"McHugh-TheLincolnTrain" - читать интересную книгу автора (McHugh Maureen F)

The train comes down the track, chuffing, coming slow. It is an old, badly used
thing, but I can see that once it was a model of chaste and beautiful
workmanship. Under the dust it is a dark claret in color. It is said that the
engine was built to be used by President Lincoln, but since the assassination
attempt he is too infirm to travel. People begin to push to the edge of the
platform, hauling their bags and worldly goods. I don't know how I will get our
valise on. If Zeke could have come I could have at least insured that it was
loaded on, but the Negroes are free now and they are not to help. The notice
said no family Negroes could come to the station, although I see their faces
here and there through the crowd.

The train stops outside the station to take on water.

"Is it your father?" my mother says diffidently. "Do you see him on the train ?"

"No, Mother," I say. "We are taking the train."

"Are we going to see your father?" she asks.

It doesn't matter what I say to her, she'll forget it in a few minutes, but I
cannot say yes to her. I cannot say that we will see my father even to give her
a few moments of joy.

"Are we going to see your father?" she asks again.

"No," I say.

"Where are we going?"

I have carefully explained it all to her and she cried, every time I did. People
are pushing down the platform toward the train, and I am trying to decide if I
should move my valise toward the front of the platform. Why are they in such a
hurry to get on the train? It is taking us all away.

"Where are we going? Julia Adelaide, you will answer me this moment," my mother
says, her voice too full of quaver to quite sound like her own.

"I'm Clara," I say. "We're going to St. Louis."

"St. Louis," she says. "We don't need to go to St. Louis. We can't get through
the lines, Julia, and I . . . I am quite indisposed. Let's go back home now,
this is foolish."

We cannot go back home. General Dodge has made it clear that if we did not show
up at the train platform this morning and get our names checked off the list, he
would arrest every man in town, and then he would shoot every tenth man. The
town knows to believe him, General Dodge was put in charge of the trains into
Washington, and he did the same thing then. He arrested men and held them and
every time the train was fired upon he hanged a man.