The Resurrection of Nat Turner, Part 2: The Testimonial (13 page)

“The battle is over.” Gray nodded. “Let's head back.”

“The battle is not over yet; there are always the spoils.” Salathiel pointed at Gray and Phipps, who had finally come from behind his tree. “You two can go free, but these two,” he pointed at Nat and Hark, “will be slaves.”

Nat Turner clenched his jaw and gritted his teeth. He lunged at Salathiel, but Hark and Gray held his arms. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair not to even let him make believe.

Salathiel taunted him. “Let him go. Let him try it. I'll break every bone in his body. Then we will strip the skin right off of what's left.”

Nat struggled against his friends. He was willing to lose to Salathiel in a fair fight; it would be worth it. But just once he needed the game to conclude without them twisting the end.

“It's not worth it, Nat,” Hark whispered in his ear. “Let it go.”

Salathiel looked at Gray and Phipps. “You two may join us.” He stepped around Nat Turner and raised his sword. He tapped his blade on Phipps's and Gray's shoulders. “You, sirs, are now Virginians.” He nodded at his little brother and then at Gray and Phipps. “Help the corporal take the prisoners.” He turned from them and slapped Nat.

The slap stung his face and brought water to his eyes, but he would not cry. Salathiel slapped him again. Blood trickled from
Nat's nose. He knew what Salathiel was saying. He was reminding him who he was, that he was a slave and not a boy. Salathiel was reminding him that even in play, he was a slave. He was reminding him that the rules to the game had been written before both of them were born, and that even at play, he was superior. Only Salathiel could call the end and the finish to the game.

Games were never games; they were always teaching lessons. Watch what you say, watch what you do, and don't try to win—because you could be beaten, taken away to some torture, some cruelty you could not imagine. Winning, they were teaching him, would bring him only trouble; when he was about to win, they wanted him to be afraid and surrender the victory.

They were teaching him. He had learned that white was a frightening color. In the middle of the night, some large, rough white hand might cover his mouth and drag him from his mother. He could imagine the hand that would take him and the sadness in her eyes. She had lost her country, her culture, her esteem among them, had lost her family, and a daughter she could not bear to mention. It would kill her if she lost him. One wrong word to their whiteness—not their boyishness, but their whiteness—and he might cause his mother to die.

One wrong word, one wrong move, and his mother—the one who held him, who kissed him, who told him stories—might be dragged away screaming, bound in chains. They were teaching him to live each day worrying that his only family might be spirited away. Then he would be like the others with ghost eyes saying he had seen her no more in this lifetime—their only hope of reunion would be resurrection after death.

They were teaching him to never think or speak or act without thinking two, three, four times. They were teaching him when he saw whiteness to censor and measure every word. They were teaching him that no game was a game; his life always hung in the balance, and they could take away everything based on one movement or word.

John Clarke Turner was teaching him that though they shared a father, they were not brothers. Along with the others, he was teaching him that their whiteness, their loyalty to their tribe, transcended any friendship or relation. John Clarke was the son to go to picnics and to be held up in the sun. John Clarke was the white one who had freedom of speech. John Clarke was the son bequeathed liberty.

John Clarke was teaching Nat Turner that—despite what their father promised—he would grow up to be his brother's slave. When they would become men he would whip him; the law would help and put him in chains.

John Clarke was teaching him, showing him in front of the others, that he was the one who mattered. All his father's dreams were for John Clarke Turner. There were no dreams of what Nat Turner would become. Even if their father at night brought Nat Turner sweets, publicly he would deny his paternity. Nat Turner's whiteness brought him nothing—mixed with even a drop of blackness, his whiteness did not exist.

They were teaching him that their forefathers across the ocean were worth more than his. Their ancestors were treasure and they took them out to show off and to play with. They made crests and held parades. But his black ancestors were stinking refuse and he should hide them away. His forefathers swung from trees, cannibals, heathen. They were teaching him to resent the black—his hair, his skin, his eyes, his heart, his spirit—within him. It was the cursed blackness that kept him from winning.

They were all learning. They were learning to choose sides. They were learning to choose tribes. No game was just a game. They were teaching him the lessons all black children silently learned in the “land of the free.”

Salathiel nodded at Gray. “Secure the prisoners.”

On the way back, Nat Turner and Hark walked ahead, their arms behind them as though they were bound. Little Nathaniel Francis walked behind, prodding them and flailing them with his
switch. He walked next to Gray, who pretended to hold their chains. When they stepped out of the forest, Cherry was still there waiting, her tattered shirttail in her hand.

February 1831

IT WAS A clear but cold February day and frost blew from Nat Turner's nose and the mare's. He attached the hames while Hark offered the animal a handful of oats.

“Awful quiet today, Nat. Even for you.”

Nat Turner nodded to his friend, uncertain how to respond.

In the midst of his certainty, he was unsure. It had been ten years since his return from the Dismal Swamp and he still waited for a sign. It had been so long that sometimes he doubted his memories. Maybe it was all in his imagination.

Things still went on the same. People were beaten and still heartbroken. Summer and winter still came and went. There had been years of corn in the fields, but Nat Turner had seen no battles—the sun had not darkened and the moon still gave her light.

Perhaps, like a merciful father, God had changed His mind. After all, the captors were also His children and He also loved them. What torment it must be for a parent to have to destroy one child to rescue another.

The truth was Nat Turner loved those he was preparing to kill. There seemed to be no choice: to save one brother he would have to pass judgment on another. So he prayed for mercy on them in the same breath he prayed for their destruction.

But when he awakened this morning, he had seen an eagle circling overhead. Nat Turner remembered an old circuit rider telling him it was an omen, a symbol of resurrection.

Though he still smiled and joked, Hark had seemed more thoughtful since Nat Turner's return from the Great Dismal. It was as though his friend sensed something. “Why you suppose
God put us here? If God loves us so much, why are we treated like animals? If Africa is where we are from, why didn't He leave us in Africa?”

Even after the vision in the Great Dismal Swamp, even after returning, Nat Turner had not wanted to believe that this was his fate. He had not wanted to believe that God's judgment began with the families he knew, with the church that bore his father's name. But it was no accident, then, that his mother had been brought to Southampton County against her will. It was no accident that his father named him Nathan, after a prophet of old. It was no accident that he was born just beyond a town called Bethlehem that was on the road to Jerusalem, Virginia.

Nat Turner nodded. He stroked the horse's mane. Soon he would not see the creature again. “Wherever there are greedy men, they will find the ones others think are least to misuse for their profit.

“But what men see as worthless, God sees as treasure. And who knows but that our suffering is a sign of God's favor.” Nat Turner stroked the horse again.

“But why is it that the black man is chosen to suffer?”

“We are not alone. Look at our Nottoway brothers. Maybe we are here to teach. The Bible is born of Eastern men—of our forefathers around the Red Sea and the Mediterranean—those who were first part of the Great Church—and it is full of Oriental thought. We know He is a living God, a God of power, a God of miracles, and we know He hears us.”

Hark scoffed. “Oriental thought? I was born and raised in Virginia.”

“We have been gone from our homeland for generations, but the thoughts and ways of our forefathers still live within us—share with your brother, honor your elders, sacrifice this life for a better life after. The truth is in our hearts, the fire burns in our bones. It seems to me the captors read the Bible with frozen hearts.”

Hark listened, but he did not answer.

“Even if I lose my life in this world, eternally it is for my good. This life is just the beginning and we are promised something greater—that is what my ancestors taught. We are willing to be last because we believe the promise that one day we will be first.

“We are willing to suffer in this world in hope of a better afterlife. That is the lesson taught us by our fathers, by our ancestors, a thought buried in the Eastern heart. Our troubles have made us forget who we are.

“Sometimes I believe God sent us on this journey. He knew it would be an arduous voyage, a life-or-death struggle—most would not survive—so God only sent the strongest, those He knew could endure. He sent us, the best of us, as part of the First Great Church. Perhaps He sent us here to teach what was taught to us by those who came before us—to teach of caring for one's brothers more than for one's self. He knew He was sending us into the hands of a great enemy, but perhaps we are here to teach about love.”

He had known and trusted Hark almost all his life and he wanted to tell him about the vision in the Great Dismal Swamp. He wanted to tell Hark about the mission ahead of him. But it was not time yet. Nat Turner waited for the sign.

H
ark was Nat Turner's friend, his best friend. Hark and the others were his people, God's people, and he had come back for them.

When he was a boy of ten, his father had promised Nat Turner his freedom and promised to make him a trustee in the church his father donated land for, the church he planned to build: Turner's Meeting Place. “You are the smart one, Nathan. You have the gift for numbers. You are a boy, but I would trust you to manage the books for this farm even now,” his father told him. “You are the devout one and I think it is only fair.”

His father did not say explicitly that his freedom and the trusteeship were payment for his silence, but Nat always felt they were. His sisters never guessed—they did not want to know—but John Clarke resented Nat Turner's paternity and their shared fraternity. He resented the relationship. He resented that their father intended to free Nat. He resented that Nat Turner's name—Nathan Turner—was added to the Turner's Meeting Place deed.

But Nat Turner dreamed that one day he would replace the small wooden church his father planned with a cathedral like the ones his mother had told him were spread throughout the ancient Ethiopian city of Lalibela.

Nat Turner had never owned anything of his own except his Bible. There was nothing for him to leave behind. But in the deed, the church and the land were given to the trustees and their heirs forever. The trusteeship was something he could hand down to his children.

It had been something of a scandal when Old Benjamin listed
Nat Turner's name first, as trustee. It was irreverent and illegal, some said, to list his name at all.

The Southampton County clerk, along with witnesses, had come to the farm and insisted on speaking with Elizabeth, Old Benjamin's wife, alone before they would witness the document.

Persimmon-faced over her husband's humiliating indiscretion, Elizabeth told the visitors she grudgingly approved—she would not go against her husband—but hoped to die before the shame came to pass. Some people said it was the disgrace of it that eventually killed her.

Old Benjamin had thought he would live to see not only the land cleared and the church built but also to see Nat Turner grow to manhood. Benjamin Turner had thought he would live to see Nat Turner manumitted, quietly, so the state could not interfere. Perhaps it was Old Benjamin's way of atoning eternally for the shame he had caused Nancie, Nat Turner's mother. Old Benjamin thought he might live to see Nat Turner become a Methodist bishop like Richard Allen.

Old Benjamin lived to see the church built and saw to it that Nat received what his father called “proper Methodist instruction.” He saw to it that his son was referred to as Nat Turner, as a human being and not an animal.

Benjamin Turner lived to see the building dedicated by a circuit-riding Methodist preacher.

Nat Turner listened to the teachings of the circuit riders. He studied the Discipline, the Twenty-Five Articles of Religion, and the tenets of Methodism. He learned the Methodist history of Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke. He studied the writings of John Wesley and memorized the words, the words to John Wesley's prayer.

O thou God of love, thou who art loving to every man, and whose mercy is over all thy works; thou who art the Father of the spirits of all flesh, and who art rich in mercy unto all; thou
who hast mingled of one blood all the nations upon earth; have compassion upon these outcasts of men, who are trodden down as dung upon the earth! Arise, and help these that have no helper, whose blood is spilt upon the ground like water! Are not these also the work of thine own hands, the purchase of thy Son's blood? Stir them up to cry unto thee in the land of their captivity; and let their complaint come up before thee; let it enter into thy ears! Make even those that lead them away captive to pity them, and turn their captivity as the rivers in the south. O burst thou all their chains in sunder; more especially the chains of their sins! Thou Saviour of all, make them free, that they may be free indeed!