SHORT SHORT STORIES


by Robert Olen Butler



THOMAS JEFFERSON, FORTY-FIVE,
U. S. AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE
SALLY HEMINGS, SIXTEEN, SLAVE, HALF-SISTER TO JEFFERSON’S DEAD WIFE



AT HIS RESIDENCE IN THE HÔTEL DE LANGEAC, PARIS, 1788



Thomas

the last eight miles to my hilltop on horseback in deep snow, Patty throwing her head back to laugh, her breath pluming into the moonlight How difficult it is to come home with you, Mr. Jefferson and then the doorway is drifted high with the snow and I lift her into my arms to carry her through and the servants are asleep and the fires are out and we are home at last and I find a Château Latour and I start a fire and we drink and she turns her face to me My husband she says and there in our bedroom on our wedding night the firelight isn’t enough to keep the night’s darkness from tainting her face, like this face now, Sally’s, her very blood shared with Patty, but her face darkened from within, as if through memory, as if by death, as if by my six-year grief, and Patty throws her head back at the run of her hands on the keys and I finger my strings lightly, the Bach sonata carrying us both and I am wooing still and she will say yes and we will marry and she will die, and I look into these eyes now and now and they are dark, Patty’s hazel charred into deep blackness, but the shape of them is the same and I hear the Bach and I run now inside like Patty’s hands running on her harpsichord I run and I run and I pursue my happiness



Sally

so easy to come to this at last: he is playing his violin and it is very sad, the music, and I stand for a long while quiet in the doorway, behind him, his shoulders hunched forward a little, his hair—I have enough of the blood of my father and my mama’s father in me that I can blush in this color of his hair—he bears my blush, which I see on my cheeks in the mirror with the eagle near the parlor door when I turn my face at his passing—his hair catches the light from the fireplace and he draws his bow back and forth on his violin, his elbow rising and falling—and I move to him and he stops playing, he knows I am behind him, and he knows how fast my heart is beating, and he ceases playing and he turns to me and his eyes are so sad and I will never as long as I live know how I come to lift my hand and put it on my master’s face but I do and I am happy






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