They know that the past was wrong, but where, in the present, amidst such beauty, can anyone see that wrongness? They can sense the echo of it beneath the soil and in their blood and in their minds, but they cannot see it.
They leave the mansion, in the green light of spring—those petals blowing past them now like confetti thrown at the loveliest of weddings—and stop and peer down into the depths of one of the wells, next to the slave quarters.
There’s a grate welded over the top of the well to prevent people from falling inside, and their girls kneel before the grate and drop pebbles down into its vast darkness.
They can barely see the glint of the still water so far, far below. (The well is not used anymore; water is instead piped uphill from the Shenandoah River.)
They count the long, long moments it takes for each pebble to plink into the sky’s reflection far below. It’s astounding how deep the searchers had had to dig to arrive at even that meager and distant trickle; and in the number of seconds it takes for each pebble to splash, and in the distance of time it then takes for the sound of that splash to travel back up to them, the listeners above can measure precisely the frustration, and sometimes perhaps even terror, Mr. Jefferson must have felt, night and day, that he had built his home, his life, his dream, on a substrate that was not adequate for either his needs nor his desires.
How many countless days, and then years, was water instead hauled, bucket after bucket, from the distant shining river at the base of the mountain—hauled bucket by bucket in an endless and ceaseless procession of brute labor—curl of deltoid, sheen of broad back, and laboring mule?
Such folly! A beautiful edifice, but he should never have built here.
The girls take turns clutching their little twig. As Mason remembered next to nothing from his first trip to Monticello, what, in turn, will they remember?
Perhaps the light through the old glass. Perhaps the giant Osage orange tree, or perhaps the dry clink the pebbles made as they tumbled all the way down the nearly dry well to the distant water so far below. Waiting, in their child’s game, to hear the tiny plink!, as long ago the anxious dreamer himself, with far less pleasure, might have leaned over this very well and listened likewise, watching and waiting for the well to recharge, so slowly, with so much other beauty all around him.
Mason and Alice glance at each other nervously. Always, Mason tells himself, we should remember what is at stake. Our little slaves.
Something catches the corner of his eye: some distant movement, back in the woods. Something blue and wild and powerful.
He turns away.
Two Deer
IT WAS JANUARY when the first deer went through the ice. I was out in the barn working, and Martha came running out of the cabin to tell me.
I grabbed a rope and went running down to the lake. The deer, a doe, had gone out onto the new ice, all the way to the middle, and had crashed through. It was twenty below and supposed to get colder. The deer had punched a car-sized hole in the center and was swimming in circles, flailing and trying to pull herself up onto the ice with her black shiny hooves. She would work her front legs up and prop herself on the ice that way, like a woman resting her elbows at a table, and then she would kick and thrash, trying to pull herself back up, but would crash through again and slide back into the water. Then she would resume swimming in circles, panicked.
I hurried out onto the ice. The ice cracked under my feet; I slowed down. I knew my wife was watching from the window and I could feel her thinking, stupid, stupid, as I went out across the ice. We had a new baby.
The doe’s eyes widened. She swam harder, certain that I was coming to leap on her back and bite her neck. The ice was making splintering sounds, so I got down on all fours and crept closer. I was almost close enough to throw the rope.
One knee punched through the ice, and I sank into the water up to midthigh. I lay spread-eagled to keep from sinking any deeper. Cold water swirled around my chest. I could feel the cake of ice I was lying on breaking away from the rest; it began to bob and float, and then sink. I figured I was going down as well, and it was a sour feeling to realize Martha and baby were watching me. I hoped they weren’t filming me; we had gotten a new video camera because of the baby, and Martha was always filming everything. It would be a stupid death, captured on tape.
I rolled onto my back—water rushing all around me—and wriggled backwards from the floating ice onto the firmer shelf ice behind me, sliding away from the hole in the ice, away from the thing I was trying to save.
The deer was, I’m sure, wondering only if it would go under or be leapt upon.
…
The second deer leapt in front of my headlights in March. Another doe, it just came sailing up over a snowbank. Her feet never touched the road. I slammed on the brakes and tried to swerve but hit her in mid-flight, as if she were a bird. The truck struck her left shoulder and knocked her into the snowbank.
I stopped the truck and got out and picked up her limp body, and loaded her into the back of the truck with my dogs. She was heavy, and I had to wonder if she was pregnant from back in the fall, from the wild rut that goes on in November, deer chasing each other all over the place, a carnival of deer breeding.
The day before
