Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings (54 page)

J
ust before Thomas Jefferson stepped into the subway car where he spotted Sally Hemings, he was standing on the platform furiously scribbling into his journal. “Our very perceptions are works of art,” he wrote, “but also moral acts. This is because we are the ones who create the ‘facts' we live by. Nothing we see, or hear, or believe is given to us by God, or is even real in any straightforward way. It is all our construction. All our responsibility. Therefore every perception, even the most fleeting, is a moment of truth, during which our souls are in peril. With every perception we create one particle of the world in which we live. As perception is added to perception, we forge the context in which we act, and therefore our perceptions dictate our acts, our morality, our selves, our souls. It is all our own doing. There is no one else to credit or blame. We wrestle, in every instant of our being, with perdition.” The train was coming into the station as he scribbled the last words—so rapidly he wasn't sure he'd be able to read them when he opened his journal again. He slipped his pen into the journal's spiral binding. There was a roar. A wind struck his face. He flung his journal into his backpack. The train had stopped. He stepped into the car and sat down. Then he recognized those high cheekbones, those narrow cloud gray eyes, that stricken expression that was only her face at rest (she was reading) and that long arc along her rib cage to her pelvis, every inch of which he could still feel beneath his fingers. Then the car filled with the screeches of mechanical birds. She put her book under her arm and her fingers in her ears. Darkness.

T
homas Jefferson is out for a morning walk when he sees Beverly sitting on the nailery porch, his elbow on his knee, his head resting on his hand, the other hand poking at the dust with a stick. He is ten years old and seems entirely unaware of his father's approach or of anything other than the mark his stick is making in the dusty road.

Thomas Jefferson walks straight over to him and, planting his cane firmly between his own feet, calls out, “Good day, sir!”

Beverly lifts his head and, for half an instant, seems not to recognize the man he is looking at. “Good day,” he says softly, his face the picture of melancholy.

“Is anything the matter?” Thomas Jefferson asks.

The boy shrugs.

“What have you been doing?” asks Thomas Jefferson.

“Nothing.” He has made a line in the red dust, and now he crosses it. “Thinking.”

“About what?”

“Nothing.”

Thomas Jefferson does not know whether to be concerned or to reprimand the boy for his rudeness. In the end he says, “That doesn't sound very interesting.”

“I was thinking about a lot of things.” Beverly looks up again and squints his eye against the brilliance of the hazy sky. “Mostly I was thinking about why I can't fly.”

Thomas Jefferson makes a bemused grunt and, clutching his cane with both hands, hunches over a bit to be closer to the boy. “Did you reach a conclusion?”

Beverly seems to think his father has just asked a very stupid question. “I don't have wings,” he said.

“Would you like to have wings?”

“I was thinking about that, too.”

“And?”

“Only if I could still have arms. I don't think I'd like it if I only had
wings. How would I eat? I'd have to have a beak, and I don't want to have a beak.”

Thomas Jefferson laughs. “There are other ways that people can fly than on wings.”

The boy's brow knits with both curiosity and skepticism.

“Come along with me,” says Thomas Jefferson, “and I will tell you about the time your mother and I saw a man fly.”

Beverly flings his stick to the side of the road and gets to his feet. As he walks beside his father on the road leading back to the great house, he hears the story of le Comte de Toytot's ascent in the
ballon.
Thomas Jefferson has nearly finished the story when it becomes apparent to him that the boy does not believe him.

“It is true,” Thomas Jefferson says. “The
ballon
rose over the treetops, and the wind carried it for many miles before the count came down in a field.”

“Did he die?”

“No. The air in the
ballon
cooled very slowly, so he descended to the earth as gently as a feather. Though once he was on the ground, a big wind blew the
ballon
into a river.”

“Did he drown?”

Thomas Jefferson laughs. “No. He was already out of the
ballon.
Nothing bad happened to him at all.”

Beverly stops walking. He is looking at the sky, his eyebrows lifted and his brown eyes filled with an unabashed curiosity.

All at once Thomas Jefferson realizes that what he has been interpreting as skepticism is, in fact, so fierce a desire to believe that it makes Beverly think that what he is hearing is too good to be true, and in this conflict Thomas Jefferson recognizes the two most essential qualities of the philosophical mind: a passion for beautiful ideas coupled with an entirely rational understanding that one's own passion does not make even the most sublimely beautiful idea true.

“But why does hot air make a man fly?” asks Beverly.

Thomas Jefferson explains about hot air being lighter than cool air.

“But when I breathe,” says Beverly, “my breath is hot, but I don't go up in the air.”

Thomas Jefferson explains how the upward force of the hot air has to be greater than the downward force created by weight. “You're too heavy,” he says at last.

“But
why
is hot air lighter than cold air?” asks Beverly.

“It has something to do with the motion,” says Thomas Jefferson. “You've seen the way the air ripples over the brick kiln or the way smoke billows as it rises.” He stops talking, because he realizes that what he is saying does not make sense and that he does not, in fact, know why hot air is lighter.

“The best way to understand how it works,” says Thomas Jefferson, “would be for us to make our own
ballon.
”

The boy's eyes and mouth both go round.

“Not a big one,” says Thomas Jefferson. “It would take much too long to build one that we could actually fly in. But perhaps we could build a small one before dinner.”

“Big enough to fly Hurly?” Hurly, a beagle, used to belong to Betty Hemings, and Beverly has been caring for him during the year since his grandmother died.

“No, Hurly's too heavy, I think.”

“A mouse?”

“Maybe a beetle,” says Thomas Jefferson.

He sends Beverly to his Uncle John for a bit of pine glue, and crosses the lawn to his own chambers to look for a silk scarf and a sheet of vellum. By the time Beverly returns with the glue, Thomas Jefferson has cut the vellum into strips. He glues one strip into a ring and makes a small canoe of the others. Then he uses the glue to attach the four corners of the scarf to the ring and then to attach the edges of the scarf to themselves so that they form a sort of sack. And lastly he dangles the canoe from the bottom of the ring on four threads.

They have finished making the
ballon
by dinner but have to wait until the afternoon to start a twig fire in the brickyard to one side of the kiln. Thomas Jefferson places two pebbles in the canoe to serve as ballast. Beverly does, in fact, manage to trap a beetle, but the only way to keep the insect from immediately crawling out of the canoe would be to kill it, and father and son agree that launching a dead beetle would be entirely beside the point.

When at last the fire is sufficiently hot and low, Thomas Jefferson holds the
ballon
upside down and grips the lowest point of the scarf between his thumb and forefinger. He carefully lifts the scarf so that the ring and the canoe swing to the bottom, and then he gently draws the whole contraption over the fire, instructing Beverly to clip the vellum ring between
two Y-shaped sticks. As soon as the scarf begins to inflate, Thomas Jefferson releases his grip on the top, and he and Beverly are equally excited when the scarf defies gravity and remains aloft.

It takes no more than fifteen seconds for the scarf to completely inflate, and then, at the count of three, Beverly pulls aside the Y-shaped sticks and the
ballon
shoots straight into the air. It doesn't get more than ten feet above the ground, however, before a breeze causes it to lurch onto its side and drop like a shot duck, straight to the earth, narrowly missing Beverly as he dodges to one side.

He cries out in disappointment, then hangs his head. “I wanted it to fly over the trees,” he says.

“Next time,” says Thomas Jefferson.

“No. It will never work.”

“Nonsense!” Thomas Jefferson gives Beverly an encouraging pat, but the boy only shrugs his hand away. Tears sparkle in the corners of his eyes.

“We didn't have enough ballast,” says Thomas Jefferson. “If we'd put in another pebble, it would have gone up straight. Let's give it another try.”

“No,” says Beverly. “It will never work. I can tell.” He starts to walk away.

Mystified by the sudden change in Beverly's mood, Thomas Jefferson says, “I brought plans for the
ballon
your mother and I saw in Paris back with me. They must be in a trunk somewhere. If I can find them, I'll show them to you.”

Beverly looks around at his father but doesn't say anything.

“Perhaps one day,” Thomas Jefferson continues, “we can construct a real
ballon
together—a big one! Maybe even bigger than le Comte de Toytot's! I'll bet the winds could carry us all the way to Charlottesville. Perhaps we could even fly as far as Washington. Wouldn't President Madison be surprised if we were to drop out of the sky and visit him!”

Beverly smiles weakly, then says, “I have to go.”

As the boy walks in the direction of his mother's cabin, Thomas Jefferson bends and picks up the fallen
ballon.
He wants to put a third pebble into the canoe and make another attempt—but not on his own. He holds the top of the
ballon
between his thumb and forefinger, and as Beverly disappears into his mother's door, Thomas Jefferson turns and carries the
ballon
to his own chambers.

Perhaps the boy will feel differently tomorrow.

I
n 1815 Francis C. Gray, a lawyer, asked how many generations of intermarriage with whites would it take for the offspring of a mulatto family to be considered white, and Thomas Jefferson replied by letter: “Our canon considers two crosses with pure white, and a third with any degree of mixture, however small, as clearing the issue of negro blood.” If we consider the relationship of Betty Hemings's mother, Parthenia, with Captain Hemings as the first “crossing” and Betty's own relationship with John Wayles as the second, then, by this calculus, Thomas Jefferson understood that his children with Sally Hemings more than qualified as “white.”

A
s a master Jefferson was kind and indulgent. Under his management his slaves were seldom punished, except for stealing and fighting. They were tried for any offense as at court and allowed to make their own defense. The slave children were nursed until they were three years old, and left with their parents until thirteen. They were then sent to the overseers' wives to learn trades. Every male child's father received $5 at its birth.

Jefferson was a man of sober habits, although his cellars were stocked with wines. No one ever saw him under the influence of liquor. His servants about the house were tasked. If you did your task well you were rewarded; if not, punished. Mrs. Randolph would not let any of the young ladies go anywhere with gentlemen with the exception of their brothers, unless a colored servant accompanied them.

—The Reverend Peter Fossett

“Once the Slave of Thomas Jefferson”

New York Sunday World

January 30, 1898

. . . Mr. Jeff allowed Joey to go into the stable, but only long enough to embrace Edy, tell her of the success of his plans and give her the oatcakes. Afterward, when Joey and I sat shoulder to shoulder on the mounting block just outside the stable, he told me he wasn't sure of the success of his plans. “I don't trust white people anymore,” he said. “Not a one of them thinks a promise to a nigger is a real promise. That Mr. Jones especially. He was just like Mr. Jeff, saying, ‘My heart is breaking. I'm so sorry. I'll do anything I can.' But I saw it in his eyes—all he was thinking was he was gonna get some niggers cheap.”

Cheap because Mr. Jeff had told us that he would cut off the bidding early on our family members so that whoever had promised us to buy them would pay the lowest possible price. “Virtue never flourishes so well,” he told me, “as when it coincides with monetary reward.” This had seemed a wise strategy at the time, but now I wondered if the reward wouldn't undermine the virtue.

“No!” Joey cried, as if he had read my thoughts. His voice wavering, on the verge of breaking into a sob, he continued, “I've got to stop thinking like that. Mr. Jeff made me a promise. I've got to trust him. I've got to have faith.”

My own anxiety and sorrow having reduced me to something close to paralytic numbness, I could only answer Joey by giving his hand a squeeze. If I spoke a single word, I would burst into tears.

The “viewing” began at eight o'clock; the yard around the stable and the whole of the lawn in front of the great house had filled with wagons and carriages. A crowd of forty or fifty white people—mainly men—had gathered in front of the open stable door, and when Mr. Jeff gave the word, they filed into the stable one by one. I had never seen a slave auction, so I had no clear idea of what actually happened at a viewing.

Despite the cold, Mr. Jeff told the slaves to remove their cloaks, coats and shawls so the “visitors” could get “a better look.” And look they did, at all of these dear men, women and children, as if they were merely animals. Arms were squeezed, and thighs; stomachs were poked and grabbed. Fingers were stuck into
open mouths to test the solidity of teeth. At one point a man with bushy black eyebrows and a yellowed periwig approached Joey's second-eldest daughter, Patsy, a fine-featured and stately girl of sixteen, and yanked down the front of her shift, tearing it and exposing one of her breasts. Joey leapt off the mounting block and raced across the yard, shouting at the man in the periwig, “No! You can't do that! Don't you dare touch her!” He was caught and restrained by Mr. Henderson and Mr. Byrd just outside the makeshift fence, but he continued to shout, and the man who had accosted Patsy kept his back turned, as if he didn't hear a word.

Mr. Jeff, however, had heard Joey, and, seeing Patsy clutching the ripped neck of her shift, he immediately walked up to the man, saying, “There is no cause for you to treat a young woman like that.”

“Don't I have the right to see what I'm buying?” the man said.

“If you cannot treat a woman with due respect,” Mr. Jeff said, “I must ask you to leave this plantation immediately.”

“I thought this was an auction, not a cotillion!” the man replied, but he turned away, leaving Patsy staring fixedly up toward the rafters as if she could not bear to see anything around her.

I had trailed after Joey and was standing speechless beside him as he—motionless now, still gripped by the two overseers—watched fiercely while the man in the periwig went on to inspect another young woman.

White people had streamed in ever-greater numbers toward the stable after the commencement of the viewing. One of them, Mr. McFlynn, a cooper from Charlottesville, gaunt and near seventy, with a face the color of a butcher's hands, had arrived just as Mr. Jeff had issued his ultimatum to the man in the periwig, and he had stopped in his tracks not five feet from where I was standing. He snorted at Mr. Jeff's words, and when he saw that the man in the periwig was not going to put up a fight, he raised his arm in my direction and called out, “How much do you want for old master's whore?” Mr. Jeff either didn't hear him or didn't want to dignify his question with a response, so Mr. McFlynn asked again, “How much for old master's whore?” . . .