Thomas Jefferson has been sitting on the porch with his head in his hands ever since Mrs. Coombes asked him to leave the cabin. He stands as Dr. Cranley comes out the door, but he doesn’t dare ask what has happened. The doctor gives him a long, disapproving look, fully understanding his relationship to both mother and child. “The mother will live,” he says, “but the infant . . . she’s in the hands of the Lord.” With that he turns and makes his way back to his carriage.
Thomas Jefferson straightens his clothing and hair, then knocks on the door. Betty Hemings, her face sallow and deflated, lets him in without a word. Glancing at the infant, whose skin has a decidedly brownish cast, she ushers Aggy and Mrs. Coombes outside, then exits herself, pulling the door shut behind her.
Sally Hemings is sleeping when Thomas Jefferson draws a chair up beside the bed, but as he sits down and leans forward, she opens her eyes. “Well, you did it, Sally Girl,” he says. “That was a hard one, but it’s over.”
A feeble smile comes to her lips and fades almost instantly.
“How are you feeling?”
She meets his eye and shakes her head. Then she looks up at the ceiling, and he wonders if she is praying.
He is silent until his thoughts become more than he can endure.
“So you’ve got a fine little girl!” he exclaims.
Again Sally Hemings meets his eye but seems not to have comprehended what he said.
“Have you chosen a name?” he asks.
“Thenia,” she says, barely above a whisper.
He’s surprised at first, but then he nods. He sold Thenia to James Monroe so that she and her children could live with their father. But a year hadn’t passed before she contracted pneumonia while walking to church in a snowstorm. She died in a matter of days.
“That’s a good name,” says Thomas Jefferson.
Sally Hemings’s lips twitch into another feeble smile, but her eyes are closed.
He looks at the swaddled infant, her eyes so purple and swollen that she has yet to open them. He, too, has noticed the brownish cast to her skin but attaches no particular significance to it, knowing that mulattoes can be almost any color, even after multiple generations of mixing only with whites. The little girl is deeply asleep—though it is hard to imagine that her injuries are not still causing her terrible pain.
“I’ll let you rest,” he tells Sally Hemings as he gets to his feet.
But when she opens her eyes and looks at him, he bends down again and kisses her.
“I’m so glad you’re still with me,” he says. “I had such terrible thoughts during the night. Such grim, awful thoughts.”
Her eyes are closed again. Very possibly she did not hear a word he said. He pats her hand, stands and leaves.
At dawn the following morning, Betty notices that her new granddaughter is ashen and not breathing.
A little later, lying in bed beside her weeping daughter, she murmurs, “It’s for the best. There was just too much pain in that poor baby’s life.”
But Sally Hemings has other thoughts.
Two weeks after Thenia’s tiny coffin is placed into the ground, Thomas Jefferson returns to Philadelphia, less to resume his duties as vice president than to garner support for his plan to challenge Adams in the upcoming presidential election. Madison, Monroe, Burr and half the editorialists of the Republican newspapers have been saying that Thomas Jefferson alone can stop Adams and Hamilton from reestablishing the monarchy. The night before his departure he protests to Sally Hemings yet again that he has no taste for government and would much rather remain at home, attending to his family, his books and the construction of his house.
She shakes her head ruefully and pats his cheek. “Do you actually believe that you might be happy here when you can have the love of a nation?”
“Do I seem so vain as that?” he says. “Is that what you truly believe?”
She answers only with a gently mocking smile.
No sooner has his carriage lumbered out the gate and turned toward the South Road than Sally Hemings has gone to his library and stands staring at his bookshelves, her arms folded across her chest. She has no idea how many books there are in this room. Hundreds? Thousands? She breathes deeply, her sinuses filling with a thin sweetness that reminds her equally of dried oats and mice.
She has decided that she will take advantage of Thomas Jefferson’s long absences to read as many of these books as she can—until, perhaps, she will have read them all. She has absolutely no idea where to begin, however, so simply walks up to the nearest shelf and pulls out the first book that catches her eye. It is black and shiny, with red bands across its narrow spine, but the letters on its pages look like tiny knots, twists and curls of string—not a one of them intelligible. She snaps the book shut and picks up its neighbor, only to find that it is written in an entirely different and equally incomprehensible alphabet—this one dark and jagged, like an army of tiny, heavily armed soldiers standing row upon row upon row. It has never occurred to her that there might be more than one alphabet. Could there be a different alphabet for every language? Will she have to learn two, three or ten new alphabets in order to read every book that Thomas Jefferson has read?
This thought exhausts her and makes her left temple throb. She thinks of giving up and going back to her cabin. Instead she decides to try the books on the shelves on the opposite wall. But these are all filled with numbers, diagrams and drawings of buildings—none of which make any sense to her, though the words at least are written in familiar letters.
Several books on the neighboring shelf are filled with pictures of flowers, and she spends a long time looking at these, even though the drawings make the flowers look crotchety and old. But she does not want to look at pictures, she wants to read—she wants, in fact, to learn to read every word in the English language, and possibly in French, too. She wants words to flow through her eyes and into her mind as easily as air flows into her lungs.
The next book is a treatise on the art of war, which she thinks might be interesting, though grim and sad. She puts it back. Then she notices a book lying across the tops of other books, perhaps because there is not enough room on the crowded shelf. She feels sorry for this book, which is squat and brown and reminds her of a brick. It is entitled The History of America and by a man named William Robertson, D.D., whose picture is on the facing page. He, too, appears crotchety and old, but his eyes look straight into hers.
She closes the book and presses it against her chest, where it seems to have the effect of speeding up her heart and making it just a little hard to breathe. Suddenly she is frightened. She puts the book back in its lonely spot atop all the others, then pulls it out again and hugs it to her chest a second time.
She lifts her head and closes her eyes as if she is praying. But she is not praying, only waiting for something to feel right. In the end maybe it does or maybe it doesn’t. She can’t say for sure. But she slips the book into the pocket of her apron anyway, hurries to the door and steps out into the dark hall.
After an unimaginable length of time, the prisoner has been reduced to a barely human mass—less a man than an insect without a carapace. To a casual observer, it would not be clear whether he is conscious, or even alive. The guard, too, is exhausted. Gaunt. Gray of hair and complexion. She is chewing gum. She speaks.
—You know how this is going to end, don’t you?
— . . .
—I finish you off.
— . . .
—Terminate you. Cancel you out. Right? What other ending is there? It’s inevitable.
— . . .
—Though I guess that means I’m not God, right? Because nothing is inevitable for God. I mean, God, absolute freedom, all-powerful—aren’t those just three ways of saying the same thing?
— . . .
—So it’s a paradox. And one of the many things that makes me th
ink this is my nightmare and not yours.
— . . .
—Maybe I’m just dreaming you. Maybe you’re nothing but my own sick delusion.
— . . .
—Never mind. I’m tired of fucking with your head.
— . . .
—Actually, I take that back. Because now I am really going to fuck with your head. Although some people might call it grace.
— . . .
—Grace! Do you hear me, fuckface? Grace!
— . . .
—Get the fuck up!
— . . .
—Get up! Do you want me to come in there and step on you, you fucking cockroach? I can always do the inevitable. I mean, that is a choice I have. Is that what you want?
— . . .
—Look, just get the fuck up. I’m setting you free.
— . . .
—Do you hear me? I’m setting you free.
—Fuck you!
—What?
The guard laughs. The guard speaks.
—I suppose you think this is too good to be true. Well, it is too good to be true! But even so, I’m still setting you free.
— . . .
—Get the fuck up! You hear me? Get the fuck up! Now! You’ve got two choices: Either I come in there and put you out of your misery forever or you get the fuck up and go free.
—Leave me alone.
—That’s an improvement. Look.
The guard pulls the keys out of her pocket. Unlocks the cell door. Opens it. She takes the gum out of her mouth and rolls it into a ball on her finger. She speaks.
—I’m sticking this into the latch hole.
She sticks the gum into the hole where the tongue of the lock goes. The hole is filled. She flattens the gum inside the hole with her index finger and covers it with a folded-up piece of the foil gum wrapper. She speaks.
—Okay. So you stole this gum from me. Right? Because that’s the only thing that makes sense. Because why would I give it to you? So you stole it. And look.
She opens and closes the cell door twice. She speaks.
—It looks like it’s locked. But it isn’t. So you can get out anytime you want.
— . . .
—Only here’s the deal: You do it on somebody else’s watch. You get me? You wait till that fuckface Quinn comes on. Or Rex. I don’t give a shit. Just wait until I’m long gone, and then you can do whatever you like.
The prisoner crawls to the front of his cell, then pulls himself up on the bars until he is balanced unsteadily on his knees. The guard speaks.
—You wondering why I’m doing this?
—Yes.
—I told you already: I’m fucking with your head. Although, actually, the truth is that I’m sick of you.
— . . .
—This hasn’t exactly been a picnic for me. I mean, the way I see it, I’m just living out your sins. And after all this time, what’s the point? You know? My life’s a fucking nightmare.
— . . .
—So now I’m really free. Free to exercise my absolute freedom. If that’s not too much of a tautology. Or is it actually a contradiction?
The prisoner lifts his hands over his head and takes hold of the bars. He groans. Trembles. He stands. He speaks.
—Thank you.
—What are you thanking me for? You don’t know what’s going to happen yet. You, of all people, should know not to be so trusting. Didn’t I just tell you I’m fucking with your head? You’ll see. It’s a whole different world out there.
—I hardly remember it.
—What you remember doesn’t exist anymore. It’s gone. All of it. You’ve been here much longer than you think.
—How long?
—An eternity.
— . . .
—So I’m just going to give you one piece of advice. Once you get past Quinn, or Rex (whatever; I don’t want to know the details), then you’ve got two choices: You go this way, you’re still in isolation. You go that way, you’re in the tunnels. Take the tunnels.
—Where do they go?
—Out. It’s a long way. You’ll probably think you’re never going to get there. But just keep going. There’ll be staircases. And people. A whole lot of people. Don’t worry about it. They’re harmless. Pretend you don’t even notice them and they’ll do the same to you. But just keep walking along beside them and, eventually, they’ll lead you up to the street.
—Thank you.
—I’m not going to say you’re welcome, because you’re not.
—You’re actually going to do this?
—I guess you’ll find out. But you’ll still be a fucking piece of shit. Don’t you ever forget that. I’m not doing this because I think you’ve redeemed yourself, or you’ve been rehabilitated, or transcended your sins, or any of that bullshit. Nothing makes the evil go away. The evil is eternal. Remember that.
— . . .
—It’s a fucking evil world in my opinion. The truth is that most people never get caught. Their lies last. They never have to endure their dark night of the soul. You’ll see. Maybe that’s why I’m sending you out there. You’ll be shocked. Everything is different. That’s a world in which you don’t make any sense. Believe me: You won’t even recognize yourself.
It is October 5, 1800, ten months after Thenia’s death, and Thomas Jefferson will stand for election to the presidency at the end of the month. He is fifty-eight, and Sally Hemings is twenty-eight.
She waits for him at the intersection of two paths, just past the lake. As he rides up, he reaches down with one hand and helps her climb into the saddle behind him. It is cold. She wraps her arms around his taut abdomen and squeezes him tight to keep warm. They talk about how they will have to build a fire at the lodge, and he says he’s not sure if they will have enough kindling. As they ford the river, she pulls down his collar and kisses him on the back of his neck, where his smell is so rich and savory.
She is happy today. She doesn’t know why. The sky is low with steam-colored clouds. Nothing special has happened, or not really. Her period is a month late, but her cycle has been irregular since Thenia, so it is too soon to draw conclusions. She hasn’t said a word to anybody about what she is thinking.
She’s just happy. She hasn’t been happy in such a long time.
The horse shambles out of the rushing water and then along the wooded bank. After a few minutes, the lodge comes into view, on a small rise, shaded by two brilliantly yellow beeches and a crimson-and-burgundy pin oak. As soon as the horse begins to mount the rise, Sally Hemings knows that something is wrong, and in the next instant she knows why: The lodge door is open, and dangling off the porch onto the steps is a red-and-white cloth—her apron.
“Shit,” says Thomas Jefferson.
Sally Hemings says nothing.
They stop beneath one of the yellow beeches. As he ties the horse to the porch railing, she picks up the apron, which is crumpled and stiff—as if it has been used to wipe up something messy, though it is unstained.
Inside the lodge the sheets are straggling off the bed and trail across the floor. The blankets are gone, as is a lantern and a hunting knife that Thomas Jefferson left on top of the mantelpiece. Otherwise the room seems undisturbed.
At first Thomas Jefferson merely turns in a circle in the middle of the room, a perplexed expression on his face. Then he gets down on his hands and knees and looks under the bed, then under a dresser on top of which the lantern had been resting. He gets back to his feet and kicks the bedstead.
“Damn it all to hell!” He kicks the bedstead again. “Goddamn it!”
Sally Hemings winces, not so much because his shouts disturb her as because she would still like to make love and thinks that Thomas Jefferson probably won’t want to now.
She sits down on the bare mattress. “It’
s not so bad,” she says.
“I know.” He sits down on the bed beside her.
“We can replace everything the next time we come.” She puts her hand on his knee.
“It’s just that . . .” He shrugs. “This was our sanctuary.” He picks up her hand, gives it a squeeze, lets it go and stands up again and walks to the window. “I suppose I’ll just have to get John to build us some strong shutters and put a lock on the door.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“What do you mean?”
She leans back, putting one arm behind her head as a pillow. “If someone wants to get in here, they’ll just get in. The only difference a lock will make is that they’ll have to do more damage.”
Thomas Jefferson looks as if he is going to contradict her, but then he doesn’t say anything.
She smiles.
“I’ll have to think about it,” he says. “Maybe talk to John.”
Still smiling, still lying down, she extends one hand in his direction. “Come here,” she says.
He does.
A while later Thomas Jefferson is sitting on the porch reading a treatise on astronomy and Sally Hemings is crouched barefoot on a rock at the water’s edge, the skirt of her gown knotted around her waist. Her newly cleaned apron is spread on a bush beside her, drying in the intervals of brilliant white sunlight that come and go as the clouds drift over. She is clutching one of the bedsheets in the shallow water and lathering it with a block of soap. Warm fluid oozes out of her onto the rock as she crouches. Her wet feet are cold, as are her hands in the water. And the gusty wind, constantly blowing a loose hank of her hair across her eyes, is also cold. But none of that matters. She is just feeling happy today. That’s all. Just happy.
Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings Page 42