Jefferson's Sons (29 page)

Harriet looked stunned.

“Thank you,” Beverly said. “I repeat: White people are different. Not because they look different, not because they are born different. They're raised different.” Beverly paused. “It's not the skin. The skin could be any color. We could all be purple, there'd still be a difference. Black people are either free or enslaved. They've got papers or they don't. If they're slaves, as long as they're doing what they're supposed to, nobody asks them questions.

“No white person wants to know who a slave is inside, what they enjoy, who their family was. A white person doesn't care if a slave is good at singing or had a brother they loved. A white person wants to know who they belong to and if they're where they're supposed to be.

“Now, if you're a black person and you're free, white folks don't care about your story either. As long as you've got papers, and you're doing something you're supposed to be doing, white folks don't care who you are. Where you're from. What your story is, who your folks are. None of that.

“And black people—”

“Which are you now?” Harriet interrupted.

Beverly looked pained. “I'm coming to that,” he said. “I'm getting to that. You've been all over me for a week, and now you're going to listen. Hush
up,
Harriet.”

Maddy had never heard the edge in Beverly's voice he heard now. He wouldn't have spoken for a dollar. Harriet rolled her eyes and looked ready to say more.

“Hush,” Beverly repeated. “That's the problem. You all told me as much as you could about being white, but you raised me black. You couldn't help it. I know. Black folks, we know how sad our stories can be. We know better than to ask another slave who his daddy is—maybe nobody ever told him, maybe he was sold as a baby, maybe it's a white man and everyone's supposed to pretend they don't know. You can't ask another slave his story. Maybe it's so sad he's buried it deep, and he'll never tell it again. Black folks, they don't ask too many questions. They tell the stories they want to tell, and they forget the rest.

“White folks want to know everything.”

Beverly passed his hand over his face. “I headed east,” he said. “I thought I'd probably end up in Washington City, it's growing fast and they must need carpenters there. But one night on the way I stopped at a tavern. I ordered some dinner, and the man asked me what I did and where I was headed.

“I told him I was a carpenter going to Washington. Nothing more than that. I didn't know what all I was supposed to say, but I sure didn't want to say too much.

“He said he had a friend who was just desperate for a carpenter to help him finish building a house. The carpenter that had been working for him took sick. The man at the inn said this friend of his would pay me good to work for him a for few weeks, and anyhow I didn't want to go to Washington in the summer with all the malaria and the flies.

“It sounded like maybe a good idea. So the next day I started working for this man. I worked hard for two weeks. Kept my head down. Got my pay on Fridays. But along about the middle of the third week the man started asking me questions. He said, ‘Tell me your name again.'”

“I said, ‘I'm Beverly Smith.' And he said, ‘Whereabouts you from?' I was afraid to say Charlottesville, so I told him it was just a little town. He wanted to know what town. I told him Bedford.”

Maddy nodded. “That was smart.” Bedford was near Poplar Forest.

“He said his wife was from around that area, maybe she knew my people. He wanted to know who all I was related to.”

“Did he really know people in Bedford,” Harriet asked, “or was he just making that up?”

Beverly shrugged, spreading his hands wide. “How could I know? I think he was just making it up. I think he was trying to rattle me. He kept after me all that day, more and more questions, 'til I didn't know where to look or what to think. Then when I was packing up he looked at me and said, ‘I think you're hiding something from me. I better not find out it's something bad.'

“So I took my tools and walked straight out of that town. Didn't go back.”

Mama looked hot with indignation. “That man got what he wanted,” she said. “He didn't have to pay you for your third week. Beverly, don't get spooked like that. You didn't have to tell him anything. Your life wasn't any of his business.”

“I kept traveling down the road,” Beverly said. “And everywhere it was the same. What was my name, who were my people? What was I supposed to say? That my father is the president, and my mother is his slave?”

Mama said, “I hope I raised you smarter than that.”

Beverly looked up, and his eyes blazed fire. “You did. Believe me, Mama, if I told anyone I'd been born a slave I'd have been run out of town. If not worse. The only way to be white is to not
ever
have been black.

“But I didn't have a story. I felt so out of place. I wasn't ever good at lying. And I thought, my name is Beverly Hemings and my people live at Monticello. I'll just go on home.

“Besides, Mama, it isn't going to work to have Harriet show up three years from now, out of the blue. I could maybe keep quiet about myself and get along, but I can't have a sister without having folks we came from. Nobody would think she was a nice girl.

“And I was lonely,” Beverly said. “I didn't know I could be that lonely. But that wasn't important, not really. I could have coped with being lonely. I came back to get a story.”

As dusk fell the room had grown completely dark. Maddy could no longer see Beverly's face, or Harriet's, or Mama's. It was past time for Mama to leave for the great house, but she hadn't moved. From the open doorway Harriet spoke, low and firm. “Our mama and papa died of typhoid,” she said. “We were so little we can scarce remember them. Our aunt Sally and uncle John raised us, only they weren't our aunt and uncle exactly, more like cousins, the only kin we had. Uncle John taught you carpentry. He died a few years ago, but you stayed on the farm, trying to be a help to Aunt Sally. Now she's gone, and with the price of land so low and crops poor and all, you had to let the farm go for taxes. Not that you minded—you like carpentry better anyhow, and I've always hoped to live in a city.

“So now you're seeking a job, and a nice set of rooms to rent. You've got a sister—me—staying back with friends for a few months—and as soon as you get settled you'll send for her. That's how it is, Beverly. That'll be our story.”

“We've got three years,” Beverly said. “I'll leave again a few months before you can, before you're twenty-one. You keep telling me our story, Harriet. You tell me until then.”

Mama went away then, up to the great house. She kissed them all before she left.

Harriet lit the lamp. She turned to Beverly. “You better be brave enough to leave,” she said. “Three years from now.”

“I will be,” Beverly said. “I promise.”

“I'm not as strong as Mama,” Harriet said. “I want children, and they will have to be white children, because I will never be strong enough to send them away.”

Beverly gave Maddy a searching look. “What about you?” he asked.

Maddy nodded. He knew what Beverly meant. “I'm strong enough,” he said. “I'll be okay alone.”

“Peter!” Maddy called. “Get back here!”

Peter laughed. He ran across the green lawn, looking back over his shoulder at Maddy. Maddy was all the time trying to make him sit down with that book. Peter wasn't going to do it, no sir.

Maddy chased him, as Peter hoped. Peter ran, squealing, but Maddy tackled him and rolled him over on the grass. “Spell your name for me,” Maddy said.

Peter rolled his eyes and giggled.

Maddy tickled him. Peter squealed. “Do it,” Maddy said.

“P-E-T-E-R,” Peter said.

“Good,” said Maddy. “Now
Fossett
.”

“N-O-S-I-R,” Peter said. He rolled to escape Maddy's grasp and sprang to his feet. “I gotta go!” he said. “It's almost time for the Eagle! I gotta go!”

Maddy let him go. He dusted his pants legs and watched Peter run barefoot across the grass. Worry hovered over the mountaintop like thick, dark storm clouds, but Peter Fossett was pure light.

 

Peter Fossett knew he was just about the luckiest boy in the world.

He lived at Monticello. That meant “little mountain” in Italian, Maddy said.

It was the most beautiful place in the world. He lived on the mountain's very top. From the front of his daddy's blacksmith shop he could see one direction, over the mountain to other mountains far away, and from the back of the shop he could see another direction, still over mountains and still far away, both directions as far as his eyes would work, and that was pretty far. Peter didn't think Monticello was a little mountain. He thought it was a great big mountain.

Maddy knew lots. He liked to tell Peter stories about other places, especially Poplar Forest, Master Jefferson's other farm. Peter enjoyed Maddy's stories, but he knew Monticello was really the best place, no matter what Maddy said.

Peter's daddy was the best blacksmith in the entire world, and his mama was the best cook ever. All the visitors who came to see Master Jefferson just couldn't believe how good Mama's food was. They filled their plates two and three times and rubbed their full bellies and licked their lips and said, “Could I have another muffin, please?”

Burwell told Peter white people were gluttons, but Peter knew he'd be a glutton too, if anybody would let him. Peter would love to sit in that dining room and eat all the muffins and ice cream he could hold. Lucky for him, his mama would sneak him a little taste, him and his little sister both, of anything she made for the great house.

Peter was seven years old, not old enough to work hard all day, but old enough to be useful. In the morning, he usually went up to the great house and helped old Burwell clear the breakfast plates away. Peter stacked them in the little box in the wall, and then he pulled on a cord and
whoosh!
sent the plates and the box down to the basement.

Once Peter climbed into the box himself. He rode down to the basement, and when his big sister Maria, who was fifteen, opened the door and saw him, she screamed. Then she laughed. But she told him not to do it again. He was such a big boy, what if he broke the box? Then they'd have to carry the plates up and down the stairs, and that would be a job.

Once the breakfast table was cleared, Peter took a little broom and swept around the fireplace in the dining room. Then he had a bit of time while Master Jefferson wrote his letters. Peter might go back to the kitchen, or he might visit Maddy and Beverly and Eston in the woodshop. He might even just sit down in the front hall and wait. If he did that he could listen while Miss Martha taught her younger children, all except the littlest one, George. Maddy was always after Peter to pay attention to Miss Martha's lessons, but Peter didn't care about schoolwork the way Maddy did. He liked to be doing things. Sitting still with a book made him itch.

Maddy was always reading through his old primer or looking up words in John Hemings's dictionary. “But you're grown,” Peter protested when Maddy tried to teach him. “I bet you didn't mess with books when you were a little boy.”

Maddy said, “When I was your age, I messed with books all the time. I got Miss Ellen to teach me.”

Miss Ellen was an old maid, twenty-six and still no husband. “She ain't going to teach me,” Peter said. “She won't have a thing to do with me.”

“She
isn't
going to teach you,” Maddy corrected. “I know she won't. That was a long time ago; she's different now.”

Peter hopped from one foot to another. “On Sunday, when James comes . . .”

“Yes?”

“Let's throw away that book and go fish.”

In the mornings, when Master Jefferson finished his letters, Miss Sally would come out to the hall and say, “Peter?” in her quiet voice. Peter would run to the stables.

“It's time for the Eagle,” he would yell.

The big boys who worked in the stable smiled at him, and old Eagle stuck his head over his stall door and whinnied. Eagle was Master Jefferson's riding horse. He was the best horse, and the smartest, and the sweetest in the world, and he was always glad to see Peter.

On his way into the barn Peter grabbed a handful of oats from the bin. He gave them to Eagle. Then he stood on a stool and brushed Eagle all over, head to toe. One of the big boys saddled Eagle, and helped Peter buckle the bridle.

Peter led Eagle to the great house. That was his very favorite part of the morning. When they came out of the stable Eagle always blew out his breath—
Phww!—
and lifted his head and pricked his ears. He looked as happy as Peter felt. But he never rushed or stepped on Peter's toes. Eagle had wonderful manners. He needed them. Master Jefferson was almost eighty years old, and not very steady on his feet. A fall from a horse would kill him. But Eagle was too sweet a horse to let Master Jefferson fall.

Peter walked Eagle up to the back porch and pushed him sideways so Eagle's body was right against the porch. He sat on the edge of the porch, holding the reins, and they waited for Master Jefferson. Eagle was always patient. He might sniff Peter's hands to see if Peter had more oats, but he never moved his feet.

Master Jefferson came out to the porch with his hat under his arm. He was tall and skinny and bandy-legged. He grew his white hair long, the way Peter's daddy said people did back in the old days, and he tied it with a scrap of ribbon. His breeches were always loose and his coat always flapped.