Jefferson's Sons (20 page)

“Well, no,” Mama said. “Field hands get one pair, twice a year.”

“That's not enough,” Maddy said. “They'd wear out.”

“Not if nobody can stand to wear them,” said Mama. “I can't stay here talking with you, Maddy. I've got work to do.”

“But Mama—” Maddy said.

Mama turned in the doorway. “Yes?”

“The field hands do the important work. They grow the crops that make the money.”

“I know,” Mama said.

“So why don't they get the good clothes and we get the ugly ones?”

Mama sighed. “You know the answer to that. Don't ask questions when you already know the answer.”

Maddy thought for a moment. He said, “But I don't like the answer I know.”

 

A week later Master Jefferson bought Miss Cornelia her first grown-up silk dress. She squealed when she saw it, threw her arms around Master Jefferson, and kissed him hard. She put the dress on and paraded up and down the parlor.

Maddy couldn't help but stare. He wanted to ask what a dress like that cost. He wanted to say, “How much is that in field-hand socks?”

Harriet took a different view. “When I grow up I'm going to have a silk dress,” she said, back in their room that evening. “I'm going to have one even prettier.”

Beverly looked as cross as Maddy felt. “Mama doesn't wear silk,” he said. “I don't see why you should.”

But Mama sided with Harriet. “I want you in silk dresses,” she said to her. “Beautiful clothing and fine buckled shoes. You, and all your little girls.” Harriet and Mama smiled at each other.

Maddy thought of Harriet having little girls. Little white girls, with a white daddy, if Harriet could pull it off. “You going to tell them about me?” he asked Harriet. “You going to tell your little girls about your darky little brother?”

Harriet reached toward Maddy, but he ducked away. “I will never forget you,” she told him. “I'll always love you and I'll never forget you.”

“You going to tell them about me?” Maddy asked. “You going to wear a silk dress when you bring them to visit me?”

Harriet's eyes filled with tears. “Don't,” she said. “I can't help that you're—I can't help it, that's all.”

Beverly got up. “Let's go for a walk,” he said to Maddy.

Maddy ignored him. “You could stay,” Maddy said to Harriet. “You and Beverly. You could stay.”

“Would you?” Harriet asked. She was angry now; her eyes flashed the way Mama's did. “Would you stay if you had a choice? You think this is easy! Would you stay?”

“It's not easy,” said Maddy. “But maybe I would.”

“Liar,” said Harriet.

“Maddy.”
Beverly had him by the arm now. He hustled Maddy out the door, calling, “We'll be back, Mama, don't worry,” over his shoulder.

“I'll be back,” Maddy muttered. “I don't have a choice.”

Beverly gripped his arm until they were almost to the orchards, to where a pile of big rocks stood by a half-built stone wall. “Here,” said Beverly. He picked up a rock with both hands. “Heave it. Far as you can.”

Maddy took the rock. He threw it over his head as hard as he could. The rock crashed against the base of the wall.

“Good,” said Beverly. “Here's another.”

Maddy threw it. He threw rocks until his arm muscles trembled, until a film of sweat covered his body and his breath came ragged.

“Better?” asked Beverly.

Maddy nodded.

“Good,” said Beverly. “Let's get back before Mama leaves, so she knows you're all right.”

“Okay,” said Maddy. His voice sounded hoarse.

“You need to throw rocks, you throw actual rocks, okay? Don't throw words at Harriet. It's not her fault.” He looked at Maddy. “I hope you've got enough sense that in her shoes or mine you'd do the same. We've got to think of the children we might have. We've got to do what's best for them. You hear me?”

“I guess,” said Maddy.

“If Harriet died tomorrow, you'd be sorry your last words to her were angry.”

Maddy shrugged.

Beverly sighed. “We won't forget you, Maddy. How could we? We never will.” After a pause he added, “We'll be able to write to each other, since you taught us all to read.”

“Will you write to me?”

Beverly reached for Maddy's hand. “I will. I promise.”

 

Maddy went through and through the primer. It had so many words, easy and hard, so many he could read out loud but didn't understand.
Embellish, transcendent, luminary, apocalypse.
“Embellish,” Mama said. “That means to make fancy. You might embellish your shirt with some lace.”

“I might not,” Maddy said.

 

“Transcendent,” Beverly said. “Sounds like
transcend,
right? So you got to figure it means something that rises.”

“Huh,” Maddy said.

 

“
Luminary
means full of light,” Miss Ellen said, when Maddy caught up with her as she was walking to the kitchen. She gave him a sideways glance. “You don't really need to know the big words. Most people use little ones most of the time.”

“I like big words,” Maddy said. “I like to teach them to Beverly.”

Apocalypse. “I know that one,” Uncle John said, to Maddy's surprise. “That's in the Bible, it means the end of world.”

“You've got a Bible?” Maddy asked. He knew Uncle John could read, and write too: Uncle John sometimes wrote to Master Jefferson when Master Jefferson was away.

Uncle John shook his head. “I go down to Charlottesville sometimes on a Sunday, listen to a preacher there. He reads passages out of the Bible. There's a part called the Apocalypse.”

Maddy nodded. He knew some about the Bible, but not much. Preachers didn't come to the top of the mountain. “Apocalypse,” he said. “So, when's that going to be?”

“No one knows,” Uncle John said cheerfully. “No one knows the day nor yet the hour. Got to stay ready. That's what they say.”

“That's what James says,” Maddy said. “That's what he says his daddy says.”

Uncle John nodded. “No flies on Joe Fossett,” he said.

“Does
apocalypse
mean what it's going to be like when Master Jefferson dies?” asked Maddy.

Uncle John gave him a sidelong look. “What makes you think that?”

“Money, I guess,” Maddy said. “Everybody talks about money. But worry too.”

Uncle John took a deep breath. “Most people wouldn't say so,” he said. “But I don't know, you could be right.”

The money problems finally got so bad that Master Jefferson sold all his books to the government. The Library of Congress had been destroyed during the war with the British. Master Jefferson offered the government his own books as its replacement.

He had thousands, filling shelves all over the great house. Mama said he loved books like most folks loved children. People in Charlottesville said that giving up his books proved Master Jefferson was a great man.

“He might be a great man,” Burwell said, down in the kitchen, “but he's not doing it for nothing.” Burwell said the government was paying more than twenty thousand dollars for the books—more than all the Monticello farms together could earn in five good years.

With money on hand, Miss Martha laughed more often. Master Jefferson bought another wagonload of wine. He drew up improvements for his house at Poplar Forest, and spoke of buying new carriage horses.

“How long will this book money last?” asked Maddy.

Mama glared at him. “That's not our business,” she said. Then she sighed, and added, “You'd think it'd last forever, money like that. But I doubt it will.”

Maddy wanted to ask if twenty thousand dollars was enough to buy the field hands decent socks, but the look on Mama's face kept him silent.

 

Miss Edith was pregnant; as summer came on her belly grew round and firm like a watermelon. One morning when Maddy came into the kitchen, he found James with his ear pressed against his mother's side. “I'm listening to the baby,” James said, grinning at Maddy. “I've been telling him, he's got to grow big and strong, so we can take on all the girls in this family. He's saying, ‘Yes, sir! Yes, sir, I'm a big boy, and I'm ready!'”

Miss Edith laughed. “Not quite ready,” she said. “But soon.”

“You can tell it's a boy,” James said. “The midwife said so,'cause Mama's carrying him high.”

Maria, James's oldest sister, gave him a cross look. “High means a girl,” she said. “It's low for a boy.”

“That's not what she said,” argued James.

“It is,” said Miss Edith.

“Well, then, you must be carrying him low,” said James, “because I know that's a boy.”

Maria laughed. “What do you think, Maddy?”

“Of course it's a boy,” Maddy said. “Anybody can see that.”

 

Later James said, “You're lucky, Maddy. Two brothers and only one girl.” They had tried to get away fishing, but Wormley had seen them and put them to work weeding the vegetable garden.

“Harriet's all right,” Maddy said. He dug into the soil to pull out a thistle by its roots. “Just bossy sometimes. She tells good stories.”

“All girls are bossy.” James sighed. “You'd think mine would have to listen to me, since I'm oldest, but they don't.”

“Eston doesn't listen to me either,” Maddy said. “He's probably the bossiest of us all.” He looked around. “I wonder where he's run off to. He could weed.”

“Probably playing his fiddle.”

“If I hear that fiddle,” Maddy said, “I'm going to go track him down. He can work.” Maddy looked around. The garden was enormous; they could weed all day and not be done.

“Anyway,” James said, “you're lucky.”

Maddy carried a bushel of weeds to the dump pile and came back. “They'll all be white, and leave me,” he said. “You were right. I can't pass.”

James looked like he wanted to say something, but didn't know what. After a while he blew out his breath. “You get to be free,” he said.

“So Mama says,” Maddy said. “Harriet and Beverly, they believe her.”

“You don't?”

“Anything could happen,” Maddy said. Wormley walked by, and Maddy and James bent to their work. When he was gone Maddy said, “I worry that it's always going to be different for me.”

 

Two weeks later Maddy woke in the dark to the noise of someone pounding on their door. He sat up, quick. Pale streaks of dawn showed around the edges of the shutters. Beverly opened the door, since Mama was still at the great house.

Joe Fossett stood with his arms around his little girls and James beside him. “Edith's time has come,” Joe Fossett said. “Davy's gone for the midwife.”

“Out of bed, Maddy,” Harriet said, kicking him. “Eston, you too.” She called to the girls, Maria, Patsy, and Betsy-Ann, to come under the covers with her. “We can go back to sleep,” Harriet said.

“We aren't
sleepy,
” protested Patsy.

Maddy got out of bed. He grinned at James. James grinned back. Beverly poked the dead ashes in the fireplace. “You want something to eat?” he asked Joe Fossett.

“I do,” Maria called, from the bed.

Maddy watched Beverly look around. Of course they didn't have anything to eat. Mama didn't let them keep food in the room: It attracted mice. “How about something to drink?” Beverly said. “I got water.”

Joe laughed. “Just keep them out of trouble, Beverly,” he said. “Fanny'll get the fire going in the kitchen and you all can get something to eat in a bit. I'm going to sit with Edith 'til the midwife comes.”

“We got to keep you out of trouble,” Maddy said to James, when Joe had gone.

“Going to be hard to do,” James said. “You might have to tie me down.” He paced the length of the room twice, then sat on the chair and twiddled his fingers.

“We might,” Beverly said. “Don't be nervous. Your mama's used to babies.”

“I don't want another girl,” James said, glancing sideways at his sisters.

“We do,” said Maria, and Patsy said, “So there.”

At dawn Harriet and Beverly went off to work like always. “What are we supposed to do?” Maddy asked before they left.