“Go along, boy!” the Captain said.
Mr. Auld stepped to the waiting rig, motioning Frederick to climb up beside the driver, and they were off toward Lower Broadway. They wound their way between warehouses, great piles of cotton bales and tobacco, pyramided kegs of rum and stinking fish markets; and finally Mr. Auld spoke.
“So, Fred, we’re going to make a caulker out of you!”
“Yes, sir.” Frederick turned his head.
“Well, you’re big and strong. Ought to make a good worker. Watch yourself!”
After that they drove in silence, the driver casting sidelong glances at Frederick, neither slave saying anything. Their time to talk would come later. The rig bumped over the cobblestones on Thames Street with its shops and saloons, and came out into a pleasant residential section of shuttered windows, dormered roofs and paneled doors.
Here the June evening was lovely. They passed a fine old house beside which a spreading magnolia tree, all in bloom, spilt its fragrance out into the street. In gardens behind wrought-iron handrails children were quietly playing. Young dandies passed along the sidewalks, parading before demure young misses. On white stoop or behind green lattice, the young ladies barely raised their eyes from their needlework. Negro servants moved to and fro, wearing bright red bandanas and carrying market baskets tilted easily on their heads. They passed a gray cathedral and came to a small brick house with white marble steps and white-arched vestibule.
Frederick’s heart turned over. The house had been freshly painted, the yard trimmed and cut. The place with its lace curtains had an air of affluence which Frederick did not recall; but this had been the nearest thing to a home that he had ever known, and he felt affection for it. Was Tommy at home? After the master had descended, they drove around back. There was the cellar door down which he and Tommy had slid; the gnarled tree was gone. He wondered what Tommy had done with the notebooks they had hid inside the trunk—those notebooks in which Frederick had so painfully traced his young master’s letters. As they climbed down from the rig Frederick, trying to keep the urgency from his voice, turned to the boy.
“Is Master—Master Tommy at home?”
The black boy stared at him a moment without answering. Then he asked, “Young Massa?” And at Frederick’s nod, “Yes—Massa Thomas, he hyear.”