“Mr. Goat told me that you planed down and finished twenty sills and chimney girts as smooth and as clean as could be, mortice and tenons and all and not one bad joint nor a single timber to throw away in the lot! Fine work, my excellent young carpenter I What I expect I shall have to do—”
Was he on the edge then of telling me what he had to say later? Perhaps. But I do not really know, for at that instant Marse Samuel’s horse suddenly reared in a panic and the mare too heaved up beneath me, neighing with alarm, and across the wagon trace three deer bolted in high bounds from a thicket, a buck and two does dappled in the leafy morning light; they flew past us in floating shapes wild-eyed and silent until one after another they struck the blanket of leaves on the far side of the road and vanished into the woods with a clamorous diminishing storm of thudding hooves and snapping branches. “Hoo, Tom!” Marse Samuel shouted, reining in his horse, calming him, and I too tightened in the mare, and for a moment we stood there in the checkered flickering light, gazing at the place where the white tails of the deer had melted into the woods, listening as the sound of the plunging feet vanished far off among the trees. But it had given us both a start. “A yard farther and they’d have been on top of us, Nat!” Marse Samuel called with an uneasy laugh, and he swung Tom around and galloped ahead, saying no more until a few minutes later when the wagon trace ended, merging with the log road which led to Jerusalem. “Then shall the lame man leap as a hart,” he said, glancing back at me, “and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness—How does it go, Nat?”
“For in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert,” I answered. “And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.”
“Yes, yes,” he replied. We had drawn to a stop near the end of the trace, beneath a grove of gnarled and ancient apple trees once part of a large cultivated grove but now turned back to the underbrush and the wildwood. Fallen from the branches apples by the bushel lay in disordered piles and rows in a shallow ditch at the edge of the trace; scattered ranks of the red and yellowish fruit were faintly rotting with a cidery odor. Even as we stood there others fell, plop-plopping on the ground. Gnats swarmed over all, barely visible, and the two horses bent down their necks and began to munch at the apples with succulent crunching sounds. “Yes, yes,” Marse Samuel said, “I had forgotten. I had forgotten.” He smiled suddenly, adding: “By God’s grace I can afford to forget the Bible with you to rely on. For in the wilderness shall waters break out and streams in the desert—Lord Almighty, would that it were really so!” He looked about him for a moment, searching the distances with a hand shielding his eyes from the bright sun. “Lord Almighty!” he said again. “What a desolate prospect hereabouts!”
I looked about me too but could see nothing out of the ordinary: apple trees, road, fields, distant woodland—all seemed to be in place.
He turned and regarded me soberly. “Those deer now, Nat. Take those deer for example. Used to be you never saw any deer on this trace, up in this quarter. Too many people around that kept them down. Fifteen, sixteen years ago when you were but a small tadpole the woods would be resounding with gunfire in November, December when old John Coleman and his boys would be laying up venison. They kept the deer population down to a proper size. Let his darkies hunt, too. Had a big driver named Friday who was one of the best deer shots in all of Southampton. But it’s all gone now. When the deer come back it means poor times. It means the people have gone.” He looked around again, the expression on his face still earnest, worried, thoughtful. “This grove here,” he murmured, “John Coleman’s too. Taken care of, those trees gave the sweetest Jonathans ever you might ask for. Now look at them, all gone to pieces, fit only for the worms. God, what a pity! What a waste and a shame!”
He said little else for a while as we rode at a slow canter toward Jerusalem. Something seemed to have taken possession of his thoughts and he remained buried within himself, lost in some troubled reverie which contrasted suddenly and puzzlingly with his happy mood of the early morning but which of course I could not presume to intrude upon. We rode in silence for an hour or a little more, the log road lying straight and level as a roofbeam before us, the woods at either side like a whispery wall, wind-thrashed and afire with leaves. Here, unlike the tamed land around Turner’s Mill, it seemed a true wilderness, for the copper and gold landscape was astir with wilderness life: partridge sprang up beyond the edge of the road, and from the forest’s windswept roof fat grouse exploded, booming as they sought the sky. Squirrels and cottontails crisscrossed the road all along the way. Once a red fox considered us from his perch on the trunk of a fallen oak; seated panting, grinning, his tongue lolled out between rows of small wicked teeth.
Yet even as we rode along I was made aware—because of what Marse Samuel had said—of the strange bleak tracts of land which at intervals broke up the forest, patches of scrubby bramble-choked earth which had once been tobacco fields but now lay in fallow ruin. Scrub oak and pine saplings poked up through these meadows; the earth was raw and weedy and great stretches of chalky, storm-runneled earth upon which nothing could grow blotched the landscape like open wounds. Here and there a forlorn last growth of stripped tobacco stalks stuck up through the briers in stiff withered spines. As we rode past one of these fields I could see on the far horizon the remnant of a great old farmhouse with its roof caved in; the tumbledown outbuildings surrounding it, rotting and abandoned like the ruined offspring of something itself long dead, made the distant view even more sinister, and I turned away from it, beginning to share Marse Samuel’s pensive mood without knowing exactly why, and rode silently along behind him as the woods closed in again on either side around us.
There was little movement on the road, and such of it as there was seemed to be coming toward us, away from Jerusalem: two peddlers’ wagons, several farmers in gigs and buggies—all of whom Marse Samuel hailed, being hailed warmly in return with elaborate, deferential greetings—and a half-blind old free Negro woman named Lucy, a ragpicker well known in the region, quite drunk and crazed and astride a spavined motheaten mule, who when Marse Samuel pressed a few pennies into her bleached palm, cackled in a voice which followed us for half a mile: “Bress yo’ soul, Marse Samuel, you Jesus hisself! Yes, you des Jesus hisself … Jesus hisself … Jesus hisself!”
In the outline of a vast arrowhead, flashing and wavering, a flock of geese raced south high in the pure blue above; a gust of wind caught Marse Samuel’s cloak, blowing it about his head, and as he reached up to recover it he said: “How old are you now, Nat? Eighteen, am I correct?”
“Yes sir, Marse Samuel, I turned eighteen first day of this month.”
“Mr. Goat has splendid things to tell me about you,” he went on. “It’s really most remarkable the progress you’ve made.” He turned to look at me with the suggestion of a smile. “You’re quite an unusual darky, I suppose you know.”
“Yes sir, Marse Samuel, I reckon I am.” I do not recall replying with immodesty; that I was in many ways both exceptional and fortunate was a fact of which I had long been well aware.
“You have by no means acquired what is known as a liberal education,” he said. “That was not my intention nor within my powers, even though I am sure that young people of your race will get that kind of learning someday. But you seem to be equipped now with the best part of an elementary schooling. You can read and write, and you can count. You have the most amazing knowledge of the Good Book of anyone within my ken, and that includes several white ministers I know. You will doubtless take on much more learning as you go forward, so long as books are within your reach. In addition to all this you have gained command of a craft, and are exceedingly skillful at everything which has been taught you. You are the walking proof of what I have tried so hard and usually so Vainly to persuade white gentlemen, including my late beloved brother, namely, that young darkies like your
self can overcome the natural handicaps of their race and at least acquire such schooling as will allow them to enter into pursuits other than the lowest menial animal labor. Do you understand what I am getting at, Nat?”
“Yes sir, Marse Samuel,” I said, “I understand fine.”
“In three years you will be twenty-one, you will have attained your manhood. Until then I wish to see you function on a new basis at the Mill. Commencing tomorrow, you will work only half a day at the shop under Mr. Goat’s direction. During the rest of the time you will act as assistant driver on the plantation, working together with Abraham in controlling the affairs of the fields and the mill itself but answerable only to me. During some of that time this fall I will be seeking your assistance in putting my library in order, it is in sorry need of straightening out. That last shipment from the factor in London contained over one hundred volumes in agronomy and horticulture alone, not to speak of the rest of my books and those of my father’s which stand in need of arrangement. Do you think you can help me in all this?”
“I will certainly try, Marse Samuel, I will most surely do my best.”
“There may be some items which will be a bit of a trick for you as yet, but you will learn in the process and I think all in all we shall manage handsomely.” He had reined in his horse, and I stopped too; now we stood abreast at the edge of the road and Marse Samuel clutched the pommel of his saddle in a gloved hand, watching me gravely. The road was empty of travelers here, desolate, traversed by small whirlwinds of brown leaves and gritty dust. Flat fields of briers rolled away to the rim of the horizon, a wasteland of dying thorns; somewhere far off a wildfire in the woods burned unchecked and its fragrance, sharp with cedar, floated around us in a powdery sweet haze.
“Now, I have long debated in my mind and heart,” he went on slowly, “whether to tell you of this other decision, for fear that it would hinder you in some way or cause you to occupy your head with fanciful notions when you should be attending to your work.”
I could not think what it was he was preparing to tell me but there was something in the tone of his voice that put me on the alert, anticipating, and in a wild and sudden fantasy I thought: Maybe he’s going to say that if I do everything right he’ll give me old Judy; he let Abraham have a horse only two years ago …
“When I was up in Richmond this last August, I saw Mr. Bushrod Pemberton, who has taken a great interest in the news I have had to convey to him in regard to you—”
A vision of the mare disappeared, and I was thinking instead: What has Richmond got to do with me? And Mr. Bushrod Pemberton? What does either of them got to do with anything in the world?
“Mr. Pemberton is one of the wealthiest gentlemen in Richmond. He is an architect and a builder of houses and he is in great need of skilled hands right now. Besides being a man of cultivation and learning, Mr. Pemberton shares most of the ideas I myself possess about the use of labor. In his business in Richmond he employs many accomplished free Negroes and slaves as carpenters, bricklayers, tinsmiths, and other artisans. What I propose to do, Nat, is simply this. If all goes well with you during the next three years—and I have no reason to doubt that anything will go awry—”
He’s going to hire me out, I thought, he’s going to hire me out to Mr. Pemberton, that’s what he’s going to do. I began to feel a creeping fear, thinking: So he trained me all these years just so he could hire me out in Richmond to Mr. Bushrod Pemberton—
“—Then I shall send you to Mr. Pemberton, under whose employ you will work as a carpenter for the following four years. Mr. Pemberton lives in a beautiful old home in the shadow of St. John’s Church. I have seen the quarters where he sleeps his servants; they are in a quiet alleyway behind the house and I can tell you, Nat, that never a darky could wish for a nicer place to live. Another thing, Mr. Pemberton is engaged in building a block of fine row houses in the center of town, and I expect you will fit in perfectly on the job from the very beginning. You will pay me half of the wages you earn from him—”
So it is all as simple as that. He’s getting rid of me. And so what all this means is that I will have to go away from Turner’s Mill. It ain’t fair. It ain’t fair.
“—retaining the other half for yourself in savings for the future. Thereupon, at Mr. Pemberton’s good report of your labor—and again I have no doubt that this might be anything but exemplary—I shall draw up the papers for your emancipation. You will then at the age of twenty-five be a free man.”
He paused and gave my shoulder a soft nudge with his gloved fist, adding: “I shall only stipulate that you return to Turner’s Mill for a visit every blue moon or two—with whichever young darky girl you have taken for a wife!”
Suddenly I realized that he was trembling with emotion. He ceased talking and blew his nose with a loud honk. Baffled, helpless, I opened my mouth but my lips parted on a fragile wisp of air, unable to speak a word, and just at that moment he turned aside brusquely and tapped his horse into a quick trot, calling back: “Come on, Nat, time’s flying! We must get to Jerusalem before that jeweler has sold out all his pearls!”
A free man. Never in a nigger boy’s head was there such wild sudden confusion. For as surely as the fact of bondage itself, the prospect of freedom may generate ideas that are immediately obsessed and half crazy, so I think I am being quite exact in saying that my first reaction to this awesome magnanimity was one of ingratitude, panic, and self-concern. And the reasons were as simple and as natural as a heartbeat. Because such was my attachment to Turner’s Mill—the house and the woods and the serene and familiar landscape which had composed my entire memory and the fact of my becoming and had fashioned me into what I was—that the idea of leaving it filled me with a homesickness so keen that it was like a bereavement. To part from a man like Marse Samuel, whom I regarded with as much devotion as it was possible to contain, was loss enough; it seemed almost insupportable to say good-bye to a sunny and generous household which, black though I was, had cherished me as a child and despite all—despite the unrelenting fact of my niggerness, the eternal subservience of my manner and the leftovers I ate even now and my cramped servant’s room and the occasional low chores I was still compelled to do, and the near-drowned yet lingering and miserable recollection of my mother in a drunken overseer’s arms—had been my benign and peaceable universe for eighteen years. To be shut away from this was more than I thought I could bear.
“But I don’t want to go to any Richmond!” I heard myself howling at Marse Samuel, galloping after him now. “I don’t want to work for any Mr. Pemberton! Now sir!” I cried. “Unh-unh, I want to stay right here!” (Thinking now of my mother’s words long ago, and still another fear: Druther be a low cornfield nigger or dead than a free nigger. Dey sets a nigger free and only thing dat po’ soul gits to eat is what’s left over of de garbage after de skunks an’ dogs has et …) “Naw!” I yelled. “Unh-unh!”
But all I could hear was Marse Samuel shouting not to me but to his horse, now plunging ahead through flying and pinwheeling billows of autumn leaves: “Hey, Tom! Old Nat won’t feel that way for … long … will … he … boy!”
And of course he was right. For many months afterward I worried off and on about my future in Richmond. But my worst fears began to melt away even that morning as we approached Jerusalem, when like some blessed warmth there slowly crept over me an understanding of this gift of my own salvation, which only one in God knew how many thousands of Negroes could hope ever to receive, and was beyond all prizing. I would have, after all, several years before I’d be leaving Turner’s Mill. As for the rest, to be a free man in a fine city working at a trade he cherished was not a fate to be despised; many a poor outcast white man had inherited far less, and therefore I should give thanks unto the Lord. I did so that day in Jerusalem, while waiting for Marse Samuel in the shadow of a stable wall, taking my Bible from the saddlebag and praying alone on my knees while carts clattered by and the sound of a blacksmith’s hammer rang out like the clang o
f a cymbal: O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee … because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee …
Yet that afternoon on the way back to Turner’s Mill, just as my joy and exultancy grew and I listened to Marse Samuel describe the kind of good work that would be in store for me in Richmond (he too was in radiant spirits, he had bought Miss Nell a resplendent gold and enamel French brooch and was glowing with pride), we encountered on the road a sight so troubling that it was like a shape of darkness passing across the bright October sun, and it looms over my memory of this day as persistently as the recollection of some exhausted moment toward the year’s end when one looks out and finds that all is hushed and that night has begun to fall, and there steals over the tongue the first flat dead taste of winter.
The slave coffle had halted at the side of the road, not far below the clearing where the wagon trace began. Had we started out ten minutes later it would have been on its way again, we should not have seen it. I began to count, and I saw that there were about forty Negro men and boys skimpily clad in ragged cotton shirts and trousers; they were linked to each other by chains that girdled their waists and each was manacled with double cuffs of iron which now lay loose in their laps or on the ground. I had never seen Negroes in chains before. None of them spoke as we passed, and their silence was oppressive, abject, hurtful, and chilling. They sat or squatted in a line straggling through the fiery mounds of fallen leaves at the wayside; some were chomping on handfuls of corn pone in a listless fashion, some dozed against each other, one gangling big fellow rose as we approached and wall-eyed and expressionless began to piss into the ditch, a small boy of eight or nine lay weeping desperately and hopelessly against a fat middle-aged shiny liver-colored man gone sound asleep where he sat. Still no one spoke, and as we moved on I heard only a faint chinking sound of their chains and now the single lugubrious plunking of a jew’s-harp, very slow, tuneless, and with a weird leaden monotony, like someone pounding in senseless rhythm on a crowbar. The three drovers were youngish sort of sun-reddened men, fair-haired and mustached, and all wore muddy boots; one of them carried a leather bullwhip and it was he who tipped his wide straw hat to Marse Samuel as we came up to them and stopped. The chains chinked faintly in the ditch, the jew’s-harp went bunk-bunk-bunk-bunk.
William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice Page 131