Read Online Jefferson's Sons by Kimberly Bradley - Free Book Online

Edith a big piece of Turkey red cloth. Miss Edith cut it up and made it into a headscarf for herself, a neck-scarf for Joe, and a tiny little coat for James. She said that way everybody could see they were all one family. Beverly liked that. He wished his family could do the same—him, Mama, Harriet, Maddy, and Master Jefferson. But Mama didn’t say anything about it, so Beverly kept quiet too.
    Baby James and Maddy were both just two years old. Both of them were learning to talk. James said Maddy’s name first. He pointed his finger at Maddy and said, “Mah! Mah!” while Beverly and Harriet cheered. Maddy took a few days longer. He was sitting on the floor of the cabin one morning when Miss Edith came in carrying James. Maddy looked up and said “Hi, James!” like he’d been saying it for months already.
    The great house was packed full for the holiday. Miss Martha came, of course, and her crabby husband and her horde of children, and so did aunts and uncles and cousins, and guests whose names Beverly never learned. He stayed busier than ever, hauling wood and water, taking ashes away and poking up fires.
    Burwell spent half the day fetching wine and French cheeses out of the fancy cellar storerooms. Those rooms were kept locked, and only Burwell had a key. Beverly wasn’t sure why. There were rules about what you could take and what you couldn’t. Taking anything out of the great house, including the fancy storerooms, was stealing. It was flat wrong and you would be whipped for it. Taking things out of the cabins, or swiping the vegetables folks grew on their own, that was stealing too. But helping yourself to a bit of extra salt pork from the smokehouse, or a handful of corn from the stables for chicken feed, or a spare potato or two from the main gardens—that wasn’t stealing. That was justice. The enslaved workers grew the crops. They tended the gardens, the fields, the orchards, and the animals. Anything they put into their own pockets was no more than what should have been theirs already.
    Beverly asked Mama once why they didn’t raise chickens or grow vegetables. Everyone else did, even Joe Fossett and Uncle Peter. Mama lifted her chin, proud. “I don’t sell things to Master Jefferson,” she said. “If we need money he will give us some.”
    Beverly couldn’t remember Mama asking for money, but he was glad to know she could have some if she needed it. “Maybe you could buy a piece of fancy cloth,” he said, “and make Master Jefferson a shirt from it, and then make me something out of the scraps.”
    â€œOh, Beverly,” Mama said.
    â€œJust the scraps,” said Beverly. “So we look like—”
    Mama cut him off. “If we looked like all one family,” she said, “what kind of secret would it be?”
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    Master Jefferson—or Papa, as Beverly still called him in his heart—went back to Washington like always. Beverly missed him. Even if his father didn’t talk to him, Beverly felt like he had a father when Master Jefferson was nearby. Now the quiet mountaintop seemed lonely and forlorn. Some days clouds hung down so far upon the mountain that the cabins and the great house poked out the top of them. The tip of the mountain, with the house and cabins, looked like an island on a sea of cloud. “Is this like the ocean?” Beverly asked Mama.
    She drew her shawl around her shoulders. “Very much like the ocean,” she said, “only you don’t get seasick here.”
    That night Mama told them again about her trip to France. “When Mrs. Jefferson died,” she said, “Miss Martha was ten years old. I was nine, Miss Maria was four, and little Miss Lucy had just been born.
    â€œThe little girls were so small that when Master Jefferson went to France, not long after, he only took Miss Martha with him. He sent Maria and Lucy to live with their aunt, Mrs. Eppes,