Five-Carat Soul by James McBride

Author:James McBride
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-09-26T04:00:00+00:00

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THE NEXT MORNING, the 9th Louisiana Colored Infantry Regiment stood in proud formation, their cannons and mule skinners assembled in a tight straight solid line for nearly a mile, their uniforms, though dirty, buttoned and ordered properly, the brass buttons and broadsword handles of their commanders glistening in the sun, as Abe Lincoln himself turned the corner of Walker and Greal. The president walked with a small entourage of men and officers, he being the tallest of them, moving in a stately manner, like a tower among small cottages, his face pockmarked by grief and struggle, holding the hand of his son Tad. He nodded at the troops as he moved slowly down the road, occasionally tipping his hat and smiling. In ten days he would be dead, slain by an assassin’s bullet, surrendered to history.

But for the 9th Louisiana Colored Infantry, it was the proudest, most electrifying moment of their lives, one they would, to a man, never forget. Thus, few among them noticed that among their 120 troops, 14 cannons, 11 wagons, and 45 mule skinners who stood in tight formation to greet the Republic’s sixteenth president there was one missing Union Army mule, one missing Union Army wagon, several barrels of Union Army supplies, and one unpaid Union Army soldier named Sergeant Abe Porter, who at that moment was making tracks north with a boy named Little Abe, rolling that Army mule at a double trot as fast as it could go, man and boy bound for the North and the long wait for the arrival of freedom and all that it represented, whatever it was, whenever it was, and however it was bound to come.

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