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Short stories: Historical fiction

That's Randolph, With A Rolled R

"Good morning little man." The woman cooed at the rather tall, muscular baby who sat up between his parents in the bed.

The little man rubbed his eyes and reaching out for his mother, his small right hand touched her breast.

"Peter!" The woman shrieked.

Peter's eyes popped open and he turned to look at his son and wife. Little Thomas smiled happily, though his mother's face was torn with feminine terror. His mouth was popping open and shut, as if wanting to speak and no sound came out.

"Peter!"

"What?" The man managed to mutter as he rubbed his eyes.

"Thomas just touched my breast!" She shrieked.

"Why, Jane, he's a babe" Peter reasoned aloud.

And so it was that little Thomas Jefferson was kicked out of mum and dad's bed from then on out. Though Peter judiciously defended his son, he eventually gave in to his wife's insistence that arrangements be made for Thomas to sleep elsewhere. Jane, being appeased, got on with her illusion of being RRRRRRRRRRandolphian.

In that bed, in as innocent a state as he was in, an American was born. Born by the treachery of his own mother, the well bred and quite haughty, Jane Randolph, who would be the first to attack the maleness of Thomas Jefferson in it's most innocent evolution. She, being his first terror of the English race, femininity and title.

"Women are not quite human...' Thomas' father said to him, one day as they sat on the broad porch of the homestead. 'They are, by their own insistence good for little else than sexual pleasure, breeding, cooking and cleaning."

The two year old Thomas nodded in understanding, and watching the sun melt into the hills of Virginia, he turned to look at his father and said, "Someday, I shall write a proclamation of our freedom."

Peter patted the back of his son and smiled. He felt sure that Thomas would absorb these truths as he grew. Yes, real conversation...real exchange of higher ideas were sacred things amongst men. Little Thomas would soon come to understand that there were three realities. The reality of the intellectual, the reality of the common sensical and the reality of the sexual. These three are sometimes one.

So it was that little Thomas Jefferson learned to seperate himself, intellectually, from the company of women. It was there that he learned to love freedom, and it was there that he honed control of those deemed less.






Learn more about this author, G E Barr.
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