’You suppose’ to have a couple bushels shelled fo’ my chickens and there ain’t a cupful lef’! Dis de fourth time in a month! You a shiftless black nigger scoundrel and I pray to sec dc day my brother sells you off to Georgia! Git dat com shelled right now, you shiftless nigger!’Jesus jumpin’Judas, de smell, Nat, comin’ out dat woman, if it was water ’twould have drown’ me in my shoes. ’De com in de shed for the chickens!’ de ole bitch say. Miss Maria?’ say I, de ole smell gittin’ strong now.
’Hark! Come right here!’ So I come, an’ already my nose begin twitchin’ like a mushrat pokin’ up out’n de swamp.
Like I was comin’ roun’ side of de barn yestiddy evenin’ and dere’s ole Miss Maria a-feedin’ the chickens. About much of this he was deadly serious, and as he jabbered away Ills broad, bold face would become furrowed in the most worrisome thought but Hark’s nature was basically humorous, outward going, beneficent, serene, and he could not long sustain a somber mood, even though many horrible things had happened to him.įinally something connected with a white person and a certain smell would tickle some interior nerve: against all restraint the giggles would begin to well up from his belly and in an instant he would have broken down clutching himself in helpless, wheezing, rich, delirious laughter, “Now Nat, maybe it jes’ me” he would begin seriously, “but dis yere nose of mine she jes’ get better ev’y day. He was very solemn about all this over the years he had worked out many subtleties and refinements upon his original philosophy, and he could talk endlessly as we worked along side each other-advising me at the top of his voice, assigning exact, marvelous odors to white people like Moses handing down the law. Hark always declared that he could distinguish between good white people and bad white people-and even white people who lay between good and bad-by their smell alone.
The following is an excerpt from a novel entitled The Confessions of Nat Turner, based on the life of the leader of the only effective, sustained revolt in the annals of American Negro slavery.
0 kommentar(er)
