Pink and Say

Fifteen-year-old Sheldon Curtis has been left for dead on a civil war battlefield somewhere in Georgia. He's got a bullet in his leg, but he's still alive. Pinkus Aylee, A black soldier, also about fifteen, who has been separated from his unit, comes across Sheldon and carries, coaxes and drags him home, where Pinkus' mother, Moe Moe Bay, nurses him back to health. During his stay with Pink and his mother, Sheldon, who is called Say for short, confesses that he was deserting when he was shot and Pink talks him into rejoining the war when he heals. Pink has no choice, because the war is about his freedom. Also during his recovery, Say is surprised to see that Pink can read. He cannot, but he tells Pink and Moe Moe Bay that he once shook hands with Abe Lincoln and in a brilliant piece of artwork, Ms. Polacco shows us the two African Americans touching the had that once touched the hand of Abe Lincoln. Say recovers, but just before they're about to leave to rejoin the war, Mauraders come. Moe Moe Bay hides the two boys in her root celler, telling them that they won't want anything to do with an old black woman, then she leads them away from the cabin. Sadly then kill her. After burying her, Pink and Say start out to find their units, but are captured by the Confederates. They are sent to Andersonville, a horrid prison built to house ten thousand, but which held thirty thousand. Pink and Say are separated after they're imprisoned and in a touching drawing Ms. Polacco shows us Pink touching the hand that touched the hand of Abe Lincoln one last time. When Sheldon is released several months later he weighs only 78 pounds. Pinkus was hanged and his body thrown into a lime pit. Sheldon lived to die an old man, as Moe Moe Bay said he would.