Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

When Thomas Jefferson first arrived, a small man in spectacles with an almost feminine voice was saying that he would not be able to take a position on the resolution — a funding matter as far as Thomas Jefferson could tell — until he had consulted with the people back in Carlisle who had elected him.

“Good God, man!” shouted another delegate (from New York, Thomas Jefferson thought). “Don’t you have your own mind? Do you think the good people of Carlisle sent you here to be a stuffed pillow?”

The original speaker replied mildly, seeming nauseated with disdain, “I thought this body was meant to be a democratic assembly of representatives, not a parliament of petty monarchs.” With that, he left the lectern and took a seat at one of the tables, where a neighbor gave him a pat on the back. The New York delegate flung both hands in the air and said something that Thomas Jefferson couldn’t hear but that inspired a round of hoots and guffaws at his table.

After that, a bemused-looking man of about forty walked to within an arm’s length of the lectern and spoke in a voice that reminded Thomas Jefferson of the jingling of sleigh bells. “The committee will be making its report momentarily. Please don’t leave!” This announcement was met with groans, but the words were heeded. No one left. Servants were summoned. Bottles of cider and wine were brought to the tables. Pipes were lit. And very soon the urgent matters this meeting had been convened to discuss were entirely abandoned in favor of tales about the catastrophes and feats of athleticism known to have occurred in and around bordellos.

At present, the only people who truly seem to be considering matters of war and independence are seated at the table in the corner to which the bemused-looking man retired. Thomas Jefferson would like to eavesdrop on their conversation, but, having suffered his whole life from a morbid shyness in large groups, he doesn’t dare go anywhere near. At the mere thought, a trembling comes into his fingertips and he is taken by an irresistible restlessness.

He lowers his hand from his cheek, sticks his thumbs into the waist of his breeches and begins to pace along the wall, keeping his head lowered and his brow furrowed, in the hope that anyone observing him might think he is deep in cogitation. Each time he stops and reverses direction, he cannot help but glance toward the corner table, and on one such occasion notices the bemused man scrutinizing him. Feeling that he has been unmasked as a charlatan, a twist of dizziness comes into his skull and his whole body breaks into a hot sweat. He has to leave the room.

A door at the end of the hallway leads into the dark garden behind the State House. No sooner is he standing in the moist coolness of the deepening evening than his head begins to clear. Already he hates Philadelphia. He wonders if he shouldn’t just have Jupiter and Bob Hemings pack his carriage in the morning and take him back to Virginia.

The sky is a metallic navy blue directly overhead and lightening toward a deep teal in the west. Thomas Jefferson can make out the silhouette of the roofs of the buildings across the street and of the trees and bushes in this very yard — which is surrounded by a high brick wall, faintly visible in the gloaming. He hears the mumble-grunt of two men talking to his right and a splattering of urine on bare earth. He cannot make out a word either is saying, but he also feels the need to urinate, so he walks toward the opposite wall, where he waits, legs spread, his penis in the evening air, until the two men have gone back inside. Once his own urine begins to flow, the relief is so great that he groans aloud.

As he rebuttons his breeches, he contemplates walking right through the building and back out onto the street, where he might perhaps find a hospitable tavern. He is now distinctly hungry. But instead he returns to the yellow room.

He is not even through the door when the bemused man — no longer seeming remotely bemused — is eyeing him again. As Thomas Jefferson makes his way back to the spot against the wall that he occupied for most of his time in the room, he wishes he knew someone well enough to ask for a glass of wine.

He reinserts his thumbs beneath the waist of his breeches and prepares to resume his contemplative pacing. But now the man who has been watching him has gotten to his feet. As the man starts across the room, the bemused expression comes back onto his face. Thomas Jefferson looks away, his entire body simultaneously heating and chilling with sweat. The man is smiling as he walks, though perhaps there is a faint perturbation on his brow. Attempting a smile of his own, Thomas Jefferson wipes his palms against his waistcoat and takes a step in the direction of the advancing man.

“Pardon me,” says the man. “You wouldn’t by any chance be Peyton Randolph’s nephew?”

“Cousin,” says Thomas Jefferson, having to force himself to speak above a whisper.

The man wrinkles his brow and leans his head closer. “Pardon?”

“Randolph’s cousin ,” Thomas Jefferson says more loudly. “I’m his cousin.”

“Ah!” says the man. “But you’re Jefferson, are you not?”

Thomas Jefferson nods. “Yes.”

The man’s eyes squeeze into arcs of delight, and his small mouth forms a distinctly U-shaped smile between his heavy cheeks. “Welcome! Welcome! I am so happy to meet you!” He shakes Thomas Jefferson’s hand vigorously with both of his. “I’m Adams. John Adams.”

Thomas Jefferson cannot speak. There is no person he has been more eager to meet than this very man still clutching his hand so forcefully.

“I must confess to being a great admirer of your ‘Summary’ for the Virginia delegation,” says Adams. “I don’t think that anyone has argued our cause half so memorably and succinctly as you have. It is masterful work — absolutely masterful!”

Thomas Jefferson can hardly believe that he has even met John Adams, let alone that he is hearing such praise. It is a long moment before he can bring himself to utter a quiet “Thank you.”

“I think we would all be much enlightened if you were to honor us with an address concerning your ideas.” At last Adams lets go of Thomas Jefferson’s hand. “Tomorrow afternoon perhaps?”

A small noise comes out of Thomas Jefferson’s throat.

“Excuse me?” says Adams.

The younger man’s lips move, but still no words emerge. His face has gone paper white. Droplets tremble on his upper lip.

“I’m sorry,” says Adams, a sharp concern in his large brown eyes. “Are you ill?”

“No… I just…”

Adams leans yet closer and turns his right ear toward Thomas Jefferson. “Yes?”

“The address… I… Thank you, but…” Thomas Jefferson has to lick his lips before he can continue. “But… I… I… can’t.”

Thomas Jefferson is not able to stop his dream. He lies, flushed and sweating in the frigid darkness, willing his mind to be clear, his thoughts to be practical and significant— Should a democracy grant citizens the right to resist subpoenas? But the dream moves within his thoughts as if it were their true nature.

And in his dream Sally Hemings’s invention has become a countryside of steel wheels, leather bellows and chains. And she herself is so resplendent it is almost impossible to look at her as she leads him across shuddering metal bridges, between house-high pistons that plunge and surge and jet shrieking towers of steam, between massive brass cauldrons, the polished flanks of which reveal his face as a gnarled dab of pink that smears and shrinks with his every step and his arms and legs as the ungainly stilts of a mantis or a giraffe.

Up diamond staircases that ring underfoot, past rows of copper clocks whose numbered faces tell something other than time. Smell of oil and dust and steam. Ceaseless throbbing. A kettledrum rumble. Bangs and clanks and rattles. And through it all, Sally Hemings, her white shift little more than a mist about her dazzling body, drifts up ladders, down corridors, across humming fields as if she herself were only a shred of steam, while Thomas Jefferson must wrench his feet off the ground with every step and feel his throat go raw from lack of breath and his heart kick in his chest.