Ten Words No. 3:
One Hundred Square Inches of Blue Sky
A Short Story
by Michelle Furr
(See 10 Words Intro for an explanation of the concept.}
The random words:
airspeed, eavesdropper, untrained,
conventions, schedule, enjoyment,
insignificant, buttes, Jefferson, interest
airspeed eavesdropper untrained conventions schedule enjoyment insignificant buttes interest airspeed airspeed
airspeed
airspeed
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Mr. Jefferson, he done put me here where all I can see is one square inch of blue. Well, maybe more like a hundred square inches of blue. Blue sky. That’s all I can see through the one tiny window high up on the wall. Bed (shelf is more like it), stinking hole in the floor, iron door, and one hundred square inches of blue sky. That’s my world now, thanks to Mr. Tom. They give me pen and paper, I don’t doubt also thanks to Mr. Tom. He put me here, but he also put me here educated, one of the few educated slaves in all of Virginia he liked to point out. He’s always been one for cultivating public acclaim, especially in unusual ways, breaking with public conventions just enough to cause everyone to sit up and take notice. Like hand-picking a couple of his slaves and educating ‘em more than they’d ever need. Or hurling a good two handfuls of ten-dollar words at an insane king who was a safe 3,000 miles away and then standing back to watch the fireworks and wait to see what’d be left over for him in the outcome. Mr. Tom, he knows how to take, and make, his enjoyment where he finds it. I do honestly believe he at first got considerable genuine delight at setting me and Josiah in a little classroom next to his study in the big house at Monticello. I believe that because many days he’d come in and have the tutor watch while he took over our lessons. Later on, we rarely saw him, and I think his interest tapered off because both me and Josiah suffered mightily under more than one basically untrained tutor (specially geometry, old Mr. Creekmore was hardly on speaking terms with Euclid, so that Pythagorean Theorem is to this day pretty much Greek to me—I hope you don’t mind if I make a little joke). I was talking about Mr. Jefferson’s enjoyments. I was doing that apurpose, to lead these words toward getting on paper just what happened, why I’m here with my one hundred square inches of blue. Not that I expect my pages to ever get outside these walls, but it does make me feel better to write down what happened, first this, then this, then this. Everybody in the thirteen United States knew Mr. Tom was something of a ladies’ man. But nobody seemed to much mind, seeing as how he could invent an automatic window opener and closer, declare independence for a whole New World, design a university, and run a country. He’s one clever man, all right. Fooled me, all those years, that’s for sure. He got me and Josiah educated, reading, writing, arithmetic, and even some literature and history, then he put us in charge, way above our place. Josiah he made the schedule man. Every evening, he’d sit down with Josiah and they’d go over what needed doing and when, and Josiah, with his beautiful penmanship, would create a letter-perfect schedule, copy it out about six times, and last thing before going to bed, go around the plantation posting it so everybody’d know what they were supposed to do the next day. Knowing my interest in figures, Mr. Tom put me in charge of numbers. Every morning I’d go trudging up the hill to the big house, and either Mr. Tom or one of his foremen would set me at a desk and give me the latest numbers from the operation of the plantation. One day it might be monies in and out for the last week, another day it might be bales of cotton forecast for next year. You never knew one day to the next. All I had to do was check the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of all those numbers. When I found a mistake, I’d write a note and pass the accounts back to Mr. Tom or a foreman. To you that may seem an insignificant employment, but to me, when you think about the other possibilities open to me, it was pure enjoyment. I got to sit quiet every day and use my brain, and of course I could now and then stop for a minute, look out those big floor to ceiling self-closing windows at the green hills of Virginia and dream. Those days, Josiah and I both thought Mr. Tom hung not only the moon, but the sun and the stars too. Like it does, trouble came without a footman and well-disguised. One evening I stayed late, this was early in Mr. Tom’s first term as president. I didn’t even know he was on the plantation because he was most always in Washington City those days. I was working late because we had a crop that year like we never had before. Seemed like those cotton plants just couldn’t wait to get up out of the ground and make so many fluffy white bolls that when they finally split open you’d swear we had a blizzard in September. So the accountants and shippers and all had a lot of adding and mutltiplying to do and I had a lot of checking to do. My little desk was in an alcove off the main central hall, really a big rotunda, with one of Mr. Tom’s offices way over to the right. I had no door, but anybody coming in the main entrance wouldn’t necessarily see me, tucked away as I was. I heard the big front doors open and close, and then voices that stopped in the rotunda. My heart liked to burst, because I knew both voices, and because I heard just enough words so I knew my world was coming to an end. They talked a bit in some disagreement and then raised their voices. Sally Hemmings said, "Jeremiah ain’t going to no wide open country where they’s nothing but buttes and buffalo." And Mr. Tom, he said, "He’ll be free, Sally. Open spaces, open air. Speed is of the essence. We’ve got one chance to get our son out of his chains, don’t you see?" They quickly moved into his office and closed the door. And I, the eavesdropper, sat a good long time, wanting to cry, wanting to laugh, wanting to shout to the world. I, the eavesdropper named Jeremiah. Here you’d think the story was headed for a right happy ending. You ever know a life story that if you stay with it long enough has a happy ending? You don’t have to stay with my life story much longer. They were in his big office. At first I heard nothing. Then they started shouting, louder and louder. Sally screamed and I heard a big thud like somebody had hit the floor. No thinking now, I ran across the rotunda, opened the office door, and saw Sally sprawled at Mr. Tom’s feet, him with his right arm raising (the same right arm that once told off the King of England but good) to hit her again. Us black folk, we nothing if not fast. I crossed the room black-folk-fast and knocked Mr. Thomas Jefferson flat on his clever white behind. There was a moment when nobody knew what to do, like we were frozen. Then we all heard a noise and looked at the doorway to see a couple of lawyers and one foreman standing there, taking it all in like we were some classical piece of Greek sculpture. Three witnesses to one slave striking down the President of the United States of America. You can imagine the trial, but maybe you cannot imagine how hushed up that trial was. As if it didn’t happen. Except here sits Eavesdropper Jeremiah and his one hundred square inches of blue sky. One day, maybe, if they let me have more paper, I’ll tell you what I’ve learned from my one hundred square inches of blue sky. END
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