The Letter Writer (5 page)

For a moment all was terrible silence. Then Mother Whitehead spoke and held out her arms in a welcoming embrace. "Owen, so you have come home to us.
Welcome, child, I have missed you so!" That was her way. After all, she had trained him up since he was a knee baby.

He started toward her but did not get far. He had to get by Richard first, and Richard grabbed his arm in a fierce grip that bound him. "Home, are you?" he said in a voice of controlled anger.

"Yes, sir," Owen said quietly.

"And so what did you find in the outside world? Did you like it?"

"No, sir."

"How many meals of hominy and bacon did you have? How much pot likker? Did you sleep on a straw mattress or on the rough ground? Did you sleep at all? Answer me! No, don't speak. I suppose you went about stealing things from good folks' plantations. How many chickens did you steal? Well?" He gave Owen a little shake. "How many of our neighbors do I have to pay off for what you stole from them? You'll tell me, you will. And for every ten dollars you'll get ten stripes. You hear?"

Nat Turner spoke up then. "That's why I'm here, Mr. Whitehead," he said. "To tell you that he was with me the whole time. At my master's. He was fed and he worked and he stole nothing. You don't owe nobody anything.
Mr. Travis owes you for the work he did. It was as if you hired him out."

He reached inside his breeches pocket and drew out some silver coins and put them on a nearby glass-topped table. "That's for his hire, sir. Mr. Travis wants you to have it."

"Are you making a fool out of me?" Richard asked.

"No, sir," Nat Turner said.

I could watch his face, hear the even tone in his voice, and tell how he despised Richard. "Mr. Travis's only wish is that you don't whip Owen for running off. He says if you don't want him anymore, he'll buy him from you. He does a full day's work, he says."

The wind went out of Richard's sails. He released Owen. "What I do with my property is my business," he said. "If I want to whip him, I'll whip him. And it's none of Travis's business how I do with my negroes."

"You know better, Richard," Mother Whitehead said kindly. "Here in this county it is everybody's business how everybody else treats their negroes." And she stepped forward and put an arm around Owen's shoulder and patted his head. "Violet, go and take Owen into the kitchen and give him some good vittles. No, Harriet, you
stay here, this is family business. I only wish Margaret were here instead of gallivanting around all the time."

And then to Nat Turner, "I am Mother Whitehead, Nat Turner. As you must have heard by now, I am near totally blind. But what the eyes can't see, the heart can. Anyway, my son, Richard, runs things around here and is the one to be reckoned with. But on this one matter I shall overstep him. Because I've known Owen since he was born. I am most pleased to meet you. I am the one always writing to Mr. Travis and asking him to hire
you
out to
me.
I have already asked him to allow me to buy you. But he refuses. It says much about your character and your work."

"Yes, ma'am," Nat answered.

"Richard has his reputation to keep. Both as a property and slave owner in Southampton County and a leading Methodist minister."

I heard Richard sigh heavily.

"I can tell you, Nat Turner, that it is not an easy path my son has taken. To head up a plantation with sixty slaves and be a minister who stands for forgiveness and love is a double duty most could not perform. I hope you will tell others how Richard manages it. Your young
friend is safe and welcomed home. We thank you for what you have done for us. And I promise you that very soon you will be working, for hire, in this very house. May we offer you something cool to drink?"

Nat said no. He left then. Richard glared at Mother, who, thank heaven, could not see the look. But he could not go against her wishes. And he knew it.

Dear Uncle Andrew:... And so that is how Nat Turner came to us. I believe that Mother Whitehead made an offer of one thousand dollars to buy him, but Mr. Travis, his master, said no. I know she paid a lot to hire him from the last week in June to the end of August. He sleeps in the groom's quarters in the stable. So far as I can see, he works very hard. Richard doesn't like him a bit and doesn't speak to him except to tell him what to do. On those few occasions, Richard talks in that bloodstained Old Testament tone of his that always gives me the shivers. It doesn't seem to bother Nat. He's a negro, with no pretensions, with nothing to his name, who's been whipped and bought and sold,
traded and abused, and his voice isn't bloodstained at all. He makes you believe that God is forgiving and good. I'd rather believe in his God than Richard's God, who is always angry and ready to punish and send us to hell forever. Please write soon.

Your loving niece, Harriet

"Another letter to Andrew?" Mother Whitehead asked.

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'm not so sure it's good, a young girl like you corresponding with a half-wit uncle like him. Why can't you be more like Margaret and have friends in the neighborhood? You see, she's spent the weekend at the Gerards' again. She has a true friend in Emilie, her own age. I hear she's bringing Emilie home for the week."

"Mother Whitehead, in the first place Uncle Andrew isn't a half-wit. He's quite sane and he has many people of eminence in England as his friends. Not only my father's old business contacts, but people who are artists and writers and such. And as for Margaret, the only reason she's having Emilie for the week is because Emilie is going out of her senses at home, because Richard put her
mother out of his church and her mother is carrying on so about it."

Mother Whitehead's blue eyes went wide. The head of half-white, half-chestnut curls shook in a negative way. "Put Charlotte out of the church? But why? The woman bakes the best upside-down cake I ever tasted. We need her for our bake sales."

"Upside-down cakes don't get you into heaven." Richard came out onto the veranda where we were talking.

"But she just lost her husband. Why did you put her out?" Mother Whitehead asked.

He leaned down and kissed her forehead. "You know I won't discuss the sins of other people in front of y'all. I'm on my way now to fetch Margaret and the girl. We ought to be home within the hour. We'll have dinner. Where is that darky today, Mother? What's he working on?"

"The table from the library that used to be your father's. You know how it's always falling down. The round, oak one. He used to put his favorite books on it."

"I'd throw it out," Richard said. "Get a new one. We can afford it, Mother."

"It was your father's," she said again. And that was all she said, except "Nat Turner is in the library working on it."

Richard left. I had a pretty good idea what Charlotte Gerard had done that was so terrible that Richard had put her out of his church. I knew that her husband had just died and she was surrounded by a lot of gossip. About two months ago, Cecil R. Gerard, her husband, had fallen from his horse and hurt his back. Charlotte had sent for Dr. Gordon to come and fix him up. He was on the way to recovery when pneumonia set in. The good doctor had stayed in the overseer's cottage on the plantation. Two weeks ago, Cecil R. Gerard had died. In his will he left the plantation to Charlotte, on one condition.

As long as she did not marry again, the plantation was hers. If she did, it went to Emilie, the daughter, and Charlotte was not to enjoy its benefits in any way. Which meant, the lawyers said, that she was not to live in the big house at all.

What happened was that Charlotte moved into the overseer's house with Dr. Gordon. She did not marry, so the plantation was still hers. She ran it by day and slept
with Dr. Gordon by night and that, I assumed, was why Richard had evicted her from his congregation.

Emilie was mortified. And crying all the time. And to give my sister, Margaret, some credit, she had remained a true friend to her but did not know what to do. And so now she was bringing Emilie home to us. As if we knew how to help her, with all our peculiarities and underlying hatreds.

I waited until Richard climbed into the gilt and cherrywood brougham, which was pulled by two thoroughbred horses and driven by Chancy the groom, to excuse myself from Mother Whitehead. And then I went to the library to seek out Nat Turner. He'd been with us only a week, but in that time I'd discovered that he had answers to questions I didn't even know I had.

***

I sat down in a chair in the corner and just watched him for a while. He hummed while he worked. A low, deep-throated hymn. And with the windows open and the chirping of the birds outside and the buzzing of a bumblebee nearby it sounded peaceful. This house was seldom peaceful.

"Is that a church song?" I asked.

"It's an old spiritual," he said. "If you don't have a church, it's still all right to sing it."

"Do you have a church?"

"No, little missy. I preach wherever the good Lord allows me to preach. I hold my Bible classes under the big tree behind the fruit and vegetable stands in Jerusalem."

I nodded. "You believe in a different God than my brother Richard believes in," I told him.

"How's that?"

"All Richard talks about is how God is going to punish us. Your God loves us. I never once heard Richard talk about a God who loves and forgives us. How am I supposed to know which God to believe in?"

He smiled. "Some of us take our whole lives pondering that question out," he answered. "Why don't you just go ahead and treat God as you'd want Him to be and see how He responds?"

"What makes you think He'd respond to me?"

"Why wouldn't He?"

"I'm just a no-count little girl on a plantation in the South. There are probably thousands of others like me."

He went on working. "Did you ever see snow?"

"Of course."

"Did you know that out of millions and millions of flakes, no two are fashioned alike?"

I just stared at him as if he'd taken leave of his senses.

"If God can do that with snowflakes, then don't you think He can do that with thousands of little girls on plantations in the South? Make them different and individual?"

I was staring at him.

"And if God makes all those little girls individual, don't you think He'd bother to respond to them as such?"

"Yes," I said.

He shrugged. "He responds to me," he said, "and I'm just one more black man amongst millions in this country. He responds because I talk to Him. Not as a punisher, but as a friend."

I was becoming frightened now and so I gave the conversation a new turn.

"Emilie is coming to stay the week. Emilie Gerard. Do you know who she is?"

More smiles. "I know," he said in a singsongy way.

"Do you think Richard should have put her mother out of his church?"

"It's his church. Though I always thought church was the place for sinners. And that we were all sinners. Even Richard." He started humming again.

Now I started to feel better. "Thank you," I said. "Things are starting to look more clear to me already. I mean, I was brought up to think of God as Richard, only bigger. I'm starting to figure that He isn't."

He never stopped working. "There is some little thing you can do for me," he said quietly. "Your father's old gun room is next door. I had to go in there the other day to see how the twin table like this was put together. On the other table was a map of Southampton County. Do you suppose you could, secretly, within the next few weeks, bring it here for me to borrow? I don't want to take it out of the house. I just want to study it a while."

"Of course," I said as I got up.

"And tell no one."

"Yes, I'll do that. Are you taking a trip?"

"You could say that. I need to be more familiar with the roads and the woods."

I walked to the door and stopped. "If you see Emilie Gerard around during the next week, talk to her, will you?" I begged. "She is the most confused human being lately."

"I sure will, missy, I sure will."

Nat Turner ate breakfast in the kitchen with the household help. With Connie and Owen and Violet and Winefred, who was the cook, and Ormond. They all liked him. He was polite and pleasant. Winefred heaped his plate with food twice, and he had all the hot coffee he could drink.

He was a likely negro, the kind you wanted to do things for. Today I would get the map of the county for him from Father's gun room.

At our table in the dining room, I stared at Emilie. It was Thursday, but she wore a Sunday frock with a pink sash around the middle. Her hair was pulled back from her brow and tied with a bow. She was fifteen, the same
age as Margaret, yet this morning there was a weariness about her that made her appear ancient.

"Have some fruit, dear," Mother Whitehead said.

"I'm really not hungry," she answered.

"Richard," Mother appealed to him, "she must eat."

"I'm not her brother, Mother," he reminded her. "And I'm not her minister anymore since she refuses to come to my church. So I can't even see to the starvation of her soul."

Emilie came to life then. "I would come, if you hadn't thrown my mama out. How can I come now, without her?"

"You should come
for
her," he said evenly. "You should come to pray for her. Haven't my past sermons taught you anything?"

"Yes," Emilie threw at him, "that you pray for those who are close to God, and those who aren't, who
need
Him, you toss away like garbage."

Everyone went silent. Hooray, I said to myself. How I wish I had the courage to talk to Richard like that. As for my brother, he looked as if someone had thrown a pitcher of cold water in his face. But he kept his dignity. He even smiled.

"If you were one of my sisters, I'd have the pleasure
of sending you to kneel on the stones out back and then spend the day in your room," he said mildly. "But you're not, so I suppose I must take the insult. Unless, of course, you are prepared to apologize."

Emilie wasn't. "I think I'll have some fruit now," she said. "I find I have an appetite after all."