"1 reckon you surprised him, too." Anna patted her husband's arm.
"I hope I did. I rather think I did," Douglass said. "And I have what may be great news: in Chicago, I heard that the Confederates are-no, may be-planning to manumit their bondsmen once the war, now suspended, is truly ended, this being a quid pro quo in return for their allies' assistance against the United States."
"Wonderful news, if true," Lewis said. "We've heard the like now and again down through the years, though, and nothing ever came of it. Who told you this time, Father? Lincoln?"
"No, John Hay," Douglass answered. "Since he was minister to the Confederate States, he should know whereof he speaks. Lincoln had other concerns." He let out a bitter sigh. " Lincoln has had other concerns than the Negro before, which I say though he is and has always been my friend. In the summer of 1862, he drafted a proclamation emancipating all slaves within the territory of the Confederate States, then waited for a U.S. victory to issue it, lest it be seen as a measure of desperation rather than one of policy. The victory never came, and, when our straits indeed grew desperate, he let that paper languish, having been convinced it was by then too late to do any good. I shall go to my grave convinced he was mistaken."
"Of course he was, Father," Lewis said angrily. He looked back over his shoulder. "In all the years since, you have never spoken of this, nor has anyone else I ever heard."
"The proclamation was never widely known, for obvious reasons," Douglass answered. "Once the Confederate States succeeded in breaking away, it became moot, and what would have been the point to mentioning it? As you'll remember, the fight to emancipate the Negro slaves remaining within U.S. territory after the War of Secession was quite hard enough."
"That is so, and you may be right about the rest, too," Lewis said, "but it galls me to think the United States went down to defeat when we still had a weapon we could loose against the enemy."
Frederick Douglass let out a hoarse whoop of laughter. "You say that, after the ignominious cease-fire to which President Blaine has agreed? We have an army's worth-no, a nation's worth-of weapons we have not loosed against our enemies in this fight, and now we shall not loose them."
"And that's a right good thing, too," Anna Douglass said, "on account of the only thing we would do with 'cm is shoot our own selves in the leg."
Lewis pointed north, toward Lake Ontario. "Two ironclads flying the Union Jack steam back and forth out there. We arc under their guns, as we have been since they first bombarded us. We are helpless against them. The problem is not only poor use of the weapons we have, but also weapons we lack."
"We have now twice gone unprepared to war," Douglass said. "May God grant that, where we did not learn our lesson the first time, we shall do so the second. I hope that, in years to come, smoke will billow from the stacks of the factories producing every manner of gun and munition so that, should another war ever come, we shall at last be ready for it."
When the carriage reached the street on which Douglass lived, Lewis had to rein in sharply to keep the horses from running down Daniel, who was pedaling his bicycle along without the slightest care for where he was going. The boy handled the high-wheeled ordinary with far more confidence than he'd shown before Douglass left for Louisville: too much confidence, perhaps.
Seeing Douglass, he whizzed close to the carriage. "Welcome back!" he shouted. "Welcome home!"
"Thank you, son," Douglass answered. By then, Daniel was speeding away again. Douglass wondered whether he heard. Even so, the journalist softly repeated the words: "Thank you." To Daniel, he wasn't a Negro, or, at least, wasn't first and foremost a Negro. Before that, he was a neighbor and a man. To Douglass, that was as it should be.
Lewis reined in again, in front of the house where Douglass and Anna had lived so long. "Here we are, Father." He grinned and tipped his cap. "Cab fare, fifty cents."
Douglass gave him two quarters, and a dime tip to boot. He would not let Lewis return the money, either, saying, "It's the best ride I've had since I left home, and one of the cheaper ones, too."
"All right, since you put it that way." Lewis shoved the coins into his pocket. "Good to know I have a trade I can fall back on at need. Heaven knows the newspaper business isn't so steady as I wish it were."
"See what you get for not pandering to the most popular opinions?" Frederick Douglass kept his tone light, but the words were serious, and he and his son both knew it. He got down, then helped Anna. She felt fragile, bony, in his arms. Anxious, he asked, "My dear, how are you?"
"As the good Lord meant me to be," she answered, to which he found no response. She went on, "Pretty soon I'll see Him face-to-face, and I intend to have a good long talk with Him about the way things do go on in this here world."
"Good," Douglass said. "I'm sure He could have made a much better job of things had He had you to advise Him."
Anna glared, then poked him in the ribs. They both laughed. Together, they walked into the house. Douglass stopped in the front hall. The feel of the throw rug under his feet, the rows of framed pictures on the walls, the infinitely familiar view of the parlor on one side and the dining room on the other, the faint smell of paper and tobacco and food-all told him he was home, and nowhere else. A long, happy sigh escaped him.
"Are you glad to be back?" Anna asked slyly.
"Oh, maybe just a bit," he answered. They laughed again.
Lewis came downstairs, brisk and quick and sure of himself. "I've put your bags in the bedroom, Father. That's settled for you." He was a young man still, and certain that things were easily settled. A small problem solved, he moved on to a greater one: "Where do we go from here?"
"How do you mean that?" Frederick Douglass asked. "I myself am going upstairs before long, to find out if I still remember what sleeping in my own bed feels like. If, however you mean Where does the colored man go from here? or Where do the United States go from here? -well, those questions require a little more thought. Only a little, you understand."
"I had suspected they might." Lewis chuckled without much mirth. "Any quick answers, before I see to the horses and the carriage?"
"You let your father rest," Anna said with a touch of asperity. "He hasn't had hisself an easy time of it."
Nothing could have been better calculated to make Douglass say, "I will answer-a horseback guess, before Lewis goes back to the horses. As I said before, the lot of the colored man in the Confederate States may improve, though to what degree I cannot now guess. The lot of the colored man in our own country? I see no great change on the horizon, though I wish I did. We shall have to go on working state by state for laws asserting our rights, for the national government, having finally broken our chains, can go no further without another Constitutional amendment, and you know as well as I how likely that is."
"Un-," Lewis said wryly. "All right, that's not a bad summation for us. Can you do as well for the country?"
"No one can guess where the country goes from here," Douglass said, shaking his massive head. "We shall have to see what the full effect upon us is of this defeat. Lincoln believes the white labourer will be pressed down until he is no better off than the Negro-but Lincoln, being white, cannot fully grasp all the vicissitudes of being black. Ben Butler, if I understand him rightly, feels the national government needs to organize us down to our shoelaces, to make certain we are never again caught short by our enemies. Whether the national government can do that, whether it will do that, whether it should do that-if I could read a crystal ball, I would wear a turban on my head, not a derby."