Cross Keys
1821
Every ominous thought, everything he could imagine crowded in on Nat Turner. Losing his family hurt as badly as he imagined it would in the days when he vowed to stay alone. It tormented him to think of his family held captive, of his wife lawfully raped by another man.
After Cherry was gone, Nat Turner was obsessed with her.
In the darkness, he crept to Giles Reese’s farm, where he watched outside Cherry’s window. Sometimes he stole nearer and gazed at her lying on her bed. He told himself he must stay away.
He was sad, he was angry, and then he felt betrayed—betrayed by Cherry because she stayed with Giles Reese. Nat Turner knew there was nothing she could do, no place she could go. He knew she did not love the man but had no choice. He knew Giles Reese did not love her, and that compounded the damage done.
How could it be that a man who did not love her could tell him, her husband, when he could see Cherry or if he could see her at all? It tore at his insides that men who would kill a man for looking at their wives or daughters were now laughing about Giles Reese’s association with Cherry. Now Nat Turner had to ask their permission.
Nat Turner was tormented thinking of it. Reese had discussions with Moore over whether the two of them would be generous enough to allow Nat Turner to visit his wife and son. The two of them—Reese and Moore—would laugh about what Reese now knew about her—“she has a spider on her back”—and then give permission.
Reese would not even lower himself to speak to Nat Turner man-to-man. Instead, Moore would pass the word to Nat Turner second- or thirdhand. “On Sundays you may see her, if Reese doesn’t have her otherwise busy.” Because he was not a man, in their eyes, they took his wife and son so he would know it, too.
It was not Cherry’s fault, but he could not help but feel betrayed. She was the weapon they used against him. Betrayed by her. Betrayed by God.
God had put Cherry before him, had made him love her, only to allow Giles Reese to steal her away. He had not asked God for her. He had wanted to be alone. He had not wanted a wife or a child. He had not wanted to be in love. He had taken a vow. He had resisted it. But he had heard God whispering to him to open, to love her.
Nat Turner ran into the woods deep enough that only the trees could hear him. Even there he would not allow himself to cry or scream. He plowed his fist into a large cypress to dull the pain.
He did not ask for this life for himself, but he had not complained. He had managed the life and the burden, the debt that he’d been given. But now the pain was unbearable.
Now the grief of who he was and where he was, of his condition, pushed him to rage. He rolled in the dirt, in the marshy, decayed leaves of old winters that lay on the ground. His anguish was wild and heavy in his bosom, a feral beast that rent his guts.
How could he look at her, his eyes saying to hers that he could not save her? He could not visit his son in shame. He could not settle for this. He could not visit them pretending to be contented. He was useless to them, dead to them. He could not bear for his wife and his son to see his humiliation, to see that this was the kind of man—one in form but not in spirit—that white men had made him.
Where was God?
Nat Turner ran until he came to the pond and he dived in, still wearing his clothes. He didn’t want to feel anymore. He didn’t want to live.
His head parted the water.
Before his feet submerged, Nat Turner had a plan.