Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

Telling herself that Ursula is just a jealous old biddy, Sally Hemings is determined to keep coming to the kitchen for her morning tea in time to catch Moak — but not only do Ursula’s stares and brow-grumbling continue without relent, after a day or two Moak stops smiling at Sally Hemings and meeting her eye. Clearly she’s not the only one who has gotten a talking-to — though when she confronts Ursula about it, the old woman only says, “I told you I ain’t talking about that no more.”

Finally Sally Hemings decides that meeting Moak in the kitchen is just too unpleasant, so she has her tea alone in her cabin and waits to run into him where she won’t have to contend with Ursula. As it happens, she doesn’t have to wait at all. The very first day that she has her tea alone, she looks out her door and sees that Moak has taken the long way around after dropping off the wood for Ursula and is walking, sling draped over his shoulder, right along the road in front of her cabin.

In her hurry to get to the door, she spills a big dollop of tea on her dress, just above her knee, but she is careful to actually step through the doorway as if she were merely coming out to check the weather.

Moak gives her a big-toothed smile the instant he sees her. “Morning, Miz Sally!”

“Morning, Moak. Just wondering if it’s going to rain.”

They talk about the weather long enough for Sally Hemings to feel she has convinced him and — to some extent — herself that she really only did come out to look at the sky. It is definitely not going to rain, they both agree. No, no, always dry this time of year. Finally Sally Hemings asks, “So why didn’t you ever bring your banjar around to show me?”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that.” Moak shakes his head slowly and gives her a sly smile. “Because you hear the banjar, you have to dance, and the kitchen’s no place for dancing, especially not with Ursula staring all the time.”

Sally Hemings can’t bring herself to say the thing that is in her mind, but that ends up not being necessary.

“Of course,” says Moak, “I can always play it for you someplace else — somewhere we wouldn’t have to worry about Ursula staring.”

Feeling breathless and dizzy as she speaks, Sally Hemings allows as it might be possible to meet in another place, and Moak suggests that she come to the old tobacco barn near Iron Field at about sundown.

She will only be out for an hour, she tells herself. Should Thomas Jefferson turn out to have sent for her, she will simply say that she went for a walk. “My head was hurting,” she will tell him. “I thought the night air would do me good.”

Sally Hemings leaves Beverly in Aggy’s care and makes her way to the East Road via the vegetable gardens, a route that keeps her well downhill from the great house and entirely out of sight. She sees her breath in the orange glow as the sun eases down, and then a shimmer of blue mist rises over the dark fields and the scant yellow leaves in the woods turn pale gray.

By the time she catches sight of the tobacco barn, just up a short path to the left of the road, she is so cold that she is shivering, even with her cape from Paris pulled tight around her shoulders. She stops at the bottom of the path and decides that she should turn around immediately. But in the next instant she is telling herself she would be a fool to have come all this way for no reason. She stands in a state of shivering paralysis for close to a minute and then hears the nasal plink-plonk of what must be a banjar.

“Too late now,” she says aloud, and starts up the hill.

The instrument sounds to her like a cross between a harpsichord and a lute — nothing like she’s been imagining — and Moak is clearly not playing it so much as plucking at individual strings, maybe to tune it or maybe just to fill the silence.

The entrance to the tobacco barn faces the field, on the far side from the road, so she doesn’t see him until she is actually in front of the door and they are less than a yard apart.

“Good evening, Miz Sally,” he says, standing up from a bench. The barn is empty and hasn’t been used for several years, but even so, the air inside is still dense with tobacco’s acrid pungency — so dense that Sally Hemings feels something swirl inside her head as she comes to a halt in front of Moak.

She doesn’t know what to say, and for a few seconds, it seems, neither does he. Then he presents the instrument to her, holding it horizontally with both hands. “So here she is!”

The first thing Sally Hemings thinks as she takes it from him is that it is a giant version of the rattle he made for Beverly — a broad stick, flattened on one side and almost as long as her arm, stuck into a gourd slightly larger than her head. The front third of the gourd has been cut off, however, and some sort of animal hide has been stretched across the opening. Gut strings run from wooden pegs at the top of the stick across the stretched hide and are knotted at the gourd’s base.

“Go ahead,” says Moak. “Give it a strum!”

“No. You. ” She tries to hand the banjar back, but he pushes it away.

“Come on!”

He is smiling so sweetly that Sally Hemings can’t resist. Holding the instrument vertically by its neck, she runs her fingernails across the strings, producing a sound much louder than she expected. She laughs and feels sweat prickling out all over her body, even though she is still cold.

“Now you do it.” She gives the instrument back. “Play me a song.”

“All right.” He puts one foot up on the bench where he had been sitting and rests the gourd on his thigh. “But you have to dance.”

She laughs again, nervously.

“You won’t be able to help yourself,” he says. He gives the strings some preliminary plucks, and tightens the pegs at the end of the neck. “That’s how it is with the banjar. You hear it playing and your feet just got to move.”

At this suggestion Sally Hemings experiences another prickling sweat and feels her feet anchor themselves to the ground. She doesn’t move when Moak starts to play, and after a while he nods encouragingly. “Come on!”

The truth is that the jangling music doesn’t make her feel like dancing at all. She had been imagining that the banjar would be much more soulful, a sort of baritone guitar or maybe something like a viola. But Moak’s tinny twanging is far more comical than soulful, and the rhythm is too fast and regular for dancing. She had been expecting something like a reel or a waltz.

“Go on,” he says, giving her another nod. “Just let yourself go! You’ll see. Your feet already know how to do it.”

Out of sheer pity, Sally Hemings takes a few steps to the left, and then to the right, but only grows more embarrassed. After a while she slows to a sort of sway, which gradually diminishes to something less than toe tapping. Moak’s disappointment in her only makes things worse. He serenades her for a few minutes, then stops abruptly.

“You want to play?” He holds out the instrument.

“Oh, no!” she cries. “How could I do that?” These words aren’t even out of her mouth before she is feeling like a coward and a fool.

“It’s easy! I’ll teach you.”

He gives her the banjar, then moves around behind her, so that he can position the fingers of her left hand on the neck. She likes the feeling of his strong, callused fingers on her own and the warmth of his body running all down her back. She realizes that she is not cold anymore and has not, in fact, been cold for quite some time.

Once he has shown her how to hold down a single string with the middle finger of her left hand, he presses the thumb and forefinger of her right hand together and then makes her strum, up and down several times. “Now let go of the string,” he says. He helps her strum a couple of times more, then tells her, “Now press your finger down again.” After a few mistakes, she manages to do what he tells her, and then, as she lifts and lowers the middle finger of her left hand and allows him to strum a complex rhythm with her right hand, he sings a dee-deedly-dee melody that actually makes what she is doing sound like music.