Of a sudden, I felt myself getting a fever. I was hot and yet my hands and feet were freezing. I left Violet to her chores as soon as we got back from slaves’ row, and I headed straight to the groom’s quarters in the stable, where Nat was living, to give him the map. I never paid much mind to what Cloanna said. She said it mostly for the negro children, anyway.
The map was burning a hole in my apron pocket. I was tired of the thought of it by now, and I wanted to be shed of it.
It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, I reckon, but there was no one about the barnyard. The sun poured down on the dust, raising it up into choking air. I longed to take my clothes off and go for a dip in the pond. I looked around. There was a parcel of slaves in the cotton field in back of the slave quarters. And another tending to the apple trees in the orchard. But they weren’t singing as they usually did when they worked. It was just too hot and there was nothing to sing about.
Nat Turner was not in his quarters. I stood and looked around. It was very neat. It had a fireplace, a desk, an oil lamp, and straw ticking.
On the desk was a pad of paper and on it was a list of names. I glanced at it. Mrs. Whitehead, Richard, Pleasant, baby William, Margaret and Harriet, Violet, and all the house negroes but Owen, take him with us, he’s angry enough. Make it quick and go on to the Jacobs place, two miles north.
I felt my heart beating. Make it quick? What were we all doing listed on that paper? Was he going to gather us together and preach to us?
“What are you doing here, missy?”
His voice. I turned, my hands trembling, and I faced him. “I brought you the map,” I said. “I couldn’t find you. No one is about. So I thought I’d bring it here.”
His eyes went from the paper with the names on the desk to me. I pulled the map out of my apron pocket and handed it to him. He unfolded it carefully. It was very quiet, and I could hear Mother Whitehead’s windmill clack, clack, clacking in the fields, a sound I usually took for granted. I heard a cow moo, a dog bark. Suddenly sounds I took for granted all stood out against the starkness of the day for me, each demanding to be heard, as if for the first, or last, time.
He glanced, briefly, at the map. “You went to see Cloanna,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes.”
“You talked to her about this.”
“No. I never mentioned it. You don’t have to with Cloanna. She just knows things.”
He scowled, and it was as if God was scowling at me. “What do you mean, she knows things?”
“She has the gift. She can sense what troubles you have. And she can—”
“You had troubles? Giving me the map?”
“I never told her that. I never even told myself that. But yes, I was confused about it.”
“Why? I told you I was going to visit these houses and preach to these people, didn’t I? White people need to be preached to. They don’t know God. They go to church all fancified in their tall hats and bonnets and eye each other up and gossip about who did what all week and simper at each other and think that God is going to listen to them. That’s not what God wants! Do you know what God wants from them?”
I was beginning to get frightened. “No.”
“He wants them to come to their senses. He wants them to let their negroes free. That’s what He wants.”
I drew in my breath.
“And that’s what I aim to tell them.”
I nodded my head in agreement.
“So what did she say about the map, then, to get you in such a state of mind?”
“She didn’t know it was a map. She only knew it was a paper—” I saw him staring at me and stopped.
He nodded his head, folded the map, put it in the pocket of his shirt, and then stepped over to the desk and added Cloanna’s name to the list on the paper.
“She’s one of the Goody Two-shoes around here, much as she tries to be different. You see what a nice cabin she has? What good food and how she is regularly supplied? You think that comes from being a troublemaker? A dissident? No, those who make trouble and shake things up are lucky to get bread and water. But to us it’s a feast for angels! Do you understand?”
“I think so,” I answered.
“Cloanna will be preached to,” he said. “When I am finished with her, she will understand.”