If you are reading this, I am dead. If you are reading this, you are also Negro, as was I, because the white folk on K, L, and M Streets only hire Negro housemen. The Coughlin family is not so bad for white folk. The Captain is never to be trifled with but he will treat you fair if you don’t cross him. His sons are mostly good. Mister Connor will snap at you every now and again. Joe is just a boy and will talk your ear off if you let him. Danny is a strange. He definitely does his own thinking. He is like the Captain, though, he will treat you fair and like a man. Nora is a funny thinker herself but there is not any wool over her eyes. You can trust her. Be careful with Mrs. Coughlin. Do what she asks and never question her. Stay well clear of the Captain’s friend, Lieutenant McKenna. He is something the Lord should have dropped. Good luck.

Sincerely,

Avery Wallace

Luther looked up from the letter as the streetcar crossed the Broadway Bridge while the Fort Point Channel ran silver and sluggish below.

So this was his new life. So this was his new city.

Every morning, at six-fifty sharp, Mrs. Ellen Coughlin left the residence at 221 K Street and ventured down the stairs, where Luther waited by the family car, a six-cylinder Auburn. Mrs. Coughlin would acknowledge him with a nod as she accepted his hand and climbed into the passenger seat. Once she was settled, Luther would close the door as softly as Captain Coughlin had instructed and drive Mrs. Coughlin a few short blocks to the seven o’clock mass at Gate of Heaven Church. He would remain outside the car for the duration of the mass and often chat with another houseman, Clayton Tomes, who worked for Mrs. Amy Wagenfeld, a widow who lived on M Street, South Boston’s most prestigious address, in a town house overlooking Independence Square Park.

Mrs. Ellen Coughlin and Mrs. Amy Wagenfeld were not friends—as far as Luther and Clayton could tell, old white women didn’t have friends—but their valets eventually formed a bond. Both were from the Midwest—Clayton grew up in Indiana not far from French Lick—and both were valets for employers who would have had little use for them had they placed just one foot in the twentieth century. Luther’s first job after returning Mrs. Coughlin to her household every morning was to cut wood for the stove, while Clayton’s was to haul coal to the basement.

“This day and age?” Clayton said. “Whole country—’least what can afford it—is going electrical, but Mrs. Wagenfeld, she want no part of it.”

“Mrs. Coughlin neither,” Luther said. “Enough kerosene in that house to burn down the block, spend half my day cleaning gas soot off the walls, but the captain say she won’t even discuss the subject. Said it took him five years to convince her to get indoor plumbing and stop using a backyard privy.”