February 1831
Outside the Whiteheads’ farmhouse, Nat Turner and the other men stomped from foot to foot, moving in an attempt to stay warm. As they passed, they greeted one another, occasionally gathering in brief clusters.
“Brother Nelson.” Dred nodded to the other man.
“Good day to you, brother,” Yellow Nelson, the preacher, responded.
“A cold day,” Sam answered.
Preacher Nelson rubbed his hands over his arms, sometimes clapping hands, to stay warm. “Yes, but we’re still alive. One more day in our right minds.”
Nat joined them. “Another chance.” He nodded to Nelson. “Is there a word today, preacher?”
Yellow Nelson laughed softly. “Oh, there’s always a word from the Lord, Prophet Nat!”
Smiling, Dred shook his head. “Don’t get him started, Prophet Nat. You know how you preachers are. We’ll be out here in this cold until Kingdom Come. And it’s too cold to be out here.”
“That’s the truth,” Sam added.
“Too cold,” Nelson echoed.
“Too cold,” Dred repeated, the tone of the conversation changing rapidly. He nodded toward the slaves working in the Whiteheads’ fields. “No kind of way to treat people, out in this cold.” He nodded toward the house. “Just so they can be inside at a tea party.” He nodded, like the others, so that the whites wouldn’t notice them pointing.
Nelson nodded. “Dickie has them out there in the fields keeping them busy. He should be out there bending his back.”
Sam stomped his feet. “He’s the one who needs to be kept busy. He’s a trifling little preacher.”
Nat Turner and Yellow Nelson answered at once. “He’s no preacher.”
“A title and a collar don’t make you holy,” Nat Turner added. “A tree is known by its fruit.”
“Out here freezing. But they don’t care,” Dred insisted.
Nelson shook his head. “They don’t see… unless there are too many of us gathered together at one time.”
Without a signal, the captive men began to separate. Slaves were invisible and unimportant unless they moved too suddenly or too quickly—a running slave was sure to gain the captors’ attention, attention that might cost the slave his life. They had learned not to laugh or speak too loudly, not to frown, point, or shout. White men might gather, shout, laugh, or yell. But the captives had learned that such behavior was risky. So the captives dispersed quietly, no sudden movements.
Nat Turner moved away. He rubbed his hands together to keep them warm.
The captors said they believed the captives were content in servitude. But they knew better. Their whips, their dogs, their overseers, the guns on their hips said they knew better. Their fear of three or more black men gathered together said they knew better.
Nat Turner felt the captive men’s anger and their humiliation that they were treated as accessories and not as humans. Their anger and humiliation were his own. They burned in his belly.
The men moved about separately, and then when each felt it was safe, they moved slowly back together.
Yellow Nelson nodded toward the Whiteheads’ carriage. “Look at that foolishness.” The men looked at the top-heavy box perched on large, spindly-spoked wheels. He chuckled, but not too loudly. “What good is that thing in the country? Always stuck in a rut, Caty Whitehead flapping around like a hen. The Whiteheads have to keep boys with them all the time to lift or pull that thing out of the mud.”
Sam nodded toward Mary Barrow’s coach. “That one is even crazier.” His shoulders shook, but his laugh was almost silent. “Did you see the cape she had on, all those feathers? I’m expecting an angry bird to swoop down here any minute, come to get his feathers back.”
Nat Turner smiled. They joshed to release the steam pent up inside them.
Yellow Nelson grinned, his back to the house. “Did you see old Hubbard when he greeted her at the door?” He widened his eyes, mimicking the Whiteheads’ elderly Negro doorman. “I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head.”
Nat Turner chuckled, imagining Hubbard.
Nelson went on with his story. “Hubbard says, ‘Mistress Barrow, that is a coat you got on there, if I do have to say so myself!’ Oh, she lit up like the Fourth of July, the vain thing.”
The men chuckled, but not loudly enough to attract attention. Owners of nothing, they had become masters of words. Mary Barrow didn’t recognize the subtle insult hidden in Hubbard’s words, words that said the coat was not a beautiful one but one that woefully defied description.
The temporary ease provided by the laughter didn’t last long and they fell into silence.
“Too cold to be out here.” Dred looked toward the Whiteheads’ fields again. “No way to treat people. No way to treat a man.” A grumbling sound echoed from his throat. “As if we don’t have any other dream but to wait on them.”
His back toward the house, Yellow Nelson was free to frown. “A day is going to come.”
They all understood. They agonized over those in the fields, over their wives and children, over their mothers and fathers, and over themselves. Their hope and sanity rested on their faith that one day things would change.
“A day is going to come,” Sam repeated.
“Someday,” Nat Turner added. “Judgment comes and that right soon.”
Each man lost in his thoughts, they separated again. Nat Turner looked up at the sky, blue and cloudless. A day was going to come. God had told him so in the Great Dismal Swamp.