When Sally Hemings has finished reading, Remus says that Peter told him to tell her that Jimmy slit his own throat.
For a time Thomas Jefferson can jot notes and do a sort of work involving barometers, yardsticks and magnifying glasses. But soon he discovers that he is no longer independent of the crowd overrunning Sally Hemings’s invention, that he, too, is being swept across plazas and parks, down boulevards and streets, along alleys and underground corridors, ever deeper into the interstices of an ever-more-massive city, its buildings rising ever higher into an ever smaller sky.
At first he thinks of all these people as insects: ignorant, soulless, moving mindlessly toward their doom. But then he notices that they are talking—as volubly and variously as any crowd exiting a theater. And it would seem from the rhythms and tones of their speech that some members of the crowd are delivering stern lectures while others are telling jokes, or pleading, or trading gossip in voiced whispers. So many words, near and far, crossing from lips to ears, from mind to mind—yet for Thomas Jefferson they remain airborne packets of mystery. A rippling of lips and teeth. Collages of tiny sounds.
For a while he thinks that the best way to extract meaning from these words is to measure them with his yardstick, but they won’t stay still long enough, and he can never quite tell where one word ends and the next begins. And then it seems that he has lost his yardstick, or maybe he never had it. The same is true of his barometer and his magnifying glass. And the last he ever sees of his notes, they are doing loop-the-loops over the heads of the crowd.
Without tools his judgments become ever harder to sustain, or even to remember, and he can offer no resistance to the human tide. And so he is swept ever deeper into Sally Hemings’s invention, hoping against his every certainty that he might yet be rescued—by some strange new freedom or by some improbable variety of truth.
And now the hammering car is pierced, yet again, by the screeching of steel against steel. And now, again, it is dark, and the yellow dimness of the incandescent bulbs mounted between the tunnel struts slides stroboscopically down the length of the car, lighting, for an instant, shoulders and flanks and frozen faces and then, an instant later, lighting them again. Thomas Jefferson is on his feet now, rocking as the car rocks, remembering how he never allowed himself to truly love Sally Hemings, when, in fact, he had never loved anyone more, and how she came to hate him, and to close herself off, and how he had lost her that way and had never known such excruciating pain. But now, after all this time, here she is, rocking in the darkness in which he, too, is rocking, in this steel screeching—multitonal, mounting and mounting, like an escalating feedback loop or like an insane fugue performed by an orchestra of metal birds. And then the screeching stops. And the lights are on.
VIII
. . . I don’t know exactly how or when it happened, but at some point I simply defined the life I was leading as a good one, which meant that anything I did that allowed me to continue living my good life was also good. And so I became afflicted with an especially perilous form of blindness.
Where I had once seen light and dark, black and white, red, yellow, orange, purple, I now saw only gray. Everything became muted, dim. I lost my ability to feel the pain of others or to be outraged. In order to believe that I lived in a good world, I had to believe that the whole rest of the world was no good—people especially—and that my only obligation was to care for my children, my family, the people I loved.
And so I used little truths and partial truths and sometimes big truths (my love for my children) to convince myself of the very big lie that I need feel no shame, that I was as close to virtuous as I could reasonably have expected to be.
I said yes to Mr. Jefferson and yes to evasions, lies and complicity. But I could have said no. No, you may not kiss me. No, I do not want your hands on my body. No, I owe you nothing. I don’t believe you. No, I don’t. I won’t. I don’t love you. No.
Had I adopted that policy, none of yesterday’s evils would have been averted, but I would not have been complicit in them, nor in any of the other evils from which I have profited over the last forty years.
No and no and no.
I might have had a purer soul. . . .
James T. Callender is walking up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the president’s mansion—although “avenue” is an absurd euphemism for this dirt track passing through swamp and primeval forest, along which a carriage could not travel twenty feet without jolting over a boulder or an insufficiently excised tree stump. So, too, the name “city,” when applied to these half dozen unfinished and ill-designed Palladian imitations amid a scattering of shacks and swaybacked houses belonging to trappers and fishermen and to the benighted farmers who supposed this swampland might be made to flourish under their plows.
Almost exactly a year ago, Callender was martyred for his service to Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican Party when John Adams had him imprisoned under the Sedition Act for the crime of publishing the truth of Adams’s own villainy and the villainy of the party he serves. No one could have been happier than Callender himself when his efforts propelled Adams out of office and Thomas Jefferson into the presidency, and no one could have been more justified in the expectation that those efforts and his consequent martyrdom would be amply compensated for by the man who had derived the greatest benefit from them. But this expectation has been revealed to have little more validity than the fantastical notion that this mosquito-infested wilderness through which he is walking might be the august capital city of a great nation.
Although it is early April, the weather belongs to July, and Callender is aware of the rank effluvium being suffused by his own person and wardrobe. He remained naked much of the previous day, as he scrubbed his solitary suit of clothing and then waited for it to dry. He had worn those same clothes every day of his imprisonment and, despite numerous washings, had never been able to rid them of the fetid stench of his cell. This morning, lifting his coat and breeches to his nose, he concluded that his efforts had at last met with success, but now, thanks to the heat of the sun and of his own body, he knows that he will never cease smelling of the jailhouse until he has the funds to purchase an entirely new wardrobe.
But maybe that is a good thing. Maybe nothing would be better than for Thomas Jefferson to experience this mere hint of the suffering that James T. Callender endured on his behalf. Maybe then he will comprehend the rankness of his own failure to live up to his obligations.
Callender’s requests could hardly have been more humble: the mere two hundred dollars that Thomas Jefferson has already promised him and an appointment as postmaster of Richmond. Is that too much to ask? The money would only cover the fine he had to pay after his conviction, and the job could hardly be more innocuous, nor easier for a president to effect. The current postmaster is, after all, a Federalist, and it is only in the government’s best interests to purge every last Federalist occupying an administrative post.
While Thomas Jefferson seems to have entirely given up answering his letters, Callender does not see how the man could possibly deny the justice of his requests once he has been confronted by them in person.
A hot day indeed, and a brilliant one, especially once he ventures across the muddy plain that surrounds the president’s mansion—so brilliant that he can see almost nothing once he has stepped into the building itself. But he can hear Thomas Jefferson’s voice echoing down a corridor to his right. And even though Callender can still make out little more than floating wads of darkness and smears of illumination reflected off polished floors, he hurries in the direction of the voice, knowing that Jefferson could well choose to avoid him if given the chance.
Callender has hardly taken two steps, however, when a figure looms out of the obscurity and catches him by the elbow. It is James Madison, Jefferson’s lackey and attack dog. “Mr. Callender!” he says. “What a surprise! Might I trouble you for a moment of your time?”
J
ames T. Callender tugs his elbow from Madison’s grasp and says, “I have essential business with the president.”
“Yes, yes—I’m sure you do. But I need to have a word with you first. It’s important.”
This time Madison grips Callender’s arm with such force that it would be impossible to escape without a struggle. “Right here,” he says, and all but shoves Callender through the door into an office, pleasantly decorated with mahogany furniture and gilt-framed paintings and suffused with golden daylight. “Please,” says Madison, indicating a chair in front of the desk, behind which he himself takes a seat.
“I have to talk to the president immediately,” says Callender.
“I’m aware of that,” says Madison. “But I have to speak to you first.” He indicates the chair again, and Callender, thinking better of making a dash for the door, finally sits. He pulls his flask from his pocket and takes a deep swallow but pointedly does not offer any to Madison.
Everything transpires exactly as Callender expects. The corruptive magnetism of power cannot be resisted. Within the precincts of Monticello, Thomas Jefferson was an immensely articulate opponent of all forms of power, and so Callender dared to imagine he might prove truer to his own principles than most. But in the end, words and principles are less substantial than the breath it takes to speak them, and they have no force except insofar as they prettify brutal self-interest. Now that Thomas Jefferson has achieved the most powerful position in the land, his own words and principles are only an embarrassment, because they expose, by contrast, the true nakedness of his greed.
This is precisely what Madison is referring to—although he himself may be entirely unaware of the fact—with all his sanctimonious chatter about “practicality,” “indiscretion” and “extremism.” And so Callender cuts him off in midsentence by getting to his feet and declaring, “I have no business with you, but only with the president.”
In fact, Callender has just abandoned all of the arguments he was formulating over the last several days. Thomas Jefferson may now be insensible to argument, but he will not be insensible to Callender’s physical presence, nor to the threats that Callender now realizes he has no choice but to make. Once a man’s soul has been infected by power, he will heed only those who might help him increase his power and those who might take his power away. Since Callender is no longer welcome as a member of the former category, he will do his damnedest to occupy the latter.
As soon as he emerges from Madison’s office, he makes straight for the corridor down which he can still hear Thomas Jefferson’s voice resounding. But Madison, not two steps behind him, calls out to a pair of soldiers, and after some hasty contention involving insults, grunts and an elbow to the cheekbone, Callender’s arm is wrenched up behind his back and he is marched out into the brilliant day. Some hundred yards from the presidential mansion, he is let go and told that if he dares to enter the building again, he will be shot on sight.
Callender wants to laugh at the retreating backs of the soldiers, but he can’t quite manage it. The reason he wants to laugh is that he knows Thomas Jefferson goes for a ride every afternoon, and so all he—James T. Callender—has to do to have his moment with the president is sit down within sight of the stables and wait. He walks around to the rear of the mansion and finds a comfortable place to sit, on a rock outcropping beside a dirt track designated as New York Avenue.
There is only one thing wrong with this plan: Between his trip from his hotel that morning and his audience with Madison, Callender has already emptied his flask and he is not at all sure he will have the necessary fortitude to confront Thomas Jefferson without another swallow or two.
Even in so imaginary a city as Washington, there can’t be very much distance between taverns, so Callender sets off and does not have to walk even a quarter mile before he finds himself sitting at a table, a glass of brandy in front of him and his flask refilled. He would have been back at his lookout point beside New York Avenue within fifteen minutes, but he gets into an argument about the superiority of militias to a standing army and ends up not starting back to his post until the sun is a good third past its zenith. He walks with heavy steps, all but certain that Thomas Jefferson has already returned from his ride. But then, still some twenty yards from the rock outcropping, he catches sight of a tall man on a bay stallion just approaching along New York Avenue. Lifting his coat hems with each of his hands, Callender sprints until he is standing directly in front of the bay and its rider.
“Now you have no choice but to hear me out!” he declares between gasps.
“There’s no point in wasting your breath,” says Thomas Jefferson. “Randolph has given up his suit, and you will have your money forthwith.” He tugs the horse’s reins to the right, but Callender leaps again into his path, before the horse has taken half a step.
“Damn the money!” he shouts. “I don’t care a pig’s prick for the money! I only want my just and deserved recompense for the services I have rendered you!”
Thomas Jefferson yanks the reins a second time. “I will not discuss this matter any further,” he says as he passes. “You have been more than adequately compensated for your work. I agree that your imprisonment was a travesty of the law, but I pardoned you as soon as I took office, and now I have seen to it that your fine will be returned to you. I owe you nothing more and consider our association ended.”
Callender shambles alongside the horse as Thomas Jefferson speaks. Several times he reaches for the horse’s reins, intending to bring it to a halt, but they repeatedly elude his fingers. Only when the horse bucks and grazes his knee with a hoof does Callender leap back and give up his efforts.
“You’re fucking arse wipe, Jefferson!” he shouts at the president’s retreating back. “You’re twice the tyrant that Adams was, and even Washington would be staggered by your self-serving hypocrisy. You’re the fucking traitor! Do you hear me? You don’t give a rat’s arse for democracy! But you can’t escape your own actions! Mark my words: Even you don’t have the power to change the facts! I know why you’re always in such a hurry to get back to Monticello! I know that every word you have ever uttered about niggers is a damnable lie! Rind may have been too afraid to publish what he knew, but I am not! Do you hear me? I am not!”
It is well known that the man, whom it delighteth the people to honor, keeps, and for many years past has kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves. Her name is SALLY. The name of her eldest son is TOM. His features are said to bear a striking although sable resemblance to those of the president himself. The boy is ten or twelve years of age. His mother went to France in the same vessel with Mr. Jefferson and his two daughters. The delicacy of this arrangement must strike every person of common sensibilities. What a sublime pattern for an American ambassador to place before the eyes of two young ladies! . . . By this wench Sally, our president has had several children. . . . THE AFRICAN VENUS is said to officiate, as housekeeper at Monticello.
—James T. Callender
Richmond Recorder
September 1, 1802
On September 3, 1802, Mr. Lilly sends Tom Shackelford into Charlottesville to dispatch several barrels of nails to Baltimore and London. Sally Hemings goes with him so that she might visit Mickel’s Millinery to buy cloth for the quilts she is making for Maria’s son, Francis, and for her own little Harriet, who is a year and a half old. But also it is a fine day for a ride: sunny and coolish, one of those days in which the sky seems to have expanded and the breezes to move about more freely—an enormous relief after three solid weeks of nearly one-hundred-degree heat.
She gets off the wagon at the stage office and walks east on Main Street, which is still muddy from the previous day’s thunderstorm. A white man in shirtsleeves and a pink waistcoat is sitting on a bench in front of a grocery, smoking a pipe. Sally Hemings’s eye is drawn to him more by his perfect stillness than anything else. He is gaunt, with deltas of shadow under his cheekbones.
His brow is gnarled, one corner of his mouth is pulled down and his china-blue eyes are staring directly at her. “Yellow bitch!” he says, and spits at her feet.
Sally Hemings is so shocked that she stops in her tracks.
“Abel!” the man shouts through the grocer’s door. “Come on out here! Jefferson’s nigger slut is right in front of your store!”
“What?” a voice calls from the dark interior.
“Just come on out! That yellow bitch whore is right here! Right on your doorstep!”
Sally Hemings has lifted the skirt of her gown and is hurrying with her head lowered along the muddy street.
“Dusky Sal!” a voice calls from behind her. “Dusky Sal!”
She hears laughter—from two men and a woman.
She doesn’t know where she is going; she only wants to put as much distance between herself and the man at the grocery as she can. But other people have heard the shouting and have stopped in twos and threes to watch her go by.
“That’s her,” one woman tells another as she passes.
“Who?” says her friend.
A man lurches in front of her—drunk, or pretending to be drunk—then gives her upper arm a stinging, three-fingered slap as she dodges past. She hears several people speak the words “nigger wife.”
At last she is in Mickel’s Millinery, the door shut behind her and its little bell still jingling. She leans her back against the door for half a second, then steps away, trying to regain her self-possession.
Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings Page 45