Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

Not long afterward the actor in the copper-colored wig is again on horseback (saddled this time) and again using his hat as a whip as he careens down one slope of Monticello while a detachment of British dragoons marches up the other.

Then comes the famous moment, the one that Thomas Jefferson has recounted with gratitude and pride scores of times and that his children will recount in their turn, as will their descendants for generations to come: Martin Hemings is standing in the dining room of the great house. One of the dragoons is holding a pistol to Martin’s chest. The British commander, who would seem to be General Cornwallis, although, in fact, Cornwallis was a hundred miles away at the time, has just told Martin he will be shot unless he confesses where his master has gone, and Martin replies, “Fire away, then.”

After these words the British commander’s plump, pink face looms gigantically in the dark theater. It is possible, by observing the alteration of the actor’s features, to actually track the progress of Martin’s statement as it slowly makes its way to the center of the commander’s plump, pink brain. There is a moment of stillness, followed by a nod that is mainly a lowering of eyelids, and then there is a gun blast and the appearance of a single dot of blood on the rim of the commander’s right nostril.

“What!” cries Thomas Jefferson, leaping from his seat. “No! No!”

James and Dolley Madison have also leapt to their feet, but only to drag their friend back down into his seat. People in the back of the theater are shouting for them all to sit down.

“That never happened!” says Thomas Jefferson. “That simply never happened!”

A man sitting behind them taps Thomas Jefferson on the elbow. “For chrissakes! It’s only a movie! Would you just sit down?”

Dolley Madison speaks softly into his ear. “It’s all right, Tom. Just wait, you’ll see, the ending is quite uplifting.”

“Why did you do that?” says Max, dropping the script onto his desk. “Do what?” says Jeremy, who has been lying on the couch under the window, texting his girlfriend.

“I liked that scene.”

“What scene?” Jeremy rests his phone on his solar plexus.

“The one where Sally’s brother says, ‘Fire away!’”

“Oh.” Jeremy swings his bare feet to the floor and sits up. He puts his phone facedown on the couch beside him. “I like it better that way.”

“So what?”

“I think it’s better.”

“But they didn’t shoot him.”

Jeremy shrugs just as his phone sounds the electric clink-clonk of an incoming text. At first he seems to be ignoring the text, but then he picks the phone up, looks at it and puts it down.

“I want to change it back to the way I wrote it,” says Max.

“Why?”

“Because that’s what actually happened, and I think it’s a cool scene.”

“How do you know it happened?”

“It’s in every single one of the books. And anyway Martin was alive until—”

“I don’t believe it.”

“What?”

“That he said that. It’s so fucking corny! So morally fucking uplifting! ‘Fire away!’ That’s like something out of a fucking Victorian children’s story. Like Sunday school.” His unanswered text clink-clonk s a second time. “Hold on a second.” He thumbs a one-word message into the phone and hits SEND.

“But you have him say it,” says Max.

Jeremy looks at him blankly.

“‘Fire away,’” says Max. “That’s the part you left in.”

“Yeah, but shooting him makes it all ironic.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He gets all moralistic and full of himself, then — whammo! — he’s dead. I think that’s funny.”

“I think you’re a fucking sick individual.”

“It’s ironic.” There’s another clink-clonk. Jeremy picks up his phone, smiles and sets it down. “But the main thing is that it puts Jefferson in more danger. Now the audience knows that the British are these actual evil bastards, so… you know, everybody will be on the edge of their seats. Maybe we can even have a chase scene.”

“Oh, come on!”

“But it also makes Jefferson look better. The way it really happened, he seems like a total coward. Quitting being governor and everything. And Martin seems way braver than him.”

“Maybe he was.”

“But Jefferson’s our protagonist. Who’s going to want to see a movie about a slave-owning, slave-fucking hypocrite who’s also a total coward? We’ve got to give the audience something to hang on to here. We’ve got to give them someone they can love.”

“But he wrote the Declaration of Independence.”

“So the fuck what!”

“He invented the swivel chair!” Max laughs as he swivels his own chair, first left, then right.

“Is that true?”

“Absolutely! You can look it up on Wikipedia.”

Jeremy laughs.

“Let me finish this fucking thing.” Max picks up the script.

Jeremy picks up his phone. “Clare’s mother’s hassling her again. Maybe I better just go call her.” He’s hitting keys on his phone as he walks out of the room.

… When Thenia was seven, she took care of Critta, Peter and me. And when Critta turned seven, it was her turn to take care of her younger siblings, while Thenia went on to learn sewing and how to clean house. But by the time I was seven — the age at which all children begin to work at Monticello — there were no younger children for me to care for, so I was given a job in the nursery, which was where Negro children who did not have sisters old enough to care for them were watched while their mothers worked, mostly in the field.

The nursery was a large cabin divided into two rooms, the smaller of which contained two or three cots and was for the babies. The larger room, furnished with a table and a pair of benches, was where the older children could play or sleep on the floor. The nursery was run by a pair of old women, whose infirmity had made them unsuited for labor, and there was always at least one wet nurse there to feed the babies. I was one of three girls whose primary duties were to wash the babies’ clouts and to entertain the older children.

I was happy with this work. While I had no great fondness for washing the clouts, it did mean that I got to spend an hour by myself at the stream running behind the nursery. I very much liked being with children, however, and they liked me, I think. I would tell them stories, sing them songs, and sometimes I even took them on expeditions into the woods — the very things I would have done had I been on my own. But, in fact, it was the children themselves whom I most enjoyed. They had their moods, of course, and the boys in particular had a fondness for teasing me, but I always fell in love with at least one of the children in my care, and I disliked almost none of them. I took my work seriously, thought of myself as a little mother and looked forward to the day when I might actually be a mother. I was meant to continue at the nursery until I was ten, at which point I, too, would be taught to sew, or to cook, or any of the other female labors. But my life took a different course one hot August day when I was nine.

I was leading three small boys past the great house on my way to a cow pond, where I hoped we could all cool off, when I thought I heard a woman calling out. I looked around, and under the shade of an enormous copper beech, lying on a couch that had been carried out of the parlor, I saw Mrs. Jefferson waving. “Sally!” she called. “Could you come here please? I’d like to have a word with you.”

Mrs. Jefferson had been ill ever since her baby died, more than a year previously. That baby had been named Lucy, and three months ago she had had another baby, also named Lucy, and had grown even sicker. She hardly walked anymore, and a couch had been brought out under the tree for her because Mr. Jefferson believed that the fresh air would do her good.