“That’s all right,” says Sally Hemings.
“Mais non!” He turns to Thomas Jefferson. “We can clear off one of these chairs for the young lady, can’t we, Tom?”
“No, really,” insists Sally Hemings.
The marquis is leaning forward to rise from his chair but now hesitates.
“Are you sure, Sally?” says Thomas Jefferson. His voice is kindly, and there is a tenderness in his gaze that brings back her sorrow. Her sorrow and something else. This is the first time he has looked into her eyes for more than an instant in the six weeks since the night he came into her room. Her knees are trembling beneath her petticoats and gown.
“Yes,” she says. “I was just on my way upstairs.”
The marquis leans back in his chair. “Well, we won’t keep you.” He takes a sip from his own glass. “But we would both like to know what you think about something.” He glances at Thomas Jefferson, who presses his hands flat together as if he were praying and holds the tips of his fingers against his mouth. “We’d like to know,” the marquis continues, “what you think of an idea that we have been discussing. It concerns the definition of liberty or, more exactly, the liberty of people living together under one government. We would like to define liberty as the freedom to do whatever one wants, as long as that does not cause injury to anyone else or deprive people of their basic rights, including the right to liberty. What do you think of that idea?”
Sally Hemings is silent. She feels Thomas Jefferson looking at her, but she doesn’t look in his direction. Her knees are trembling so violently now that the skirt of her dress has begun to shake.
“It’s all right,” says Thomas Jefferson.
“Let the girl answer,” says the marquis. He is not smiling now. He no longer seems the least bit funny or kind.
“Sally,” says Thomas Jefferson, “you don’t have to say anything if you would rather not.”
“It’s a simple question,” says the marquis. “Should people be free to do whatever they want as long as they don’t hurt anyone else?”
After a long moment, Sally says, “I suppose that would be all right. If they don’t hurt anybody, I mean. But I don’t know. I’d have to think about it for a bit. It seems to me that there are a lot of things that don’t hurt anybody else, but I’m not sure if people should really do all of them. Like hurt animals. I don’t know if people should be able to do that if there isn’t a good reason.”
“Well said,” says Thomas Jefferson, who is leaning forward now, his hands still pressed together in front of his mouth.
“What about depriving people of their liberty?” says the marquis. “Do you think that one man should be free to deprive another man of his freedom?”
Thomas Jefferson falls back into his chair again, his forehead gnarled with uneasiness, his eyes still gleaming.
“What do you think?” says the marquis. “Do we have the right to deprive other people of their liberty if they have not committed a crime?”
“Gilbert,” says Thomas Jefferson. “I think you are being inconsiderate.”
“Let her speak,” says the marquis.
“I think…” says Sally Hemings. “I think that’s another question I have to think about some more.”
“But you must have an opinion!” the marquis says impatiently. “Do you think that someone should have the right to deprive you of your liberty if you haven’t broken the law?”
Sally Hemings’s eyes are hot with tears. Her vision blurs.
“Gilbert!” Thomas Jefferson slaps his hand down on the desk. “This is pointless and cruel.”
“Let her speak,” the marquis says firmly. “What do you think, Sarah?”
“I think,” she says, her voice trembling, “that there is a difference between the way things are and the way they should be.”
“Is that all?” says the marquis.
“Yes, my lord.”
~ ~ ~
Some days later I make my camp in a shallow declivity that gives me partial shelter from a cold wind that has been blowing steadily from the northwest since first light, though never with very much force. The wind is strong enough to keep blowing out my matches, however. And I am only able to get my fire going by first crouching to shelter the match and kindling with my body and then by standing upwind of the fire with my sleeping bag open and stretched out behind my back as a windbreak.
I sit back down once the larger logs have begun to burn steadily but soon realize that far from blowing out the fire, the steady wind is causing it to burn much faster than normal and that I am going to have to gather considerably more wood if I want to stay warm until it is light again.
I am casting a long-legged shadow at that dim fringe where the fire’s flickering light fades into the surrounding gloom when I notice two white coals hovering in the darkness some twenty or thirty yards in front of me. Acting as if I haven’t seen anything unusual, I carry the wood I have already gathered back to my camp at an unhurried pace, drop it beside the fire and sit down next to the backpack, where I have left the open buck knife I used to shave sticks into kindling.
I watch the hovering coals only out of the corner of my eye and can tell that they have come considerably closer since I first spotted them. They waver as they approach, and sometimes they disappear. Then they begin to fade into a vertical smear of lesser darkness that gradually, as it brightens, coalesces into the shape of a man. His long, wispy hair is blown across his face by the wind and looks golden in the firelight. He is barefoot. His jeans are worn through at the knees. His T-shirt is filthy and webbed with holes in the vicinity of his belt buckle. His vaguely military jacket is also filthy and missing every one of its buttons. Even before he has stepped into the full light, that lush and acrid odor of a body unwashed for weeks has begun to affect my sinuses and eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Do you mind if I sit down?”
I shrug. He sits.
Then I move my sleeping bag and belongings about a yard away from him, so that more wind can pass between us. If he notices, he doesn’t show it. For a long time, he just stares wordlessly into the fire.
Only when he sweeps his long hair — more gray than gold — out of his face do I realize that he is Thomas Jefferson.
“Oh, my God!” I say.
“What?” He looks at me with a sick-dog squint.
“What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know.” He shakes his head and lifts his hand in a way that indicates weary befuddlement. “I don’t know how I got here. I don’t even know where I am. Do you know where this is?”
I don’t know how to answer this question.
“I’ve just been…” he says, “… well… just walking. And… I don’t know. This place gives me the creeps. You know? It’s like… I mean I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know how I’m going to get out. I walk and walk and walk, and nothing ever changes. You know? I don’t ever get anywhere. I’m just here.” He shakes his head again, but this time expressing only weariness. “This is no way to live.” He looks me straight in the eye. “No. Way. To. Live.”
~ ~ ~
Thomas Jefferson hears the front door slam and light, hurried footsteps, then feminine exhalations in the corridor outside his study and the whispered words, “C’est pas possible!” Leaving his desk, he finds Sally Hemings, gasping with her back to the wall, bonnetless, her hair undone on one side, her eyes wide, looking right at him but showing no trace of recognition. Her hands are flat against the wall, as if in the next instant she is going to push off and flee back down the hall. “Sally?” says Thomas Jefferson, unsure if she has even heard him. “Sally, what’s happened?”