Jefferson's Sons

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

  “Yeah, I got a brother your age, he sleeps like the dead. Want coffee?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Be a minute before I get the water boiling. Want biscuits?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’re awful polite, ain’t you, you and your brother both.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “You ‘ma’am’ me one more time, I won’t give you breakfast. Didn’t I tell you I got a brother your age?”

  “Yes, m—” Maddy bit back the word ma’am and grinned at her. “I got a sister your age,” he said.

  “Where’s she?”

  “Home,” he said. “Monticello—she works in the weaving factory. On the farm. And Beverly you met, and Eston, he’s littler.”

  The girl nodded. She was an ugly girl, with a big ugly scar across one side of her face, but she was smart, Maddy could tell. “Lucky you, still together,” she said. “My brother’s on a farm near Appomattox. There’s a tavern you might stop at near there, an’ if you do, tell one of the yard boys to tell him I say hey. Will you? Tell him I’m fine, tell him the burn’s healed up all right.” She touched her cheek, where the scar was. “I was leaning over the fire and something popped. Hit me right here. Got infected, so I was sick a long time.”

  Maddy nodded. “I’ll tell Uncle John, and he’ll be sure we stop to give the message. He’ll know the tavern.”

  The girl smiled. “Much obliged.”

  They spent three and a half days and three nights on the road, the second and third nights at taverns. They weren’t allowed to sleep inside—the rooms were for white people—but that didn’t matter, Uncle John said, because out in public they needed to guard the wagon and its contents anyhow. They rolled up in blankets and slept on the ground beneath the wagon, and they were warm enough, and dry.

  “Horses must be white,” Maddy said. They got to sleep in the tavern stables.

  Uncle John grinned. “Horses have black skin,” he said. “Didn’t you ever notice? Beneath the hair.”

  Maddy shook his head. “Don’t tell the white folks,” Uncle John said. “They find out, they’ll make the horses sleep under the wagon with us.”

  Master Jefferson had given Uncle John money to buy food, so they had plenty to eat, though they had to use the back doors of the tavern kitchens and eat out in the yard. On the first day, not knowing the rules, Beverly started to go through the front door of a tavern. Uncle John called him back, sharp. “Watch yourself,” he said. “You’re out here with me and you don’t want people thinking you’re trying to pass.”

  “Why not?” Maddy asked.

  “White people hate when black people try to pass for white,” Uncle John said. “It makes them nervous.”

  Maddy glanced at Beverly. “But when he’s free—”

  “Yep,” Uncle John said. “We best not talk about that. Beverly will be okay on his own. But right now, dressed like he is, and traveling with me in this wagon, he appears to be a black person. He’s going to get hurt if he doesn’t follow the rules.”

  Maddy scowled. He didn’t like being reminded of the difference between Beverly’s skin color and his. Uncle John seemed to understand. “I’m same as your mama, aren’t I?” he said. “Same Mama, same Papa. But I could see circumstances where maybe she could pass. Me, not a chance.” He showed Beverly the back of his warm brown hand.

  “You’re just tan,” Maddy said. “From working outside.”

  “Maddy,” Uncle John said, “I’m tan where the sun don’t shine.”

  Maddy knew Uncle John meant to be funny, but Maddy couldn’t laugh. Neither did Beverly, who seemed uneasy and kept swallowing as though he had something stuck in his throat. When they had traveled down the road a few miles, Beverly asked, very quietly, “What happens if you don’t follow the rules?”

  Uncle John looked serious. “You mean the rules white people make for black people?” Beverly nodded. “I’ll tell you,” Uncle John said. “A black man who doesn’t follow the rules is a dangerous man in a white person’s eyes. A black man who doesn’t follow the rules doesn’t live very long.”

  The brightness of the day seemed to fade. Maddy thought about Uncle John’s words. He thought about Beverly, who would be breaking the rules every moment of his white life. He looked at Beverly, but couldn’t tell what his brother was thinking.

  Uncle John cleared his throat. “Beverly,” he said, “I don’t know what you’re planning, and I don’t ever need to know. But I will say this. If you pass for white, you’d better pass in your heart too. You better be white all the way. There will never be a single white person you can trust with the truth about your past. Do you hear me? Never a one. No matter how much you think they might care about you. Love you, even. Don’t you ever, ever tell.”

  Beverly nodded. He held on to the edge of the wagon seat with both hands. He seemed to be studying the hills far away. “I hear you,” he said.

  They drove through towns and villages, past big farms and little houses. Maddy had never realized there were so many people in the world. He’d never thought about them—nor about the roads, the bridges, and fields of corn and trees and everything else. From the Monticello mountaintop he could see a long way, but nothing like as far as they’d driven. When he thought about all the things he’d seen in only three days, and how Lewis and Clark had walked west for months, and how Mama had sailed for weeks across the ocean, he started to understand how big the world might be.

  “Beverly,” Maddy said, at the end of the third day, “is this what it’s like to be free? Driving along this road? Go wherever you want? Do whatever you want to?”

  “We can’t go wherever we want,” Beverly said. “We’re going from Monticello to Poplar Forest. We can’t go anywhere else.”

  “Yeah, but nobody’s telling us how fast to go. We can stop and rest whenever we want to. At the taverns we can order whatever we want to eat.”

  Beverly said, “This is nothing. Freedom will be a whole lot better than this.”

  The great house at Poplar Forest had the same kind of windows as Monticello, and the same white Chinese railing on the roof, but it was much smaller, and its oddly shaped rooms fit together like pieces of a puzzle. Uncle John called it an octagon. He made Maddy repeat the word octagon. “That means eight-sided,” he said. “This house has eight outside walls, all exactly the same size.”

  Maddy thought it was easier to say eight-sided than octagon, but he didn’t say so. Uncle John seemed proud as he showed them through the house. “No Irish carpenters here,” he said. “Local people built the brick walls, but all this fine woodwork was done by yours truly. All these good-looking windows and sashes and cornice boards.”

  In the center of the house the dining room was built as a perfect cube, twenty feet long, twenty feet wide, with a ceiling twenty feet high. It had windows in its roof called skylights. “They’re clever,” Uncle John said. “Otherwise this room wouldn’t have windows. It’d be dark all the time. Of course, if it gets too hot, one of you will have to climb onto the roof to pull the blinds.”

  Maddy looked, but Uncle John wasn’t joking. “You do it,” he said to Beverly.

  “No way,” Beverly said. “That’s a job for you.”

  The only way to reach the dining room from the kitchen was to walk through the bedroom Miss Ellen and Miss Virginia would be sharing. “Burwell will serve dinner,” Uncle John said, “but if you get called on to give a hand, be sure you knock before you open their door.”

  The ground floor was divided into rooms the same size as the main floor. Beneath the big dining room was a deep cellar full of food and wine. “Fine peach brandy they make here,” Uncle John said. “We’ll take some of that with us when we go home.” He showed them the small room where they would all sleep. The way the house looked from the outside, Maddy would have guessed their room was underground, but it wasn’t: It had a regular door to the outside, two fine glass windows, a brick floor, a bed with a shuck mattress, and a fireplace.r />
  A short, plump black woman came into the room, wiping her hands on her apron. “Everything all right?” she asked.

  Uncle John swept her a deep bow. “Miss Hannah,” he said, “allow me to introduce my nephews. Madison and Beverly.”

  Miss Hannah grinned and shook them both by the hand. “Come eat,” she said. “Dinner’s ready.”

  The kitchen was a smaller version of Monticello’s, with a set kettle in the corner and a stew stove against the wall. “You must cook like Miss Edith,” Maddy said.

  “Laws, no.” Miss Hannah laughed. “I’ve heard about that woman’s table. I’m just a plain cook. When Master Jefferson ain’t here I work in the fields.”

  “Plain cook nothing,” Uncle John said. “Unless you mean plain good.”

  Hannah laughed again. Maddy liked her.

  Before sunset they heard the landau coming up the long sloped drive. They went out to meet it. Beverly took the horse Burwell had been riding while Burwell went to the landau and helped Miss Ellen and Miss Virginia down. Miss Ellen looked around, her eyes bright. “Oh, I do love it here!” she said. She smiled at Maddy, but didn’t say hello.

  Master Jefferson clutched Burwell’s arm as he stepped from the carriage. He looked tired. His hair was coated with dust from the road. He smiled at Uncle John and Maddy. “I see you made it here all right. Madison, what do you think of the place? Handsome, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Maddy said.

  “I thought you’d like it,” Master Jefferson said.

  Life at Poplar Forest was different from life at Monticello. Everything was quiet. There weren’t any white visitors, except occasional old friends. Master Jefferson followed his usual routine, writing letters, riding, and eating a fine dinner in the afternoons, but he did it without fuss or interruption, with only his granddaughters for company. Miss Ellen spent most of each day reading, her hair tucked behind her ears, her lips silently moving.

  “Greek?” Maddy asked as he passed her one day.

  She shook her head without looking up. “Latin,” she said. “I will never read the Aeneid in translation again.”

  Miss Virginia wandered the gardens, sketching flowers. “We need a piano here, Grandpapa,” she said.

  “Hmm—mm,” Master Jefferson said. “Someday.”

  Uncle John was carving more fancy woodwork, like he’d done at Monticello. Master Jefferson often spent part of a morning watching him, and discussing things Maddy’d never heard of before—cornices, entablatures, classic Greek design. Uncle John seemed to know just as much about those things as Master Jefferson. Maddy was impressed.

  Master Jefferson had brought his Italian violin. One day he handed it to Maddy. “Try it,” he said. “See what you think. It’ll feel quite different from your kit violin.”

  The Italian violin was bigger, and heavier, and Maddy knew how expensive it must be. He was half-afraid to touch it. Once he started, though, he found himself mesmerized by the instrument’s lovely pure sound.

  “That was very fine,” Master Jefferson said when Maddy had finished. “You have a good ear.”

  “Beverly’s better,” Maddy said. “And Eston, he’s the best of us all.”

  “Beverly has had many more years of practice,” Master Jefferson said. “You play well. Eston I understand may be a prodigy.”

  “Yes, sir,” Maddy said. He didn’t know the word, but the way Master Jefferson said it made him think it was a good thing. “Were you a prodigy?”

  Master Jefferson looked thoughtful. He flexed his wrist, the stiff one. “I don’t know,” he said. “I loved to play, I practiced hard, I played well—but no, I don’t think I would have said I was a prodigy. A good amateur, perhaps. Nothing more.”

  It was so strange, to talk with Master Jefferson like that—to have his full attention, to not need to worry about what Mama or Miss Martha or some white stranger might think. In a way it was wonderful—and yet . . . Master Jefferson had sold James. No matter how kind he was to Maddy, he had still done that to James.

  “If you could pick anyone to be our father,” he asked Beverly one day, when everyone else was out of hearing, “who would you choose?”

  Beverly looked at him for a long moment. “I never think like that,” he said. “We don’t get to pick, so what’s the use of asking?”

  “I’d pick Uncle John,” Maddy said.

  “He’d be good,” Beverly agreed.

  A few days later Beverly brought the subject back up. “Master Jefferson has done a lot of great things,” he said. “Everyone says he was a leader in the war. He wrote that declaration thing. He made us a new country. And then he went to France, and he was president. He reads and writes and thinks all the time.”

  “Yes,” said Maddy. He wasn’t sure where Beverly was headed.

  “So,” Beverly said, “does all that mean he’s a great person? White folks seem to think so. If you’re great enough in some areas, does it make up for the rest?”

  Maddy asked, “Would a great person sell someone else’s son?”

  Uncle John had walked up behind Maddy. “What was that?” he asked. Maddy repeated the question. “You want to know if great people can own slaves?” Uncle John asked. “Can a person be great and still participate in evil?” He tapped Maddy’s shoulder. “That’s what you’re asking?”

  Maddy nodded.

  Uncle John seemed to have already thought it out. “You can be great in the eyes of mankind,” he said, “but not great in the eyes of God. God calls slavery a sin, an evil, corruptible sin. Do you know the Bible verse? ‘And God brought them out of Egypt, that place of slavery.’”

  “Mama always says she’s bringing us out of Jordan,” Maddy said.

  “Yes, sir,” Uncle John said, nodding. “Yes, sir. Your mama, she is a great woman. You remember that.”

  The next day Maddy was sawing a piece of wood for Uncle John when the blade slipped and cut deep into his hand. Blood poured down his forearm. Uncle John clapped a rag over the cut and pressed hard. Blood welled up around Uncle John’s fingers. It hurt so much Maddy could barely breathe.

  Master Jefferson hurried to him. “Let’s see,” he said, peeling back the bloody rag. “Ah. Get Hannah, Beverly. Tell her to bring clean cloth.”

  Master Jefferson sent Burwell for a doctor. He led Maddy to the great house porch and bound his hand tightly with the bandage Hannah brought. He made Maddy drink a tot of peach brandy. “Medicinal,” he said. He sat with Maddy while they waited for the doctor to arrive.

  When the doctor came he pressed on the edges of the cut. They gaped open. Fresh blood flowed. Maddy felt sick. “Mmm,” the doctor said. He picked up the bottle of brandy and poured some into the wound.

  It felt like Maddy’s hand had been thrust into a fire. He screamed, and would have jerked his hand away if Master Jefferson hadn’t had such a tight grip on his arm.

  “Steady,” Master Jefferson said. “That’s the worst of it.”

  Maddy wanted to be brave, but it hurt so much he sobbed.

  “It’s all right,” Master Jefferson said, as soothingly as though he were talking to a tiny child. “It’s all right. It’ll be over soon.”

  The doctor sewed the wound shut with a needle and thread. He bandaged Maddy’s entire hand. “Keep that clean and dry,” he said. “We don’t want infection.”

  “Yes, sir,” Maddy said. “Thank you.”

  “He won’t lose the use of it, will he?” Master Jefferson asked.

  “Shouldn’t,” said the doctor. “I didn’t see any tendons cut. If we can keep infection out, he ought to be fine. I’ll come around to check it tomorrow.”

  Master Jefferson got up, squeezing Maddy’s shoulder. “Go lie down,” he said. “Keep quiet the rest of the day.”

  Maddy went to their room and lay down. He took a book with him—with so many books around the house no one would notice, plus here he didn’t think anyone would mind—but found he couldn’t focus. He stared out the open window, lost in thought. Mama
would have held him the same way Master Jefferson had. She would have soothed him, but she also would have made him hold still for the brandy and the stitching.

  It was the first time he ever felt like he had a father.

  Later that night he discussed it with Beverly. “Maybe he does care about us,” Maddy said. “Maybe he does think of us as his children.”

  Beverly said, “We are his children, whether he thinks about us that way or not.”

  “I know, but—” Maddy struggled to say what he meant. “It’s like there’s a secret side of him, and here, since it’s not Monticello, he can let it show.”

  Beverly didn’t say anything. Maddy’s hand throbbed. “He loves Mama,” Beverly said, after a while. “I’ll give him that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know,” Beverly said. Maddy nodded. He knew it too.

  Poplar Forest was a better place for them than Monticello. Maddy wished he and his family could live there all the time.

  December 1818

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Three Months of Grief

  Two years passed. Peter grew into a sturdy little boy the very image of James. Eston started working in the woodshop. He grew skinny and tall; Beverly, broad-shouldered and strong. Beverly was a good carpenter and a lively musician. He played for the dances Miss Martha’s girls held. Master Jefferson turned seventy-six years old and was still strong enough to ride every day. He went to Poplar Forest twice a year, and always took Maddy and Beverly along. Sometimes Maddy felt like everything inside him waited for those days.

  At Christmastime Mama gave Harriet a long length of fine linen, bleached snow-white. Harriet smiled in delight. “That’ll be your underthings,” Mama said. “Petticoats and shifts and stays.”

  “Why’s she need those?” Maddy asked. No one wore fancy shifts in the weaving room. He moved closer to the fire. Beverly was tuning the violin. Eston whittled a chunk of wood.