My Monticello(56)

We’ll fight, I said, my voice unsteady. When I looked up my eyes caught on Devin, his back against books, locs tumbling around his face.

Way I see it, Devin said, we just need to defend the top of this hill. Beat them down bad enough that they move on to the next one. Make them feel like this little bit here is ours.

Maybe we can fool them, LaToya said.

Make them think we are without mercy, that we have lost our hearts, Mr. Flores said.

Maybe we could spook them, make them think we haunts, Ms. Edith said.

We could build some sort of barriers around the house, Ira said.

We know this house well, the lay of the land here, Mr. Byrd said.

Maybe we can hold them off—long enough for things to come back. That was Knox.

We fight! I said, my voice full of fury, full of hope.

We fight! everybody answered.


XII.

We worked deep into the darkness, planning then preparing, setting up a second guard post along the eastern border. I held the ladder for Mr. Byrd as he climbed up to wind the great clock above the main door in the entrance hall. Had I noticed its second face, he asked, on the front of the building? Did I know that, when wound, that clock triggered an hourly gong that could be heard down in the valley below? When I saw those hands set back into motion, I understood we were no longer hiding. Time had started up again.

When I finally had a moment to rest, I knew I’d never be able to sleep. Every creak in the house sounded like a warning, and when I squeezed my eyes closed, I felt filmy, weightless. I floated so high that I could see our whole town shimmering below me. From that great height, among the smoldering remains, I could see dark bands of men gathered, throwing old wood in to feed a fire: window frames jutting nails, floorboards slick with lichen. I could see the orchard people, hats resting on their chests, dreaming beneath the barn’s breached roof, a bordered view of stars. I could see the barefoot man’s dark-skinned daughters wrenching against the ways they’d been bound. I could hear the echo of sadness in Devin’s voice, from all those hours earlier. You came to me, he’d said.

I must have slept some.

I woke to the clamor of the great clock, its vibration moving through my body, so that I bolted upright in a blackened room. I could make out Knox’s sleeping form on our shared pallet. He must have come to bed sometime after I had. Now he rolled over, throwing his arm across my lap. At once, I remembered all that hung so heavily over us. I got up as quietly as I could, making my way across our small room, past the maze of tables and chairs in Jefferson’s chambers, my eyes struggling to adjust to the dark. As they did, MaViolet’s sleeping face emerged, her eyes pinched closed, her mouth unnaturally twisted. Ms. Edith was asleep in the chair by her bedside; she opened her eyes, then closed them again when she saw that it was me.

I had to go somewhere, but where to? I made my way through the parlor, toward the west porch. The night air felt dry and hot on my skin.

I crossed the pebbled path—my bare feet shifting stones—and crept onto the lawn, to try to catch some kind of breeze. The Flores family’s tents remained huddled in a half circle way back near the tree line. The waning moon had withered, and dense clouds had rolled in, leaving the sky a tarry black. It felt so dark out, I could hardly remember streetlights. It seemed strange how much I’d counted on artificial light before—the blue aura of a TV in a neighbor’s window, the far-off beams of headlights, revealing the edges of things. How I’d loved that easy, lavish light, hardly recognizing the ruin in its excess. I moved out into the grass, longing to see the full shining moon again.

I was almost to the small muddy fishpond when I sensed a gathering in the deep dark in front of me. I froze, listening, my heart drumming up in my ears. I took one step, then another, hardly registering the scratchy grass, the itch of insects at my ankles. I stretched my arms out into the space as if to touch plushness, a tawny pelt or the knobbed grace of antlers. But my quiet commotion scared them off: I heard their hooves scatter.

I was alone again.

I took a few more steps, and there, at the far end of the south terrace, was another shadow—a person standing near the massive trunks of the willow oaks. As I moved closer, I knew it was Devin, his familiar silhouette cut from blackness. There are oval-framed portraits along a wall of Jefferson’s library, black profiles of significant people Jefferson knew. Devin is one of my significant people. When I saw Devin, I felt relief and something more.

It’s my fault, I said right away when he looked up at me, as if we were picking up from those cramped moments in the trunk, before he’d raised a gun again in our defense. Devin did not seem surprised to see me—he was fidgeting with something, his Zippo lighter. Closing, it made a clicking sound. And you’re right, I went on. I did come to you.

I thought he’d say, Fine, and tell me to go back to my little college man, but he did not say anything. So I tried to answer his question from earlier, about being pregnant. I told him the truth: that I wasn’t sure if the baby belonged to him or to Knox, or if it was even a she. When I told him this, I wanted to be able to hope for her.

Why did you come to me though? Devin said.

I scratched at my elbow, a new dry itch. I already said it was my fault, I told him.

Devin produced a cigarette from behind his ear and rolled the fragile white column between his fingers. Why did you come around messing with me if you love him?

Thing is, it had only ever been the two of them. First Devin. Then I’d waited a long, long time. Then Knox.