The Confessions of Nat Turner Read Free Page B

brought me up by foot from Cross Keys, there had been two women—banshees in sunbonnets, egged on by the men—who had pricked my back deep with hatpins a dozen times, perhaps more; the tiny wounds along my shoulders had begun fiercely to itch and I yearned to scratch them, with a hopeless craving which brought tears to my eyes, but I was prevented from doing so by the manacles. I thought if I could get off those manacles The Confessions of Nat Turner
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    and scratch I’d be able to think clearly, I’d be relieved of a great affliction, and for an instant I was on the verge of capitulating to Gray if he’d allow me this concession—nonetheless, I kept my mouth shut, saying nothing. This immediately proved wise.
    “Know what I mean by a pack of misery?” he persisted, deliberately, patiently, not unkindly, as if I were the most responsive of company, instead of a worn-out and beaten sack.
    Outside I could hear the thudding and clash of cavalry and a dull babble of hundreds of distant voices: it was the first day, the presence of my body in custody had been verified, and hysteria hung over Jerusalem like thunder. “What I mean about a pack of misery is this, Nat. Is two items. Now listen. Item in the first part: the con-tin-u-ation of the misery you already got. For example, all that unnecessary junk the sheriff got wound around you there, those chains there around your neck and them quadruple leg irons, and that big ball of iron they hung onto your ankle there.
    Lord God Almighty, you’d think they’d figured you was old Samson himself, fixing to break down the place with one big mighty jerk. Plain foolishness, I call it. That kind of rig, a man’d die settin’ in his own, uh, ordure long before they got around to stretching his neck.” He leaned forward toward me, sweat like minute pale blisters against his brow; in spite of his easy manner I could not help but feel that he exhaled eagerness and ambition.
    “Such things as that, what I might call, as I have already stated, the con-tin-u-ation of the misery you already got. Now then . . .
    Of two items, the item in the second part. Namely, the pro-mul-gation of more misery over and above and in addition to the misery you already got—”
    “Excuse me.” For the first time I spoke, and his voice abruptly ceased. He was of course working up to the idea that if I did not tell him everything, he would find a way of getting at me through some sort of villainous monkey business with Hark. But he had misjudged everything. He had at once misinterpreted my silence and unwittingly anticipated my most nagging, imminent need: to scratch my back. If I was to be hung come what may, what purpose could be served by withholding a “confession,”
    especially when it might augment in some small way my final physical relief? Thus I felt I had gained a small, private initial victory. Had I opened up at the outset it would have been I who had to ask for indulgences, and I might not have gotten them.
    But by remaining quiet I had allowed him to feel that only by small favors could he get me to talk; now already he had expressed the nature of those favors, and we had each taken the first step toward getting me unwound from my cocoon of iron and The Confessions of Nat Turner
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    brass. There is no doubt about it. White people often undo themselves by such running off at the mouth, and only God knows how many nigger triumphs have been won in total silence.
    “Excuse me,” I said again. I told him there was no reason to go any further. And I watched his face flush and his eyes grow round and wide with sudden surprise, also with a glint of disappointment, as if my quick surrender had scattered all the beautiful possibilities of threat and cajolery and intimidation he was spoiling for in his tiresome harangue. Then I told him quite simply that I was most willing to make a confession.
    “You are ?” he said. “You mean—”
    “Hark’s the last one left, except for myself. They