I suffer from terrible nightmares. Have I already mentioned that? Sometimes I'm able to conjure them even while I'm awake, but they are mirages only, they don't last. In my nightmares, I attempt to kill, but here's what happens: for instance I hold a gun, and aim it at the enemy. I can see their faces– twelve of them, to be exact– against the dark, glowing like the images of Chirst's disciples on a church mural. The past is reborn, along with its procession of emotions, ebb and tide of feeling – darkness and dazzlement, guilt, dread. Ebb and tide of images – drops of sweat on men's faces, crying children, a charcoal pool of blood. I reload the revolver with hands that are black and anointed with thick gore. I put it against my temple. I press the trigger all right, but one bullet after another feebly drops on the ground from the sheepish muzzle. Can I be blamed for waking up having wet the bed?

I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it showed me in a better light – less hesitant, less perverted. I wish it had more shape. I hardly remember myself now, and the more time passes the worse it gets. Memories fly away from me in a blizzard of pale repetitive scraps like those morning storms of discarded newspapers that a train passenger  sees whirling in the wake of the observation car. Maybe I feel so old and forgetful because my life ought to be measured in dog years. I was brought up like a dog, after all: cooped, well-trained, and starved.

I miss the crackle of the fireplace, I remember light buzzing before my closed eyes whilst curled up upon the old fustian cloth, wagging my tail; but that is a story of long ago, muzzled and caged, the price of my violence. I am sorry. I am so sorry. Sometimes I dream of vultures in the trees around Hamilton's house.

***

"You may come out now." 

Laugh not as you imagine me crouched behind the sofa, scared as a ferret, sweating too. Remarkable how difficult it is to conceal one's troubled breathing when in hiding. I slowly got up, and through some freak mechanical flaw my dress pocket began noisily emitting all my dimes and quarters, and great big silver dollars like some sonorous, jingly and wholly demented machine. In an attempt to stop the coins from falling, I firmly clutched a handful in my ravaged hand. It instantly produced a sharp pain which, being prolonged, led to the rest of my loot coming tumbling to the floor with a hitting-the-jackpot clatter that almost made me laugh, despite the terrifying reality of my position.

Hamilton sat leaning back in his chair and seemed almost bored with me.

"There's something seriously wrong with you," he concluded, getting up and putting his cigar out, half smoked, in an ashtray on the desk. "Go ahead, explain yourself."

I pictured him killing me. Certainly he would do it in some vulgar, gruesome and painful manner. Why would he limit himself, after all? Other visions of torture presented themselves to me swaying, and a nausea swept through me.

"Sorry, sir. I'll pick them up."

"You better."

I spent a while collecting the coins with my inflexible hands, all the while thinking, I'm absolutely done for. Hamilton opened the desk drawer, and I put the money inside obediently.

"A traitor and a thief," Hamilton said plainly. "What a treasure I've found, to be sure. That's a whole two dollars and thirty cents you almost took from me."

"I thought there would be more," I confessed with embarrassment.

He uttered a harsh, jarring laugh which frightened me.

"I have a little cache, yes, but not here. It would be too obvious," he sank back in his chair. "You put so much emphasis on so many wrong things. Say you ran away with this money. What would you buy with it? And where would you go?"

I swallowed a lump of panic.

"You don't have to tell me. I didn't come here for the money."

"Then why are you here?"

"I presumed," I faltered, "that you, maybe..." 

"If you have something to say, sit down."

The minute was so chosen that it was impossible to refuse. I sat down on the arm of the sofa, fumbling with the edge of my apron.

"You see, my fingers are covered in blisters. Look," I demonstrated my hands. "And I was hoping that you might have some sort of remedy."

"I suppose the stealing came naturally?" Hamilton asked ironically.

I darted a glance in his direction, and immediately withdrew it.

"Sorry."

"Don't apologize. One can't cheat an instinct, after all."

I waited for him to elaborate on this, but he didn't, so I said, "What does that mean?"

He didn't provide me with an answer, and instead stood up, stodgy and solemn, looking like a kind of assistant executioner.

"Follow me."

I felt a horrible pang in the pit of my stomach. Worse was coming, then. A painful expectation of the beating made my head spin. I'm a coward, I fear pain. I always envisioned my death to be painless. I find no shame in it: the faceted transparency of my fear is evidence of the ceaseless vacillation of my soul between hope and despair, a desire to live or to die. The perpetual ripple of unfed needs, the painful burden of my rolled-up, tucked-away dreams, and terror in the face of physical suffering kept me afloat through the entirety of this savage existence that I brought upon myself.

Hamilton led me into the dressing room. In the hall the lights were on, and the space glowed gently pink; beneath the red fisheye I could see my shape on the wall: a ridiculous distorted figure, my hair down my back like a mane, my eyes gleaming. The edge of the skirt rubbed against my ankles like sandpaper, and as I looked down I saw my large feet in stiff boots protruding from beneath it like two ugly tumors. Long skirts are better on women, when their soft-boned feet are nearly naked in their transparent stockings, the high-heeled shoes with their straps attached to them like delicate instruments of torture. Women wear red lipstick, outlining the damp cavities of their curious mouths. Only once in my life have I worn lipstick; red was never quite my color.

"Here. Take them."

The image at once dissolved, and I saw, with a shock of amusement, Hamilton's hairy fist holding out a pair of gloves. I took them and examined them.

"This is it?"

"I'm no pharmacist," Hamilton said calmly. "I don't own any sort of remedy for blisters. But, I suppose It would be easier for you if you worked with your hands covered."

I couldn't help but breathe a gasp of relief.

"Won't you punish me? Beat me?"

"It would be completely useless to me. Don't get me wrong, I do own a proper whip; but it's merely tradition. I never abuse my servants for something they have no control over."

I lowered my gaze.

"Why, aren't you sweet to worry about me, sir."

"Well, I do. I believe Mr. Jefferson was right when he wrote about this sort of thing."

I knew vaguely what he meant, and instantly rejected it. Shutting my mind to it, I allowed an increasing coolness to creep into my side of the conversation.

"What you've said earlier," I began with muffled spite. "About instincts. Was that something from his Theory, too?"

"Why, have you not read it?"

"I never found the time."

Hamilton gave a short laugh, and from his laugh alone I knew with certainty that he was going to say something grotesque.

"Well, then. There's a phenomenon for you," he began, sounding like a Baptist preacher about to make a recruitment speech. "Despite what your charming Socialist books will tell you, all men are not created equal. Ever since the foundation of this country we have been putting laurel-wreaths on lousy heads. Do you get my meaning?"

"I don't think so."

"Developed by a historical living process, the People of the United States present a moral, sensible society. A true American is by nature a virtuous, law-abiding citizen of his country – white or black, it matters not. From this it follows that, if society is normally organized, all crime will cease at once and all men will become righteous in one instant. But there will always be exceptions to this rule. One can be born with a natural predisposition to crime – "a slavish instinct." Those born with this instinct only obey the law of mechanics– not the law of the State. They do not possess a living soul, for the living soul is an object of suspicion, the living soul is capable of thinking. And so a criminal, any criminal, even the pettiest one, is not a human being. A criminal is no longer a citizen, but a member of an inferior, alien race. Hence, criminals are not to be afforded the same rights and freedoms as people. The only way to redeem a criminal is to put his labor to use, because he doesn't know how to live by his own labor. It's in his nature to serve, to follow orders. Hence, slavery is good for the slave – it keeps him from commiting more crimes, all the while setting him on the path of his natural predilection."  

How loathsome, how obscene this whole idea was. With a feeling of nausea in the pit of my stomach, with clammy, cold hands, I said as though carelessly, but with a catch in my voice:

"Suppose I don't want to... "redeem myself"? Why should I fight to uphold the system that cast me out? I shall take pleasure in seeing it smashed."

"I never spoke of any system," Hamilton said crossly. "It's a fundamental truth."

"What, that some people have the right to murder and enslave others? God, you are sick."

"Do you think Aristotle was sick?" Hamilton asked coldly.

"What does that have to do with Aristotle?"

"I thought political philosophy was your favorite genre," he gave me a smile one would give to a toddler. "You treat Mr. Jefferson's ideas as though they were newly discovered curiosities. But, if you read Aristotle, you would know that the original Theory of Slavery belongs to him. Mr. Jefferson simply extended the idea."

I shook my head, stared right into his eyes and felt with sudden loathing how weak, how physically weak I had become. Everything about this man was unabashedly familiar. A sort of  indiscernible and subtly menacing terror flowed from him, in the same way it did from my father and grandfather. Hamilton was morally deformed; a personality filthy under its sophisticated varnish, like smallpox spots under a layer of powder. I hoped that I would be the one to murder him, in the end.

"One day... One day, there will have to be a revolution," I said, not even troubling conceal the implication. "You may think the Great War is over. Well, let me tell you, it isn't! Germans aren't going to respect the armistice. It's another trick. Only this time, once they attack us..." I paused that he might get the full effect of my pronouncement. "No one is going to be here to fight. You can't make a slave fight a war, can you?"

"I was in the Army for three years. I don't know any better place for a slave," Hamilton's shoulders straightened and a mantle of dignity fell upon him, strangely at variance with his awkward figure. "The War against Germans was a gift of revenge from the high gods. It accomplished what the Civil War couldn't. The Civil War has solved the racial question, but nothing else of significance came out of it. This new slavery, if you like, existed only as a distraction from Socialist clubs, only ones in the North at that. And even so, all the fuss about the 'dawn' of some sort of "public opinion" against slavery, has it so suddenly dropped from heaven without any warning? For the last twenty years I've been sounding the alarm, and as soon as the war began in 1914, I knew everything was about to change. Our loss came from idleness, and all this talk of abolition made things worse; the economy was destroyed, but all people could talk about was the emancipation of whatever was left in the South. The Theory spared us another Civil War."

"Maybe we would have been better off with a Civil War," I said with wrath. "Russia used the Great War to make a complete regeneration–"

"Oh, how abolitionists love Russia!" Hamilton interrupted sullenly. "How easily this communist nonsense gets to their heads! All of them peer at the Russian revolution through their fingers, and you do too. I understand only too well why wealthy Russians all flock abroad. If the ship is sinking, the rats are the first to leave it. Sainte Russie is a country of wood, of poverty, the country of the disgraced upper classes, where the immense majority still live in huts. Everything there is doomed and awaiting the end. America, on the other hand, arose from the panic of the war victorious, under new law, and with enough resources to rebuild this country from scratch."

"How patriotic!"

"This slavery should be a pleasure for you. Be grateful you weren't sent to some sort of factory."

"Well, yes, yes, to be enslaved to you is a pleasure!" I yelled. "If there is pleasure in the ultimate degree of humiliation and insignificance! This Theory is the most cruel and insulting despotism which can exist on earth. I don't need such pleasure. Punish me. Beat me, right now!"

Hamilton was silent for a moment. Then he said calmly, arranging his tie:

"I won't bother."

It is the first thing I remember about him, somehow, and I can hear it still today. I won't bother! Until I die there will be those moments, moments seeming to rise up out of the ground like Macbeth's witches, when his face will come before me, when the exact timbre of his voice will nearly burst my eardrums. It might have started right there and then.

"Your Excellency is a real ass," I said to Theodosia at lunch. Theodosia looked up from her interrupted soup, and her gray eyes dwelled on me for an instant. Having expropriated me, she turned insouciantly away.

"To me he ain't."

"Is he nice to you?"

"He's seldom unnecessarily disagreeable."

"Rot! He's a pious fool."

"Do you judge everyone by yourself?"

She stood up from her place, and went to check the stove. The sunlight, coming slant now through the window, caught her hair, partly covered and drawn back. She fully covered her hair only when Hamilton sent her to the village, although I'm sure nobody much cares for a slave's modesty. She must have been attractive, years ago. I couldn't help but notice a dimple in each of her ears, where the punctures for earrings have long grown over. Despite her closed face and pressed lips, I enjoyed staying in the kitchen. Vella would sometimes come in, carrying a bottle of lemon oil and her duster, and Theodosia would make coffee for both of us. She never made coffee just for me.

"Listen, Ms. Barrow. Whatever you heard about me–"

"I've heard plenty."

"Well, I'm certain that half of what you've heard is untrue."

I was used to people making assumptions about me. When the court records were made public and the newspapers printed items concerning my suit, the story was rounded out and blown out of proportion, and the defense my father used for me had, of course, leaked out in detail. I began to hear rumors about myself from all quarters, rumors founded usually on a soupcon of truth, but overlaid with preposterous and vulgar detail.

"What my father said," I began. "He only said it to try and save my life. The punishment for treason is hanging. But, by proving that I was disturbed in some way, he gave me a year to be sold into servitude. Such is the law. So, if you must know, I'm not a schizophrenic, and I'm certainly not a..."

I trailed off. An instinct made me suck back the repulsive word that formed on the tip of my tongue.

My fair accuser stared at me incredulously.

"I'll tell you straight, Mr. Laurens. I don't care if you're a homosexual."

"Good, because I'm not," I assured her. "I'm really not."

The reiteration of the word still somewhat embarrassed me and sent uncomfortable shivers up my back. Theodosia was silent for a moment.

"You haven't the slightest notion of remorse, do you?" She asked with meticulous carelessness, "Thinking only of your own precious hide. You're rotten."

I had reached the stage where I no longer fought, but submitted.

"Perhaps I am."

I must be a rotten soul, I fancied grotesquely; so indecent as to be absolutely rotten. "And, trust me, I am ashamed of myself."

"Ashamed? What you've done to those people is a grave sin. Far graver than treason. You should die of shame."

She stepped away from the stove, and added with sudden heat:

"At least have the decency to admit that you're a murderer."

With that, her resemblance to Sybil dissipated.

The next morning we had a power failure, and Hamilton ordered fire in the parlor. He must have been afraid I might commit suicide if left sitting around, and to keep me occupied he commissioned me to tend to the fireplace. I knew he was expecting a guest, because the preparations for the visit began as early as the night before. Looking out the freshly washed window I could see the garden, wherein the daffodils were now fading. It was a windless day, slashed with alternate sun and rain, sun without warmth, rain without a breeze. On a better day Vella would be seen among the flowerbeds, her knees on a cushion, a basket at her side with shears in it and pieces of string for tying the flowers into place. She wasn't there now.

The warmth from the flame is far better than the warmth from the sun. Dark walls store it up, and give it out like a used tin oven. I sat in front of the fire on the carpet, my shoes off, my legs in front of me, surrounded by a buttress of black skirt, warming my feet, as at a campfire, of earlier and more picnic days. Deep in the fireplace a quartered log was cooking to a murky black. It smelt neither of smoke nor of incense—the fire was tall and dull and faintly blue. There was a vase of daffodils from the garden on the polished mantelpiece, but strangely they gave no scent either.

As the clock struck two, I heard Hamilton coming down the stairs.

"He's late. Wish he'd hurry up," he declared to the back of my head. I turned around to look at him. He stood staring out the window. Devoid of the symmetry of features essential to the Hollywood ideal, he was yet, here and there, nice to look at.  He was dressed in a suit of the exaggerated tightness then semi-fashionable; his turned over collar was notched at the Adam's apple; he had on exquisitely polished shoes and wore floral cologne. But he was unclean, in reality and in thought, with that especial gloomy stench borrowed from a rotten mind, barely masked by the smell of narcissus ombre.

I stood up slowly, my boots in my hand.

"Sorry about that. Anyway, I'd better get going. The fire will be good for the next hour or so."

"Wait just a minute," Hamilton turned his head, collar and all, towards me and fixed his pince-nez. "I would like you to wait on us. I fancy indeed that you are a man of very good breeding, or at least know how on occasion to behave like one, yes?"

"I am not particularly interested in being a waiter," I answered, dryly and even with a shade of haughtiness, "Certainly not like this."

I tugged at the edge of my skirt.

"It wasn't a question, though, was it?" Hamilton said casually.

I considered for a moment, unable to decide the exact degree of seriousness intended by his remarks. But Hamilton, with that facility which seemed so frequently to flow from him, continued, his dark eyes gleaming in his thin face:

"There will be twice the hell to pay as opposed to misbehaving now, for both you and me. It's a very important person. If you are afraid of disgrace, don't be. You've disgraced yourself enough when you dressed up as a woman and went to an abolitionist demonstration."

I clenched my fist. It had become gradually clear to me during our bestial cohabitation that even the most miserable family life I led in the Laurens mansion was better than Hamilton's imitation of parenting, which, in the long run, was the best he could offer me.

"Why did you even buy me?" I asked in a crestfallen tone.

"I don't follow."

"You are not a noble, perhaps, at all," I said. "But you must have many friends. You are, as they say, 'not without connections.' What can you want with me, unless you've some special object? Did my father pay you to humiliate me? Because it's just exactly the course you've been following since I got here."

Hamilton laughed in a one-syllabled snort.

"I wish it was so."

"Then why? Just... Why?" A dull animal rage boiled within me, and I didn't know where to escape from it. "I see clearly that you reproach me. You're trying to teach me some sort of lesson. Well, I am completely broken and humiliated, if that was what you wanted.  You made me dress as a woman, and now you want to disgrace me in front of other people. Clearly it has something to do with me being a transvestite, although I've already explained to you that I'm not. And since you will not accept my explanation of what is the matter you could at least explain to me why you despise me so much!"

"Oh, yes," Hamilton responded, his chin raised, his voice raised, his whole physical being raised. "Yes, trust me, I heard of your didoes, even if I am buried down here in the country. But, frankly speaking, I care not whether you are what your father said you are. You think of yourself as an Athenian among Greeks, don't you? You think you're benevolent, sane, wise..."

"No—" I began, but he interrupted ruthlessly.

"Many leaders of men, such as Lycurgus, Solon, Mahomet, Napoleon, and so on, were all without exception killers and perverts, from the very fact that they did not stop short at bloodshed, if that bloodshed—often of innocent persons—were of use to their cause. But the difference between you and them is that they had the right to do so, for they were extraordinary people. You, on the other hand, have no gift or talent to produce an original thought or aid humanity. You are material that serves only to reproduce its kind. It is your duty to be controlled, because that's your vocation, and there should be nothing humiliating in it for you."

I saw the point at once, and knew where he wanted to drive it. I took several steps toward him.

"Then who the hell are you?" I asked coolly. "You contend that you have the right to murder. Who do you think you are? Napoleon? Because if so, you ought to be in an insane asylum."

Hamilton looked down at me, and his face suddenly changed.

"Why on earth are you barefoot?"

We both stared at my feet, which were inches away from his shoes. Was that his concern?

"I'm mighty sorry," I said ironically. "Do my plebeian toes disgust your Excellency?"

Hamilton grew pale and then red.

"Is that any way to speak to me?"

I didn't care any more what he might do to me. Insolent and efficiently driven over the edge, I pressed my naked foot on top of his, keeping it there, making sure to ruin the polish.

"Now it is."

Hamilton seemed to bulge in protest. His eyes and mouth opened wide, like those of a dead fish, and his pant leg, clinging closely to his thigh, at once outlined a barely perceptible muscle contraction. Was it disgust, this torment he experienced as he consumed my foot with his eyes? Came a doorbell now after what seemed like many hours. Hamilton disregarded it first, as some great big feeling closed over him, folded down upon him, crept up into the byways of his mind.

Suddenly he was awake, saying:

"Put your goddamn shoes on."

As he went to answer the door, I sat down on the sofa, fuming, and quickly put my boots back on. For half a minute there wasn't a sound from the hallway. Then I heard a sort of choking murmur, followed by Hamilton's voice on a clear sentimental note:

"I'm so awfully glad to see you again."

A pause; it endured horribly.

"Don't get any ideas, Hamilton."

I expected a stranger, but when the guest entered the parlor, my first terrified impulse was to hide in the supply closet, crawl under the sofa, run outside through the back door, anything to escape him. But it was too late to think about it; already his marvelously booted feet were on the dusty-rose carpeting of the room. Outside, under the window of my shame, to the west of my terror—a staid, dignified alley of huge pine trees—degenerated into the despicable haunt of roaring thunder. Surely it will rain again. The guest's broad face, tipped sideways beneath a fashionable hat, looked out at me with a bright impudent smile, demonstrating large sharp teeth and bright red gums. It was a tall and handsome man, with a burnt sienna complexion. Even his hair, sticking out in different directions and frizzy, did not give him a stupid appearance, as frizzy hair usually does. If there really was something unpleasing and repulsive in his rather good-looking and imposing countenance, it was due to quite other causes.

"Mercy! Why on earth is he dressed like that?"

"Pay no attention to him, Mr. Jefferson. Please sit. John, fetch us a bottle of Chardonnay, will you?"

Jefferson emitted his special barking laugh, and a cold shiver ran down my back.

"This is a travesty. You've got a twisted sense of humor."

He was indeed a man who bore the weight of a great name. If my reader is in any way familiar with the abolitionist movement, he may know him as 'The murderer of our Nation'. I met him once when I was a child, but my recollections of the gallant Peter Jefferson, his father, the first planter in America to accurately chart the Great Wagon Road, were much more vivid. Before my mother had "joined another choir," as her widower huskily remarked from time to time, Jefferson Sr. came down to South Carolina every summer to discuss business. I remember sitting on my father's lap while Jefferson expelled pleasant, thick-smelling words for sometimes as much as an hour. He was continually promising Henry hunting trips and fishing trips and excursions to his estate, "oh, some time soon now"; One trip we did take; when I was ten we went to West Virginia, and there, seated with other children in the cool shade of the porch of Jefferson's plantation, I briefly saw his son – it was a tall young man, beautiful in a carved indian sort of way, rumored to be a result of his irish father's amorous connection with a dark-skinned servant. From the middle distance, I could only distinguish a shock of black curls jerking out around his face. I saw his crop beating the air with wild pleasure. I saw someone curled on the ground beneath his feet. In a panic of despair and terror I ran inside, and upon returning home wedded to a vague melancholy that was to stay beside me through the rest of my life.

As the new century approached, driving the nation farther from the memory of the Civil War, most of the planters throughout the South ended up in the same fix. Ever since Lincoln's Compromise, the former Confederacy kept on living by selling crops and using labor it did not pay for. But, with the new law on slavery, there was no way to get enough workforce to keep the plantations quite prosperous, no way to bring in the necessaries which cotton money had brought in years gone by. There simply weren't enough criminals to do the job, even though the Industrial North kept shipping off most of its delinquents to the South. It was a situation made to order for speculators and profiteers, and men were not lacking to take advantage of it. As the number of slaves grew scarcer and prices rose higher and higher, the public outcry against servitude grew louder and more venomous. In those early days of 1910, no newspaper could be opened that did not carry scathing editorials denouncing the plantors as vultures and calling upon Congress to put the South down with a hard hand. Congress did its best, but the efforts came to nothing, for the government was harried by many things – especially the imminent threat of the Great War. I remember hearing something about the releasing of slaves in that last desperate effort to stem the tide of the German army on the Western Front. One can assume that it was our devastating loss in the war that led Peter Jefferson to suffer a heart attack and perish, with much sweating and grunting and crying aloud for air, in his son's arms.

It was then that Thomas Jefferson, determined, from his own words, to consecrate the remainder of his life to the moral regeneration of the world. Emulating the magnificent efforts of Aristotle, he gave himself up furiously to every indignation of the age. From an armchair in the office of the estate which now belonged to him, he directed against the enormous invisible enemy – "the soulless slave creatures", a campaign which went on through the entirety of the Great War. "The Slave Theory" had been published in 1917 – it was a rather overwritten political piece concerned with identifying imposters among the true American people. The collection of essays hesitated and then suddenly became a stunning success – it was just what the government needed in order to recover the nation form the devastating blow of the war against Germans. Our desperate Congress proposed a list of the constitutional amendments, which, following Jefferson's ideas, proclaimed all criminals to be another species, not equal to humans. All prisoners were sent to newly built factories, and all those who already served their sentences were arrested and put through double jeopardy. The year in which my story takes place finds Jefferson on top of the world; just a year prior he was appointed as the Secretary of State. Our country is now nothing but a naked, dried-up body, loaded with irons, and only those corrupted by the old training might seriously hope that the dead man will return to life, and, in their joy, begin to dance. But never mind, never mind, I am only a servant, never mind, let us go on with my miserable story.

Pressing my quivering hands against the sides of my thighs, I nodded.

"Will do. It's– It's good to see you, Mr. Jefferson."

Jefferson's eyes– a real cat's, shone with confusion.

"Are you talking to me?"

I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat. Hamilton had to step in.

"Pardon him, Thomas. I didn't have the time to teach him how to behave. I've been sick all week, you see."

"What's the matter? You sounded well enough on the phone."

Hamilton smirked.

"I'm a permanent neurasthenic. I suppose it will never get better. John, hurry up."

I took a deep breath and set out along the hall and softly to the kitchen, where I found Vella crying incoherently on Theodosia's shoulder.

"Why had God invented children," I heard Theodosia say, her hand buried in the curlicues of Vella's hair. "Crying nuisances you all are."

My first thought was that of deep concern.

"Ms. Smith? Are you alright?"

Upon seeing me, Vella buried her face deeper in the folds of Theodosia's apron.

"Mr. Thomas—he's so mean! So doggoned mean—so hateful! Oh, Mr. Laurens, don't you look at me now..."

Theodosia gathered the weeping girl into her arms and looked at me wearily.

"What are you doing here? There, babe, put your head on my shoulder..."

"They want wine. Good Lord, what happened?"

Theodosia shook her head.

"It's in the pantry. Don't make him wait. Go, now!"

Galvanized by the authority in her voice I almost turned to leave, but in that moment Vella lifted her head to look at me. There was a deep, almost frantic glow in her eyes that for a moment lit up her plain little face and made it beautiful.

"Mr. Laurens, you will be careful, won't you?"

I nodded reassuringly, and then torturing myself ran on.

It had been years since I had bottled up malice against the man known as Thomas Jefferson—since my fourth year at Buffalo when I had come upon a popular essay about "planter traditions." I knew all about the bloodhounds which Jefferson supposedly kept to track down runaway slaves; I also knew about the dreadful branding irons which he used to mark their cheeks, and the horse crops with which he used to beat them to death. It's easy to imagine that he would become the man to capture the attention of that incredible pigsty we call Congress–the dozen shrewd men at the top, egotistic and cynical, who were content to lead this choir of chains clanking in a discordant and amazing hymn, and continued cheers for God, the Constitution, and the Rocky Mountains!

I've been wasting my time. I should have taken things into my own hands while I had the chance. I should have stolen a knife from the kitchen, or found some way to the garden shears; the world is full of weapons of revenge if you're looking for them.

But it was too late, for I had already retrieved a bottle of Chardonnay and was now on the way back to the parlor, carrying the bottle in one hand and two glasses in the other. Then:

"I didn't force you to do it, Alexander."

I froze outside the door which was a fraction ajar, not quite space enough for my elbow.

"Yes, but—I owe one to you. Besides, I couldn't think of myself when you were offering so much money. I do hope that his daddy is happy."

"Don't try to palm off that twaddle about owing something to me. You wanted a new political tool, and I gave you the opportunity. Do you hate him?"

"I wonder. I never liked stupid people."

"Does he hate you?"

"I annoy him. If I smoke a cigar he comes into the room sniffing, if you know what I mean."

"Is that what you're punishing him for?"

"That's none of your business."

"It is my business. Why, I always knew you liked this sort of thing... Among others."

"You must stop now."

"His shoelaces were untied. God only knows what took place here."

There was a loud thud which almost made me drop the bottle.

"Won't you forget about that? What are you doing here, Thomas? If you wanted to talk to me, and I mean, really talk, you would have known that I'd much rather do it in private. This is torture."

"Mr. Hamilton, you must not stand so close. We are not alone."

"If we were alone, would you care?"

"Mr. Hamilton, you forget yourself."

Ignoring a sick, frightened feeling, I moved a little on purpose and muttered something aloud that I might not have the appearance of eavesdropping; I pressed my hand against my throbbing heart, then squeezed the neck of the bottle and pushed the door open. Jefferson was sitting gracefully on the edge of the armchair and looked as though he just made a very good joke, while Hamilton stood almost right up against him, pale and firm. Both glanced back at me simultaneously.

"Took you long enough," Jefferson said nonchalantly. "It's getting hot in here. I think the fire is too strong." 

Hamilton sat down on the sofa in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease.

"Yes. Quick, pour us some wine."

In result  of  that  weird  conversation, the numbness of my soul was for a moment resolved. I came up to Jefferson and began pouring the drink. A brilliant and monstrous mutation had suddenly taken place, and here was the instrument. It was allied, I suppose, to that swooning curiosity which impels one to examine with a magnifying glass bleak little figures, while ignoring obvious realities of life. Within  the  intricacies of the pattern (slippery bottle, thumping heart, blistered fingers, Jefferson's unpleasant gaze), I can dimly distinguish my own vile contribution. Had I not been such a fool to keep my gloves on, fluids produced by vindictive anger and clammy anxiety would have surely provided me with a better grip.

The wine slipped out of my hands.