The Great Dismal Swamp
1821
The runaways, the Maroons in the swamp, were invisible to him at first. Then he began to see other black people—individuals, families, groups—walking by, keeping the silence of the Great Dismal Swamp.
Nat Turner understood as he watched the swamp people moving without sound, without disturbance; they had finally allowed him to see them.
There was a gray-haired man among them who kept his face hidden. The man seldom spoke, only nodded or pointed. He directed Nat Turner to places along the stream where fish waited, ready to be taken. He showed him places to catch small animals for his supper.
The gray-haired man led him through the swamp and showed him the slaves who worked there, chained so they would not escape. There were slaves working even at the edge of the Dismal Swamp and some slavers who made their places there. The man showed him that others, the refugees, the escapees, worked and earned money, no questions asked.
He could use his axe to cut and collect shingles and sell them for a price. The money Nat Turner earned would be his own to use as he pleased.
Soon Nat Turner learned of flatboats that traveled the shallow canal waters carrying goods up and down the Chesapeake. In a short time he talked a boat owner into hiring him. The owner didn’t care and didn’t want to know whether Nat Turner was a runaway slave. The owner did not even want to know his name.
There was joy for him on the water that splashed his face and wet his feet. He learned quickly, and other boatmen taught him that the Chesapeake Bay flowed into the Atlantic Ocean. Freedom called to him from the water.
The canal water was brown, darker brown than the water that flowed at the stream near where he slept. As he moved along he saw fish leaping from the water, sometimes felt something in the water nudge his boat. Overhead the trees—reaching high into the sky—arched from each shore, joining hands to make a green lace canopy above him.
The flatboat, rising and falling, felt like a living thing beneath his feet. Each journey he took by flatboat, carrying supplies to different places along the Dismal Swamp Canal, Nat Turner poled his way a little farther, a little closer to the bay. Making deliveries along the canal, along the way that led to the bay, he met men who told him how he could go about being hired onto a ship at the bay or in Norfolk. It seemed that the great ships, like the ones he’d dreamed of as a boy, were always looking for hands.
Each day Nat Turner rode the canal was revelation. Each night he fell asleep quickly and refused to listen or pray to God.
IN JUST SHY of a month’s time came the opportunity he hoped for, a load that was to be ferried all the way to the bay. Nat Turner forced himself to be calm, so that anyone standing on the shore wouldn’t know—wouldn’t know that each time he plunged the pole into the water, each time the tip of the pole touched down, each time he pushed against pressure points underneath the currents, he was moving forward and away. He didn’t want any casual observers—slavers, slaves, or Maroons—to know that he was inching closer to his dream, to freedom, to Ethiopia.
He wanted observers to look at him and believe it was just another run. It was not an escape, only a delivery. It was a dream he did not want stolen away.
He trembled at his first sight of the Chesapeake Bay. The great expanse opened before him, inviting him to sail away. The water stretched out before him—water that could not be held in place by two shores. The sky arched above him, stretching until it met the water at a distant horizon. He saw them, the great ships, first appearing as dots. Nat Turner had trouble distinguishing them from the land or the water. But as he drew closer, he recognized them.