Jefferson's Sons

James was just nuts for baby Peter. At night he sat in the doorway of their room with Peter on his lap, and made faces at the baby and waggled his fingers in front of his nose. The first morning Peter smiled, James woke Maddy up to tell him the news. Whenever Maddy or Beverly or Eston practiced the violin, James popped his head into their room and said, “Come on over, and play that for my brother. He likes it.” Sometimes, when Peter was fussy, James asked Maddy to play for him special.

“Was I that excited when Eston was born?” Maddy asked Mama.

Mama laughed. “You liked Eston fine, but you weren’t as wound up as James. I’ve never seen anybody make as much fuss over a baby as James.”

That summer Maddy finally began working for Uncle John. He swept shavings and carried tools, just like Beverly did when he began. Uncle John taught him the names of the tools and how they were used, and the different kinds of wood and what each was good for. Maddy took a piece of charcoal and labeled the wood in the shop, alder, pine, hickory, chestnut.

“That’s helpful, isn’t it?”

“It would be,” Beverly said, “if we couldn’t already tell what kind of wood it was just by looking.”

“Now, Beverly,” Uncle John chided him. “Words are fine things.”

“Beverly knows that,” Maddy said. “He collects them.”

“Loquacious,” Uncle John said, with a glint in his eye. “Commotion, bedlam, infliction.”

“What’s that mean?” Maddy asked.

“Means we talk too much,” Beverly said. “How about we try for tranquility.”

Maddy swept awhile in silent tranquility. Then he said to Uncle John, “Say that first word again.”

“Loquacious,” Uncle John said. He went to one of the woodshop cabinets and pulled out a heavy green-bound book. It was much bigger than Maddy’s blue primer or the little book of stories Miss Ellen had given him. “Look it up,” Uncle John said. “Loquacious. L-o-q—”

Maddy stared at the green book. “Look it up?”

“This is a dictionary,” Uncle John said. “A man named Mr. Webster wrote it. You can look up any word there is, any word at all, and this book will tell you what it means.” He showed Maddy how to go through the pages, finding first l, then lo, then loq, and then, right beneath lopping, loquacious.

“Talkative,” Maddy read. “Given to continual talking.” He grinned. “Eston is a loquacious fool. Where’d you get this book?”

“Miss Cornelia gave it to me,” Uncle John said. “She said it would help me with the letters I write.”

“Not Miss Ellen?” Maddy asked.

Uncle John shook his head. “Miss Cornelia. Mighty handsome gift, wouldn’t you say?”

“Can I look up—can I look up all my words?” Maddy meant all the words in the primer, the ones he could read but didn’t understand.

“In time,” Uncle John said. “We’ve got to get our work done. You bring your primer tomorrow, you can look up a couple of words a day.”

Maddy looked at the big, beautiful book. He looked at Beverly. “How come you didn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t know,” Beverly said.

Uncle John closed the book and put it back in the cabinet. “Which I only got last week,” he said. “Nobody’s holding out on you boys. But you’ll not talk too much about it, I hope.”

“Don’t worry,” Beverly said. “We won’t tell Miss Martha.”

Bedlam: a place appropriated for lunatics. Commotion: agitation, perturbation. Well, that was no help. Maddy looked those up too. Agitation: disturbance of tranquility. Ah. Beverly’s favorite word. Maddy smiled. And perturbation: disturbance, disorder.

There were so many words in that dictionary. Maddy worked his way through it, day after day, in the short spurts of time Uncle John would allow. All the words in the primer that confused him—and then he had a great burst of thought. “That declaration,” he said.

“What declaration?” Uncle John said. “I didn’t hear anybody declaring.”

“It’s lunchtime,” Beverly said. “I declare.”

Maddy brushed them aside. “The one in the hallway.”

Uncle John pursed his lips like he disapproved, but after a bit he said, “Have at it, young’un. Just don’t be in the great house when you shouldn’t be. You’re too old for that now.”

It turned out that it wasn’t the individual words of the declaration that were hard to understand: It was the way the words, each simple enough by itself, were arranged into complicated sentences. Maddy had to read a bit, and then wait, and think, and read a bit more, and think a bit more. When he finally understood the long first paragraph he felt sad.

“Is slavery a form of government?” he asked Uncle John.

“The government allows slavery,” Uncle John replied.

“Governments rule by consent of the people,” Beverly cut in. “Haven’t you gotten to that part yet?” So Beverly had read the declaration too; Maddy had wondered. “For sure, nobody’s giving their consent to be a slave. It’s not a government.”

“If it was,” Maddy said, “we could get rid of it.”

“I suppose,” said Uncle John. “You best leave all that, Maddy. Thinking about it won’t make it better. Come hold this chair rail for me while I heat up some glue.”

“Let’s both save our money,” Maddy said to James. “When I’m twenty-one, Master Jefferson will set me free. Then we’ll put our money together and buy you your freedom. And we’ll go out west together, just like we said.”

James raised an eyebrow. “What, you’d buy me? I’d belong to you?”

“’Course not. I’ll give you what money I’ve got, and you can buy yourself.”

James grinned. “All right. Only now we’ve got to save up extra, so we can buy Peter’s freedom too. I’m not leaving him behind.”

They wouldn’t be twenty-one for more than ten years. Maddy hated to think of how long that was. Once, when he and James saw Master Jefferson on his horse a long way off, Maddy was struck by how frail Master Jefferson looked. James must have thought the same thing, because he turned to Maddy and asked, “What happens if he dies before you’re twenty-one? Do you still get to be free?”

“I don’t know,” Maddy said. “Hope he don’t die.”

Later Mama said, “I trust him, Maddy. He’ll get it fixed in time.”

“If he just keeled over dead tomorrow—”

“I trust him,” Mama said.

Maddy knew he didn’t need to trust Master Jefferson. He only needed to trust Mama. But sometimes even that was hard to do. Maddy saved his money. He had over two dollars now.

Joe Fossett asked Master Jefferson if James could apprentice in the blacksmith shop, and Master Jefferson agreed. So now, in the early summer mornings, Maddy and James both went off to work like men. In Maddy’s family’s room only Eston was left in the big bed, waiting for Mama to come home, and even though he was a big boy, seven years old, he didn’t like that at all. “Go see Miss Fanny,” Harriet said, stroking his head when he complained. “She’ll be glad to see you. You can help her.” Miss Fanny was still running the kitchen for Miss Edith until Miss Edith got over having a baby.

“I don’t want to help Miss Fanny,” Eston said, opening his eyes wide at Harriet. “I’m a little boy. I’m too little to help her.” He stuck out his lower lip and tried to look pitiful. “I need somebody to help me.”

Harriet laughed and hugged him. “You’re a good little boy,” she said. Harriet snuck a skein of woolen yarn out of the textile shop and traded it with Miss Fanny for a pair of laying hens. She gave the hens to Eston. Every morning Eston had to let his hens out of the coop Beverly built for them, and throw them some grain, and get them water. Then he collected their eggs—always one, more often two—and took them to Miss Fanny. He’d sell them to her, and sometimes she’d turn right around and cook him one for breakfast. She wasn’t supposed to do that—eggs were too expensive for slaves to eat—and it made Eston giggle. He said, “You paid me to eat that egg.”

“You could pay me to eat three of them,” Maddy offered. Miss Fanny laughed and whapped him with her spoon.

Later Eston came into the workshop. He handed Maddy half a leftover fried egg sandwiched between two pieces of bread. “It came off the breakfast table,” he said. “Miss Martha didn’t finish it.” Mmm, Maddy loved fried egg.

When the weather grew cold again and work slowed in the carpentry shop, Burwell sent for Beverly and Maddy to wait table at the great house. Master Jefferson still had every kind of visitor, from strangers who dropped by and ended up staying four days, to all Miss Martha’s folks, to Mr. and Mrs. Madison, who visited so often that one of the bedrooms was named after them. If fewer than a dozen people sat down to dinner, Burwell and Beverly handled it just the two of them, but if there was more than that they started having Maddy work the table too.

Master Jefferson liked a tranquil dining room. He didn’t want servants standing behind every chair, or constantly walking in and out of the room. He’d invented things to make serving dinner easier.

On one side of the dining room was an alcove with a special swinging door. Instead of having hinges down one side like a regular door, it swung around on an axle in its center. The door had shelves on both sides. When the food was ready, one of the girls working for Miss Edith carried it down the basement hallway to the dumbwaiter there. A dumbwaiter was a box on a pulley system that could be hauled up and down between floors. The girl stacked the food on the shelves in the dumbwaiter. Then another girl on the main floor hauled the dumbwaiter up, took out the dishes, and put them on the shelves of the swinging door. Beverly swung it around, and all the food came into the dining room at once without the girls having to carry it in and out. When the dishes were empty Beverly sent them out of the room the same way.

One side of the dining room fireplace opened up like a little cabinet, and held a smaller dumbwaiter just for bottles of wine. Whenever Burwell emptied a bottle, he handed it to Maddy. Maddy stuck it into the fireplace dumbwaiter and hauled on a little rope, and the bottle went down to the basement. In the cellar Uncle Peter replaced the empty bottle with a full one, and Maddy hauled that bottle up and handed it to Burwell.

Folks always carried on about Master Jefferson’s fine French wine. It did look pretty, shining ruby-red in the fancy long-stemmed glasses—it looked like juice from raspberries, which Maddy loved. He could imagine how sweet that wine must taste, and he kept hoping for a sip, but the blamed guests kept drinking the bottles dry. Finally, one evening when he was clearing the table, he saw that one bottle wasn’t quite empty. Before Burwell could catch him he drank the wine.

“PPffhht!” Maddy spat his mouthful across the table. It was awful—like drinking vinegar straight from the jar.

Burwell whirled around at the noise. He looked at Maddy and laughed.

“Better hope you didn’t stain the tablecloth,” Beverly said. He was laughing too.

“No matter if he did,” Burwell said, “we’ll tell Miss Martha it was one of those hick farmers from Ohio.”

“Why do they like it so much?” Maddy asked. He looked around the table for something to eat, to clear the taste of the wine from his mouth. Not much left. He grabbed a piece of bread.

“It grows on you,” Burwell said, still grinning.

“Not on me it won’t,” said Maddy.

Burwell poured the wine and laid the food on the table, and passed plates, and took away any dish that was empty. Beverly and Maddy made sure the diners had whatever they needed—water in their glasses, or salt or butter, or fresh napkins. When they weren’t fetching things they stood still as statues, Maddy by the fireplace, Beverly by the swinging door. They never, ever spoke, but of course they always listened.

Master Jefferson loved to tell stories, and he would do that if the guests at the table enjoyed listening. But sometimes, especially when he had law students living in the pavilion at the end of the dependency row, his guests were more argumentative, and then conversation grew lively. Maddy enjoyed the debates even when he only understood half of what was said.

“But sir,” one of the students might say, holding his wineglass up like he was about to make a toast, “have you considered Socrates?”

“Socrates?” Master Jefferson replied. “Socrates!” His eyes blazed. He leaned forward and said something in a different language, which made absolutely no sense to Maddy, though he guessed it was probably Miss Ellen’s Greek. The student fired back with something else Maddy didn’t understand. Master Jefferson replied—Maddy wished they’d switch back to English—and half the room applauded. Not Mister Jeff, who, like Maddy, only knew one language, nor Miss Martha—but the people that understood what was going on. Sometimes Miss Ellen forgot herself, and said something in Greek too. When that happened Miss Martha’s lips pressed together. If Ellen looked up Miss Martha shook her head.

But if Master Jefferson looked around, and saw that half the dinner guests seemed confused, he would lean back in his chair and smile. “That reminds me,” he would say, and start to tell a story about his life in France, or when he was president, or anything at all but at least in English, and all around the table people would nod their heads in relief, and smile.

Maddy moved over to Beverly on the excuse of bringing him a bottle. “What’s a Socrates?” he murmured.

“Some kind of promise?” Beverly guessed. Burwell thumped Maddy’s head and hissed at him to be quiet. After dinner Burwell said Socrates was a dead man, who said a whole bunch of smart stuff back when.

“Kind of like Master Jefferson,” Beverly joked.

“Only a lot more dead,” said Maddy.

Burwell told them to hush, but his lips twitched, so Maddy knew he thought it was funny.

When Maddy listened to Master Jefferson speak at the dinner table, and saw how all the other people, including Miss Martha and her husband, listened to him, and how highly they regarded him, Maddy was proud. This was his father, a great and intelligent man. Generous too, at least at the table. He seemed delighted by how much his guests ate and drank.

Yet sometimes when Maddy set another empty wine bottle into the dumbwaiter, he’d wonder what the wine cost, in terms of field-hand socks. He’d place dishes of ice cream around the table, and think of the work it took to pull the ice out of the river, and how the people who cut the ice never tasted the ice cream. Work in the fields was far more laborious than work in the great house, but witnessing the injustice of Master Jefferson’s daily extravagances was hard in a different way.

One evening when Maddy was standing in his place minding his business he noticed one of the dinner guests staring at him. Maddy looked quickly at the man’s plate and glass, but both were full. The salt and butter were within the man’s reach. Maddy didn’t know what the man wanted, and when the man saw Maddy looking at him, he dropped his eyes. Next thing, though, the man started staring at Beverly. He looked at Beverly, then at Master Jefferson, then back at Beverly. Then, a moment later, back at Maddy. The man seemed astonished and concerned.

Maddy tried to think what might be wrong. He’d washed his hands and face before he came inside, and he could see that Beverly looked clean too. Maddy studied Beverly and then looked at Master Jefferson the way the guest had.

Then he understood.

Beverly looked like Master Jefferson.

Beverly’s hair was darker, not red, and his eyes were darker, but the shape of his face and eyes matched Master Jefferson’s. When Beverly was thinking he put his lips together just the way Master Jefferson did.

The visitor seemed unnerved. He spent the whole dinner sneaking glances at Beverly and Maddy. Maddy was glad when the meal was done.

He hadn’t spent much time looking in mirrors. With his darker skin he always figured he didn’t look like Master Jefferson at all.

“You do,” Beverly said, later that night when Maddy asked him. “Especially around the eyes. Not as much as Eston does, but you still do.”

“Have people stared at you like that before?”

Beverly shrugged. “Sure. Not so much the Southerners— they’d rather not look. Some of the Yankees, their eyes about bug out of their heads.”

“Do they say anything?” Maddy asked.

“Not to me,” Beverly said. “Once I heard Miss Martha say our ‘strong Jefferson family resemblance’ was because Master Jefferson’s nephews came here and fooled around with Mama.”

“That’s not true!” Everyone who knew Mama knew she was faithful. “Miss Martha knows better.”

Beverly shrugged again. “What’s she supposed to say?”

“What are you going to tell people, when you’re white and they want to know who your daddy is?”

“I’m not going to tell them anything,” Beverly said. “I can’t tell them about my mama or my father, either one.”

“I know that,” Maddy said. “But folks’ll ask. What are you going to say?”

Beverly looked worried. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll just tell them it’s none of their business. I never was any good at telling lies.”

Christmastime came, and with it celebration. Joe Fossett let the forge go cold. The weaving shop shut down, and Uncle John padlocked his workroom. Mulberry Row felt like one long party. Of course Miss Edith and Miss Fanny had to cook like the devil was after them to feed all the guests in the great house, but lots of people helped them. Some folks got passes, to visit relatives on other plantations, and some folks from other plantations came to Monticello. When Mama was around she was always singing. Beverly played his violin, and folks danced, and a couple of times he even went up to the great house and played so the white folks could dance too.

Maddy felt so happy. He remembered that later.

On the first day of January, Master Jefferson sold James.