The Errand

Thirteen-year-old Jessie Bollier, his widowed mother, and his sister live in a one-room home in a poor quarter of New Orleans in 1840. His mother makes a meager wage sewing dresses, and Jessie plays his fife to make a few pennies. He dreams of being rich someday, and although he is curious about the lives of slaves he sees, he is forbidden to visit the slave market and knows little about their daily existence. His mother tells him that despite his family's grinding poverty,

there were souls whose fates were so terrible in comparison
to ours, that we should consider ourselves
among the fortunate of the earth. I knew she was
thinking of the slaves who were sold daily so close
to where we lived.

When his mother has to make a dress in a hurry, she sends Jessie out to his aunt's house to get some...