Banneker

What did he do except lie under a pear tree, wrapped in a great cloak, and meditate on the heavenly bodies? Venerable , the good people of Baltimore whispered, shocked and more than a little afraid. After all it was said he took to strong drink. Why else would he stay out under the stars all night and why hadn’t he married? But who would want him! Neither Ethiopian nor English, neither lucky nor crazy, a capacious bird humming as he penned in his mind another enflamed letter to President Jefferson—he imagined the reply, polite and rhetorical. Those who had been to Philadelphia reported the statue of Benjamin Franklin before the library his very size and likeness. A wife? No, thank you. At dawn he milked the cows, then went inside and put on a pot to stew while he slept. The clock he whittled as a boy still ran. Neighbors woke him up with warm bread and quilts. At nightfall he took out his rifle—a white-maned figure stalking the darkened breast of the Union—and shot at the stars, and by chance one went out. Had he killed? I assure thee, my dear Sir! Lowering his eyes to fields sweet with the rot of spring, he could see a government’s domed city rising from the morass and spreading in a spiral of lights....