The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron Read Free Book Online Page A

treatment to me . . .’” I saw Gray stir uncomfortably, then raise one haunch up off a fart, trying to slide it out gracefully, but it emerged in multiple soft reports like the popping of remote firecrackers. Suddenly he seemed flustered, discomfited, and this amused me: Why should he feel embarrassed before a nigger preacher, whose death warrant he was reading? He began to speak in a kind of roar, compounding his fluster and stew: “ I had been living with Mr. Joseph Travis, who was to me a kind master, and placed the greatest The Confessions of Nat Turner
    31
    confidence in me; in fact, I had no cause to complain of his treatment to me!’ That’s the item! That’s the item, Reverend!” I found him staring at me. “How do you explain that? That’s what I want to know, and so does everyone else. A man who you admit is kind and gentle to you and you butcher in cold blood!”
    For a moment I was so surprised that I couldn’t speak. I sat down slowly. Then the surprise became perplexity, and I was silent for a long time, saying finally even then: “That—That I can’t give no reply to, Mr. Gray.” And I couldn’t—not because there was no reply to the question, but because there were matters which had to be withheld even from a confession, and certainly from Gray.
    “For see here, Reverend, that’s another item the people can’t understand. If this was out and out tyranny, yes. If you was maltreated, beaten, ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed—yes. If any of these things prevailed, yes. Even if you existed under the conditions presently extant in the British Isles or Ireland, where the average agricultural peasantry is on an economic level with a dog, or less—even if you existed under these conditions, the people could understand. Yes. But this ain’t even Mississippi or Arkansas. This is Virginia in the year anno Domini 1831 and you have labored under civilized and virtuous masters. And Joseph Travis, among others, you butcher in cold blood! That—” He passed his hand across his brow, a gesture of real lament. “ That the people can’t understand.”
    Again I had the impression, dim and fleeting, of hallucination, of talk buried deep in dreams. I stared long and hard at Gray. Little different from any of the others, nonetheless it was a matter of wonder to me where this my last white man (save one with the rope) had come from. Now, as many times before, I had the feeling I had made him up. It was impossible to talk to an invention, therefore I remained all the more determinedly silent.
    Gray looked at me narrowly. “All right, if you won’t open up about that, I’ll skip ahead to this other item. Then I’ll come back and read the whole thing.” He thumbed through the papers. Watching him, I again felt dizzy from hunger. Off in the town, the courthouse clock dropped eight jangling chimes on the morning and the stir and bustle, the sound of hoofbeats and voices, became louder and louder. Somewhere I heard a Negro’s voice, a woman’s, shrill with mock fury: “I gwine knock you to yo’ knees directly!” And then a little black girl’s young laughter, ashiver with equally mock panic and fright. Then a second’s stillness, then The Confessions of Nat Turner
    32
    the hoofbeats and voices again. I began to nurse and coddle the pain of my hunger, folding my arms over my belly, standing guard over its emptiness like a sentinel. “Here we are,” said Gray. “Now listen to this, Reverend. It’s right after you’ve left the Bryants’ place—remember, you yourself haven’t killed anybody yet—and gone to Mrs. Whitehead’s. I quote: ‘I returned to commence the work of death, but they whom I left had not been idle: all the family were already murdered but Mrs. Whitehead and her daughter Margaret. As I came round to the door I saw Will pulling Mrs. Whitehead out of the house, and at the step he nearly severed her head from her body with his broadax. Miss Margaret, when I discovered her, had