Jefferson's Sons (31 page)

“I'd rather lie to you,” he continued. “If I thought it was right, I'd tell you a lie and let you feel safe just a little while longer. But it's not right, and I won't do it. I want you to know I will never lie to you. You can always trust everything I say.”

It was terrible to think about even from the strength of his daddy's arms. Peter shuddered. Daddy held him tighter. “I'm sorry,” Peter's daddy said.

 

Three months after Beverly left, Peter was going into the kitchen when he saw Mr. Bacon, one of the overseers, drive a farm wagon up Mulberry Row. Mr. Bacon pulled up just past the kitchen and got down. Peter stopped in the doorway to see what was going on.

Mr. Bacon knocked on the door of Miss Sally's room. The door opened, and a fine-looking young woman wearing a hoop dress came out. Peter thought it was one of Miss Martha's girls, but he couldn't tell which—her face was shaded by her big straw hat. She held a carpetbag in her gloved hands. Mr. Bacon took it from her, helped her onto the wagon seat, and settled the carpetbag by her feet.

Peter stared. He was sure he knew her—he recognized the set of her shoulders and the way she carried herself—but he didn't know her name. He'd never paid much attention to Miss Martha's girls. What was one of them doing in Miss Sally's room? “Ma—” he said. Mr. Bacon started the horses. The wagon went down the row and disappeared around the bend.

“Mama,” he said, “a white woman just came out of Miss Sally's room.”

“Leave it,” Mama said. She was chopping greens, a big heap of them, her knife flashing through the pile.

“But Mama, a white woman. Looked like one of Miss Martha's girls. Mr. Bacon drove off with her. Mama”—she didn't seem to be paying attention—“shouldn't I go get Miss Sally?”

“You should not,” Mama said. “Fetch some wood. The stoves are running low.”

“But Mama—”

Her knife never quit moving. “Peter, shut your mouth and go away. And stay away from Miss Sally. She knows all about that lady on the wagon. She doesn't want to talk to you.”

Peter shut his mouth. He fetched wood. He looked at the stern set of his mother's face, and decided to go find Maddy.

The woodshop was empty. Finally Peter tracked Maddy down in one of the lower farm fields, mending fence.

“This woman came out—this woman who looked like—” As Peter began to speak, the truth suddenly hit him straight upside the head. He fell backward onto the grass. “That was Harriet,” he said. Harriet was Maddy's big sister. She looked almost white even when she was dressed as a slave. He looked up at Maddy, stunned. “That was Harriet, leaving.”

Maddy's face was even more expressionless than Peter's mama's. “Yes,” he said. “It was.” He turned away and knocked one of the ends of a new fence rail into place.

Peter couldn't believe he hadn't recognized Harriet right away. But the difference between Harriet wearing homespun and a headscarf and Harriet wearing a hoop dress and lady's hat was astonishing. “It's going to be another thing we can't talk about, isn't it?” he said. “That's why Mama shut me up.”

“It's safer if we don't talk,” Maddy said. “Safer for Harriet. I want Harriet to be as safe as she can.”

So did Peter. He liked Harriet. She was one of his sister Maria's best friends. “She went off with Mr. Bacon,” Peter said. Mr. Bacon was a short old man, with a wide flat face like a badger. “She's not taking up with him?” That was a horrible thought.

“No,” Maddy said. “He's giving her a ride into town, that's all.” Maddy sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “He's putting her on a stagecoach bound for Philadelphia.”

“She's going to Philadelphia!” Peter'd heard of that place. It was far, far away. A great big city.

“No,” Maddy said. “She's not.”

Peter waited for him to explain, but he didn't. Peter watched Maddy pound fence rails for a while, then said, “I suppose I might go ask my daddy. He tells me the truth.”

Maddy's face looked tight and smooth, like one of those head statues Master Jefferson had. Like it was carved out of stone. He didn't say anything.

Peter waited some more. “Please tell me,” he said.

Maddy sighed. He sat down next to Peter. “A lady can't just walk away,” Maddy said. “Or ride off on a horse, or go anywhere on her own. A lady has to travel respectably, or she isn't a lady anymore.”

Peter had never thought of Harriet as a lady. He guessed she was, but he'd never thought of her that way.

“So we had to send her off that way,” Maddy said. “With an escort, someone to buy her stage ticket and put her on properly. But we don't want Mr. Bacon to know where she's really going. He might decide to tell somebody, or to go after her himself. Harriet's going to get off that stage in a day or so and switch to another one. She's not going to Philadelphia.” Maddy sighed. “She's going to live with Beverly.”

The grass tickled Peter's legs. The wind whipped his shirt. Sheep lay in the pasture with them, chewing their cuds and watching them warily. “You know where Beverly is?” he asked Maddy.

Maddy nodded. “He's in a city. He's all right. He has a job, and a place for him and Harriet to stay.”

“How do you know all that?”

“He wrote a letter.”

Peter frowned. “I didn't know you got a letter.” He should. News like that traveled all up and down Mulberry Row.

Maddy said, “It's a secret, Peter. He sent the letter to Jesse Scott.”

Peter turned this over in his mind. “Where's he at? What city?” Maddy frowned. “I'd better not say.”

Peter pouted. “Why not?”

“The less people know, the better,” Maddy said.

“My daddy tells me the truth,” said Peter.

“So do I,” Maddy said. “The truth right here is, I know and I'm not going to tell you. Keeping a secret is not the same as telling a lie.”

It wasn't the same, but Peter didn't like it. On Sunday, Peter told James all about Harriet, and about Maddy keeping secrets too. He told the whole story right in the middle of the kitchen, and he didn't care who overheard.

James stopped eating. He took hold of Peter's hand and walked him down to Miss Sally's room, where Maddy lived. James stuck his head inside.

Miss Sally wasn't there, but Eston was playing his fiddle and Maddy was lying on the bed.

“I just heard,” James said. Eston kept playing. Maddy nodded.

“Don't you worry,” James said. “Harriet's smart. She was born smart. She'll do fine.”

Maddy blew out his breath. “Hope so,” he said.

Peter tugged on James's hand. He wanted James to ask where Harriet went. Instead James spoke to Eston. “How long now until you turn twenty-one?”

Eston kept playing his music. He said, “Five years, two weeks, and one day.”

James smiled. “I'd be counting like that too.”

Eston played another flourish. “But I won't be leaving town,” he said. “I figure I'll just stay.”

“You're leaving,” Maddy said.

“Probably not,” Eston said. “Miss Virginia hired me to play for her dance next week. Five years from now I ought to get fiddling jobs pretty much all the time. Nobody minds a fiddle player being black. I figure, I can just stay here.”

Maddy looked angry. Peter wondered why. “You'll go be with them,” he told Eston.

“I won't,” Eston said.

James laughed. “What's that you used to say?” he asked Maddy. “A tree, it might get old and fall down, but Eston won't never budge.”

Maddy got up from the bed. He smacked Eston's backside and picked Peter up by the arms. “It's a nice day,” he said, throwing Peter over his shoulder and tickling him until he howled. “Let's enjoy it.”

That night, before he walked back to Edgehill, James took Peter aside and told him to leave Maddy alone. Whatever secrets he wanted to keep belonged to him, and to Miss Sally and their family. Peter wasn't to poke in Maddy's business. “But—” Peter said.

“No buts,” James said. “That's how it is.” They were in the kitchen. Mama was sitting down to a cup of tea, trying to catch her breath. Patsy and Isabella were washing dishes, and Maria was packing a bundle of food for James.

“Maria's not leaving, is she?” Peter asked.

Mama frowned at him. Maria tightened the knot on the bundle with her teeth. “If I do,” she said, “it won't be on a stagecoach wearing a hoop dress.”

 

A few weeks later, on a Sunday, Maddy came to their room looking for James. He sat down between James and Peter, and his smile lit the room like daylight. “Eston went to Jesse's for his lesson,” Maddy said. “Jesse had a letter. She's safe. They're together, and they're doing fine.”

 

Every day that summer, Peter searched for worms in Maddy and Eston's cabbage patch. He scooped them up in his hands and fed them to his mama's hens. In the fall, when Maddy and Eston sold a hundred cabbages to Master Jefferson, they paid Peter a quarter for his work. He took it to his daddy. “Put this with the money,” he said.

“What money?” Daddy said.

“The money under the bed,” Peter said. Daddy had a whole jar full of money, saved up in a secret cubby dug into the floor beneath the bed.

Daddy laughed. “I didn't know you knew about that money,” he said.

“You put my quarter with it,” Peter said. “It's my wages. It goes with yours.”

Daddy closed his fingers around the quarter. “All right,” he said. “All right, son. That's what I'll do.”

That fall, Master Jefferson returned from Poplar Place determined to improve the great house at Monticello. He planned to tear down the wooden steps along the back porch, build new brick steps, widen the portico, and build new, grander columns.

Peter thought it sounded exciting, but Maddy shook his head. “A couple new coats of paint, that's what the great house needs,” Maddy said. “A cistern that doesn't leak, a better laundry, new cabin roofs. Master Jefferson's always more excited about creating something new than taking care of what he's already got. This place looks like a pigsty.”

It was true the great house looked shabby and run-down. But, Peter thought, it had always been that way.

Maddy and Eston tore down the old wooden steps in a single day. Peter helped haul the pieces away. Then John and Maddy widened and leveled the bare ground where the old steps had been, measured it, and marked where the new steps would be with sticks and string. Master Jefferson came out to see. He, John, and Maddy discussed the new steps for a long time. Peter grew bored. He went to the kitchen and then to the forge.

The next day, John showed Peter how to mix up a kind of mud called mortar that dried hard and wouldn't wash away. He showed Peter how to use a trowel to slap mortar onto a brick, and how to lay the bricks on the ground in a long straight row.

“Stop,” Maddy told him, “that's sloppy.” Maddy wanted the bricks lined up perfectly straight, with exactly the same distance between each brick, and exactly the same amount of mortar on each one.

Peter didn't see why that was important. “Because details matter,” Maddy said. He made Peter go study the outside walls of the great house, and the outbuildings, and the kitchen. “They're all built the same way, aren't they?” Maddy said. “All in straight lines, with even spaces. That's because details matter.”

“I'm going to be a blacksmith,” Peter said. “My daddy—”

“Agrees with me,” Maddy said, grinning. “You go ask him, small fry. Ask him if he has to get a horse's shoes exactly right, or just pretty close.”

Peter scowled. Then he had to laugh, because Maddy was right. Peter knew what his daddy would say.

On the bottom layer of the steps, where the bricks would be covered by the ones above, Eston scratched something into the smooth surface of the mortar.

“What's that?” Peter asked, coming up behind him.

Eston jumped like Isabella caught stealing a cookie. “Just my initials,” he said. “Just for fun.”

Peter studied the scratch marks. Eston looked at him. “That's a
Q
and a
K,
” Eston said. “Stands for Eston Hemings.”

Peter nodded. “I knew that.”

Eston laughed out loud. “Peter, my name does not begin with
Q
. That's an
E
you're staring at. Don't you know your letters yet?” He looked around quick to be sure they were alone. “Hey, Maddy,” he said, “we forgot to teach this boy to read.”

“I've been trying,” Maddy said.

Eston said, “We'll have to try harder. Else we might run out of time.” He put a stick into Peter's hand.

“I don't want to,” Peter said.

“Sure you do.” Eston helped him scratch
P
and
F
into the mortar. Maddy put his initials in too, and then they covered the letters with bricks before anyone could see.

 

That afternoon Master Jefferson came out to check on their progress. He was standing on the old part of the portico, leaning over, and all of a sudden he just sort of tumbled, the way Peter's baby brother, William, did sometimes. Master Jefferson fell so slowly Peter thought he'd catch himself, but he didn't. Eston rushed forward, but not in time.

Master Jefferson landed on his left arm. Peter heard a loud crack. Master Jefferson sat up, with Eston's help, and his arm bent where it shouldn't have. Peter realized the noise had come from Master Jefferson's arm breaking. He felt sick. Master Jefferson groaned. Eston and John lifted him to his feet. Master Jefferson cradled his arm.