Jefferson's Sons Read Online Free PDF

pass,” he said. “Jamie was carrying it. Too bad he can’t read, because he’d have known what a piece of trash it was. It’s the worst-spelled mess of a fake pass I ever saw. Wouldn’t have fooled a white man’s dog. Just so you all know. I find out one of you wrote this pass, I’ll have you whipped alongside Jamie. You hear?”
    He crumpled the pass in his hand, dropped it onto the ground, and strode away.
    Harriet pulled Mama’s skirt. “Who’s Jamie?” she whispered.
    â€œJames Hubbard,” Mama said. “Jamie’s just what the overseer calls him.”
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    The overseers nosed around Charlottesville and pretty soon the details came out. Beverly learned them in bits and pieces, by listening in the kitchen to Davy Hern and Joe Fossett and others who traveled and could pick up news.
    James Hubbard had worked for pay on his own time, which meant Sundays and late at night. He’d cleaned out privies and burned wood for charcoal, nasty jobs, but the only work he could get for cash. He spent some of the money on real breeches, a fancy shirt, and a coat, to replace the loose pants and long shirt that would have identified him as a slave. He spent the rest—five whole dollars, Joe Fossett said—to bribe one of the overseers’ sons to write him out a fake pass. The boy was a poor scholar. He spelled the words on the pass wrong. The first person James Hubbard showed his fake pass to had had him arrested.
    Five dollars! A year of cleaning out privies earned six. Beverly imagined working that hard for a piece of paper the overseer could just crumple in his hand. He didn’t know anything about passes. He’d never heard of them before.
    Mama explained in the cabin that night. If you were a slave, you were not supposed to travel anywhere without either a white person or a pass. When Davy Hern went by himself to Washington, he carried a pass signed by Master Jefferson that said who he was and what he was doing. “What about in Charlottesville?” Beverly asked.
    â€œIn Charlottesville everyone knows Davy Hern,” Mama said. “They won’t bother him. Anywhere else he goes, he’d better have a pass.”
    A slave caught without a pass was thrown in jail. Black people who weren’t slaves had to carry papers saying they were free.
    Beverly stared at Mama. He’d never heard of free papers either. “Even Jesse Scott?” he asked.
    â€œEven Jesse Scott,” Mama said.
    â€œMama,” Harriet said, “why are we slaves?”
    Mama looked at Harriet. Then she did something strange. She lifted Maddy from where he was playing on the floor, took off his shirt, and set him in the middle of their bed. Maddy waved his hands at them. He was a pretty baby, with soft brown curls, big gray eyes, and cheeks as round as apples. Harriet bounced the bed a little, and Maddy laughed.
    â€œLook at Maddy,” Mama said, “both of you, and tell me, does he look like a free baby or a slave baby?”
    Beverly looked at Maddy, then back at Mama. “A slave baby,” he said. It made his heart sink a little. He’d figured it out—the people who lived on Mulberry Row, and the people who worked in the fields—they were slaves. The overseers and the people who lived in big houses were not. Maddy was a slave, and so was Beverly; when they were older they would need a pass.
    Harriet nodded. “Slave baby.”
    â€œHow do you know?” Mama asked.
    â€œâ€™Cause he is one,” Beverly said.
    â€œBut how can you tell?” Mama persisted. “Look at him. What do you see?”
    â€œHe’s a boy,” Harriet said, after a pause.
    Mama pounced on that. “Yes. He’s a boy. If we took off his diaper we could see he was a boy. So. Since he’s a boy, he must be a slave, right? Because all boys are slaves?”
    â€œNo,” Beverly said. “Plenty of boys aren’t slaves.