Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

— How can you say that?

— You see! That’s exactly what I’m talking about.

— No in-between. How can you say that?

— Because that’s the way it is.

The prisoner makes a vocalization that commonly precedes speech. The guard speaks .

— Shut up! I’m still talking. I know what you are going to say. You’re going to tell me about complexity, ambiguity, our muddy human souls. But none of that matters. So what if you wanted to do the right thing? So what if you thought you were doing the right thing? Or if you had a terrible childhood? Or even if you were insane? If the thing you did was evil, that’s all that matters: You’re evil. You belong here. End of story.

— How can you say that?

— Hah!

— What?

— Didn’t I just tell you? You’re shit in here. And I’m God . Right? I’m the big, fucking, all-powerful mystery. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Didst thou create Behemoth? Leviathan? Have the gates of death been open unto thee? Get down on thy knees! Repent in dust and ashes!

The prisoner is laughing. The guard speaks .

— What’s so funny?

— Nothing.

— Then shut up!

— …

— …

The prisoner speaks.

— But still, there’s a flaw in your reasoning.

— I knew you’d say that.

— So you know what I’m talking about?

— Why don’t you tell me?

— You said if the thing you did was evil. That implies that you have to have a way of distinguishing evil from ordinary wrongdoing, or even from virtue — because, after all, sometimes evil is just a matter of perspective. The theft of a loaf of bread might seem evil to the baker, but to the starving man—

— Just like I said: Complexity. Ambiguity. Our muddy human souls. You’re like a robot.

— Don’t evade the point.

— What is the point?

— The point is that conclusions about whether a person is good or evil have to be based on evidence, and evidence can be misleading, or just hard to interpret. And then there’s the matter of terminology. How exactly do you define evil? And where do you draw the line—

— Are you actually paying attention to what you are saying?

— …

— I mean, do you actually think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out that a man who buys and sells human beings is evil?

— …

— Well? What have you got to say for yourself?

— That’s not what I…

— You think there’s any way that trading in human beings isn’t evil?

— I’m just talking about what you said, about there being no in-between.

— Well, you know what? I don’t give a fuck about what you were talking about. If you’re evil, you’re evil. That’s all there is to it. We’re not talking garden variety screwup here, or even mean fucking bastard. We’re talking evil. There’s no such thing as being a little bit evil. Evil is an all or nothing proposition. That’s it. And all your talk about ambiguity, definitions and all that other bullshit is just a way of avoiding the simple truth.

— And I’m saying that there is no such thing as simple truth. For better or for worse, reality is always complex and ambiguous, and a failure to recognize that fact leads straight to tyranny.

The guard shakes her head and smiles. The prisoner speaks.

— What?

— If that’s what you think, then it looks like you’ve got a lot to learn about tyranny.

She bangs her billy club against the bars of the cell. The prisoner leaps backward. He speaks.

— What the fuck!

— Get down on your knees!

— …

— You heard me! Get down on your knees!

The guard pulls a ring of keys out of her pocket and unlocks the cell door. The prisoner speaks.

— What are you doing?

The guard bangs her billy club against the cell bars once again, but far more forcefully. The bars ring. The ringing reverberates down the corridor. The prisoner speaks.

— What are you doing?

— I’m going to teach you a lesson about tyranny.

The door swings open as if of its own accord. The guard and the prisoner look into each other’s eyes. She speaks.

— And about your fucking pursuit of happiness and your fucking created equal.

The guard enters the cell. The prisoner backs away. The guard speaks.

— That is so fucking over.

A day has passed, and a night during which Sally Hemings did not sleep. Now it is morning, but so early that there is only a blue vagueness in the garden outside the kitchen door. An armful of wood has already burned down to a mound of glowing, irregularly popping and snapping coals, and a ten-gallon iron stewpot is already filling the air with onion-scented steam. Jimmy, who got back from Le Havre last night, is standing at the chopping block transforming peeled carrots into a heap of thumbnail-long cylinders. He doesn’t know that Sally Hemings is standing in the doorway behind him, watching.

Her first thought is that her brother seems so gentle as he gives himself to his work, and so unhurried, even though the extraction of each new set of three or four carrots from the heap, their alignment against his knife and then the rocking chops that transform them into orange cylinders are accomplished in scant seconds. It’s his grace that makes him seem unhurried, or even in a sort of trance. He hardly looks at what he’s doing, his eyes turned toward the empty space above a shelf of soot-blackened copper pots, and yet his knife blade strikes with the regularity and precision of a ticking clock.

But in the next instant, all Sally Hemings sees is her brother’s humiliation. His movements are not so much graceful as supremely controlled. His back is rigid, his expression blank and his head held high in the manner of a man struggling to endure the unbearable. There is a great deal of rage inside Jimmy, but it is humiliated rage — rage lacking not intensity but the power to be expressed in action.

At these last thoughts, Sally Hemings becomes so weak with sorrow that a groan escapes her throat.

Jimmy’s head jerks around. “Oh, Sally!” He smiles. “Don’t do that! I thought you were a ghost.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t you know better than to creep up on a man with a knife in his hand!?”

Sally Hemings can’t bring herself to laugh. Jimmy’s smile is replaced by the slightly parted lips and crumpled brow of concern.

“What’s the matter, Cider Jug?”

“Nothing.” She looks away, then back.

Jimmy is still looking at her but doesn’t say anything.

“I just heard someone in here,” she says, “so I thought I’d look in.”

“Hunh.”

“What are you making?”

“Boeuf bourguignon.”

“Oh.” Sally Hemings wasn’t quite listening to his response. So after an instant she asks, “What’s that?”

“Beef and wine and vegetables — potatoes mostly.” He looks back at the chopping block, lines up some carrots and places his knife across them. “Mr. Jefferson’s having a whole bunch of people over tonight.” Chop.

Sally Hemings doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then she says, “I better be going.”

Jimmy rests the hand holding the knife on the table. When she doesn’t budge from the doorway, he says, “Come over here.”

“No. I’ve got to go.”

“Come over here.” He points his knife blade at the floor beside him.

She wipes her hands on her apron, then crosses the room to stand beside her brother, though not as close as he indicated.

When she still doesn’t say anything, Jimmy says slowly, with a knowing smile, “You look like the dog sneaking out of the hen yard.”