Jefferson's Sons (21 page)

“What do you usually do?” Harriet said. “Use your head, Maddy. You're not the one having the baby, you don't have to do anything special.”

Maddy felt like he did. Maria was a big girl, eight years old, and usually she watched Patsy and Betsy-Ann, but usually Miss Edith was in the kitchen making breakfast, and it felt strange to know she was having a baby instead. “Do we go eat?” he asked James.

“Might as well,” James said.

Eston grabbed Maddy's hand. “I'm hungry.”

The door to the Fossetts' room stood propped open, and as they walked past it Maddy could hear the midwife talking to Miss Edith inside. He carefully looked the other way. So did James and Eston. None of them wanted to see a baby half-born. The girls stopped and waved, and tried to go in and talk to their mother, but James pushed them into the kitchen.

Fanny had hot corn cakes ready, and milk to drink. “You all ought to go somewhere else,” she said. “You're already fidgety. Babies take a long time.”

James shook his head. “Not this one.” He wiped the milk off his upper lip with the back of his hand.

Fanny laughed at him. “How would you know?”

“I've got a feeling.” James grinned. “My brother's in a hurry, he's coming fast.”

At that exact second the baby screamed. It was a long, loud, angry wail, as though the baby had not wanted to be born. Maddy and Eston and James and Maria all threw down their plates and jumped up, quick, but Fanny moved faster. She barred the door with her wooden spoon. “You are not going anywhere,” she said. “You will sit on that bench until I say so. Your mother does not want an audience yet.”

They sat. Maddy's mama came in, and kissed and hugged them all around. “The baby just yelled,” Maddy said. “It's born.”

Mama's eyes were sparkling. “I know,” she said. “I took a little look at it. The midwife's got to clean it up, and then clean up Miss Edith.”

“I told them to sit until I said so,” Fanny said.

“Good,” said Mama.

“Boy or girl?” asked James.

Mama's eyes sparkled more. “I'll let your mama tell you,” she said.

Time went by at a crawl even though Fanny gave them jobs to do. Maddy didn't know what Fanny was listening for or how she knew what was happening on the other side of the kitchen wall, but finally she nodded and said, “James. Go get your father from the shop. Then you can all go in together.”

The girls got up and ran out with James. Maddy and Eston waited until they had gotten Joe Fossett and come back. After a few minutes they followed them into the Fossetts' room.

Miss Edith lay flat on the bed, covered with a sheet, looking sweaty but happy. Joe Fossett sat beside her, cradling a tiny baby wrapped tight in a blanket. Joe Fossett's hands were almost as big as the baby.

“We've named him Peter,” Miss Edith said.

Maddy came closer. The baby stared at him with wide black eyes. “Hello, Peter Fossett,” Maddy said.

James put his arm around his father's shoulder and touched the baby with his finger. “See, Maddy,” he said. “We've both got little brothers now.”

James was just nuts for baby Peter. At night he sat in the doorway of their room with Peter on his lap, and made faces at the baby and waggled his fingers in front of his nose. The first morning Peter smiled, James woke Maddy up to tell him the news. Whenever Maddy or Beverly or Eston practiced the violin, James popped his head into their room and said, “Come on over, and play that for my brother. He likes it.” Sometimes, when Peter was fussy, James asked Maddy to play for him special.

“Was I that excited when Eston was born?” Maddy asked Mama.

Mama laughed. “You liked Eston fine, but you weren't as wound up as James. I've never seen anybody make as much fuss over a baby as James.”

That summer Maddy finally began working for Uncle John. He swept shavings and carried tools, just like Beverly did when he began. Uncle John taught him the names of the tools and how they were used, and the different kinds of wood and what each was good for. Maddy took a piece of charcoal and labeled the wood in the shop, alder, pine, hickory, chestnut.

“That's helpful, isn't it?”

“It would be,” Beverly said, “if we couldn't already tell what kind of wood it was just by looking.”

“Now, Beverly,” Uncle John chided him. “Words are fine things.”

“Beverly knows that,” Maddy said. “He collects them.”

“Loquacious,” Uncle John said, with a glint in his eye. “Commotion, bedlam, infliction.”

“What's that mean?” Maddy asked.

“Means we talk too much,” Beverly said. “How about we try for tranquility.”

Maddy swept awhile in silent tranquility. Then he said to Uncle John, “Say that first word again.”

“Loquacious,” Uncle John said. He went to one of the woodshop cabinets and pulled out a heavy green-bound book. It was much bigger than Maddy's blue primer or the little book of stories Miss Ellen had given him. “Look it up,” Uncle John said. “Loquacious.
L-o-q
—”

Maddy stared at the green book. “Look it up?”

“This is a dictionary,” Uncle John said. “A man named Mr. Webster wrote it. You can look up any word there is, any word at all, and this book will tell you what it means.” He showed Maddy how to go through the pages, finding first
l,
then
lo,
then
loq,
and then, right beneath
lopping, loquacious
.

“Talkative,”
Maddy read.
“Given to continual talking.”
He grinned. “Eston is a loquacious fool. Where'd you get this book?”

“Miss Cornelia gave it to me,” Uncle John said. “She said it would help me with the letters I write.”

“Not Miss Ellen?” Maddy asked.

Uncle John shook his head. “Miss Cornelia. Mighty handsome gift, wouldn't you say?”

“Can I look up—can I look up all my words?” Maddy meant all the words in the primer, the ones he could read but didn't understand.

“In time,” Uncle John said. “We've got to get our work done. You bring your primer tomorrow, you can look up a couple of words a day.”

Maddy looked at the big, beautiful book. He looked at Beverly. “How come you didn't tell me?”

“I didn't know,” Beverly said.

Uncle John closed the book and put it back in the cabinet. “Which I only got last week,” he said. “Nobody's holding out on you boys. But you'll not talk too much about it, I hope.”

“Don't worry,” Beverly said. “We won't tell Miss Martha.”

 

Bedlam: a place appropriated for lunatics. Commotion: agitation, perturbation. Well, that was no help. Maddy looked those up too. Agitation: disturbance of tranquility. Ah. Beverly's favorite word. Maddy smiled. And perturbation: disturbance, disorder.

There were so many words in that dictionary. Maddy worked his way through it, day after day, in the short spurts of time Uncle John would allow. All the words in the primer that confused him—and then he had a great burst of thought. “That declaration,” he said.

“What declaration?” Uncle John said. “I didn't hear anybody declaring.”

“It's lunchtime,” Beverly said. “I declare.”

Maddy brushed them aside. “The one in the hallway.”

Uncle John pursed his lips like he disapproved, but after a bit he said, “Have at it, young'un. Just don't be in the great house when you shouldn't be. You're too old for that now.”

 

It turned out that it wasn't the individual words of the declaration that were hard to understand: It was the way the words, each simple enough by itself, were arranged into complicated sentences. Maddy had to read a bit, and then wait, and think, and read a bit more, and think a bit more. When he finally understood the long first paragraph he felt sad.

“Is slavery a form of government?” he asked Uncle John.

“The government allows slavery,” Uncle John replied.

“Governments rule by consent of the people,”
Beverly cut in. “Haven't you gotten to that part yet?” So Beverly had read the declaration too; Maddy had wondered. “For sure, nobody's giving their consent to be a slave. It's not a government.”

“If it was,” Maddy said, “we could get rid of it.”

“I suppose,” said Uncle John. “You best leave all that, Maddy. Thinking about it won't make it better. Come hold this chair rail for me while I heat up some glue.”

 

“Let's both save our money,” Maddy said to James. “When I'm twenty-one, Master Jefferson will set me free. Then we'll put our money together and buy you your freedom. And we'll go out west together, just like we said.”

James raised an eyebrow. “What, you'd buy me? I'd belong to you?”

“'Course not. I'll give you what money I've got, and you can buy yourself.”

James grinned. “All right. Only now we've got to save up extra, so we can buy Peter's freedom too. I'm not leaving him behind.”

They wouldn't be twenty-one for more than ten years. Maddy hated to think of how long that was. Once, when he and James saw Master Jefferson on his horse a long way off, Maddy was struck by how frail Master Jefferson looked. James must have thought the same thing, because he turned to Maddy and asked, “What happens if he dies before you're twenty-one? Do you still get to be free?”

“I don't know,” Maddy said. “Hope he don't die.”

Later Mama said, “I trust him, Maddy. He'll get it fixed in time.”

“If he just keeled over dead tomorrow—”

“I trust him,” Mama said.

Maddy knew he didn't need to trust Master Jefferson. He only needed to trust Mama. But sometimes even that was hard to do. Maddy saved his money. He had over two dollars now.

 

Joe Fossett asked Master Jefferson if James could apprentice in the blacksmith shop, and Master Jefferson agreed. So now, in the early summer mornings, Maddy and James both went off to work like men. In Maddy's family's room only Eston was left in the big bed, waiting for Mama to come home, and even though he was a big boy, seven years old, he didn't like that at all. “Go see Miss Fanny,” Harriet said, stroking his head when he complained. “She'll be glad to see you. You can help her.” Miss Fanny was still running the kitchen for Miss Edith until Miss Edith got over having a baby.

“I don't want to help Miss Fanny,” Eston said, opening his eyes wide at Harriet. “I'm a little boy. I'm too little to help her.” He stuck out his lower lip and tried to look pitiful. “I need somebody to help me.”

Harriet laughed and hugged him. “You're a good little boy,” she said. Harriet snuck a skein of woolen yarn out of the textile shop and traded it with Miss Fanny for a pair of laying hens. She gave the hens to Eston. Every morning Eston had to let his hens out of the coop Beverly built for them, and throw them some grain, and get them water. Then he collected their eggs—always one, more often two—and took them to Miss Fanny. He'd sell them to her, and sometimes she'd turn right around and cook him one for breakfast. She wasn't supposed to do that—eggs were too expensive for slaves to eat—and it made Eston giggle. He said, “You paid me to eat that egg.”

“You could pay me to eat three of them,” Maddy offered. Miss Fanny laughed and whapped him with her spoon.

Later Eston came into the workshop. He handed Maddy half a leftover fried egg sandwiched between two pieces of bread. “It came off the breakfast table,” he said. “Miss Martha didn't finish it.” Mmm, Maddy loved fried egg.

 

When the weather grew cold again and work slowed in the carpentry shop, Burwell sent for Beverly and Maddy to wait table at the great house. Master Jefferson still had every kind of visitor, from strangers who dropped by and ended up staying four days, to all Miss Martha's folks, to Mr. and Mrs. Madison, who visited so often that one of the bedrooms was named after them. If fewer than a dozen people sat down to dinner, Burwell and Beverly handled it just the two of them, but if there was more than that they started having Maddy work the table too.

Master Jefferson liked a tranquil dining room. He didn't want servants standing behind every chair, or constantly walking in and out of the room. He'd invented things to make serving dinner easier.

On one side of the dining room was an alcove with a special swinging door. Instead of having hinges down one side like a regular door, it swung around on an axle in its center. The door had shelves on both sides. When the food was ready, one of the girls working for Miss Edith carried it down the basement hallway to the dumbwaiter there. A dumbwaiter was a box on a pulley system that could be hauled up and down between floors. The girl stacked the food on the shelves in the dumbwaiter. Then another girl on the main floor hauled the dumbwaiter up, took out the dishes, and put them on the shelves of the swinging door. Beverly swung it around, and all the food came into the dining room at once without the girls having to carry it in and out. When the dishes were empty Beverly sent them out of the room the same way.