The Letter Writer (7 page)

Now, too old to work anymore, she spent her mornings on the wooden porch of her cabin, stitching clothes for the little slave children. And her afternoons, trimming the ends off beans or shucking corn. She would not let her hands be idle, lest the devil use them for his workshop, she had told us.

Not many people on the plantation visited her. Truth
to tell, she had "the gift." She knew things. And since everyone, even all the slaves, had secrets they didn't want brought out into the open, she kept those secrets for them. I like to think she stitched them into the clothing she made for the little folk.

She could always be counted on to keep a body's secrets. So people told her things.

Up until now I hadn't had any secrets. Oh, how I wished I had. When she discovered that about me, she just leaned back in her ancient rocking chair and laughed. "Go get yourself some secrets, girl. Life ain't interestin' if'n you doan have any."

Now I had one. And I was not as all-out thrilled as I thought I would be. I was more frightened than anything. The secret was a burden, not a joy. I decided I would say nothing to Cloanna. I would see if she could discover it on her own. And I warned Violet not to say anything, either.

But Violet was troubled by what I had done. I could tell. And whenever Violet was troubled, it was enough for her just to go and visit Cloanna, even if she never said a word.

Sure enough, there was Cloanna in her rocking chair, snipping the ends off beans. Her face was a map I'd like
to trace. I'd love to see where it would take me. And I'd love to see where she had been.

"What you two doin' here in the slave quarters on such a beautiful day?" she scolded. "Why ain't you rompin' in the meadow, or pickin' some flowers, or fishin' in the pond?"

"I'm too old to romp," Violet told her.

"Humph. When I wuz your age I hooked my skirts up and went wadin' in the pond."

"I've done that when I picked cattails," Violet said. "Massa Richard said if he caught me at it again he'd whip my legs."

"He did, did he? He's gotten terrible persnickety since he become a preacher. When he wuz a whippersnapper boy I used to box his ears when he come inta my kitchen and stole my fresh-baked bread and just-churned butter. Ask him about that sometime if'n you want to see his face go red."

"No thank you, Grandma, I don't talk like that to Massa Richard."

"Well he needs somebody to talk to him like that. You there, little Miz Harriet, the cat got your tongue this day? Why you so quiet?"

"No reason," I told her.

"No reason to lie to Cloanna, missy. She knows the difference. It's heavy, ain't it?"

"What?"

"That secret you're totin' round inside you. It's bearin' down on you. You finally got yourself a first-rate secret an' it ain't so much fun now, is it?"

Tears came to my eyes. "No," I admitted.

"Listen to me, chile." And she leaned forward. "I doan know all. But somethin' tells me it's about paper. An' lines on the paper. 'Portant lines. An' you stole that paper. Is old Cloanna right?"

"I didn't really steal it," I said.

"Now you lyin' to Cloanna. It's bad to lie to people, chile, but it'll get you right inta hell to lie to me. Didn't anybody ever tell you that?"

"No," I said.

She went back to snipping the ends off her beans. "Would you do as I say if'n I say to destroy that paper you stole?"

I looked at her blankly.

"Doan give me that dumblike look. If'n there's any-thin' you ain't, it's dumb. Well, would you do as I say if I told you to destroy it?"

"I don't know," I answered.

"Well I'm sayin' it, anyways. Destroy it. No good will come out of you stealin' it when it ain't yours to have. Look, little Harriet chile, I feel it in my ninety-two-year-old bones. Like when the sky gathers black around me and it threatens rain. My knees hurt. My back hurts. My wrists hurt. Somethin' bad gonna happen round heah, and I want no part of it. So you better watch your p's an' q's and doan go foolin' 'round any. Now I've said my piece. Go, go and leave me alone."

"Why can't you tell us more?" I pushed.

"'Cause I the keeper of secrets round heah, tha's why," she answered firmly. "Now go, the both of you. An' leave me with my beans."

We left, sadly. "I'd like to know what secrets she carries about people around here," I told Violet.

"I'll wager she carries them to the grave," she said.

"What do you suppose she meant about something bad going to happen around here?"

"She just wants to scare the boots off us," Violet said.

But we were quiet walking home. And I think we both knew not to distrust Cloanna. Too many times when she predicted something, it had come true. Like
the time she told Richard to get all the cows in the barn one midsummer night, that the wolves were going to attack. Richard only scoffed at her. And the next morning he had three dead calves lying in the pasture.

Richard never discounted anything she said again.

Of a sudden, I felt myself getting a fever. I was hot and yet my hands and feet were freezing. I left Violet to her chores as soon as we got back from slaves' row, and I headed straight to the groom's quarters in the stable, where Nat was living, to give him the map. I never paid much mind to what Cloanna said. She said it mostly for the negro children, anyway.

The map was burning a hole in my apron pocket. I was tired of the thought of it by now, and I wanted to be shed of it.

It was about three o'clock in the afternoon, I reckon, but there was no one about the barnyard. The sun poured down on the dust, raising it up into choking air.
I longed to take my clothes off and go for a dip in the pond. I looked around. There was a parcel of slaves in the cotton field in back of the slave quarters. And another tending to the apple trees in the orchard. But they weren't singing as they usually did when they worked. It was just too hot and there was nothing to sing about.

Nat Turner was not in his quarters. I stood and looked around. It was very neat. It had a fireplace, a desk, an oil lamp, and straw ticking.

On the desk was a pad of paper and on it was a list of names. I glanced at it.
Mrs. Whitehead, Richard, Pleasant, baby William, Margaret and Harriet, Violet, and all the house negroes but Owen, take him with us, he's angry enough. Make it quick and go on to the Jacobs place, two miles north.

I felt my heart beating. Make it quick? What were we all doing listed on that paper? Was he going to gather us together and preach to us?

"What are you doing here, missy?"

His voice. I turned, my hands trembling, and I faced him. "I brought you the map," I said. "I couldn't find you. No one is about. So I thought I'd bring it here."

His eyes went from the paper with the names on the
desk to me. I pulled the map out of my apron pocket and handed it to him. He unfolded it carefully. It was very quiet, and I could hear Mother Whitehead's windmill
clack, clack, clacking
in the fields, a sound I usually took for granted. I heard a cow moo, a dog bark. Suddenly sounds I took for granted all stood out against the starkness of the day for me, each demanding to be heard, as if for the first, or last, time.

He glanced, briefly, at the map. "You went to see Cloanna," he said. It was a statement, not a question.

"Yes."

"You talked to her about this."

"No. I never mentioned it. You don't have to with Cloanna. She just knows things."

He scowled, and it was as if God was scowling at me. "What do you mean, she
knows
things?"

"She has the gift. She can sense what troubles you have. And she can—"

"You had troubles? Giving me the map?"

"I never told her that. I never even told myself that. But yes, I was confused about it."

"Why? I told you I was going to visit these houses and preach to these people, didn't I? White people need
to be preached to. They don't know God. They go to church all fancified in their tall hats and bonnets and eye each other up and gossip about who did what all week and simper at each other and think that God is going to listen to them. That's not what God wants! Do you know what God wants from them?"

I was beginning to get frightened. "No."

"He wants them to come to their senses. He wants them to let their negroes free. That's what He wants."

I drew in my breath.

"And that's what I aim to tell them."

I nodded my head in agreement.

"So what did she say about the map, then, to get you in such a state of mind?"

"She didn't know it was a map. She only knew it was a paper—" I saw him staring at me and stopped.

He nodded his head, folded the map, put it in the pocket of his shirt, and then stepped over to the desk and added Cloanna's name to the list on the paper.

"She's one of the Goody Two-shoes around here, much as she tries to be different. You see what a nice cabin she has? What good food and how she is regularly supplied? You think that comes from being a troublemaker? A dissident? No, those who make trouble and
shake things up are lucky to get bread and water.
But to us it's a feast for angels!
Do you understand?"

"I think so," I answered.

"Cloanna will be preached to," he said. "When I am finished with her, she will understand."

Before Nat Turner could put his plan into motion, however, another incident happened that gave us all pause about our practice of slavery.

Two slaves ran off from the Gerard plantation down the road, the one where Mr. Gerard had died and his wife, Charlotte, was now living with his doctor in a cottage on the grounds. The place from whence Emilie came.

"It must be chaos there," Richard said at supper the evening I gave Nat the map. "I understand their overseer rules with an iron fist, which is why the slaves continually run away."

We had supper in near silence. Pleasant said she
thought Richard should take a ride over there and see what was going on. "Just your presence helps," she reminded him. "All you have to do is ride into a barnyard and it has a calming effect. The slaves all know who you are."

Richard puffed up at the compliment, as he was meant to do. "We'll see," he said.

Then a courier came with a note for Richard, brought to the table by Owen. Richard excused himself to sit there and read it, then raised his eyes and looked at his mother. "It's an invitation to all our slaves to witness a beating," he said.

Mother Whitehead scowled. "A beating?" she asked.

"Yes," Richard answered, as quietly as if it were an invitation to a barbecue. "A hundred lashes. Charlotte's overseer wants me to bring all our slaves to witness the whipping of Ebban, one of the slaves who ran away. It seems that he attacked one of the patrollers. They want to set an example."

"
Richard!
" exclaimed Pleasant. "You can't. You can't bring all the slaves."

"And why not?" he wanted to know.

"Because," she said. And oh I did admire the way she stood up to him. "Not the women, anyway. I mean,
think of what that means. It means Violet and Cloanna and..." She was counting on her fingers.

Richard said, "I should think it a good thing for them to see."

"What about Nat Turner?" she asked.

"He doesn't belong to me," he said quickly. I think he was a little afraid of Nat Turner. "The overseer of Charlotte's says he wants to do this tomorrow. Get it over with. Charlotte," and he glanced again at the note, "adds a line here that says can we please fetch Emilie to stay over tonight as she doesn't want the girl to see this. I'll go fetch her. It isn't far." He stood up. "I'll go tell the courier yes to all of it."

"Da, Da," said baby William, waving his fat little arms. He was daft over his father. Pleasant set him down on the floor, and he toddled out of the dining room after Richard.

***

Richard brought Emilie home that night. "Mother won't put a stop to this," she said between tears when we had her safely ensconced upstairs. "She's so taken with Dr. Gordon, she cares about little else. She lets Harry, our overseer, handle everything, and he is such a cruel man.
When my father was alive, he kept him reined in, but now Harry is determined to have his way and make a show of it. Oh, I hate him, and Dr. Gordon, and everyone." She burst into tears and hid her face in the bedcover. She slept overnight with Margaret.

***

The next morning at breakfast Emilie was composed at least, if not happy. Pleasant allowed her to play with baby William and even feed him breakfast, and it turned out she loved babies. It was William who got her to laughing again and who claimed her attention even while the big commotion of Richard's gathering the slaves was going on outside. And then, against a canopy of a great deal of dust and a symphony of low moaning, the slaves were herded out onto the road and driven like cattle, by Richard and other slaves whom he trusted, in the direction of the Gerards'.

Then our place was eerily silent, for the women had gone, too. Even Violet, who was half slave and half white. I personally knew she would not be able to take this.

I brought second rounds of breakfast coffee out to the veranda for Mother Whitehead and Pleasant, Emilie,
Margaret, and myself. There was also breakfast cake and I told Mother Whitehead how I thought Violet would never make it through without fainting.

"No man will live through one hundred lashes," Mother Whitehead said quietly, stirring sugar into her cup. "He'll die before they reach seventy-five. It's a calculated way to kill him."

"Violet is only half colored," I said. "The half of her that's white will cry and faint."

"The half of her that's white is likely stronger than the half that's colored," Mother Whitehead said. And it made me think that she knew who Violet's father was.

"What will they do if he dies?" Pleasant asked.

"Say it was accidental," Mother Whitehead answered calmly. "You are not allowed to murder your slave in this state, but if it is accidental, they can't blame you. Then likely they will burn him so no one can exhume the body and see how mauled he was with the whip."