The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron

and abstract work in natural philosophy, and in a fair hand inscribe page after page of random dictation, and had mastered his numbers as far The Confessions of Nat Turner
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    as a comprehension of simple algebra, and had so attained an understanding of Holy Scripture that such of those few adepts in the science of divinity as had examined his knowledge of the Bible came away shaking their heads in wonder at the splendor of his erudition.” He paused and belched. My eyes moved back again toward his, and I saw him wipe his mouth with his sleeve.
    “Rumor!” he resumed quickly. Now his voice had risen to a kind of impassioned runaway singsong, his eyes were wild and obsessed. “Astounding rumor to emerge from the backwoods of Old Virginny! Astounding as those rumors which in olden times came back from the depths of Asia—that at the source of the River Indus, I believe it was, dwelt a species of mammoth rat, six feet long, which could dance a lively jig while accompanying itself on a tambourine, and when approached would sprout heretofore invisible wings and fly to the topmost branch of the nearest palm tree. Rumor almost impossible to entertain! For to believe that from this downtrodden race, the very laws governing which bind it to an ignorance more benighted and final than death, there could arise one single specimen capable of spelling cat is asking rational intelligence to believe that balmy King George the Third was not a dastardly tyrant or that the moon is made of clabber cheese!” He had begun to jab his finger at me as he spoke, a long bony finger with hairy joints, sending it forth into my face in quick thrusts like a snake’s darting neck. “But beyond this, mind you, beyond this—to imagine this . . . this prodigy, this paragon , a Negro slave —oh, perish the vile word!—
    who had acquired the lineaments not just of literacy but of knowledge, who it was rumored could almost speak in the accents of a white man of breeding and cultivation; who, in short, while still one of this doomed empire’s most wretched minions, had transcended his sorry state and had become not a thing but a person -all this is beyond the realm of one’s wildest imagination. No. No! The mind boggles, refuses to accept such a grotesque image! Tell me, preacher, how do you spell cat?
    Come now, prove to me the reality of this hoax, this canard!” He kept jabbing his finger at me, the voice cajoling, amiable, the eyes still wintry-wild and obsessed. The smell of applejack was around him like a sweet vapor. “Cat!” he said. “Spell cat . Cat!”
    I had begun to feel surely that he was not being sarcastic, that he was somehow trying to express mad, hulking, terrifying feelings beyond anyone’s surmise. I felt blood pounding at my temples and the cold sweat of fear and anxiety clammy beneath my arms. “Don’t mock me, mastah, I pray you,” I breathed in a whisper. “Kindly please, mastah.Don’t mock me.” Time crept The Confessions of Nat Turner
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    past and we were both silent, gazing at each other, and the November wind boomed behind us in the forest, crashing like giant, diminishing footfalls across the graying waste of cedar and cypress and pine; for a moment my compliant lips trembled on a broken wisp of air, faltering— ’Ca-, Ca-”—and a grief-haunted sense of futility, childish, lifelong, nigger-black, welled up in me like a sigh of pain. I stood there sweating in the blustery wind, thinking: So this is the way it is. Even when they care, even when they are somehow on your side they cannot help but taunt and torment you. The palms of my hands slimy, and my mind roaring, thinking: I do not want to, but now, now if he forces me to spell the word I will have to try to kill him. I lowered my eyes again, saying more distinctly: “Don’t mock me, mastah, please.”
    Yet now Cobb, adrift in his brandy haze, seemed to have forgotten what he had said to me and turned away, staring madly toward the forest where the