffeta, trimmed with bias bands of black velvet edged with white at the bottom of the skirt. I will
likely be able to make a fitting by the end of June and will require this gown for the Fall Festival in honor of the success of the crops to be held in Jerusalem in September. Keep in mind that while made of taffeta, it must be elegant and genteel. As for my daughters, we will discuss their dresses when I come for my fitting.

Thank you, Mrs. Catharine Whitehead P.S. Oh, by now you must have heard that my houseboy, Owen, has run off. We think it is just a prank, but he is missed terribly by all, and I ask you to please send around a courier if you have seen him.

I felt guilty not telling her what I heard. But Violet had begged me not to. And I kept my promise.

Then she said that since there was still time we would do one more letter. This one was to Mr. Travis, four miles down the road, and the theme was familiar.

I wish you would have a change of heart about hiring out to me your darky, Nat Turner. I have heard he is a first-rate worker, that he can read and write, and does not need someone standing over him all the time telling him what to do, that he has invented a privy flusher, the kind that would be fed by water from my
windmill. I need a barn designed for my prize cattle, some good oak furniture fixed, and many an honest day's work done around here for which I would pay premium prices.

She had been trying to "acquire" Nat Turner now for six weeks. But Mr. Travis had refused to hire him out. "What do I have to do?" she asked me. "Offer to buy him?"

Not until that afternoon did I have time to write the letter I wanted to write. It was to Uncle Andrew.

Uncle Andrew brought me into a world I'd never known. He told me about his friend John Constable, the landscape painter, who had studied at the Royal Academy Schools and was recognized as the foremost landscape painter in Britain. I learned all about Constable, the way he painted, what he painted, and how his wife died.

I made my mind up that I would travel to England someday. I would go to the Lake District, where all the great artists and writers seemed to go.

I had, without realizing it, another tutor in Uncle Andrew.

He knew Joseph Cottle, too, the British bookseller, who was a patron of Coleridge and Wordsworth. He sent
me a copy of
Lyrical Ballads.
And Margaret became so jealous she just had to take it to school and show it around. I prayed she wouldn't lose or destroy it somehow, for it had Coleridge's signature inside it.

Margaret told everyone it was hers.

I learned a lot about Uncle Andrew. Mostly I learned that we felt the same about slavery, God, and family. My family knew I wrote to him and did not object, so long as I did not speak of him. He was, for some reason no one would name, the black sheep of the family.

That day I wrote and told him about Owen.

Likely he is hiding out in the thick, swampy woods that adjoin our property. Slaves all flee there when they run away. Some run away regularly when they want to be treated better, then in good time they come home. The slaves at home will bring them food.

I know that slavery in England ended in 1807. I suspect you people in England think we are barbarians at best for still following the practice. Well, Owen has been gone near three weeks now. I wonder if Violet is feeding him. I might let her take me to see him. Or then again, Uncle Andrew, I just might bring him some food, myself.

Dear Mr. Peyton: I have been informed by some of our neighbors that you are fortunate enough to have produced turnips for sale and turnips to spare. If this is true, I would like to purchase 10 or 15 bushels. Let me know the price. This year we have sowed only our freshest land in turnips since we presumed that wearied lands would not bring them. They were used as food for Whites and Negroes and also for cattle and sheep. Mr. Young told me he planted turnips to be fed on only by sheep and as the basis of the improvement of poor lands. We will try that experiment here this year, only with buckwheat...

For two hours I had written letters concerning the improvement of land, the rotating of crops, and what fertilizer was best. By the time we were finished I knew that turnips as well as hemp and pumpkins were best planted on new clearings of land. And that eight acres of pumpkins, well grown, will feed all the stock we have for two to three months. Those letters taught me more than I learned from Pleasant about my geography and numbers together.

***

It was to be a warm June evening, turning into the kind of night when you didn't want to go to sleep but stay up all night talking.

I asked Mother Whitehead if I could sleep upstairs with Violet. "I see nothing amiss with it," she said.

I made her an eggnog with rum in it, her favorite bedtime drink, and left her there in the parlor. She would have her "talk" with Richard before she retired. They talked every evening, and mostly it was about the running of the plantation.

We sat on Violet's bed, inside the mosquito netting, and I felt like a girl in a fairy tale. "Tell me about Nat Turner," I said.

"Did Mother Whitehead get his master to lend him out yet?" she asked.

"She wrote him another letter," I told her. "But I don't know whether we'll be getting him. Violet, do you know where Owen is?"

She giggled. "Well, he isn't here, so stop looking around. But I do know where he is, yes. He's with Nat Turner."

I'd known, as a matter of course, that she was a follower of Nat Turner. All negroes who considered themselves of any eminence around the Southampton area of Virginia were. But I'd never asked her about it. I'd never intruded on her privacy.

The sound of a night bird drifted in the open window. A single tallow candle gave a flickering light. "Why is he with Nat Turner?" I asked. "And where are they?"

"Nat heard he'd run off and went to Nelson's Pond, where he'd been told he was hiding. It fits right in with Turner's plans. He's going to do a baptism there tomorrow."

The pond was at the abandoned Nelson plantation. The property must have been beautiful when once lived in, with that spacious pond in front. Now it seemed haunted. The owners had fled when people were fleeing
these parts and going south because the soil could no longer support their tobacco growing.

"Have you ever seen him do a baptism before?"

"A few times."

"What's it like?"

"Have you ever seen your brother do one?"

"Yes, but it can't be like that, because Turner has no church."

"Tomorrow, he's baptizing old Ezra Bentley. Well," she elaborated, "he takes the person right into the water, then dunks them under and holds them there for a minute while he says the words."

"Ohhh," I breathed, "how dramatic."

"Yes." She nodded with self-importance. Then she leaned close and whispered in my ear. "Ezra was chased out of your brother's church for being a drunk and a gambler. He wanted baptism, but your brother said no."

I nodded solemnly.

"I always thought people who were sinners were supposed to go to church," she reasoned. "And not be thrown out. But it seems that Richard wants only the ones who aren't sinners."

I nodded, agreeing.

"There's more." She smiled triumphantly. "Owen's
going to be at the baptism. Yes"—she nodded her head vigorously—"he is. He wants to come home, you see. But he's afeared of what Richard will do to him. So he's gone to Nat Turner and hopes Nat will speak with Richard as one minister to another and talk Richard into not whipping him for running away."

"Ohhh," I breathed.

"So if you want to come, we go tomorrow."

"Are we going to bring Owen some food?" I asked.

"Yes. I've got it all arranged with Connie in the kitchen. She's going to make some egg salad sandwiches and wrap them in cabbage leaves. For Owen and Nat."

I felt envious that she could call Nat Turner by his first name. But she seemed perfectly at ease with it.