William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (167 page)

Again I waited for God’s voice. For an instant indeed I thought He spoke but it was only the rushing of the wind high in the treetops. My heart pounded wildly and I recall thinking then: Maybe not now. Maybe He don’t want to speak now, but at another time. A thrill of joy coursed through me as I thought: He’s just testing me now. He’s just seeing if I can baptize. He’s going to save His voice for another time. That’s all right, Lord.

I turned to Willis, tugging at his arm, and together we went out into water waist-high where I could feel the mud squirm warm between my toes. Off near the other bank a little water snake scurried along like a whip on the surface of the creek, in frantic S-shaped ripples disappeared upstream; I took it as a good omen.

“For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body,”
I said,
“whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have been all made to drink into one Spirit …”

“Amen,” said Willis. I grasped the back of his head and shoved him under, pressed him down beneath the foaming murky waters. It was the instant of my first baptism, and the swift brief exaltation I felt brought a sudden flood of tears to my eyes. After a second or two I brought him up in a cloud of bubbles, and as he stood there dripping and puffing like a kettle but with a smile as sweet as beatitude itself on his shining face, I addressed myself to the blue firmament.

“Lord, I am a sinner,” I called, “let me be saved by these redeeming waters. Let me henceforth be dedicated to Thy service. Let me be a preacher of Thy holy word. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

And then I baptized myself.

Walking back to the Mill that afternoon we passed down a lane of dogwood, white and pink in wanton lovely splashes, and a mockingbird seemed to follow us through the woods, making a liquid chanting sound among the wild green leaves. Willis kept up a steady excited chatter all the way—we had caught half a dozen bream—but I paid little heed to him, being lost in thought. For one thing, I knew that I must consecrate myself to the Lord’s service from this point on, as I had promised Him, avoiding at all costs such pleasures of the flesh as I had experienced that morning. If I could be shaken to my very feet by this unsought-for encounter with a boy, think what it might be, I reflected, think what an obstacle would be set in my path toward spiritual perfection if I should ever have any commerce with a
woman!
Difficult as it might become, I must bend every effort toward purity of mind and body so as to unloose my thoughts in the direction of theological studies and Christian preaching.

As for Willis—well, I realized now that loving him so much, loving him as a brother, I should do everything within my power to assure his own progress in the way of the Lord. I must first try to teach him to read and write—I figured he was still not too old for learning; that accomplished, maybe it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that Marse Samuel might be persuaded that Willis, too, was fit for freedom and could be set loose in the outer world—Richmond perhaps!—with a grand job and a house and family. It would be hard to describe how much it pleased me to think of Willis free like myself in the city, the two of us dedicated to spreading God’s word among the black people and to honest work in the employ of the white.

The thought filled me with such hope and joy that I stopped on the path beneath the dogwood trees and there in the clear spring air knelt with Willis in thanksgiving and blessed him in the Lord’s name, replacing before I arose again his moccasin fangs with a tiny white cross I had carved from the shinbone of an ox.

Whenever in later times I recollected that day and thought of my first eighteen years, it seemed to me that all that long while it was as if I had been mounting a winding and pleasant slope toward the distant hills of the Lord, and that that day was a kind of promontory on the way. Not knowing the future, I had expected to pause at this lofty place and then go on, proceeding upward by gentle stages to the remote, free, glorious peaks where lay the satisfaction and fulfillment of my destiny. Yet as I say, whenever I reflected upon that eighteenth year of mine and that day and the events which quickly followed, it was plain to me that this promontory had been not a restful way station but an ending: beyond that place there was no gentle, continuing climb toward the great hills but a sudden astonishing abyss into which I was hurled like a willow leaf by the howling winds.

One long weekend late that spring there was to be a Baptist camp meeting just outside of Jerusalem. A wellknown revivalist named Deacon Jones would be the leader, coming all the way down from Petersburg, and Baptists for miles around were expected to meet there—hundreds and hundreds of planters and farmers and their families from a dozen counties, some traveling from as far away as the coast of North Carolina. Tents would be pitched, for four days and nights there would be singing and praying and feasting from wild turkey and barbecue. There would be a laying-on of hands and organ and banjo music, and general salvation for all lucky enough to attend. Some of the slaveowners, I knew, would bring what Negroes they owned and these privileged souls too might partake of the spirit of the revival, and would be welcome just like the white people to approach the holy bench, even though few of
them
would get a taste of the turkey or the barbecue. When I learned of the camp meeting I became greatly excited, and I asked Marse Samuel if I might be permitted to go for the Saturday gathering, taking several of the servants in one of the wagons. I intended to include Willis and Little Morning, who had gotten religion many years before and who, ailing now and feeble and with a pitiful wandering mind, might be going to his last revival. Although Marse Samuel was an Episcopalian he had long ago put churchgoing out of his head; yet he did not scorn the Bible and often sought ways that his Negroes might be led into religious instruction—I myself of course being the chief example. Thus when I asked him if I might go on this Saturday expedition he readily gave his permission and said that he would write out a pass for the group, warning me only that I should return before nightfall and that I must keep an eye on the other Negroes, who might fall into the hands of the wise and knowing darkies from some James or Black-water River plantation; these were smart darkies who had been exposed to white rivermen and traders and thus to vice, and they would literally swindle our innocent backwoods Negroes out of their trousers or their shoes.

Ever since the day I baptized Willis, I had begun to teach him to count and also to read, using my Bible as a primer and spelling out the words on the back wall of the shed next to the carpenter’s shop, with a cattail dipped in lampblack as a kind of brush to write the letters. It pleased me to see how quickly he responded to my instruction; if I persevered, and took advantage of every opportunity, I was sure that it would not be long before he knew the alphabet and would be able to see the connection between the letters and the words in such a simple line as the third verse of the entire Bible, which of course goes:
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light
. Willis too was excited at the prospect of going to the camp meeting. Although I myself had never been to such a revival, I knew from tales told long ago by my mother and Little Morning just what sort of colorful bustle and activity might be expected, and thus I was able to tell Willis all about it and infect him with my own anticipation. On the afternoon before the day of the camp meeting I borrowed two juicy pullets from Goat’s brood, promising to pay him back in extra work, and I made up a large and festive meal for us Negroes who were going—fried chicken, a rare treat, and a couple of loaves of shortening bread I was able to wheedle out of Abraham’s wife, who had become cook at the big house—and I put the chicken and bread in a small pine box together with a jug of sweet cider, placing all in the carpenter’s shed where it would be safe from pilfering black hands, and then went to bed at a very early hour since we would be leaving for Jerusalem long before dawn the next morning.

At along about midnight I was awakened by a soft whisper and, suspended like clinking bells above my face, the tinkling of a lantern in whose sudden yellow glow the eyes of a little Negro girl were as round as eggshells. It was one of Wash’s younger sisters—another of Abraham’s numberless children—and she mumbled that I must come down to the cabin right away, her daddy had sent her, her daddy was miserable sick. I dressed and followed the girl down the slope through the moonlit, frog-filled, balmy night and there in the cabin found Abraham as the girl had said, feverish and in bed, coughing and hacking away, his broad black chest glistening with streams of sweat in the glare of the lamp.

“ ’Tain’t nothin’, Nat,” he said weakly. “Hit jes’ de misery I gits ev’ry springtime. I gwine be awright come next week.” After a pause he went on: “But nem’mine dat. Marse Samuel done told me I gots to take dem four boys up to whar de trace begins at two in de mawnin’. What time hit now?”

“I just heard the clock ring twelve,” I said. “What boys you talking about, Abe?”

“Marse Samuel done hired out four boys to chop tobacco fo’ two weeks over to de Vaughans’ place. Vaughan’s got a wagon dat’s gwine meet our wagon up whar de trace commences. I uz supposed to carry dem boys up dere but now I got dis misery, so you got to carry ’em, Nat. Dat’s at two o’clock, so git on now an’ let dis po’ sick man rest his bones. I gwine be awright.”

“But I’m goin’ to the camp meeting, Abe,” I started to protest, “all this time I figured on the camp meeting—”

“You kin
still
go to de camp meetin’, boy.” he insisted, “you jes’ ain’t gwine git a whole lot of sleepin’, dat’s all. Now git on, Nat, and carry dem boys on up dere in de wagon. Dey waitin’ right now behin’ de stable. Here, you got to take dis yere paper.”

Of course Abraham was right about the camp meeting: I might still make it to the beginning of the trace and back, pick up Willis and Little Morning and the others and be off to Jerusalem just as I had planned—provided only that I was willing to do without sleep, a minor burden. What I had not counted on, however, was that among those four Negro boys I must take to meet the Vaughans’ wagon, among those sleepy black faces upturned to the moonlight in the hushed luminous space of ground behind the stable’s lowering wall, was that of Willis himself, and my heart gave a sickening heave as I caught sight of him and as there came over me a chill, clammy sense of betrayal.

“But he said you could go to the camp meeting!” I fumed while I harnessed up the two mules, shortening their traces amid the manure-sweet stable gloom. Willis padded drowsily about barefooted in the darkness, helping me, saying not a word.
“Daggone,
Willis!” I whispered urgently. “He didn’t mention
nothin’
at all about bein’ hired out to Major Vaughan.
Nothin’!
Now daggone it, you goin’ to be over at the Vaughans’ for two weeks choppin’ tobacco and maybe it’ll be a whole ’nother year before you get to go to a camp meetin’.” I was nearly frantic with disappointment, and the radiant globe of pleasure and anticipation in which I had buoyantly dwelt for so long cracked and fell away from me like shattered glass as I yanked the mules out onto the moon-drenched lawn and, wildly impatient, urged the boys up into the wagon. “Daggone it,” I said, “I fixed fried chicken and there’s
cider
too! C’mon, nigger boys, move yo’ butts!” The three other boys scampered up over the tailgate; young field hands of fifteen or sixteen, they giggled nervously as they clambered into the wagon; all three of them wore rabbits’ feet attached to a leather bracelet on the left ankle—that year a plantation fashion; one boy was able to disgorge at will large bullfrog belches and this he began to do without ceasing, bringing forth from the other boys squeals of childish laughter. Willis climbed onto the seat beside me. “Git up, mules!” I said angrily. It was the first time I had ever felt even the trace of disillusionment with Marse Samuel and this strange new feeling itself added to my distress. “Daggone Marse Samuel anyway!” I said to Willis as we set forth down the lane. “If he was going to hire you out to the Vaughans for two weeks, how come he didn’t tell me and you first so we wouldn’t get all prepared about goin’ to the camp
meeting?
”

In a little while my chagrin and anger drained away, fading off into that mood of resignation to which most Negroes become accustomed sooner or later, no matter what the occasion. After all, there were worse blows, I figured as we rocked along slowly through the moon-white woods; suppose Willis could not go to
this
camp meeting, did it really matter? Certainly there would come along other revivals I could take him to, and his failure to attend this one would make but a tiny gap in his spiritual education. I looked at him tenderly as the moon spread a pale light over his features; nodding next to me, he was half asleep, his delicate lips apart and his eyelids fluttering in a fight against slumber. I aroused him with a nudge and a question: “What’s two and three?”

“Five,” he said after a pause, rubbing his eyes.

“And three and four?”

“Seven.” He began to say something else, hesitated, then went on: “Nat, how come you figures Marse Samuel done hired
me
out? I’se a ’prentice carpenter.”

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully, “I reckon they need extra hands over there. But that’s all right. Marse Samuel only hires out to good people, I know that, and the Vaughans are quality folk, treat you well. Anyway, listen, it ain’t but for two weeks, no time at all. Then you’ll be back and we’ll have more teaching. What’s three and eight?”

“Fo’teen,” he said, yawning hugely.

Behind us in the cart the three boys had gone to sleep, sprawled against each other lifeless and limp in the moonlight. The night was clamorous with frogs and katydids, warm, fragrant with cedar, clear like day, the moon powdering the trees in light as starkly white as the dust of bone. The lop-eared mules, plodding along with a crushed rasping sound against the dewy weeds, found their way ahead as if they knew the road by heart, and I let the reins go slack in my hand, drowsing too, and fitfully slept until the end of the trace, roused only once and then dimly by the high wail of a bobcat miles off in the swamp, its distant scream echoing through some perplexed strange dream like the sound of claws scraped in anguish across the bare face of the heavens.