Jefferson's Sons

That summer disaster followed on the heels of disaster. It never rained. The blazing sun burned up the wheat, and then the other crops, one by one, until there was nothing to be sold. The grass turned crisp and brown. The hay crop failed.

The entire country fell into something called a panic. It meant no money anywhere. Banks failed, which meant, Mama said, that they shut their doors, and if you’d given them your money to keep safe, that was just too bad. Your money was gone.

Eston wanted to know how money could disappear. He went to his jar on the shelf and pulled out a penny. “It can’t disappear,” he said.

“All right,” Harriet said, shooting him a look, “say I buy a farm. Say it costs a thousand dollars, but I’ve only got a hundred dollars in cash. I pay one hundred, and get a bank loan for the other nine hundred. But my crops fail. I can’t repay the bank what I owe. So the bank takes my farm, and they sell it to somebody else to get their money back.”

“Only Joe Fossett, he’s nobody’s fool. He says the farm isn’t worth a full thousand dollars anymore. Between the hard times all around and no crops growing, there’s a lot of land for sale. The most Joe will pay for the farm is six hundred dollars. So the bank takes it. They gave out nine hundred and only got back six. Three hundred dollars disappeared.”

They didn’t say it, but they all thought of Beverly. They hadn’t heard from him yet, and they were starting to worry. Beverly was a good carpenter, surely he could find work somewhere. And he had fifty dollars. A man could live a long time on fifty dollars.

Maddy figured the panic wouldn’t hurt Monticello, because Master Jefferson would never sell his land. No planter would. Mama pursed her lips when Maddy said so.

“Friendship, I suppose. Mr. Nicholas asked him to. And Mr. Nicholas once signed a loan for your father, so your father felt he couldn’t say no.”

Since Maddy’s first night at Mr. Nicholas’s farm, on his first trip to Poplar Forest, he’d stayed there many times. It sure seemed prosperous. It was kept up much nicer than Monticello. “Why does Mr. Nicholas need a loan?” he asked.

Mama smiled back, but she didn’t look happy. “I’m not, no, I’m not. Twenty thousand dollars.” She stretched the words out. “Twen-ty thou-sand dol-lars.”

Maddy knew Joe Fossett had over two hundred dollars saved. He made marks on his slate to help count: Twenty thousand dollars was Joe Fossett’s two hundred dollars, a hundred times over. Maddy thought of a hundred men working as hard and saving as long as Joe Fossett had. He tried to imagine all that work turned into a piece of paper Master Jefferson could sign.

It never once rained at Monticello that summer, but at Poplar Forest a fierce storm broke the drought—not just rain, but hail, big chunks of ice hurled from the sky. They crushed the meager crops flat and shattered the windows of the great house. The overseers wrote there wasn’t a single one still whole.

Master Jefferson went there at once, with Miss Ellen and Miss Cornelia, Burwell, and Miss Fanny’s brother Israel. A week later Master Jefferson sent for Uncle John. He wrote that he’d ordered new glass shipped to the nearest port on the James River. Uncle John should pick it up along the way.

Uncle John, Maddy, and Eston traveled three days in sweltering heat under a blazing sun. When they reached Poplar Forest the house looked as though it had sat empty and neglected for years. Tall weeds grew up around the front portico, and all the front windows were covered with boards. “Where’s that rascal Israel?” Uncle John muttered. “Can’t he at least cut the grass?”

No one came out to hail the wagon. Uncle John drove around to the stables, and asked a boy working there to unhitch and care for the horses. They looked into the empty kitchen, then found Hannah in the laundry next door.

Burwell lay in Maddy’s bed, in the room on the lower floor. Usually he slept on a mat in the small room off Master Jefferson’s bedroom. “Couldn’t stay upstairs,” he said. “Not when I can’t stand up, and have to keep using—” He broke off, groaning, his hands pressed to his belly. Maddy didn’t have to ask what he meant. The stench from the chamber pot nearly made him retch.

Maddy carried the pot to the privy. On his way back he ran into Miss Ellen, who was carrying a mug full of liquid. “Have you seen Burwell?” she cried. “I’ve got another dose for him—something Cornelia says Mama used to use. At least, she thinks so. We’ve tried everything. Grandpa’s sent twice for the doctor, but he hasn’t come.”

The dose didn’t help. Burwell gritted his teeth and groaned; his sweat soaked the blanket he lay on. “How long have you been like this?” Uncle John asked.

Uncle John told them to leave him alone with Burwell for a while. Maddy and Eston followed Miss Ellen upstairs. “It’s horrid here,” she said. “The books grew mold after the storm.”

Inside, the house smelled dank and stuffy. All the windows facing north were broken. The dining room was entirely ruined, its wooden floor buckled, its plaster walls moldy, and its skylight beaten into an empty frame. The beautiful octagonal table Uncle John had made did survive the storm; Hannah had moved it to the parlor.

That night Maddy thought Burwell would die. He tossed and turned on the bed, sweating and groaning through clenched teeth. Uncle John sat beside him, wiping his face with damp cloths and trying to get him to drink.

In the middle of the night Maddy rose from his pallet on the floor. “Let me have a turn,” he said to Uncle John. “You get some rest.”

Maddy went to the kitchen to ask Hannah’s help. Israel was loading a breakfast tray for the table upstairs. “More bad news,” he said. “Master Jefferson’s sick.”

Maddy’s heart fell. If Master Jefferson was as sick as Burwell, he would die; he was too old to fight it. While Hannah put bathwater to heat, Maddy climbed the steps to see. Master Jefferson lay on his bed, panting a little, his face stiff from pain. “It’s only rheumatism,” he said. “My knees mostly. I’ll get Ellen to wrap my legs in flannels. I’ll be fine.”

The warm bath helped; Burwell sank into something like sleep. Israel went for the doctor again. Eston and Maddy began to replace broken windows.

It was the hottest day in the history of the world. Half the house lay sick in bed. Maddy thought Miss Cornelia and Miss Ellen might just once have been able to fetch themselves something from the kitchen, but no. They expected dinner served as usual. Maddy washed his hands, composed his face, and started to shuttle food from the downstairs kitchen to the table in the parlor. Part of the girls’ old bedroom had been turned into a pantry, so at least he had a place to set the food down after he brought it up the stairs. He wished he had a dumbwaiter, like at Monticello, or about three more people to help him. When the table was finally ready, he called the granddaughters to sit down.

In the kitchen, Miss Hannah said that they bought ice from a neighbor’s icehouse, a little bit every day, but that today’s ice was gone. “Half of it melted on the way over here,” Hannah said. “If you ask me, it’s a waste of time. But those girls get fussy when the butter’s melted, or the wine isn’t chilled.”

Maddy reported the lack of ice. Miss Cornelia pursed her lips. He filled her empty water glass. “Oh, don’t bother,” she said. “I wanted something cold.”

Someone knocked on the front door. Maddy answered it. A man handed him a packet of mail. Master Jefferson couldn’t go anywhere without letters following him. He’d probably have mail delivered to his grave.

Master Jefferson had propped himself up on a pillow. He was staring at a letter open in his hand, and his face was so perfectly still that for a moment Maddy thought he had died. He could swear Master Jefferson wasn’t breathing. Maddy cleared his throat. Slowly, very slowly, Master Jefferson looked up.

“Nothing,” Master Jefferson said. “Nothing.” He closed the letter in his hand, and set it atop the others on the pile. “I’m not hungry. Take that food away.”

The letter turned out to be from Mr. Nicholas. The bank had asked him to repay his loan. He couldn’t; he had no money left. Mr. Nicholas’s money had disappeared. Since Master Jefferson had signed the loan, he would have to pay instead. The twenty-thousand-dollar debt belonged to him.

A day later the doctor finally arrived. He bled Burwell until Burwell nearly fainted, and gave him laudanum to make him sleep. Burwell survived.

Master Jefferson’s rheumatism gradually improved. Uncle John, Maddy, and Eston repaired the windows, one by one. It seemed to take forever. For the first time Maddy was impatient to return to Monticello. He might get news of Beverly there. But when they finally reached home Maddy got the shock of his life.