Read The Resurrection of Nat Turner, Part 2: The Testimonial for Free Online Page B

too—I cleaned them real good.” She looked around at the people. “You don’t have to worry.”
    The people’s eyes followed the porcine jewels; their mouths salivated. Smiling, Mrs. Hathcock dropped them into the steaming pot of vinegary water.
    Daniel helped his mother to a chair. She smiled. “Master Edwards let me have them instead of feeding them to the dogs.” It was a Christmas treat; for most of them it was the only meat they would taste all year. Nat Turner heard the empty stomachs grumbling. He saw anticipation in their eyes and smiles.
    Another woman came and set a lidded jar on the table. “This is something, right here!” From the jar she pulled three pig feet andone ear. She had boiled them and pickled them in brine. Nat Turner smiled back at her. He knew what a sacrifice she had made. She had gone to bed hungry many nights, knowing she had the pork, but saved this Christmas portion to share.
    She got a knife and cut the treat, passing tiny pieces around. Children’s eyes rounded and glowed as they sucked on the bones—gnawing on the bones, sucking on the marrow.
    Smiling and gracious, his mother gave her portion away to Mother Easter, the old woman who sat beside her. Though his mother had been away from Africa more than thirty years, like a good Ethiopian Christian, she still did not eat pork. Cherry gave hers to their son, and Nat Turner gave his to her.
    People huddled together, laughing and talking, gathered from the scattered farms they lived on. Communion was the gift they shared. There was no wine or unleavened bread for them. There were no hats, cloaks, mittens, or presents. There was nothing for them except the hardscrabble meal they had scraped together. Captivity had taken its toll—so many without coats and shelter froze to death during the night. So each one celebrated that he had awakened that morning, clothed and in his right mind. Survival was the gift they shared. All of them heroes.
    This was not like the Christmases Nat Turner had seen and sometimes shared at his father’s house.
    At his father’s house there had been evergreens. Nat Turner remembered the smell of pine. There was holly with red berries to decorate the room. There was glazed ham and a holiday goose then. The spicy, sugary aroma of apple preserves and brandied peaches filled the room. There was hominy baked with cheese. He could not eat with the others in his father’s house, but his father would bring a plate to him and to his mother with bits of succulent things to taste.
    He recalled holding in his hands candy and a book—sometimes a coat new to him, a hand-me-down—given as presents.
    He remembered inside his father’s church, where he and theother black people were allowed to sit on the back pew when his father was alive. Inside, at Christmas, the church was filled with holly and mistletoe. He recalled the scents of dried lavender, rosemary, and rose petals.
    The people gathered in this cabin had none of what Nat Turner remembered. God had sent him back from the wilderness for them.
    Twenty-eight people crowded into the small cabin. The Artis brothers, part Cheroenhaka Nottoway Indian, sat talking to Hark, Sam, Dred, and some of the other men. “They have taken our land, saying we are not Indians because our mothers wed black men. Now we must pay rent to white men for our own land.” Frown lines were worn into his cheeks. “Indians that marry white men keep their land,” Exum Artis said.
    â€œFor now,” his brother, Arnold, added. “But they want us to leave. They want all the freemen to leave because we remember. We remember that they were poor and they once worked as slaves—indentured men. They were treated like us. There were no lies that God made them special.” All the freemen—black and Nottoway—and even white Berry Newsom nodded.
    â€œThey want us to leave, but we are just farmers. Where would we