Jefferson's Sons (35 page)

When Peter's daddy heard the news, he buried his head in his hands.

“What's it mean?” Peter asked. The look on his father's face frightened him.

“Next summer I'll be a free man,” Daddy said. “Also Burwell, John, Madison, and Eston.”

“And Mama too?” asked Peter. “And us?”

Daddy's face looked like it might break. He took a long, terrible breath, and then he folded his arms around Peter and held him tight, just as Peter always hoped he would. But he didn't speak. Peter felt a wave of overwhelming dread.

“What's going to happen?” Peter asked. “Will Mister Jeff be master now?”

“That won't matter,” Daddy said. “They're going to take all the money Master Jefferson owes, and put that number on one side of a scale. Then they'll turn every last thing he owns into money, put it on the other side of the scale, and try to make the two sides balance.”

“What if they don't?” Peter asked.

“They won't.” Peter's daddy looked angry now. He looked furious. “Not from all I've heard. But that's not our problem. Our problem is that Mister Jeff will have to sell everything Master Jefferson owns. He'll have no choice.”

“Sell Monticello?” Peter asked.

Daddy spat in the dirt by the forge. “I don't give a fig for Monticello,” he said. “I suppose they'll sell it. The big house, the fields, the farms, the furniture.”

He turned toward Peter. “They'll sell the people.”

“Which people?” Peter whispered.

Daddy didn't answer. Peter understood.

Him. His mama. His brother and sisters. Everyone, except his daddy, Burwell, Maddy, Eston, and John.

Never before had he thought of himself as a slave.

Beverly subscribed to a weekly newspaper. He unfolded his copy, and read the bone-chilling words in black and white: “Executor's Sale. Will be sold, on the fifteenth of January, at Monticello . . . 130 valuable Negroes . . . believed to be the most valuable for their number ever offered at one time in the state of Virginia.”

So this is what it comes to, he thought. Never a visitor turned away. The finest food in the country on the table every night, the finest imported wine—the grandchildren decked out in silk dresses, the favors done for friends. One hundred thirty people to be sold. Beverly had read that the total debt exceeded a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

One hundred thirty valuable Negroes. Beverly knew most of their names.

“Dear?” his wife asked. “Is something wrong? You look—shaken.”

Beverly folded the paper and rose from the breakfast table. He kissed her cheek as he stood. His wife was the meekest of women. She rarely asked him anything, which was something he treasured about her. Now he forced himself to speak lightly. “Merely my continued astonishment at our namesake's demise.”

She laughed, because it was a little joke they shared, that Beverly's last name, and now hers—Jefferson—must bode some connection, however far-off, forgotten, and distant, with the great patriot. “Perhaps it's as well we aren't related,” she said. “Someone might come asking you for money.”

Beverly paused just inside the dining room door. “I'll be in the shop all day, but after I close I might step over to Harriet's for a moment,” he said. “You won't mind?”

“Of course not, dear. Tell her I hope she's feeling well.”

Beverly hesitated. “I know you'll think this is foolish of me. I'm sure it
is
foolish—but I might go to that auction. To Monticello.”

His wife furrowed her brow. “But why?”

“I don't know. I just think I'd like to be there.”

“But it's such a long trip,” she said, “and whatever household goods they're selling will be far too grand for us. Certainly more than we can afford. Unless—surely you're not thinking . . .” She paused, and bit her lip. Beverly knew what it cost her to confront him. “Beverly,” she said. “Perhaps I haven't expressed myself fully on one particular subject. As your wife I must bow to your wishes, I know, and I realize you'll soon need more help in the shop, but I can not—I really can not—agree—” She broke off, and looked at her lap.

“What are you talking about?” Beverly asked.

“I will not own slaves,” she said in a rush. “I hope you're not thinking of bidding on a person. I won't have it. I think it's wrong.”

Beverly crossed the floor in two steps and kissed her full on the mouth. “No,” he said. “No. It's not that. I'd just like to see this place they talk about. Monticello. Who knows what will happen to it now?”

 

“No,”
said Harriet. She anchored her needle into the small breeches she was sewing, put her hands on her lap, and glared at him. “No. Are you insane, Beverly? All it would take is one person—
one
—to recognize us, and it would be us up on that block. We don't have papers—we're still probably written down in the estate book. We weren't in the will. We are still his legal property.”

“No one would—”

“Beverly.” He saw she held her hands not on her lap, as he'd first thought, but cupped protectively around her swelling belly, her second child. “Anything you do endangers me. And my children. And yours, when you have them.”

A wail came from one of the back rooms. Harriet glared at Beverly as she got up. She returned carrying a sturdy blond little boy. “Look who's up from his nap,” she said. She joggled the baby and said to him, “Look who's here. Your uncle Beverly.”

The baby's sleepy face lit into a beautiful smile. He held his hands out to Beverly.

Beverly took him and swung high in the air, then brought him back down to kiss him. Then he turned back to Harriet. “I just keep thinking—Mama. The will didn't mention her.”

“It hardly could, could it?” Harriet returned to her sewing, her needle darting swiftly through the fabric. “It didn't even mention Maddy or Eston by name. Mama's fine. You know she is, she has to be. Miss Martha will be too afraid of the truth getting out to treat Mama poorly. We'll send them another letter. Maddy will let us know if they need help, help we can give them.” Harriet paused to move a pin. She looked up at him. “I'd give anything to see them,” she said. “Anything but my babies. That's final.”

Beverly paced across the little room, bouncing his nephew in his arms. “I'm going to send money through Jesse Scott,” he said. “Ten dollars, more if I can manage it. Not for Mama—for the rest of them. Jesse will know how to use it.”

Harriet nodded. “I've got a bit saved up,” she said. “I'll give it to you—but you'll mail it, won't you? Please.”

“Yes,” Beverly agreed.

Maddy was already twenty-one when his father died, so he was legally free the day the will was read. He wasn't quite sure what to do with himself, however. Eston was only nineteen, and Uncle John wouldn't be free for a year. Maddy kept going to the woodshop, even though none of them had work to do.

A few weeks later Miss Martha opened the door of the shop. She stood in the doorway without coming in. “We're closing the house,” she said. “I'm going to Boston with Tim and George. The others are moving in with Jeff.”

Miss Martha looked strange and severe in her stiff black dress. John, Maddy, and Eston stared at her. None of them knew what to say.

“Shut this place down,” she said. “Eston, John, you can have your time. I told Sally she could have hers. Find her a place down in Charlottesville. Find yourselves work down there. Take the tools, the wood. Do what you like. Only”—here she fixed Maddy with a fierce glare—“don't be spreading lies about my father. Do you hear me? Make no trouble for me, and I'll make no trouble for you.”

Maddy heard her. Before the week was out, he, Eston, and Mama were settled into a little house near Jesse Scott. John moved to a cabin down the mountain that Miss Martha gave him—alone, since Miss Martha took his wife with her to Boston. They all found carpentry work at the new university.

Now it was the day before the auction. At the great house, auction personnel were cataloguing furniture and preparing for the sale. Maddy avoided the house on his way up from town. He went first to the graveyard on the far side of the mountaintop, near where the woods began. Even from there he could hear clangs coming from Joe Fossett's anvil in the blacksmith shop. Maddy shuddered. Joe was working half to death.

It was bitter cold. Snow blanketed the ground. The sharp wind scudded drifts against the gravestones, except for Thomas Jefferson's. That one grave had been brushed clean, and a small shining pile of holly lay upon it. Mama's work, Maddy knew. She climbed the mountain two or three times a week to tend the grave.

He heard a noise behind him. Turning, he saw Peter Fossett a little ways away. Peter looked thin and cold; shadows underlined his sad eyes. “Peter!” Maddy went to him and hugged him. “I was coming to see you next.”

Peter didn't say anything. Maddy took off his own scarf and wrapped it around Peter's neck. He wished he had mittens to cover Peter's hands. “Tomorrow—” Maddy said.

“Daddy can't bid on us,” Peter said, his voice high and trembling. “He's still a slave until July, and slaves can't own property, so he can't bid. But he gave all his money to Jesse Scott. Jesse's going to bid on us for Daddy.”

Maddy nodded. He held Peter's shoulders. “I know. Me and Eston and Mama, we gave Jesse all the money we had. It wasn't much, but it might help.” Maddy knelt in the snow, and pulled something from his pants pocket. “I came to see you special, though, because I have some things just for you.” He pressed a small flat object into Peter's hands.

“That old primer,” Peter said, looking down.

“Miss Ellen gave me this primer,” Maddy said. “I've always treasured it. Words are powerful things. Learn them and you'll have their power. Only keep it a secret—white people don't like for us to read.”

“My daddy's going to try to buy us,” Peter said. “With Jesse Scott. And if he can't buy me—if he runs out of money before he gets to me—he's found a nice white man to buy me, who says he'll let my daddy buy me back later on.”

“That's good,” Maddy said. “That's real good, I'm glad. But you listen to me. There isn't such a thing as a nice slave owner. Slavery is bad. It's evil. All slave owners are bad. If a person would own another person, you can't trust a word they'll say, so you be careful, you hear me? That's why I'm giving you this too.” He opened Peter's hand, and pressed two quarters into it.

“A long time ago your brother and I caught a bird, and sold it to my father for fifty cents apiece,” Maddy said. “I always felt bad about it. I gave Jesse the rest of the money I had, but I'm giving this fifty cents to you. You keep it secret, and you hang on to it. Get one of your sisters to help you sew it into your clothes. You never know when you're going to need it.

“I'm in Charlottesville. I will always help you with anything I can,” Maddy said. “But sometime you might need that money. You hang on to it.”

Peter nodded. From Mulberry Row a woman's voice called, “Peter! Pee—ter!”

“That's Mama,” Peter said.

“You better go,” Maddy said. “I love you, Peter Fossett.”

Peter started down the path, then turned. “You all going to be here tomorrow?” he asked.

Maddy shook his head. “No. Think we should?”

Peter shook his head too. “Eston looks just like him. You all better stay away.”

Maddy turned back to his father's headstone.
Author of the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom and the Declaration of Independence,
it read.
Founder of the University of Virginia
. That was what Master Jefferson—no, Thomas Jefferson, Maddy corrected himself—had wanted written there. That was how he wanted people to remember him.

The champion of freedom, Maddy thought, who owned slaves. Who lived his life so that at his death one hundred thirty people must be sold.

Maddy heard a loose shutter banging against the side of the worn-out great house. He reached down to touch the holly on the grave. It was fresh, and so were Mama's footprints in the snow at the grave's edge. At her age Mama had no business climbing this mountain in the cold. She did it anyway. Despite everything, Mama loved him. Maddy hoped that someday he would too.

The night before the auction was savagely cold. Icy air seeped into Peter's family's room from the walls and ceiling and floor; it blew in under the door and around the windowpanes. Daddy built the fire high, but the cold remained and seemed to deepen the coldness in their hearts.

For months they'd known the auction was coming. They'd watched the preparations being made. Daddy had worn himself out. He'd worked every job he could for wages, but he didn't have enough money to buy them all. He'd tried to broker deals with some of the white men in Charlottesville, so that at least they would all stay nearby. The auction had been advertised in newspapers across the nation. If a stranger from the Deep South—no, Peter wouldn't think of that. He drew his knees up sharp and huddled closer to his sister Isabella.

They were all on the one bed for their last night together. Peter, Mama, Daddy, Maria, Patsy, Betsy-Ann, Isabella, William, and Daniel. And the new baby, the baby Mama was carrying in her belly, the baby Mama had told them about only a week ago. It was crowded, but Peter wanted to be crowded. He wanted to be surrounded by his family forever.