piece of flesh and held them over the fire, turning them as they cooked and then parceling out the chunks for all to savor like the sacrament of some new religion. When it came time for Faraday and Tennyson to taste the meat, they refused. All of this the old white man watched from afar, until he saw that refusal and it compelled him up from the ground and forward.
“You fellas new,” he said, approaching Faraday. It was not a question. “My name’s Turnbull. You don’t have to eat that foulness if you don’t want. They ain’t gonna force you.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Faraday said.
“Don’t pay no mind to their works. The yoke is heavy and these men have chosen their manner of coping.”
“Coping? Their masters bring them plenty of food and water, yet that is not enough. They must slaughter each other. And you call that coping?” Tennyson said.
“Yes. Blind as they are, there is thought behind their actions. They still have hope and through the practice of their superstitions they are able to feed that hope, to let it grow inside of their hearts.”
“And why is it you do not have to fight?”
“When I first came here, I acquainted myself with the one who leads them. He had been a shaman in his country but here he was made to work in a mine. I spoke to him of the gospel and he heard me and rejected me. But he saw in me a counterpart to himself and, respecting my beliefs, has never forced me to take part.”
“You are a man of the Bible. Is that how you cope?”
Turnbull brought out of his trousers a thin little tome. “The good book is my relief, yes. Don’t have all of it here, only the most important parts. The rest I keep in my head. Once I was a preacher, but now I preach only to myself.”
“How did you end up here?”
“I came up out of Texas some ten years ago. Worked as chaplain to a platoon of men during the war. After that I took up a post as pastor in Nacogdoches. But the people there are blasphemers. Good white men they may once have been but time has corrupted them. One among them spread vicious rumors about myself and those beasts took it as true. I fled. Lived alone in the wilderness. Always moving, but one time I must have trespassed on the wrong tribe’s territory, because they took me in and made a slave out of me and sold me to another tribe and then another, until the Ohlone came and bought me for a pittance.” Turnbull spat. “Truth is, slavery is the best thing’s ever happened to me and it could be for you too if you listened to the gospel.”
“No man deserves to be a slave,” Tennyson said. “Not even Negros.”
“I’ll give you that, but if that slavery serves as the opening through which a man comes into the kingdom of God, then surely some good has come from the evil. For in the good book it is said that all the rich man’s belongings cannot save him from condemnation, and I tell you that every man is that rich man and those belongings are all of the pernicious little wants that the heart of man covets, each one being incapable of shoring up what is broken and imperfect inside of himself. But here in the pit of slavery a man is forced to choose. Forget those belongings and find the one true treasure, or spend the rest of his life searching for a way to recover them, no matter how mad or far-fetched that possibility may be, as these Negros do every day, succeeding only in defiling themselves further. I chose the former.”
“Yet what virtue is there in your choice if the only alternative is horrible?” Tennyson said.
“All alternatives are horrible. But every man comes to this understanding in the way that the Father deems best. Slavery was my fate and it may or may not be yours. Now, tell me how it is that you fellas came to be captives of the Ohlone.”
Faraday told Turnbull the full story, omitting only those little details involving their way of making a living that could be construed as criminal, and when he was done, the old
“You fellas new,” he said, approaching Faraday. It was not a question. “My name’s Turnbull. You don’t have to eat that foulness if you don’t want. They ain’t gonna force you.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Faraday said.
“Don’t pay no mind to their works. The yoke is heavy and these men have chosen their manner of coping.”
“Coping? Their masters bring them plenty of food and water, yet that is not enough. They must slaughter each other. And you call that coping?” Tennyson said.
“Yes. Blind as they are, there is thought behind their actions. They still have hope and through the practice of their superstitions they are able to feed that hope, to let it grow inside of their hearts.”
“And why is it you do not have to fight?”
“When I first came here, I acquainted myself with the one who leads them. He had been a shaman in his country but here he was made to work in a mine. I spoke to him of the gospel and he heard me and rejected me. But he saw in me a counterpart to himself and, respecting my beliefs, has never forced me to take part.”
“You are a man of the Bible. Is that how you cope?”
Turnbull brought out of his trousers a thin little tome. “The good book is my relief, yes. Don’t have all of it here, only the most important parts. The rest I keep in my head. Once I was a preacher, but now I preach only to myself.”
“How did you end up here?”
“I came up out of Texas some ten years ago. Worked as chaplain to a platoon of men during the war. After that I took up a post as pastor in Nacogdoches. But the people there are blasphemers. Good white men they may once have been but time has corrupted them. One among them spread vicious rumors about myself and those beasts took it as true. I fled. Lived alone in the wilderness. Always moving, but one time I must have trespassed on the wrong tribe’s territory, because they took me in and made a slave out of me and sold me to another tribe and then another, until the Ohlone came and bought me for a pittance.” Turnbull spat. “Truth is, slavery is the best thing’s ever happened to me and it could be for you too if you listened to the gospel.”
“No man deserves to be a slave,” Tennyson said. “Not even Negros.”
“I’ll give you that, but if that slavery serves as the opening through which a man comes into the kingdom of God, then surely some good has come from the evil. For in the good book it is said that all the rich man’s belongings cannot save him from condemnation, and I tell you that every man is that rich man and those belongings are all of the pernicious little wants that the heart of man covets, each one being incapable of shoring up what is broken and imperfect inside of himself. But here in the pit of slavery a man is forced to choose. Forget those belongings and find the one true treasure, or spend the rest of his life searching for a way to recover them, no matter how mad or far-fetched that possibility may be, as these Negros do every day, succeeding only in defiling themselves further. I chose the former.”
“Yet what virtue is there in your choice if the only alternative is horrible?” Tennyson said.
“All alternatives are horrible. But every man comes to this understanding in the way that the Father deems best. Slavery was my fate and it may or may not be yours. Now, tell me how it is that you fellas came to be captives of the Ohlone.”
Faraday told Turnbull the full story, omitting only those little details involving their way of making a living that could be construed as criminal, and when he was done, the old
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