Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

Most mornings, as Sally Hemings sets out on her walk, she can hear the urgent huffing of the bellows as the blacksmith gets his fire going and, as she returns an hour or so later, the clink and clang of a hammer on steel. She has seen the blacksmith from time to time, resting on a box in front of his shop at midday or lumbering with his head lowered toward his cabin somewhere down the East Road. He is in his thirties, she thinks, though with a patch of completely white hair above his left eye. His shoulders are massive and his forearms as thick as her calves. His skin is middle dark — the color of glazed stoneware — and he has a round, heavy-cheeked face with large, weary eyes. She has never said a word to him. Her mother tells her he is “simple.”

One day in early March, just after Thomas Jefferson has left for New York City, Sally Hemings is coming back from her walk and notices that for the first time (perhaps because the weather is warm) the smithy’s front door is open. Peering into the dark interior, she sees what looks like a red-hot bar of iron floating in midair and gracefully twisting itself into a knot. She wants to walk up to the door to get a better look, but she is too self-conscious so keeps walking. The next day, however, when she sees the door open again, she feels less timid.

The heat of the forge warms her nose and cheeks before she is even an arm’s length from the door. At first all she can see inside the building is the glow of the burning coals, but then a low, merry voice calls out, “Don’t be shy, pretty lady,” and an orangish smear in the darkness coalesces into the round-faced blacksmith looking straight at her and smiling. “Come on in!” he says. “Ain’t nothing to be afraid of in here.”

“I don’t want to disturb you,” she says.

“Pretty girl like you can’t never disturb nobody! Come on in. Come on in. Je vous en prie! ” He laughs. “I know you know what that means! Je vous en prie! ”

The air inside the smithy is so hot it dries out her nostrils and the back of her throat. She wants to take off her coat but doesn’t think that would be proper. The blacksmith is in shirtsleeves, with his collar open to the top of his greasy leather apron. The skin on his neck and chest is glossy with sweat.

“I bet you know all kinds of French after living in Paree,” he says. “My mammy came up to Virginia with a family from New Orleans, so I been speaking French practically since the day I was born. Je vous en prie! Je vous en prie! ”

The blacksmith’s name is Sam Holywell.

When Sally Hemings starts to introduce herself, he cuts her off. “I know who you are! Everybody talking about Miz Sally this, Miz Sally that. You pretty near famous around here.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she says, rather unhappy at the news.

“Oh, no! That’s a fact!” He laughs. “You just about famous as Mr. Jefferson.”

She coughs, in part because of the dryness in her throat. “I was wondering if I might watch you work for a moment.”

“Sure,” he says. “Make yourself at home. Most likely you’ll get bored, though. Ain’t been making nothing but horseshoes the last two days.” He nods at the jumbled heap against the wall behind him, then picks up a hammer and a pair of tongs. “You best stand back, now. Sparks be flying. Wouldn’t want to spoil that beautiful coat!”

Sally Hemings takes a step back and half sits on a barrel.

The work is nothing like what she thought she saw through the door. It’s all banging and flipping and banging some more. No graceful twisting in midair. Nothing graceful at all, in fact. And so noisy she has to keep her fingers in her ears. But even so, she is amazed by how rapidly and precisely all that clangorous hammering knocks the bar into an arc and then tapers that arc into a perfect horseshoe.

After a final inspection, he flings the still-glowing shoe into a barrel of water, where it hisses and sends up bubbles of steam as it sinks to the bottom. “So that’s it,” he says. “Not much of a show.”

“I thought it was amazing,” she says. “You make it look so easy, but it must be so hard.”

He smiles shyly as he puts down his tools, and Sally Hemings decides he has a lovely mouth. “Thanks,” he says, glancing at her in the eye. “It’s not all that hard, but it sure makes a body thirsty!” He mops his forehead with the back of his arm, then dips a ladle into the same barrel where the horseshoe is still sending white bubbles to the surface. He lifts the ladle to his lips, slurps the water down, then dips the ladle in again and holds it out to Sally Hemings. “Want some?”

“Oh, no, no,” she says. “Thank you.”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with it!” He smiles. “Tastes a bit from the iron. But that’s good for you. Makes you strong. Go ahead.”

She takes a sip and gags at first but manages to swallow it. “Thank you,” she says. The water is warm. It tastes like ash.

“My pleasure!” He smiles at her happily, his large, dark eyes aglint with the daylight pouring in through the open door. “You sure is a pretty woman! Hope you don’t mind me saying that!”

Sally Hemings blushes and looks at her feet. “Well, I guess I better be going. Got my own work to do.” As she moves toward the door, she smiles and says, “That was wonderful. Thank you so much.”

“ Je vous en prie! ” he says, with a big grin. “Je vous en prie!”

“ Merci bien ,” she replies, stepping sideways out the door. As she turns toward the great house, where it is time for her to wake Maria with a cup of hot chocolate, she feels a surprising pang of sorrow. Sam’s not simple , she tells herself, he’s just kind.

The next day, on her way out for her walk, she carries a tin pitcher of fresh water over to the smithy. No one answers her knock, so she leaves the pitcher on the ground. By the time she comes back, the door is open and the pitcher is gone. She knocks again, sticks her head in the door and says, “Morning, Sam!”

“That you, Miz Sally?” He glances over his shoulder as he dumps a shovelful of coal into his forge. Then he leans the shovel against the wall, wipes his hands on his apron and walks toward her.

“I just wanted to make sure you got that pitcher I left you.” She looks over his shoulder but can’t see the pitcher anywhere.

“I figured that was you!” He laughs. “I surely did! And thank you very much. Nothing wrong with my water here, but it don’t hold a candle to water straight from the well.” The pitcher is on a shelf just beside the door.

Sam is looking right at her with his big dark eyes and smiling so appreciatively that she feels another pang in her breast, but this one is warm, and it makes it hard for her to talk. “Well, all right,” she says. “Maybe I’ll come by for it later in the day, so I can bring you some more tomorrow.”

“Ah, you don’t have to do that!”

“It’s nothing.” She blushes. “See you later.”

When she stops back at the smithy on her way to have supper with her mother, Sam hands her the pitcher and tells her, “Now, you hold on a minute! Don’t you go anywhere!” He hurries over to the water barrel, rolls up his sleeve, plunges in his arm nearly up to the shoulder and pulls something out that he immediately wraps in an old rag. As he walks back toward her, he pats and rubs the rag over the object it conceals. “You know what this is?” He pulls back the rag and holds up what look like two horseshoes joined tip to tip so that one shoe opens to the right and the other to the left.

Sally Hemings is stumped. “A hook?”

“It’s an S !” he says proudly. “The letter S. And do you know what name starts with S ?”