Jefferson's Sons (5 page)

“Because we just know,” Harriet said.

“Pretend you don't know,” Mama said. “Pretend you're walking down a road you've never been on before, so you don't know who lives on it, and you see this little baby sitting on the side of the road. This boy, our Maddy, only you've never seen him before. How would you know whether or not he was a slave?”

Beverly looked at Mama. She waited. “You wouldn't know,” he said, thinking it out. “You couldn't ask the baby. He can't talk. So you wouldn't know until somebody else came along and told you.”

“That's right!” Mama said. She swooped down and kissed Beverly, then took Maddy back on her knee and dressed him. “You remember that, both of you. Nobody is a slave on their own. There is nothing inside either one of you, or anyone else—Joe Fossett or Uncle John or me or anyone—that
makes
you a slave, that says you have to be one, that says you're different from somebody who isn't a slave. The difference is other people—people who make laws and put other people into slavery and work to keep them there.”

Mama's eyes blazed. “But you aren't really slaves either,” she said. She rocked Maddy back and forth in her arms. “You remember that. You'll never be sold and you'll never be beaten, and when you turn twenty-one you'll be free. Both of you, and Maddy too. That's a promise. A promise your father made me about all the children we might have. You'll be
free
.”

“How can he promise that?” Beverly asked. “He can't just make us free.”

Mama paused, frowning. “He can,” she said.

“Because he's the president?”

“Because he owns us,” Mama said. “He owns all of Monticello. The buildings and the farms. The people too.”

Harriet asked, “You mean, because he's our daddy?”

Mama shook her head. She said, “Because he's Master Jefferson.”

When Uncle Peter slapped him for dipping into the sugar jar, Beverly thought Mama had lied when she said he wouldn't be beaten. He told her so. Mama said there were smackings and then there were beatings, and if he didn't understand the difference now, he would someday, most likely someday soon. Mama was right. Beverly was up on the new roof of the great house when word came that James Hubbard had been brought back to the mountain.

It was September. The heat of the summer was over, and the air was cool and clear. Master Jefferson had come and gone. Once he'd called Beverly into his room and listened to him play, and twice he'd happened to stop by Jesse Scott's house just when Beverly was taking a lesson. Master Jefferson had stayed until Beverly was done. He'd smiled at Beverly and said he was glad to see him working hard. Beverly thought Master Jefferson's smile was his favorite thing in the world.

Now Master Jefferson was gone, and the great house was shut up again, except for the workmen finishing the new rooms.

Beverly loved being on the roof. He could see for miles down the mountain on all sides, to mountains beyond mountains making ridges against the sky. The new roof had a dome in the center, and Beverly's uncle John had built a fancy wooden railing all around it. Now Burwell was painting the railing white. Beverly was helping. Burwell always painted things when Master Jefferson was away; he knew just how to mix paint, any color you could wish.

Harriet brought the news about James Hubbard. Beverly saw her dashing across the great house lawn, her skirt hiked up and her braids blowing behind her. She shouted, “Burwell, Burwell!” and then she scrambled up the ladder three stories to the roof and plopped herself over the edge.

“Easy, missy,” Burwell said, grabbing her arm.

“James Hubbard's back!” Harriet said. “They brought him back from jail. He's in the wagon. An overseer's driving. James Hubbard is all skinny and he's got handcuffs on.” She took a gulping breath. “Overseer said James Hubbard's getting whipped tomorrow, and everybody has to watch.” Her eyes shone big and frightened. She said, “James Hubbard looks
bad
.”

“Well,” said Burwell. “So would anybody who's been locked up months in jail.” He patted Harriet's cheek. “Don't fret. We don't worry about tomorrow today. You get down and go play. And don't you climb this roof again without asking me, hear? You could fall.”

Harriet smiled. She was a wonderful climber, always in and out of trees. “I never fall.”

“See you don't.” Burwell held the top of the ladder while she climbed down. He yelled, “Tell your mama.”

Burwell went back to the railing and picked up his brush. Beverly sat cross-legged beside him. Burwell didn't speak. Finally Beverly whispered, “What's going to happen?”

“He'll be whipped,” Burwell said. “Maybe that's all, this time.”

“Will it be bad?”

Burwell smoothed white paint over the golden brown wood. He covered three pieces before he answered. “Yes.”

 

The overseers brought the field workers to the mountaintop for the whipping, dozens and dozens of people Beverly didn't know. The mountaintop people, the workers from Mulberry Row, all had to be there too. Beverly asked Mama if he could bring his violin. He thought James Hubbard might like music to take his mind off being whipped, and he thought too that if he was playing he could shut his eyes and only hear the music and not have to think about James Hubbard.

“Nonsense,” Mama said. “You and Harriet will stand still and behave, just like everyone else.”

“But I don't want to,” Beverly said.

“What you want doesn't matter,” Mama said.

 

The overseers—four of them, all white men—prodded everyone into a sort of half circle around a post. James Hubbard stood with his hands tied to the top of the post, his back toward them. Mama moved to the front of the crowd, and as she did Harriet stepped behind her and hid her face in Mama's skirt. Beverly tried to do the same, but Mama grabbed his shoulders and held him facing forward. One overseer ripped James Hubbard's tattered shirt from his back, and a second stepped forward with a long black bullwhip in his hand.

The whip whistled through the air and came down with a crack against James's back. James jerked, but didn't yell. A red welt formed on his skin.

Beverly turned his face away. Mama pushed it back. “You watch,” she whispered.
Crack!
Another jerk. Another welt, and a trickle of blood.
Crack!

Beverly wanted his violin. He wanted to run away, back to his cabin or to Master Jefferson's room with all the books and chairs.
Crack!
Blood ran down James Hubbard's back. It soaked into his breeches, the real breeches he'd bought to run away in. They were going to turn red, just like the red suit he'd won for being the best worker in the nail factory.

Beverly turned his head and vomited down the side of Mama's skirt.

Afterward, in the cabin, he cried and cried. Mama rinsed her skirt. She seemed sad, not angry. She patted Beverly's back and held Harriet in her lap, and when Beverly's sobs slowed to hiccups she said, “There's a reason I made you watch that.”

“'Cause the overseer said so,” Beverly said.

“No. I could have let you hide your face. I wanted you to watch because I wanted you to understand.
That's
slavery. Not this nice life you children have, because of who I am and who you are. That. James Hubbard didn't do anything wrong. All he wanted was to live his own life, to earn money for himself and make his own choices.

“I love you children more than life, and I'm going to get you out of Jordan, do you hear me?” Mama's eyes blazed up, fierce but still not angry. “I'm going to see you live free. What happened to James Hubbard will never happen to you. But you've got to understand it. You've got to know how things are. When you're grown you'll be able to go anywhere you want in this world.
Anywhere
. Do you understand me?”

“No, Mama,” Beverly said. The look on her face frightened him. He didn't understand anything at all.

“James Hubbard did too do something wrong,” said Harriet in a thin, trembling voice. “He did too. He ran away. Master Jefferson had to punish him. Because he ran away. He wasn't supposed to—”

“Master Jefferson didn't punish him,” Beverly cut in. “The overseers did.”

Mama looked grave. “The overseers only do what Master Jefferson tells them to,” she said. “Master Jefferson ordered the whipping. It was his responsibility. No one else's.”

“That's not true,” Beverly said. He thought of Master Jefferson's gentle hands, his soft voice, his warm smile. “He would never do that. He wouldn't. He'd never whip anybody. He's not mean like the overseers.”

Mama said, slowly and deliberately, “All James Hubbard did was try to get free. Running away is against the law, but it's not
wrong
. Sometimes laws are wrong. Master Jefferson told the overseers to whip James Hubbard. They wouldn't have done it otherwise. They wouldn't have dared.”

“You're lying,” Beverly said. “I know you are.” He put his hands over his ears and refused to listen anymore. His father, whip James Hubbard? Beverly knew it couldn't be true.

Cold weather came. The garden froze and died. Beverly and the other mountaintop boys covered its beds with deep layers of horse manure from the stables. The great house seemed asleep, except for the faint sound of Uncle John's hammering, hard to hear behind the sounds of the nail boys at their anvils.

Dawn to dusk was the master's time; dusk to dawn belonged to the slaves. In winter, days were short enough that folks had time to relax together in the evenings, before they fell asleep, and with Master Jefferson in Washington, Mama stayed with them every night. Usually, after she rocked Maddy to sleep, she told Beverly and Harriet stories.

“Tell about Great-grandma and the sea captain,” Harriet said. Beverly stretched out on the floor in front of the hearth, close to the dancing flames. Mama's chair creaked as she rocked in time to her knitting. Harriet drew Mama's shawl over her head until only her nose peeped out.

“Once upon a time,” Mama began, “your great-grandma lived free with her family in a place called Africa, over the ocean and far, far away.”

“Like France,” said Beverly.

“Farther away than France,” Mama said. “Warmer too. She wasn't a slave, your great-grandma. She was a free woman, with beautiful ebony skin and beautiful black kinky hair. She didn't need to carry papers. Everybody in her village, her mother and father and brothers and sisters, her uncles and aunts and her friends, all of them were free.

“Then evil men came to her village. They kidnapped your great-grandma. She was strong, and she fought them, but they had guns and no one in her village did.”

“Were they white or black?” asked Beverly.

“Who?” Mama said. “The villagers?”

“The kidnappers.”

Mama paused. “I don't know,” she said. “Might have been either, or both. Evil comes in all colors. They kidnapped hundreds of people, from all up and down the coast of Africa. They chained them into the belly of a horrible ship, and sailed them all the way to the city of Williamsburg, right here in Virginia.”

Mama paused before she went on. “And they sold all those people into slavery. Your great-grandma, she was bought by a man named Mr. Francis Eppes.”

“Who got the money?” Beverly asked. “Who did Mr. Eppes pay?”

“The kidnappers,” Mama said. “And the people who owned the ship.”

Beverly bit his lip.

“Your great-grandma wasn't born a slave,” Mama said.

“She didn't have something wrong with her turned her into a slave. She didn't do anything wrong. She didn't deserve to be captured. You remember that.” Mama paused again, then went on with the story.

“Mr. Eppes called your great-grandma Parthenia.”

“But that wasn't her real name,” Harriet said.

“No,” Mama said. “Parthenia was what Mr. Eppes called her. Her real name was the one her parents gave her, in Africa. We don't know what it was.”

Beverly wished somebody had known his great-grandma's real name.

“Some time later, your great-grandma formed an attachment with a sea captain—”

“A
different
sea captain,” Harriet cut in. “
Not
the captain of the slave ship.”

“A different one,” Mama agreed. “A white man named Captain Hemings, who was captain of a merchant ship from England. He was a fine man, and Parthenia was a woman of uncommon beauty, and together they had a beautiful little girl named Elizabeth Hemings, and that was your grandma.”