The Resurrection of Nat Turner, Part 2: The Testimonial (35 page)

Trezvant was still laughing. “You are a high-minded fellow, aren't you? Everyone's stealing from you.”

“I am a trustee and have the right to set forth judgment. It is
against God's law to make your brother your slave, and the penalty for this disobedience, for centuries of arrogant disobedience, is death.” No mercy could be given to those who gave no mercy. “‘For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.'” There was no life or mercy for those who chose to live with cold, dead hearts.

The smile left Trezvant's face. “You are a murderous wretch! You killed children!”

Nat Turner's head and shoulders slumped. He heard Levi Waller's family screaming. He saw their faces. If they had gotten to the still earlier, Waller's family might still be alive. A tear stung his cheek. “I thank God that I feel this sorrow,” he whispered to himself.

Then their faces and screams were replaced by those of the captives he'd known. He saw his mother's tears and her shame. He saw and heard the witnesses, and he saw Misha and her baby floating away on the water. He felt their heartbreak, their humiliation, their shame. Nat Turner lifted his head, righted his shoulders. “How many children have
you
killed?”

In one swift movement, Trezvant rose to his feet and struck him. Nat Turner tasted salty blood as he toppled from his stool to the floor. Trezvant's boot moved in slow motion and Nat Turner felt bright, white pain across the bridge of his nose.

Boston

1856

H
arriet had thought she wanted to listen; she had thought she was ready. She had thought she had the courage to hear.

But she felt accused. She felt angry. She had done nothing wrong.

She had given her life and sacrificed her reputation working to abolish slavery. The guilt and anger she felt was not rational. She did not create slavery. She owned no slaves. She tried to help, had risked her life and reputation to help. But she felt guilt just the same, and Harriet wanted it to stop.

“How could you know this?” The anger in her voice surprised her. She felt it, but she had not wanted William to know. “You were in the Great Dismal Swamp, were you not?” She was embarrassed by the cynicism that laced her voice but not embarrassed enough that she could control it. “You were not there! How could you know this?” She did not call William a liar, but she wanted to believe he was. It would have been easier than feeling what she felt. She had done nothing, but she felt convicted.

William was calm. “There were others there. There are always those who go unnoticed—as long as they do not move too suddenly, as long as they are quiet. The truth is carried on whispers and birds' wings.

“There were even those in the courtroom who wanted the truth known.”

Harriet thought of William Parker, the lawyer who acted as
Nat Turner's defense attorney, and she recalled the mysterious letter that had sent her on her most recent journey.

Harriet's hand shook when she lifted her teacup. Though she fought it, everything within her felt convicted. “I feel as though you are attacking me, Mr. Love.” She rested the jittering cup back on its saucer. “All white people are not responsible. I did not create slavery. All white people are not evil.”

“I only speak the truth of what happened.”

“But Nat Turner was a murderer!” Harriet was surprised at the bitterness in her tone. “You try to paint him as a hero.”

William nodded. “Why is it so hard for you to allow us a hero?”

“I hardly think ‘hero' describes Nat Turner.”

“Because he took up arms?” He shook his head.

It was the same thing she had felt before, a kind of quiet antagonism, as though William were angry with everyone. His aggressiveness and senseless anger sparked hers; she had done nothing to him. She did not deserve to feel guilty.

“You wanted to know the truth,” William said.

Somehow she could not help feeling as if she and her family had played some part in forcing Nat Turner to be who and what he had become.

Now William reached out and touched her hand. Harriet was stunned by what appeared to be kindness in his dark eyes. “We can stop.”

She pulled her hand away and then wiped at the tears on her face.

“It is not easy or pleasant for any of us. That is why we must work hard to end it.”

“I didn't do it!” Harriet wept.

He nodded. “Still, all of us must work to clean up the mess. Part of ending it is facing the truth.”

Harriet dabbed at her face. “Forgive me.”

William shrugged and shook his head. “We may stop,” he repeated.

“Continue,” she said, and then braced herself.

Cross Keys

1831

 

What must it feel like to sail, sailing away,

Watching the prow of a great ship cut through the water?

What must it feel like to stand, standing as master of the ship,

Riding the waves beneath you?

What must it feel like to step, stepping on sandy shores,

Dining on French pastries, drinking Turkish coffee?

What must it feel like to ride, riding in a grand carriage,

Bustling down the cobblestone streets of the capital,

Having men and women wave the flag and call you hero?

What would it be like to sit, sitting in a cabin before a golden fire,

Bouncing his son on his knee with his wife smiling at him across the table?

What would it be like to see, seeing another spring,

Hearing the first robins and seeing apple blossoms?

What must it feel like to swim, swimming in the ocean,

Swimming until he disappeared from shore?

Nat Turner was choking now, water all around him. He bobbed in the ocean, great waves crashing around him, choking him. He was going to drown.

“WAKE UP, YOU devil!” Trezvant's voice reached him through the waves. “Wake up!” Then, “Douse him again!”

Come to, his face, hair, and shirt wet, Nat Turner sputtered
and gasped for air. Trezvant's voice had a false pleasantness. “That's a boy. You must remember your place so you don't make me angry.”

It was difficult to see; Nat Turner imagined that both his eyes must be swelling shut. Trezvant stared at him, seeming to admire the knot Nat Turner felt pressing the center of his face. “All right, Preacher man, let's try this all again.”

Pounding the table one time and smiling another, it seemed to Nat Turner that all Trezvant's questions ran together. Outside, the leaves drifted and swirled softly, translucent against the late afternoon sun. His mind drifted away… he felt Cherry's warm hand on his face.

STANDING IN THE moonlight, he watched her walk the path that he had left for her. Still under the trees, she skirted in and out of the moonlight.
“I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.”
In the darkness, secreted among the grass, the trail of stones glowed green and blue and pink. She collected them as she walked so that no one else could follow.

For months Nat Turner had been planning and planting and had managed to keep this secret in the woods to himself. Instead of tattered rags, he imagined Cherry in a white gown and shawl. When she stepped into the moonlight, her feet touched the carpet of rose of Sharon that glowed silver, like her gown, in the moonlight.

She saw him then and smiled but remained quiet so they would not be discovered. She waved at him with one hand and waved her skirt with the other.

When Cherry was close enough to see him clearly, Nat Turner stooped to release the jar of fireflies at his feet. Their lights gently flickered on and off around him, Cherry skipped toward him like a little girl.

Her smile broadened and she clapped her hands softly when
she saw the shining rocks that ringed the great oak. Within the stone boundary were the flowers he had planted for her. Vines heavy with white angels climbed the trunk and lower boughs of the great tree. Their trumpetlike, sweet-smelling flowers trembled in the summer night breeze, glowing where the moon shone through the translucent petals. In the garden were lilies of the valley and daisies he had planted for her, knowing this day would come. The blooms she lingered over most were the moonflowers. Their perfume was intoxicating. The blossoms were glorious in the moonlight, though the fragile blooms would be dead by sunrise.

Nat Turner placed a wreath of Queen Anne's lace in Cherry's hair, her beautiful black hair like sheep's wool. He held her so close he felt her heart beating. They swayed together beneath the moon and stars.

What needed to be said between them could be said without words. He stepped away from her into a small spot he had cleared. He would light the black powder mixed with minerals, the experiment he had placed there. He grabbed his small torch, touched it to the first of three piles. There was a puff and then a glow of red. Then another puff and a brighter flash of blue. Finally, a last puff followed by a brilliant flash of white. Still silent, Cherry smiled at him, leaping like a child.

NAT TURNER WOULD never see Cherry again.

T
rezvant had left his seat. Now he circled the stool where Nat Turner sat. “I hear you read and write and quote scripture. I hear you think you're some kind of Baptist preacher.”

“Methodist.”

“Eh?”

Trezvant and men like him knew so little about the world, but thought it was their right to rule it. “My mother was raised in the Old Oriental Church, but I was raised Methodist.”

“Oriental?” Trezvant laughed. “An Oriental Methodist nigger? You are entertaining.” Trezvant shook his head. “Murder is a funny business for a Bible-quoting preacher.”

“What choice did we have? You stole everything, choking us, choking the life out of us.”

“Well, I don't want to hear all the spiritual gibberish, Nat. More than fifty white people are dead, and I want to know why.”

“What choice did we have? More of the wicked will die if you do not heed God's warning. More innocents will die because of you.”

Trezvant reached across the table and hit him again, a stinging blow across the mouth. “You are a depraved, coldhearted black imp. Answer me straight, and no more about God!”

His face burned where Trezvant hit him, and Nat Turner tasted more salty blood in his mouth. “If it is not about God, then you have no right to hold me. You argue on one hand that your right to enslave me comes from God. But if it is not God's doing, then I have every right—every duty—to fight for my freedom.” In court they would swear on God's Bible and wave the Constitution
over him. The law, the Constitution, said all men were created equal. “Your Constitution says it is my duty to rise up against those who oppress me. Nothing more was done than what the law of the land requires.”

“Don't quote the Constitution at me, Nat Turner. It was not meant for niggers! The Constitution does not apply to animals!”

“But I believe the words written in the Constitution come from our Father, and He intended them for all His children.”

Trezvant shook the table. “Insane, uncivilized animal!”

The inside of his mouth felt raw, and Nat Turner felt his lips swelling. “Animal? If I am an animal, then you must free me. There is no natural law against killing. The strongest beast takes all—land, women, power. It is what animals do, what a lion or a dog would do. By natural law I have every right to take everything you have, to kill you if you threaten me or my family. Kill or be killed. If I am an animal, I may do anything to protect and gratify myself, my family, my land, and my community, my tribe.”

“You are a monster! A crazed nigger!”

N
at Turner was surprised at how calm he felt. The names had lost their potency. Perhaps he had been called so many names in his lifetime that they no longer had any effect. Maybe it was simply relief that this day had finally come. Maybe calm was a part of freedom, so free he would speak the whole truth. “A man buys my wife and misuses her so that his children are born from her. The captor, a thief, calls his children borne of her, as well as mine, his property. Slaves! He sells them. He abandons them. Or he sends them to work in the fields for him and then steals his own child's wages. The law supports him in what he does. The church agrees with him and calls him a godly man. Am I the one who is crazy?”

Trezvant made angry, grunting sounds.

“You expect me to agree, to bow down to wickedness. If I complain, I am beaten, tortured, sold away, or maybe lynched.

“I am threatened with torture and death if I run away. When I stay, the man says it is because I am happy and love him. Who is crazy?

“You say it is your individual right to own other men. You know it is wrong, but you want wrong to be right—to do wrong without consequence. So you lie and say God, who created all men, has commanded you to enslave others. You captors create wicked lies and write them into law to excuse your wrong.

“You say the state is sovereign and no nation can bully you and overpower your will. But you force me, an individual, to be a slave. You sing songs about your own freedom while you steal freedom from me and others like me.

“Who is crazy? Is it so difficult for you to understand? I am a man. A man! And I would rather die than be your captive!”

The captors could not humble themselves enough to consider that God's will might be different from their own. When God's will was different from theirs, they prayed against God's will. They were willing to lie and do wrong for the sake of what they thought right. They did not know how to submit. They were too proud and cowardly to submit. They shouted and stomped, pouted and demanded their way. Then the captors were surprised when rebellion rose among them.