The Letter Writer Read online

  The November morning was true to its word, cold to the bones, dismal and gray. It looked like rain. Owen drove.

  First there was the business with the map that had to be dispatched. Papa, a man to be reckoned with just on sight, was ushered into the office of the sheriff. He went in alone to deliver the map and give his story.

  He was introduced, all around, and when the door opened and he came out, he was with several important-looking men who looked over at us and smiled. Papa gestured that we should come over, so we did. Violet and I gave our little curtsies and accepted their condolences for our losses.

  "That brother of yours, the reverend, is a big loss to the community," the sheriff said.

  "And we're so glad an adult is going to be in charge of the plantation. We were worried about Harriet, there all by herself, handling it alone."

  "I'm proud of her," Papa said. "She did as good as Mother Whitehead would have done."

  I basked in the praise.

  "Brave girl you were, Harriet, running off like that to warn the Jacobses. If you hadn't, there's no telling what all would have gone on and who all would have been killed," the sheriff told me.

  "Can she visit with Nat Turner?" he said in disbelief to Papa's request. "Don't know why anyone would want to. But if it helps her reason things out, of course she can. We'll just leave the door to where the cells are open. Thank you for the map, Mr. Whitehead. I'm sure it's already a historic document."

  The room where the cells were was small and dank, with no windows. It was cold, a preserved coldness, like it had been held over from last year. It's like a springhouse, I thought. There were two cells. They said that Hark, Nat Turner's lieutenant, was in the other cell. I couldn't see him and didn't try.

  The first thing I heard was the clanging of chains as Turner stood up when I presented myself. He was in leg irons and his hands were manacled, too.

  It smelled in here. A smell of rotting flowers, or death, or dead animals.

  He'd been here about two weeks.

  I could see that his bed was a pine board. That he wore rags that barely resembled a shirt and breeches, that his feet were bare. The dank walls dripped with a wetness. The walls were crying. For him? For us?

  But he was still Nat Turner, the preacher. He still thought that only he had the answers to the sins of mankind.

  "Ah," he said, "the little girl of the map."

  I said nothing. There was something I had to clear up with him right now.

  "Hello, Nat. I won't ask you how you are. I can see. I've come to see you. On two counts. I have to ask you a favor."

  "Me?" He laughed and held up his manacled hands. "Anything I can do for you, child. You want my blessing?"

  "Nat, don't jest. I want a promise from you."

  "I'm only gonna be around a couple more hours."

  "Nat, please don't tell any of them that I had anything to do with the map."

  "The map? Long gone," he said. "Lost."

  "It isn't. It's been recovered and turned over to the magistrate. My name's been taken off it. That's what I'm asking you, don't you see? Please don't tell anybody I gave it to you."

  "Lost," he said again. "My map is lost. If they have one, it's an imitation."

  Well, if he wanted to think that, then let him think it, I decided. It was better that way.

  "But I got it all in my head. You want to hear it?" And he started to recite. Like a prayer. "Travis," he said, "Salathul Francis, then Reese, then the Turner place, then Bryants, then Whitehead, then Porter, then Nathaniel Francis, then Harris, then Doyle, then Barrow, then Captain Newit Hams, then Waller, then Williams, then Vaughan. Did I forget anybody? I must have. Oh yes, Jacobs."

  He gave a big sigh. "I saw you. I saw you running through the woods. You were running through the woods like you were being chased by the devil himself. Toward the Jacobs place. At first I wanted to go after you. But then I said no, let her go. Because, of a sudden, my spirit was low, and I felt a terrible grief. And I wondered if that's how God feels when He has to kill so many in a great tragedy. You see, I felt like God that day. But never once since. No, never."

  "I need to ask you one more thing."

  "Ask."

  "Is it true that my sister, Margaret, is the only person killed by your hands?"

  He scowled. "Beautiful, sassy Margaret," he said. "She never did know not to tease a man."

  "Is it true?" I pushed.

  "True as you're standing there."

  "Why?"

  "Why did I kill her? Or why is she the only one?"

  "Anything you want to tell me."

  He grimaced. "I killed her because of all the times she sassed me. All the times she bent over and showed me her bosoms. All the times she made me want her. And after I killed her, I couldn't bring myself to kill another. She was perfection. Nobody could come up to her as prey."

  "Did she suffer? Did you make her suffer?"

  He shook his head no. "It was clean and swift. Her beautiful blond hair soaked up the blood. But she didn't suffer. I promise you that."

  He was lying. Even here. Even now. Now I had to burn her dresses and cloaks and shoes and everything. I couldn't give them, in good conscience, to Violet. I couldn't let Violet have her room with honest goodwill.

  "Do you want to stay around and see me hanged?" Nat asked.

  "No," I said. No. In years to come, everyone will know about Nat Turner. He will be famous. Remembered as two people: one who could preach and one who could kill.

  "No, thank you," I said. I would remember him always as the man who killed everyone I loved. And those I still had to learn to love. I didn't need to see him hanged.

  I left him there. In that room that was as cold as a springhouse, where the walls wept tears and it smelled of death.

  ***

  Within six months my new father had sold our plantation and moved us, and all the animals and help, to another one on the other side of Jerusalem, which he called "Harriet's Hope," because when Violet and I weren't studying under our new tutor, Papa let me have a hand in running it. And a say.

  He wanted me to be myself again, he said, to forget the horrors. This new place is so lovely, there are days I think I can. And then there are the days I know I never will.

  * * *

  About Nat Turner

  Nat Turner once talked about his mother's mother: "She was a girl of the Coromantee tribe from the Gold Coast of Africa, just thirteen years old when she was brought in chains to Yorktown, Virginia, aboard a schooner out of Newport, Rhode Island.

  "She was sold in the harborside of Hampton, to Alpheus Turner, who was the father to Samuel Turner."

  Nat Turner, himself, was born in 1800. At first Samuel Turner's brother, Benjamin, was his master, but when Benjamin died, he was given to Samuel. His next master was Thomas Moore, and then he went to Joseph Travis.

  Nat Turner could not account for his ability to read and write. He was not only extremely intelligent but mechanically able and very influenced by religion in his life, a trait he attributed to his grandmother.

  By the time he was twenty, Nat Turner considered himself a minister, though he was never officially ordained by anybody.

  He described his "ordination" this way: "As I was praying one day at my plough, the spirit spoke to me. Which fully confirmed for me the impression that I was ordained for some great purpose in the hands of the Almighty."

  There is no doubt that Turner considered himself a preacher. He spoke about "hearing a loud voice in the heavens and the Spirit instantly spoke to me."

  All during his time of slavery, from birth in 1800 to his revolt in 1831, Nat Turner never gave any trouble to any of his masters or any of the people he was hired out to, like the Whiteheads. Even when he preached behind the vegetable stands in town or did baptisms in the nearby ponds, he did not agitate the crowds or cause a breaking of the peace.

  So nobody, not even scholars in this day, can explain Turner's motives. Was it for liberty? For justice? For pe
rsonal gain? How could any black man of Turner's obvious intelligence think he might organize an army (some say he had sixty men with him), destroy plantations, kill the people on them (white and black), capture a town (Jerusalem), and set up shop as an entity of his own without being captured?

  All Turner knew was that this was his moment. That "the Spirit" told him to do it. Was he mad? One would think so. But then, how could he appear so polite and talented and agreeable to everyone in the months and years before?

  It is worth pondering. At any rate, he was caught, he came to trial, and he was hanged on November 11, 1831. In today's world he is still not understood. The best historians cannot figure him out. Was he a criminal or a misunderstood holy man? Like others of his type, whose lives splash across the tabloids, perhaps we shall never know.

  * * *

  Author's Note

  One of the first things I was asked when I told a group of teachers I was doing a book on Nat Turner was "Are you going to make him a hero?"

  A hero? How can you make a hero out of a man who was responsible for the killing of fifty-seven people? And then I realized that she was asking about my "treatment," my "viewpoint," of Nat Turner. Would I consider him a victim? Or just a plain old killer?

  What I have tried to do with this book is not impose my opinion on him at all, because, after all, it is said that he is our history's most misunderstood figure.

  That I can agree with. And, since I finished writing the book with no handle on the motives or character of Turner, I presume that is how I left him. Misunderstood in the sense that I certainly did not understand him. But he makes a darned good story.

  When I first got the idea for The Letter Writer, Nat Turner was light-years away. If someone had told me I would someday write about him, I would have scoffed at the idea. The whole concept of his story was too overwhelming.

  Important writers had fought, argued, and differed for years about how he should be viewed in our history. Did I dare put my two cents in?

  All I wanted to do with this book was write a story about a young girl who was a "letter writer" for an elderly woman who was blind. That's the only piece of the puzzle I had when developing the plot. Who she was, where she lived, what century she lived in, I had no idea. But her role, somehow, must be critical to her well-being and her position important enough to those around her so that her actions might somehow save their lives.

  That's all I had, but more than I usually have to start out with.

  Then I must figure out the where and the when of it.

  You have to be living under a rock these days not to know that young adult novels are getting sharper and more on the edge and, yes, riskier. Today's kids want more, so I decided to take the risk and put my girl (already named Harriet) against a backdrop so terrible for her time that Frankenstein would look like the Three Little Pigs.

  The Nat Turner rebellion.

  I found her a place in the Whitehead home. And then, while doing research, I came across an incident in which a fourteen-year-old girl is seen by Turner running through the woods in bare feet, hysterical and crying, running northward for help.

  That was my Harriet, I told myself. I was on the right track.

  And so it began.

  I do not pretend, offering a book like this, to be as knowledgeable as the adult prizewinning authors who wrote about the Turner rebellion. I do not pretend to have any answers about it, any special information. Someday, perhaps, someone will.

  I do not offer academic viewpoints or racial bias. I do not intend to foster arguments. My Harriet wrote her letters, as she was told, and when the time came, saved her world.

  I simply offer that. A good read.

  * * *

  Bibliography

  The books I found most helpful for the time period of my novel are listed below, with many thanks to the authors who so painstakingly did the original work.

  Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998.

  Betts, Edwin Morris, ed. Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book. Monticello, VA: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1999.

  Franklin, John Hope, and Loren Schweninger. Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

  Greenberg, Kenneth, ed. Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

  Mellon, James, ed. Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember. New York: Avon Books, 1988.

  Styron, William. The Confessions of Nat Turner. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.

  * * *