Jefferson's Sons

  “Help him! Why won’t you help him?”

  “I can’t do that,” Mama said in a fierce whisper. “It’s not possible. It’s not my business.”

  “But it’s James.”

  “Unless it’s you, or Beverly, or Harriet, or Eston, I can’t do anything. It’s no use. I’ll only make trouble if I try.”

  “But Mama—”

  “Come,” Mama said, still holding his arm. “We’ll go say good-bye.”

  Maddy would not have thought it possible that he could walk back to the kitchen, that he could stand beside the overseer’s wagon and watch James climb into the wagon and be driven away. He would not have thought it possible that Joe Fossett could look so hard and cold, or that Miss Edith could keep from screaming, or that James could kiss baby Peter good-bye without bursting into sobs.

  Maddy didn’t go to work that day. He lay on the bed with his face to the wall, and he wasn’t sure who he hated more, his mother or Master Jefferson.

  The next day Beverly kicked him out of bed. “You wanted to be grown enough for a real job,” he said. “You’ve got to do that job. Get up.”

  Maddy balked in front of the kitchen door. “I can’t go in there,” he said. “What’ll Miss Edith say?”

  “What’s she going to say?” Beverly asked. “She cooked dinner last night, didn’t she?” Maddy didn’t know if she had or not. “Twenty people,” Beverly said. “I waited table. It was a handful. We could have used you, but I thought I’d give you the one day.”

  In the kitchen breakfast was laid out like usual. Miss Edith had bacon for the great house frying on the hearth, and was mixing the batter for her famous breakfast muffins. She handed Maddy a bowl of grits without saying a word. Maddy studied her. Miss Edith looked haggard, like she hadn’t slept for a week, but the kitchen itself was pristine.

  Eston slid behind the table and put his arms around Miss Edith. He buried his face in her apron, and she buried her face in his hair.

  “Where’s Mama?” Maddy whispered to Beverly.

  Beverly shook his head, the tiniest bit, so Maddy knew: Mama was at the great house. Maddy’s stomach clenched. He put down the bowl of grits and walked out. Beverly followed.

  “How can they?” Maddy asked as they walked to the woodshop. “How can Miss Edith make breakfast? How can Mama go up there?”

  “What’re they supposed to do?” Beverly asked. “You want Miss Edith to burn the kitchen down? Tell everyone she doesn’t want to be cook no more? You want Mama to scorn Master Jefferson? That’d help us get free, sure enough.”

  “Maybe,” Maddy said. He thought Miss Edith could at least not make muffins. She could serve the great house scorched porridge for a few days. And Mama—

  “It won’t bring James back,” Beverly said. “He’s gone. Miss Edith’s got four other children, and Mama’s got us. Last thing Miss Edith needs is to be sent to work in the fields, instead of somewhere she can sit down and keep warm in winter and feed her family good food.”

  “Mama should have done something,” Maddy said.

  “I don’t think she could,” said Beverly. “If she knew it was coming, if she heard about it ahead of time, maybe she could have talked him out of it. But once James was sold—Master Jefferson wouldn’t go back on his word to Mr. Randolph. You know that. Anyhow, as far as I know Mama’s never stopped a slave from being sold before.”

  They’d never had a slave sold from Monticello before, except James Hubbard. When Maddy said so, Beverly shook his head. “Master Jefferson sells people all the time. He sells field hands, you just don’t know them. He sold Joe Fossett’s mama and brother and sisters. Mama’s sister Thenia, he sold her to James Monroe.”

  Maddy didn’t know his aunt Thenia, though he’d heard her name. She died before he was born. “I thought Master Jefferson liked James,” he said. “I thought he liked Miss Edith and Joe Fossett. I thought he’d be fair to people he liked.”

  Beverly took his hand and squeezed it. “I thought so too.”

  There wasn’t much work in the woodshop that day, and if there had been, none of them would have had the heart to do it. Uncle John was silent, closed down from sorrow. “Fine boy like James,” he muttered, halfway through the morning. He shook his head and sighed. Maddy didn’t say a word. He scraped at a rough piece of wood with a bit of broken glass, scraped and scraped it, until the wood was as smooth as the glass, but the wood wasn’t meant for anything, it was just something for his hands to do. He thought of Uncle John’s dictionary. What were the words for this? He didn’t know them.

  A few hours later Uncle John got up. “Lock the door when you leave, Beverly,” he said. “I’m going to go find me a drink.” He walked out the door, carefully shutting it behind him.

  Beverly got up to put another log on the woodshop fire. “I hope he doesn’t steal the good brandy,” Beverly said. “They’ll sell him next.”

  Maddy looked up from his scraping. “Papa will sell him,” he said. “You say ‘they’ll sell him,’ but what you mean is, ‘Papa will sell him.’ Our father will sell him.”

  Beverly nodded.

  Maddy said, “Nobody around here speaks the truth.”

  “Why, no, of course not,” Beverly said with a bitter smile. “That would not be gentlemanlike. It would be the end of all tranquility.”

  Maddy got up. “Would Uncle John steal the brandy?” he asked. “’Cause if he would, I’m going to go steal it for him.” He’d like to see Master Jefferson try to sell him or whip him, either one.

  Beverly waved his hand. “No, no, he’s got a jar of hooch in his cabin. Some kind of corn liquor Uncle Peter makes on Sundays.”

  “Then I’m leaving,” Maddy said.

  He went down to the blacksmith shop. Joe Fossett had the forge hot, and he was making nails the way the nail boys used to. Pound, pound, pound, pound! and then a flip of the newly made nail into a bucket, and then, pound, pound, pound, pound! over and over again. It looked to Maddy like Joe Fossett’s version of throwing rocks. He sat down on a keg to watch.

  Joe Fossett made twelve more nails. “We’re going to miss him, Maddy,” he said at last.

  Maddy nodded.

  “It’s true he’s not far. That’s some comfort. I tell myself, that’s some comfort. Right?”

  Maddy snorted. He said, “Beverly says he sold your mama.”

  Joe nodded. He put down the hammer and wiped his hands on his pants legs. “That was a little different, maybe,” he said. Joe Fossett pulled out another keg, and sat down on it beside Maddy.

  “When Master Jefferson went away to France,” Joe Fossett said, “my mama got hired out to a white man named Thomas Bell. They fell in love, I guess, and Mama had Robert and Sally—you know Sally, she’s Jesse Scott’s wife. We all lived down there in Charlottesville with Thomas Bell. He was a real good man, even if he was white. He told everybody flat out that Robert and Sally were his children, and later on when he died, he left his house and all his goods to Mama and to them.

  “Anyhow, when Master Jefferson came back from France, Mama asked him if he would sell her to Thomas Bell—she and all her children. Well, the ones of us that were left. Thomas Bell was willing to buy all of us, not just the ones that were his blood. He was going to set us all free. He did free Mama and Robert and Sally.”

  “Why not you?” asked Maddy.

  Joe Fossett held up his hand. “Master Jefferson sold Mama and the little ones. But he wouldn’t sell me or my sister Betsey. He made us come back to Monticello instead. I was eleven. Betsey was nine.” Joe hesitated. “It was hard for us, here without Mama.”

  Maddy thought for a moment. “You could have been free.”

  Joe shrugged. “I reckon. It didn’t work out like that.”

  Maddy wanted to ask if Joe Fossett ever thought about that, about the difference between his brother Robert and himself. But Maddy guessed he knew the answer. Instead he said, “What did you mean, saying all your mama’s children, well, the ones of you that were left? Did
you have family that died?” Maddy knew Sally Bell, and he’d heard of Robert, but he’d never known any of Joe Fossett’s other kin, not a sister named Betsey nor anybody else.

  Joe shrugged. “I had a brother, Daniel, he was eight years older than me, and he got sold when I was about three. He’s far away and I don’t hear about him. And then my sister Molly, she was just three years older than me. She was sold when she was thirteen—that was when we lived with Mr. Bell. She went to Mr. Randolph’s, like James. She’s dead now too.”

  Joe wiped his hands down his pants legs again. He stood and picked up his hammer. “It’s hard,” he said. “You think you’d get used to it, but you don’t.”

  “Who was your daddy?” Maddy asked. It was a terrible question; none of his business, he knew. Mama would be angry if she found out he asked it.

  Joe Fossett didn’t seem to mind. “His last name was Fossett—that figures, doesn’t it—and Mama says he was a good man. That’s all she says. I figure, if she doesn’t want to say more, I ought not to ask.”

  Maddy nodded. Some stories were too sad to tell. “What happened to your sister Betsey?”

  “Master Jefferson gave her to his daughter Maria, the one that died. For a wedding present. Miss Maria’s husband still has her. They live on a farm called Millbrook, out in Buckingham County. I get word of her once in a while. Haven’t seen her in twenty years. We named Betsy-Ann for her.”

  Maddy thought Joe Fossett’s face was the saddest thing in the world.

  “I knew it could happen,” Joe Fossett said. “James. I just didn’t think it would happen yet. I thought, maybe, me being a good blacksmith and Edith a good cook, we might have some protection—and making James my apprentice—” Joe stopped and swallowed hard. After another pause he said, “I tried to keep us all together. James was born in the President’s House. In Washington, D.C. Did you know that?”

  Maddy nodded.

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it.” It wasn’t a question, so Maddy didn’t answer.

  “I got two dollars,” Maddy said. “How much—”

  Joe Fossett shook his head. “I already been to Mr. Randolph’s,” he said. “Went there yesterday with all my money in my hand. He won’t sell. I don’t know why he wants James, but he won’t sell.”

  When Maddy waited tables that night, and the next, he kept his eyes down. He didn’t even glance at Master Jefferson. He tried not to hear what he was saying. Maddy didn’t understand how everyone could go on with their work, how Miss Edith could keep cooking, same as always, without burning the meat or poisoning the soup or spitting into the food. How Joe Fossett could shoe Master Jefferson’s riding horse without driving the nails too deep.

  How Mama could go to Master Jefferson’s room at night.

  After a few days Harriet took Maddy aside. She walked him past the garden and sat him down on an old log on the hill. “What,” she said, “do you think slavery is?”

  Maddy glared at her. Harriet took no notice.

  “I’ll tell you,” she said. “It’s not having any say. Any choice. Not about you, not about your family, not about anything. Forget having to work for someone. Forget not being paid. It’s the say. The not having any say.”

  “I know that,” Maddy said.

  “You act like you don’t. You act like you’re just now discovering what everyone else understood all along.”

  Maddy searched for the words to explain. “I thought Master Jefferson cared about Miss Edith and Joe,” he said. “He liked James for bringing him that bird. I thought he wouldn’t sell people he liked, not if they worked hard.”

  Harriet shook her head. “You thought wrong.”

  Maddy plucked some of the dead grass on the hillside and threw it into the air. He watched the wind carry it away. “So that’s why you’re so glad to go,” he said. “To leave us.”

  Harriet nodded. “If I’m not free, it will be terrible when I grow up.” She tucked the edge of her skirt around her ankles and shivered at a gust of wind. She pulled Maddy’s arm until he leaned against her. She rubbed his forehead with her hand. “I’m pretty, I know I am,” she said. “I’m not saying it to be vain. And if I’m not free, or even just not white, and some white man decides he fancies me—I might not be able to tell him no. Mama’s lucky, she had more choice than most.”

  Maddy flinched. He understood what Harriet meant. Harriet looked down at him. “Okay?” she said.

  “Okay,” said Maddy. “I get it. But Beverly, he acts like he doesn’t want to leave. You act like you do.”

  “He doesn’t want to leave Mama. He sure wants to be free.” When Maddy didn’t reply, Harriet added, “You ask him.” A moment later she said, “Ask Mama to tell you about her brothers. James, that was the cook in France. And Robert. Ask her.”

  Uncle John and Uncle Peter were Mama’s brothers. Maddy had heard of James the cook, but he didn’t know anything about an uncle Robert. Mama had had eleven brothers and sisters; some were dead, and it was hard to keep track of them all.

  “You ask her,” Harriet said. She sat him up and stood and brushed grass from her skirt. “Meanwhile, stop being mad at Miss Edith. Stop being mad at everybody if you can, but especially Miss Edith. She’s got trouble enough.”

  When Maddy asked Mama about her brothers, she sighed. Her face softened, but Maddy couldn’t tell whether she was happy or sad. “Robert was always Master Jefferson’s favorite,” Mama said. “Right from when my family first came to Monticello.” She smiled. “Have I never told you this story?” When Maddy shook his head, Mama called Eston over. “You ought to hear this too.” She sat them down by the fire, picked up her knitting, and began.

  “Master Jefferson’s wife was named Martha Wayles. Her father, Mr. Wayles, was my father too. He was the father of half my brothers and sisters, from Robert straight down to me. A few years after Martha Wayles and Master Jefferson married, Mr. Wayles died. Master Jefferson inherited everything Mr. Wayles owned.”

  “People, land, debts,” Maddy said, remembering.

  Mama nodded. “He got everything.”

  “Counting you?” asked Eston.

  Mama nodded. “My mother, the sea captain’s child, and all her children—ten of us, at the time—we all came to Monticello.”

  “You stayed together,” Maddy said.

  Mama nodded. “I was two years old. Robert would have been about thirteen. He was a lovely boy, and Master Jefferson favored him. Robert was Master Jefferson’s personal servant at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. He stayed with him throughout the war and returned to Monticello afterward. James, you know, went to France and trained to be a chef.

  “Master Jefferson thought so highly of Robert and James that when he returned from France he set them both free.”

  Mama stopped for a moment. She stared hard at her knitting, as if she had dropped a stitch. “What happened?” Maddy prompted.

  Mama looked up. “They left. They went away from Monticello to live their own lives. James found trouble; he’s dead now. But I think Robert is still alive. He was in Richmond with a wife and children. I don’t hear from him. He doesn’t come back here.”

  “But that’s okay, isn’t it?” Eston said. “If he’s free, he’s allowed to live in Richmond.”

  “Yes,” Mama said. “He can live wherever he wants. That’s what freedom means. The problem was, Master Jefferson set James and Robert free because he thought they were his friends. He thought that when Robert and James were free they’d keep on at Monticello forever, that nothing would change except that he’d pay them. He didn’t understand that freedom was bigger than that to them. They did like Master Jefferson—sure they did. But they loved being free.

  “It upset Master Jefferson when they left. It hurt his feelings.”

  “They weren’t trying to upset him,” Eston said.

  “They weren’t,” Mama said. “Master Jefferson didn’t understand what it’s like to live under somebody else’s control. He still doesn’t; he never will. Th
at was the last time he ever set anyone free.”

  Maddy said, “Is that why he won’t make you free?” It was a bold question, but Maddy had to ask it. “You always say we’ll be free, but never you. If he cares about you—”

  “He does,” Mama said quickly. “He does care about me. I know that. But he’ll never set me free.” She dropped her knitting into her lap and leaned forward. “If he did, it would have to be recorded at the courthouse. The records are filed where anyone can read them. Newspapers would find out, and there’d be talk. There’s already talk, but it would be worse. Free papers would be proof, in some people’s minds.”

  “So?” Maddy asked. Mr. Wayles was Mama’s daddy. Captain Hemings had been Grandma’s daddy. There were white daddies everywhere.

  “It would stain his reputation,” Mama said. “We’ve been over this before. A president, a leader of the revolution, an important man in history—he’s not supposed to have children with a woman he owns.”

  “But it is okay that he owns people?” Maddy said. “That he sells little boys?”

  “You wouldn’t think so,” Mama said. “I can’t explain it. I don’t think it’s okay, but some people do.”

  Maddy thought of the story Harriet was always telling them, about Great-grandma being kidnapped in Africa. “What’s the difference,” he asked, “between the men that kidnapped Great-grandma, and Master Jefferson? They took her away from her family. Master Jefferson took James away from his.”

  Mama thought for a moment, and then spoke slowly, as though choosing her words with care. “Master Jefferson would think it impossible that he could be in any way compared to a slave trader. He would say that he’s a gentleman, an educated man. He would say that he works for the good of his country, and therefore for the good of all Americans. He’d say he’s a farmer, a landowner. He wouldn’t understand how you could possibly ask such a question.”

  “What would you say, Mama?” Eston asked.