My Monticello(31)

I—I can stay, Georgie said, brushing away tears. I can help!

For a moment, the wind died back, sounding like the inside of a shell.

Knox was helping Ms. Edith with the food when I walked over, squeezed his shoulder. I’d be right back, I told him.

On my own, I made my way to the Jaunt, still parked crookedly along the loop. I hadn’t set foot inside since we’d fled. Hello, I called into the open door, compelling my legs up the stairs, hardly tipping my body in. Hey!

The driver’s seat had a small tear in it. The inside of the bus smelled like rain and the bodies of years of commuters, maybe of our bodies too. My eyes flitted along the broken back windows, but I didn’t see anybody. I might’ve retreated, but my feet on the top step made some kind of sound.

Devin sat up from a bucket seat in one smooth gesture, dark hair wreathing his head.

Elijah jumped up from a couple seats back, on the opposite side. His massive feet, clad in high-tops, had been planted in the aisle. He rubbed sleep from his eyes.

I’ll wait out here, I said.

When Devin came down the steps a moment later, he scanned the entrance, the lot. Everything cool? he said. He took in my weary nod without meeting my eyes, surveying the new storminess of the morning. He had on a fresh T-shirt; he laced his arms across his chest. Elijah jumped down from the back door and walked out of view. Devin leaned his back against the Jaunt, and I wanted to say something true to him.

Thank you, I said, for real, for what y’all did, for everybody. On First Street, I mean.

Elijah came back, hit Devin up for a smoke.

You think this’ll be bad as those others? Elijah said, looking above the trees. Of course there was no way to know. I told them there was talk of going up to the house. I put it on the older folks, and on the children. They shouldn’t be out in weather like that.

Devin kept looking everywhere but at me. I dared a glimpse of his face, a small plunder. Y’all should come too, I said.

Elijah chuckled and Devin palmed his Zippo. I rocked on my dirty sneakers, readying my feet to leave. Anyhow, we’re going up, I told them.



* * *



Mr. Byrd led us, angling another branch turned walking stick out before him, one knobby end pressing against the pathway. That path, broad and tree-lined, promised to deliver us to Thomas Jefferson’s plantation home, self-designed, well over two hundred years old, and largely built by his slaves. We’d set out from the museum end of the patio, topping a flight of steps where a life-size statue of Jefferson stood on a landing, glinting in metal, not far from where I used to check tourists’ bags. Our footfalls against the pale pebbles made a shushing sound.

Stray raindrops began to pelt our heads, but the leaves above us took the brunt of the first waves of rainfall. Mr. Byrd had traded his cranberry polo for a novelty T-shirt from the gift shop, made to mimic the scrawl of the Declaration of Independence. As he moved ahead of our group, Thomas Jefferson’s words undulated across his back: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

We carried a jumble of supplies. Ms. Edith had laced her arms with tote bags filled with food, and seeds, and tea. Carol and Ira carried one hen each along with Ira’s now bulging leather satchel. Ezra hefted a case of bottled waters, and KJ shadowed him, pulling his pea-green suitcase through the pebbles as if he imagined wheels. Knox carried his messenger bag, newly fattened with supplies. He helped me to support MaViolet, with him on one side and me on the other as we facilitated her slow shuffle. Above her tall stockings, I could see the bright naked caps of her knees with each step. Her senior year, she’d been lead majorette, marching across the field in high white boots and a uniform marked by golden epaulets. Back then, she could throw the baton high and always catch it, a result of relentless practice, she’d told me. Now she stumbled up that path, full of effort. It was steeper than I remembered, with gullies carved along the edge to capture runoff. Her house slippers kept filling with tiny rocks. Periodically, I helped her to empty them.

There had been, according to Mr. Byrd, at least one remaining shuttle cart down in the lot that we might have used to drive her up. But the batteries had been run down to nothing, with Mrs. Dandridge zipping herself around the property, directing the remaining workers to keep everything ready, to keep the generators running, as if this shining performance of normalcy would bring the world back.

From one section of the path we could see that empty stretch of road below where we’d driven the Jaunt in a few days earlier. We were already hustling to beat the full onset of rain, but when we saw the road and the hastily blocked entrance, we all picked up our pace. LaToya high-stepped in her foamy flip-flops. Ms. Edith huffed mightily, naming growing things between harsh breaths. Ira pushed his hand off a tree dividing the path, asking how much farther we had. I drew MaViolet forward too, so quickly that Knox asked me to slow down, just a little.

The storm, I said to explain my haste, calling on that more immediate anxiety. I was wishing Devin and Elijah had walked up with us, but they’d remained down at the welcome pavilion, “to keep watch,” along with Georgie, resurrecting an old set of walkies the guards had been using before we’d arrived.

Up ahead I could see a bend in the path, then a short set of stairs that led up to the Jefferson cemetery. When I’d worked at Monticello, shuttle buses would pause below the family cemetery so that tourists could gaze at Thomas Jefferson’s obelisk gravestone. The walking path passed the cemetery too, with its black metal fencing, the gravel shifting to a tight brick mosaic beneath our footfalls. Our group paused at the locked gate, where a black-and-gold sign welcomed Jefferson’s descendants and warded off strangers. Through the spire-topped pickets, we eyed rows of stone markers, many of them engraved with the Randolph family name. Briskly, we set off walking again, the path splitting a high pasture between a feeble allée of wispy trees. MaVi, we’re almost there, I said.