Editor's note: Pinkus Aylee, a black soldier, rescued Sheldon "Say" Curtis after he was wounded by Confederate troops. Pink took the feverish Say home to his mother's farmhouse, where he recuperated.
Then fever must have took me good, 'cause I could feel a cool, sweet-smelling quilt next to my face. Soft, gentle warm hands were strokin' my head with a cool wet rag cloth. "Look at the mornin' that's comin'," a woman's voice said as she spooned oat porridge into me. "Do your momma know what a beautiful baby boy she has?" "Where am I? Is this heaven?" I asked.
She tossed her head and laughed. "No child, Pinkus brung you home to me -- don't you remember?"
The mahogany child, I thought. "Both you children been on the run for days, and a miracle of God Almighty brung you both here, yes indeed, child, a miracle."
I remember thinkin', Could this war have been so close to this lad's home? I couldn't imagine havin' a war right in his back yard. I looked over and saw him lookin' out the winderlight. "Guess you don't remember much," he said. "I'm Pinkus Aylee, fought with the Forty-eighth Colored. Found you after I got lost from my company." "My name is Sheldon. Sheldon Curtis," I said weakly. "This is my mother, sweet Moe Moe Bay," he said as she smiled at me.
For the next week Moe Moe Bay fed us both up good. Raw milk and corn bread never tasted so good in all my born days. It were the first time in months my vittles didn't have any mealy worms in it. She saw to it that I tried to walk a little every day. "So's that mean-lookin' leg don't go stiff on you and cripple up," she'd say.
This place wasn't that much different from our farmhouse in Ohio, more poor maybe, but it smelled the same. Like pine boards and good cookin'. A mess-o'-beans with salt pork, corn bread, greens and onions. When we slept, she sat near us, stoked the fire and watched over us. Never thought I'd feel safe enough to sleep deep again.
As we rested under the willow tree, Pink asked me about my family back home. "Got one brother still at home to help run the place for Pa," I answered. "What was your outfit again?" Pink asked. He'd asked me before. "Ohio Twenty-fourth. I carried the staff. Wasn't supposed to carry a gun, but then so many died, even us boys had to carry after so many were slaughtered like hogs." "Least you got to carry. In the Forty-eighth, we couldn't have guns at first. We fought with sticks and hammers and sledges. Can you imagine not trustin' us with our own fight?"
I couldn't imagine such a thing. "Then when they did finally give us muskets, they were from the Mexican-American War. Those muskets jammed and misfired!" "Then how, in God's name, can you want to go back?" I asked. " 'Cause it's my fight, Say. Ain't it yours, too? If we don't fight, then who will?"
I had no answer for him, but, God forgive me, I didn't want to ever go back to it!
That night I couldn't sleep. "What's wrong, child?" Moe Moe Bay said from her chair. "I don't want to go back," I blurted out. "I know, child," she said. "Of course you don't." "You don't understand. I took up and run away from my unit. I was hit when I was runnin'." I sobbed so hard my ribs hurt. "I'm a coward and a deserter."
She looked at the fire and said nothing for the longest time. Then her voice covered my cries. "You ain't nothin' of the kind. You a child ... a child! Of course you scared. Ain't nobody that ain't." "I'm not brave like Pink. ... I'm not brave." "Child, bein' brave don't mean you ain't afeared. Don't you know that?" "I don't want to die." "They's things worse than death, child. But you got nothin' to fear. You are here now, and I'm huggin' you up. You goin' to be an old man someday. When it is your time, the sweet Lord'll send a hummin' bird to fly your soul to heaven. Now, you ain't afeared of hummin' birds, are you?"
Her words brought me sweet sleep. That night I dreamt of hummin' birds and green pastures full of sunlight and wildflowers.
From PINK AND SAY by Patricia Polacco. Text copyright (c) 1994 by Patricia Polacco. Illustrations (c) 1994 by Patricia Polacco. Reprinted by permission of Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers.
Pub Date: 3/28/99