Colonel Bull muttered something, then swung the butt of his gun against Tiberius's head, knocking him off the barrel. Hutchenson and Whittaker pulled him off the prisoner, who was bleeding now from a gash on his forehead. Hutchenson helped him back onto the barrel.
"Why'd you'd do that?" Tiberius's head was tucked like a turtle's. He asked Hutchenson, "Why'd he do that? I been tellin' the truth!" He watched them talking among themselves, whispering, and angrily brought out, "No, I'm not lyin'! What's that? What'd he say? Colonel Bull sayin' I tried to drag him off his horse? Oh, that's where I remember you from! Well sir, I… I ain't callin' you no liar, I wouldn't do that. I guess maybe me'n some of the others did pull a white man off his horse when he come ridin' down Pon Pon Road… but I just got swept hup in the rebellion, that's all."
They were quiet for a few moments. Hutchenson had that sad look on his face again. Colonel Bull began loading his rifle. Whittaker took a step toward Tiberius, who flinched, waiting to be hit again, but all the overseer did was ask a simple question.
"Nossir, Mistah Whittaker, I did not kill anybody. know me better'n that. I wouldn't hurt a fly, sir. It's just that, like I was tryin' to tell you, I felt like I'd been sleepin' all my life and just woke hup. You a Christian man, right? You understand how it feels when the spirit hits you at meetin' time, like you was blind but suddenly you can see. That's how it was for me. I was with them when they left the farm, that's right, and marched over to the Godfrey place, then to the Lemy farm, pickin' up as they went more field hands ready to risk everythin' for just one day of freedom and folks like me, who wanted it too but was used to the old ways and had to be swept along. I reckon Jemmy had an army of over a hundred by the time y'all found our camp. We'd covered ten miles and Jemmy thought maybe he'd brought the whole Province to its knees. Guess that was a mistake, eh?" He tilted his head left to keep the blood trickling from his forehead out of his eyes. "I just want you to know the reason they let so many good white people live — the ones what treated colored folks right — is 'cause I took hup for 'em. That's right."
"That's enough," said Hutchenson. "You don't have to tell us any more. I understand. I believe in freedom, too." He lifted Tiberius to his feet, gripping his left arm. Whittaker took hold of his right. They began walking him toward the barn door.
"Thank you, Mr. Hutchenson," he said. "I knew you'd understand. I guess y'all fixin' to let me go now, huh?"
Poetry and Politics
"PHILLIS, HAVE YOU a moment to talk?"
"Of course, ma'am, but should you be up at this hour? The doctor said—"
"I know what he said. Pooh! You've been reminding me of it every day since you returned from England, which I wish you'd not done for my sake. I'm an old woman, and far poorer company, I would guess, than the Countess of Huntingdon and Benjamin Franklin. He isn't really a nudist, is he?"
"To hear others tell it, yes! I swear I heard them say it! And you're not poor company. I'd rather be here, helping you and Master John, than riding in carriages from one court to another in London and being called the 'Sable Muse.' Isn't that silly? I've never seen so many people astonished — there and here — that an Ethiop could write verse!"
"No, not an Ethiop. They're dazzled, and well should they be, at a girl barely thirteen translating Ovid from the Latin and publishing her first book at twenty. I daresay you are a prodigy, probably the most gifted poet in New England"
"Oh my… Better than Michael Wigglesworth?"
"Leagues beyond him, my dear."
"Perhaps you are… biased. Is that possible?"
"Not a'tall…"
"But Mr. Jefferson, his opinion of my work is less than laudatory."
"As is my opinion of him. Come now, show me what you're working on. That is a new poem, isn't it? Is that why you're up before cock's crow?"
"Oh, I couldn't sleep! But, no! Don't look! Give it back, please. I know it's not good. At least not yet. It could be years before it's ready—"
"I just want to see. May I? Well… this is a departure for you. 'On the Necessity of Negro Manumussion.' What prompted you to begin this?"
"You… and Master John."
"How so?"
"Just prior to sending me to London for medical treatment you granted me manumission—"
"We were worried. Your health has always been frail."
"— and when I was there I discovered that everyone of my color was free. Just a few months before I arrived, Chief Justice Mansfield passed a ruling that freed all the slaves in England. I was thinking, would that we had such a ruling here!"
"But there are free black men and women in Boston."
"Yes, and they live miserably, ma'am! My contact with them is slight, but I've seen them languishing in poverty and ostracized by white Christians. I wonder sometimes what they think of me. I imagine some mock the models I've chosen — Alexander Pope — and my piety and the patriotism of my verse, such as the poem to General Washington, which you know I labored long and hard upon, though he is a slaveholder (and who replied not at all to my gift), so that, the hardest work sometimes, at least for me, has been to honor in my verse the principles of the faith that brought me freedom, yet — and yet — I have not spoken of its failures, here in New England or in the slaveholding states that justify my people's oppression by twisting scripture."
"Must you speak of these things?"
"Yes, I think so…"
"Is this why you could not sleep last night?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Phillis… are you… unhappy here?"
"No, no! That's not what I'm saying. I'm thankful for the blessing that brought me from Senegal to America. Thankful that you took on the sickly child that I was, carried me here to be a companion for you, taught me to write and read, and introduced me to Horace and Virgil, associates with whom I can spend hours, and ne'er once have they rebuked me for my complexion—"
"The finest thoughts have no complexion."
"So I have believed, ma'am. I believe that still. But while the greatest thoughts and works of literature and the gatekeepers of heaven vouchsafe no distinctions based on color, the worst prejudices and passions of man reign throughout the colonies. Will it not be odd, a hundred years hence, when readers open Poems on furious Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley, and discover that in not a single poem do I address the anguish of bondage, the daily horror that is happening around us, the evil of men bleeding their sable brethren for profit? Will I not be suspect? Or censured? For it is our hope — isn't it? — that freedom will come to all? If it does, ma'am, what will free Negroes think of me? That I wrote nothing to further our cause?"