Trezvant had left his seat. Now he circled the stool where Nat Turner sat. “I hear you read and write and quote scripture. I hear you think you’re some kind of Baptist preacher.”
“Methodist.”
“Eh?”
Trezvant and men like him knew so little about the world, but thought it was their right to rule it. “My mother was raised in the Old Oriental Church, but I was raised Methodist.”
“Oriental?” Trezvant laughed. “An Oriental Methodist nigger? You are entertaining.” Trezvant shook his head. “Murder is a funny business for a Bible-quoting preacher.”
“What choice did we have? You stole everything, choking us, choking the life out of us.”
“Well, I don’t want to hear all the spiritual gibberish, Nat. More than fifty white people are dead, and I want to know why.”
“What choice did we have? More of the wicked will die if you do not heed God’s warning. More innocents will die because of you.”
Trezvant reached across the table and hit him again, a stinging blow across the mouth. “You are a depraved, coldhearted black imp. Answer me straight, and no more about God!”
His face burned where Trezvant hit him, and Nat Turner tasted more salty blood in his mouth. “If it is not about God, then you have no right to hold me. You argue on one hand that your right to enslave me comes from God. But if it is not God’s doing, then I have every right—every duty—to fight for my freedom.” In court they would swear on God’s Bible and wave the Constitution over him. The law, the Constitution, said all men were created equal. “Your Constitution says it is my duty to rise up against those who oppress me. Nothing more was done than what the law of the land requires.”
“Don’t quote the Constitution at me, Nat Turner. It was not meant for niggers! The Constitution does not apply to animals!”
“But I believe the words written in the Constitution come from our Father, and He intended them for all His children.”
Trezvant shook the table. “Insane, uncivilized animal!”
The inside of his mouth felt raw, and Nat Turner felt his lips swelling. “Animal? If I am an animal, then you must free me. There is no natural law against killing. The strongest beast takes all—land, women, power. It is what animals do, what a lion or a dog would do. By natural law I have every right to take everything you have, to kill you if you threaten me or my family. Kill or be killed. If I am an animal, I may do anything to protect and gratify myself, my family, my land, and my community, my tribe.”
“You are a monster! A crazed nigger!”