The Letter Writer Page 5

Margaret looked as if she wanted to slap me. "It helps in school," she said through clenched teeth. "The teachers are always trying to please me because of Richard. Most of them are in his congregation."

  "So that's how you get your good marks," I said in astonishment. "And Mother Whitehead and Richard think it's because you've earned them."

  "Do you two always fight like this?" Emilie asked.

  "Yes," I said. "You could say there's no love lost between us."

  "I wish I had a sister," she said wistfully, "just to commiserate with. Just to confide in. I'd never fight with her."

  And then Margaret said the one thing I knew was always on her mind. "She's my half sister," she said.

  That brought silence into the room. Emilie finished her packing.

  "What will you do when you go home?" I asked her. "Live in the house alone with all the servants?"

  "I don't know," she answered. "I haven't come to that bridge yet. Mayhap I'll move in with my aunt Marie Claire in Jerusalem. I'll let you all know."

  Mother had Nat Turner drive Emilie home. Margaret went with them. Before they left I sneaked some words with Nat Turner. "Talk to her," I begged. "Tell her that God is not vengeful. Tell her that He is a forgiving God, please."

  He promised he would.

  Nine

  I didn't give the map of Southampton County to Nat Turner for another two weeks. Though he was an acknowledged minister, I knew it was wrong to do so.

  The reasons why I'd learned with my ABCs. One did not give maps or plans or letters or any reading material to nigras. It was all part of the Southern belief system that they did not know how to read, of course, though quite a few of them did. Those who did were considered dangerous and to be watched. It was that simple.

  They were to be suspected of any motive. Did Turner want the map so he could rob houses? I could not forgive myself, at first, for thinking that.

  But I had another problem.

  Suppose the family saw me walking around with the map in my hands? What reason would I give as to why I had it? I was not known to be studious. Pleasant had all she could do to be patient with me.

  And then my reason for borrowing the map came to me. I would go to Pleasant first and tell her that it was time for me to understand Southampton County. Wasn't it? She would be surprised but happy. And say yes to my "borrowing" the map to study over the remaining weeks of summer.

  "Why I'll know all the roads and small towns' names and who lives where, and creeks and streams and signposts," I told her. "And then do you know what, Pleasant? We'll go on a ride, just you and I, when the fall comes. A picnic, and I'll see all the places I studied about."

  She laughed, and tossed her chestnut curls. "We'll have to be escorted. You know Richard won't let us wander around alone."

  I shrugged. "Owen can be our escort. He's big and strong now."

  It was agreed. And as if the Lord had blessed my plans, the post came early the next morning. And there was a letter from Uncle Andrew that I quickly snatched out of the mass of mail that was put on the table in the hallway.

  I had written to him about how I was going to lend Nat Turner the map of Southampton County. Quickly I scanned the letter.

  My dear, I can't give you a viable opinion of slavery or of dealing with the slaves in general or in particular. But from my vague memories I can tell you that a slave who knows how to read and write is never innocent of planning or conniving, no matter how likable he seems. I would watch myself with Nat Turner. In many ways it sounds as if he is trying to get information from you. For what, I don't know. But I'd venture that he is planning something. That is only my opinion, of course, and I am only a sixty-eight-year-old man for whom the very idea of slavery seems dim and quaint. And oh yes. Don't ever let him have the key to the gun room.

  It was the first time Uncle Andrew disagreed with me on anything. And it was not very forceful, so that morning, after reading the letter, I went immediately to the gun room. It was locked, of course. But I knew where the key was. Everybody did, apparently even Nat Turner, who had entered the gun room to look at the twin table, so I wondered at the necessity of locking it. I pulled over a chair in the hallway, stepped up on it, and retrieved said key from the top of the doorjamb and opened the door.

  I had always wondered why Father kept such an array of guns. There were at least twenty muskets and rifles, twelve flintlock pistols, six fowling pieces, six swords, two cutlasses, and plenty of powder and lead. My father must have been a prime marksman, too, because there were at least eight trophies for shooting. It all impressed me much but not in a pleasant way.

  Then I focused my attention on the map on the round oaken table in the corner. There it was, spread out. I studied it for a minute. In all the years I'd lived here I had never really looked at the map of Southampton County.

  For a moment I had my doubts again. But then I folded the map carefully and put it in my apron pocket. I would ask Nat Turner, once more, why he needed it.

  And then, on my way out of the room, another phrase rang in my head like a church bell on Sunday. Don't ever let him have the key to the gun room.

  How did Uncle Andrew know the gun room was locked? Oh, the question begged an answer. But there was none. He'd never been to this house! He'd never even been to America!

  Silly, I told myself, all gun rooms are locked. Who leaves one open?

  Who? Just who?

  ***

  I waited until after breakfast, until after everyone had settled down and gone to their appointed tasks. I wrote some letters for Mother Whitehead, then settled her on the veranda where she would stay until it became too hot. I fetched her knitting. She could still knit, though near blind. She just needed help picking out the colors. And she now excused me for an hour or so. All the while I had the map of Southampton County, folded neatly, in my apron pocket.

  I found Nat Turner working on a chair in the library.

  "Good morning, missy."

  "Good morning." Margaret was looking at books at the other end of the room. She wore her blue silk robe over her pajamas. What must Nat Turner think? I should talk to her later, I told myself. I should ask Mother Whitehead to talk to her. No, I should have Richard say something. Would they tell me to mind my own business? It was my business, wasn't it? Why did I know it was wrong and not Margaret?

  The answer was that Margaret knew.

  What was it Uncle Andrew had said? I can tell you that a slave who knows how to read and write is never innocent of planning or conniving.

  She stood up now, Margaret did. "I found it," she said of the book in her hand. "Tristan. I knew it was here." Triumphantly she marched from the room. Nat did not look at her. He kept his eyes lowered, and I knew this was bad, this was worse than if he had looked at her. This showed that he did not trust himself to look at her.

  "I have your map," I told him. And I drew it from my pocket.

  He took it and spread it on the floor. He was most pleased and thanked me. He studied it for a moment and a brown finger traced over the roads while his lips moved silently.

  "How long can I keep it for?" he asked.

  I hadn't thought about that. I thought he only wanted to look at it, perhaps for ten minutes, and when I told him this he shook his head.

  "I need it for at least three weeks," he told me.

  I became irritated, then. Three weeks! And what was I supposed to do if someone asked why it was gone? Pleasant knew I had it now. And Nat wouldn't even do me the honor of telling me why he needed it so badly.

  "I can't let you have it that long," I told him. "It's been right there, out in the open on the table forever. If my brother, Richard, goes in there for anything, he'll notice that it isn't there anymore and ask why. Not that he needs it. But it's really the only one within ten miles and people sometimes come and ask him to use it. People who are planning fishing or hunting trips. And besides, it's special because it belonged to my father."

  He nodded slowly but never took his eyes from the m
ap.

  "Are you planning a fishing trip?" I asked. I didn't say hunting because negroes weren't allowed to have guns.

  "You could say that, after a fashion."

  I met his eyes with mine. And mine were full of hurt because he was holding back with me.

  He gave a small smile. "I am a fisher of men, like the Lord told Saint Peter he would be doing from here on in. I am going to stop at plantations and preach of the God that loves us."

  I let out a sigh. Of course.

  "Well, if that's what you're going to do, then I have an idea," I told him. "My sister-in-law, Pleasant, Richard's wife, thinks I have this map to study for schoolwork. But since it is so valuable I think that it should be copied, and the original should be put back on the table in the library."

  He nodded, not quite understanding.

  "I know that Pleasant has some very thin tracing paper. I can get it from her and then all I have to do is put it over the top of the map and trace it onto the thin paper."

  His eyes went wide, understanding. "You would do that? For me?"

  "Yes. But you'd still have to give the traced copy back to me, because I'm supposed to be studying it for school."

  "Yes." He looked at me, a piercing look, one that took in more than I was willing to give him.

  And so we came to our agreement, which was at the cornerstone of the events that followed. No, Uncle, I never gave him the key to the gun room. I gave him something worse.

  Ten

  "I think it's a wonderful idea," Pleasant said to me as she rustled around amongst her embroidery things to find the tracing paper. She was a much-talented woman, my sister-in-law. She once told me that she had a rich inner life, which had nothing to do with religion. "It keeps me sane," she confessed.

  Ah, there was the tracing paper. She gave me two pieces. "Richard will like that you don't want to dirty or otherwise wrinkle the original map," she said as I left her room.

  It took me two days to trace Southampton County because Mother Whitehead came up with a parcel of letters that had to be written, of a sudden. My hands were ink-stained before I finished, and I was tired of holding a pen.

  She owed people letters, she told me. And they were very important. One was to Jenkins, Middleton, and Pierce, her cotton factors who sold her cotton and took 4 percent for doing so:

  Dear Sirs: This is to ascertain that I will be signing on with you for another year, as pleased as I have been with your reputation for caution and reserve. I was pleased with the price of forty-five cents a pound brought by my fine crop of cotton and even the coarse grade that brought thirty-one cents a pound. Let's hope prices rise again this year and that English brokerage houses don't collapse, that there are no reports of bad weather, and no king of importance abdicates. I will write again soon to order my list of wheat, flour, salt, coffee, tools, and all other manner of items the plantation does not produce....

  And so it was more than two days before I gave my rendition of the map to Nat Turner. I told no one, except, of course, Violet. Her eyes went wide at the telling. "What," she asked, "did he say he was going to do with it?"

  "He said he was going to stop at plantations and preach to the people how the Lord loves us. And is a forgiving God," I told her. It had sounded so good, so right, when Nat said it. Now it sounded empty and flat.

  Violet said nothing for a moment. Then, "I think we should pay a visit to my grandmother."

  I drew in my breath. Her grandmother was Cloanna, the oldest woman on the place. She was grandmother to all the slave children. Nobody knew exactly how old Cloanna was, but she used to be the cook and everybody who remembered still talked about how wonderful the dishes were that she turned out. They said nobody could ever cook like Cloanna again.

  Now, too old to work anymore, she spent her mornings on the wooden porch of her cabin, stitching clothes for the little slave children. And her afternoons, trimming the ends off beans or shucking corn. She would not let her hands be idle, lest the devil use them for his workshop, she had told us.

  Not many people on the plantation visited her. Truth to tell, she had "the gift." She knew things. And since everyone, even all the slaves, had secrets they didn't want brought out into the open, she kept those secrets for them. I like to think she stitched them into the clothing she made for the little folk.

  She could always be counted on to keep a body's secrets. So people told her things.

  Up until now I hadn't had any secrets. Oh, how I wished I had. When she discovered that about me, she just leaned back in her ancient rocking chair and laughed. "Go get yourself some secrets, girl. Life ain't interestin' if'n you doan have any."

  Now I had one. And I was not as all-out thrilled as I thought I would be. I was more frightened than anything. The secret was a burden, not a joy. I decided I would say nothing to Cloanna. I would see if she could discover it on her own. And I warned Violet not to say anything, either.

  But Violet was troubled by what I had done. I could tell. And whenever Violet was troubled, it was enough for her just to go and visit Cloanna, even if she never said a word.

  Sure enough, there was Cloanna in her rocking chair, snipping the ends off beans. Her face was a map I'd like to trace. I'd love to see where it would take me. And I'd love to see where she had been.

  "What you two doin' here in the slave quarters on such a beautiful day?" she scolded. "Why ain't you rompin' in the meadow, or pickin' some flowers, or fishin' in the pond?"

  "I'm too old to romp," Violet told her.

  "Humph. When I wuz your age I hooked my skirts up and went wadin' in the pond."

  "I've done that when I picked cattails," Violet said. "Massa Richard said if he caught me at it again he'd whip my legs."

  "He did, did he? He's gotten terrible persnickety since he become a preacher. When he wuz a whippersnapper boy I used to box his ears when he come inta my kitchen and stole my fresh-baked bread and just-churned butter. Ask him about that sometime if'n you want to see his face go red."

  "No thank you, Grandma, I don't talk like that to Massa Richard."

  "Well he needs somebody to talk to him like that. You there, little Miz Harriet, the cat got your tongue this day? Why you so quiet?"

  "No reason," I told her.

  "No reason to lie to Cloanna, missy. She knows the difference. It's heavy, ain't it?"

  "What?"

  "That secret you're totin' round inside you. It's bearin' down on you. You finally got yourself a first-rate secret an' it ain't so much fun now, is it?"

  Tears came to my eyes. "No," I admitted.

  "Listen to me, chile." And she leaned forward. "I doan know all. But somethin' tells me it's about paper. An' lines on the paper. 'Portant lines. An' you stole that paper. Is old Cloanna right?"

  "I didn't really steal it," I said.

  "Now you lyin' to Cloanna. It's bad to lie to people, chile, but it'll get you right inta hell to lie to me. Didn't anybody ever tell you that?"

  "No," I said.

  She went back to snipping the ends off her beans. "Would you do as I say if'n I say to destroy that paper you stole?"

  I looked at her blankly.

  "Doan give me that dumblike look. If'n there's any-thin' you ain't, it's dumb. Well, would you do as I say if I told you to destroy it?"

  "I don't know," I answered.

  "Well I'm sayin' it, anyways. Destroy it. No good will come out of you stealin' it when it ain't yours to have. Look, little Harriet chile, I feel it in my ninety-two-year-old bones. Like when the sky gathers black around me and it threatens rain. My knees hurt. My back hurts. My wrists hurt. Somethin' bad gonna happen round heah, and I want no part of it. So you better watch your p's an' q's and doan go foolin' 'round any. Now I've said my piece. Go, go and leave me alone."

  "Why can't you tell us more?" I pushed.

  "'Cause I the keeper of secrets round heah, tha's why," she answered firmly. "Now go, the both of you. An' leave me with my beans."

  We left, sadly. "I'd like to
know what secrets she carries about people around here," I told Violet.

  "I'll wager she carries them to the grave," she said.

  "What do you suppose she meant about something bad going to happen around here?"

  "She just wants to scare the boots off us," Violet said.

  But we were quiet walking home. And I think we both knew not to distrust Cloanna. Too many times when she predicted something, it had come true. Like the time she told Richard to get all the cows in the barn one midsummer night, that the wolves were going to attack. Richard only scoffed at her. And the next morning he had three dead calves lying in the pasture.

  Richard never discounted anything she said again.

  Eleven

  Of a sudden, I felt myself getting a fever. I was hot and yet my hands and feet were freezing. I left Violet to her chores as soon as we got back from slaves' row, and I headed straight to the groom's quarters in the stable, where Nat was living, to give him the map. I never paid much mind to what Cloanna said. She said it mostly for the negro children, anyway.

  The map was burning a hole in my apron pocket. I was tired of the thought of it by now, and I wanted to be shed of it.

  It was about three o'clock in the afternoon, I reckon, but there was no one about the barnyard. The sun poured down on the dust, raising it up into choking air. I longed to take my clothes off and go for a dip in the pond. I looked around. There was a parcel of slaves in the cotton field in back of the slave quarters. And another tending to the apple trees in the orchard. But they weren't singing as they usually did when they worked. It was just too hot and there was nothing to sing about.

  Nat Turner was not in his quarters. I stood and looked around. It was very neat. It had a fireplace, a desk, an oil lamp, and straw ticking.

  On the desk was a pad of paper and on it was a list of names. I glanced at it. Mrs. Whitehead, Richard, Pleasant, baby William, Margaret and Harriet, Violet, and all the house negroes but Owen, take him with us, he's angry enough. Make it quick and go on to the Jacobs place, two miles north.