The Good Lord Bird

by James McBride

  “I ain’t scratching my name to nothing till I know what it is,” Pardee grumbled.

  “Stop making it tough, ya stupid idiot. I’m making it easy for ya.”

  Pardee throwed his eyes to the paper again and started reading.

  He took his time about it. Five minutes passed. Ten. The sun shone full overhead and the liquor bottle the men passed around was emptied and tossed. Another liquor bottle appeared. They passed that. Twenty minutes passed. He was still reading.

  Several fellers dozed off while Kelly sat on the ground, doodling with his gun belt, drunk as a fish. Finally he looked up at Pardee. “What you waiting on, the steamboat?” he snapped. “Just sign it. It’s just a few declarations.”

  “I can’t read ’em all at once,” Pardee said.

  Well, it occurred to me that Pardee probably couldn’t read at all. But he acted like he could. The men begun to curse him. They cursed him for the better part of ten minutes. He kept on reading. One man went up to Pardee and blowed cigar smoke in his face. Another come up and yelled into his ear. A third come up, hawked, and spit right on his face. That made him put the paper down.

  “Hatch, I’m gonna bust you across the jibs once I get clear here,” Pardee growled.

  “Just finish!” Kelly said.

  “I can’t read with your cousin screwing up my figuring. Now I got to start all over again.”

  He throwed the paper to his face again. The men grew more furious. They threatened to tar and feather him. They promised to hold an auction and let the Negro driver sell him. Still, Pardee kept reading. Wouldn’t look up. Finally Kelly stood up.

  “I’mma give you one last chance,” he said. He looked serious now.

  “Okay,” Pardee said. He thrust the paper out to Kelly. “I’m finished. I can’t sign it. It’s illegal.”

  “But it’s signed by a bona fide judge!”

  “I don’t care if it’s signed by Jesus H. Christ. I ain’t signing nothin’ that I don’t know what it is. I don’t understand nothin’ in it.”

  Now Kelly got mad. “I’m giving you a break, ya watery-mouth, yellow-livered Free Stater. Sign it!”

  “That’s some way to treat a feller who rode cattle with you for two years.”

  “That’s the only reason you’re drawing air now.”

  “You lyin’, bowlegged cockroach. You just tryin’ to stake my claim!”

  That stirred the men. Suddenly the thing went the other way. Claim jumpers in Kansas, folks who throwed themselves on another’s land who already made a claim on that land, why, they was almost worse than horse and nigger thieves.

  “Is that true, Kelly?” one of them asked. “You trying to stake his land?”

  “Course not,” Kelly said hotly.

  “He’s straight out been aiming on my land since we got here,” Pardee said. “That’s why you calling me a Yank, ya leech!”

  “You’s a blue-bellied, pet house-paupin’ liar!” Kelly roared. He snatched the paper from Pardee and gived it to the driver of the wagon, a Negro.

  “Nigger Bob, you read it out loud,” he said. He turned to Pardee. “And whatever that nigger reads off here, if you don’t agree and sign off on it, I’m gonna bust a charge into your neck and be done with you.”

  He turned to the Negro. “G’wan and read it, Nigger Bob.”

  Nigger Bob was a hardy, tall, fit Negro, not more than twenty-five, setting atop the driver’s bench on the wagon. He took the paper with shaking hands, his eyes wide as silver dollars. That nigger was panicked. “I can’t read, boss,” he stammered.

  “Just read it.”

  “But I don’t know what it says.”

  “G’wan and read it!”

  That Negro’s hands shook and he stared at the paper. Finally he blurted nervously, “Een-y. Mean-y. Mine-y. Moe. One-two-three.”

  Several men burst out laughing, but Kelly was hot now, as was several others, for the men growed impatient.

  “Kelly, let’s hang Pardee and get up the road,” one said.

  “Let’s tar and feather him.”

  “What you fooling ’round for, Kelly? Let’s go.”

  Kelly waved them to silence, then blew out his cheeks, hemming and hawing. He didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. Being full of gulp sauce weren’t helping him, neither. He said, “Let’s vote on it. All in favor of hanging Pardee for being a nigger-loving Free State Yankee and an agent of the New England Emigrant Yellow Belly Society, raise your hand.”

  Eight hands were raised.

  “All in favor of not hanging?”

  Eight more hands went up.

  I counted sixteen men. It was a tie.

  Kelly stood there swaying, drunk, in a quandary. He tottered over to Nigger Bob, who sat in the wagon driver’s seat, trembling. “Since Pardee here’s an abolitionist, we’ll let Nigger Bob decide. What’s your vote, Nigger Bob? Hang Pardee here or not?”

  Pardee, setting in the back of the wagon, suddenly leaped up in a snit. “Hang me then!” he howled. “I’d rather hang than have a nigger vote on me!” he cried, then tried to leap out the wagon, but fell flat on his face, for his feet were tied.

  The men howled even more. “You pukin’ abolitionist egghead,” Kelly said, laughing, as he helped Pardee up. “You should’a read them resolutions like I told you.”

  “I can’t read!” Pardee said.

  That stopped Kelly cold and he took his hands off Pardee like he was electrified. “What? You said you could!”

  “I was lying.”

  “What about that land title at Big Springs? You said it was . . .”

  “I don’t know what that was. You wanted it so damn bad!”

  “You blockhead!”

  Now it was Kelly’s turn to be on the spot while the other men laughed at him! “You should’a said something, ya damn dummy,” he growled. “Whose land is it then?”

  “I don’t know,” Pardee sniffed. “But you been told. Now. You read these resolutions to me and I’ll sign ’em.” He thrust the paper out to Kelly.

  Kelly hemmed and hawed. He coughed. He blew his nose. He flustered around. “I ain’t much on reading,” he muttered. He snatched the paper from Pardee and turned to the posse. “Who here reads?”

  Weren’t a man among them spoke. Finally a feller in the back said, “I ain’t setting here watching you fiddle with your noodle a minute more, Kelly. Old Man Brown’s hiding out near here somewhere, and I aim to find him.”

  With that he galloped off, and the men followed. Kelly rushed to follow them, staggering to his mount. When he swung his horse around, Pardee said, “At least gimme my gun back, ya knobhead.”

  “I sold it in Palmyra, ya mule-face abolitionist. I oughta kick your teeth out for screwing up that land title,” Kelly said. He rode off with the rest.

  Pardee and Nigger Bob watched him leave.

  When he was out of sight, Nigger Bob moved from the driver’s seat to the back and untied Pardee’s ankles without a word.

  “Ride me home,” Pardee fumed. He said it over his shoulder as he rubbed his ankles, setting in back of the wagon.

  Nigger Bob hopped into the driver’s seat, but didn’t move. He sat atop the wagon and looked straight ahead. “I ain’t riding you no place,” he said.

  That floored me. I had never heard a Negro talk to a white man like that before in my entire life.

  Pardee blinked, stunned. “What you say?”

  “You heard it. This here wagon belongs to Mr. Settles and I’m taking it home to him.”

  “But you got to pass Palmyra! That’s right where I live.”

  “I ain’t going nowhere with you, Mr. Pardee. You can go where you want, however you please. But this here wagon belongs to Marse Jack Settles. And he ain’t give me no permission to ride nobody in it. I done what Mr. Kelly said ’cause I had
to. But I ain’t got to now.”

  “Git down off that seat and come down here.”

  Bob ignored him. He sat in the driver’s seat, staring off into the distance.

  Pardee reached for his heater, but found his holster empty. He stood up and glared at Nigger Bob like he was fit to whup him, but that Negro was bigger than him and I reckon he thought better of it. Instead, he jumped down off the wagon, stomped down the road a piece, picked up a large stone, walked back to the wagon, and chinked out the wood cotter pin on one of the wagon wheels. Just banged it right out. That pin held the wheel on. Bob sat there as he chinked. Didn’t move.

  When Pardee was done, he throwed the pin in the thickets. “If I got to walk home, you walking too, ya black bastard,” he said, and stomped up the road.

  Bob watched him till he was out of sight, then climbed down from the wagon and looked at the wheel. I waited several long minutes before I finally come out the woods. “I can help you fix that if you take me up the road a piece,” I said.

  He stared at me, startled. “What you doing out, little girl?” he said.

  Well, that throwed me, for I forgot how I was done up. I quick tried to untie the bonnet. But it was tied tight. So I went at the dress, which was tied from behind.

  “Good Lord, child,” Bob said. “You ain’t got to do that to get no ride from Nigger Bob.”

  “It ain’t what it looks like,” I said. “In fact, if you’d be so kind as to help me take this thing off—”

  “I’ll be heading out,” he said, backing away.

  But I had my chance and I weren’t going to lose it. “Wait a minute. Help me. If you don’t mind, just untie—”

  Good God, he jumped atop the wagon, hustled onto the driver’s seat, called up that horse to trotting, and was off, pin or no pin. He got about ten yards before that back wheel got to wobbling so bad—it just about come clean off—before he stopped. He jumped down, pulled a stick from the thickets, stuck it into the pin hole, and commenced to banging it into place. I ran up on him.

  “I got business, child,” he said, chinking away at the wheel. He wouldn’t look up at me.

  “I ain’t a girl.”

  “Whatever you think you is, honey, I don’t think it’s proper that you unstring that dress from ’round yourself in front of ol’ Nigger Bob—a married man.” He paused a minute, glanced around, then added, “Less’n you want to, of course.”

  “You got a lot of salt talking that way,” I said.

  “You the one asking for favors.”

  “I’m trying to get to Dutch’s Crossing.”

  “For what?”

  “I live there. I’m Gus Shackleford’s boy.”

  “That’s a lie. Old Gus is dead. And he ain’t have no girl. Had a boy. Wasn’t worth shit neither, that child.”

  “That’s a hell of a thing to say ’bout somebody you don’t know.”

  “I don’t know you, child. You a sassy thing. How old are you?”

  “It don’t matter. Take me back to Dutch’s. He’ll give you a little something for me.”

  “I wouldn’t ride to Dutch’s for a smooth twenty dollars. They’ll kill a nigger in there.”

  “He won’t bother you. It’s Old John Brown he’s after.”

  At the mention of that name, Bob glanced around, taking stock up and down the trail, making sure nobody was rolling toward us. The trail was empty.

  “The John Brown?” he whispered. “He’s really ’round these parts?”

  “Surely. He kidnapped me. Made me wear a dress and bonnet. But I escaped that murdering fool.”

  “Why?”

  “You see how he got me dressed.”

  Bob looked at me closely, then sighed, then whistled. “There’s killers all up and down these plains,” he said slowly. “Ask the red man. Anybody’ll say anything to live. What would John Brown want with you anyhow? He need an extra girl to work his kitchen?”

  “If I’m tellin’ a lie I hope I drop down dead after I tell it. I ain’t a girl!” I managed to pull the bonnet back off my head.

  That shook him some. He peered at me close, then stuck his face into mine and it hit him then. His eyes got wide. “What the devil got into you?” he said.

  “Want me to show you my privates?”

  “Spare me, child. I takes your word for it. I wouldn’t want to see your privates any more than I’d want to stick my face in Dutch Henry’s Tavern. Why you paddling ’round like that? Was John Brown gonna run you north?”

  “I don’t know. He just murdered three fellers up about five miles from here. I seen that with my own eyes.”

  “White fellers?”

  “If it look white and smell white, you can bet it ain’t buzzard.”

  “You sure?”

  “James Doyle and his boys,” I said. “Deadened ’em with swords.”

  He whistled softly. “Glory,” he murmured.

  “So you’ll take me back to Dutch’s?”

  He didn’t seem to hear me. He seemed lost in thought. “I heard John Brown was about these parts. He’s something else. You ought to be grateful, child. You met him and all?”

  “Met him? Why you think I’m dressed like a sissy. He—”

  “Shit! If I could get Old John Brown to favor me and carry me to freedom, why, I’d dress up as a girl every day for ten years. I’d be thoroughly a girl till I got weak from it. I’d be a girl for the rest of my life. Anything’s better than bondage. Your best bet is to go back with him.”

  “He’s a murderer!”

  “And Dutch ain’t? He’s riding on Brown now. Got a whole posse looking for ’em. Every redshirt within a hundred miles is rolling these plains for him. You can’t go back to Dutch nohow.”

  “Why not?”

  “Dutch ain’t stupid. He’ll sell you south and git his money for you while he can. Any nigger that’s had a sip of freedom ain’t worth squat to the white man out here. High-yellow boy like you’ll fetch a good price in New Orleans.”

  “Dutch wouldn’t see me sold.”

  “You wanna bet?”

  That gived me pause then. For Dutch weren’t too sentimental.

  “You know where I can go?”

  “Your best bet is to go back to Old Brown. If you ain’t lyin’ ’bout being with his gang and all. They say they’re fearsome. Is it true he carries two seven-shooters?”

  “One of ’em does.”

  “Ooh, wee, that just tickles me,” he said.

  “I’d rather blow my brains out than run around dressed like a girl. I can’t do it.”

  “Well, save yourself the bullet and go on back to Dutch, then. He’ll send you to New Orleans and death’ll be knocking shortly. I never heard of a nigger escaped from there.”

  That done me in. I hadn’t considered none of that. “I don’t know where the Old Man is now,” I said. “I couldn’t find him by myself nohow. I don’t know these parts.”

  Bob said slowly, “If I help you find him, you think he could lead me to freedom, too? I’ll dress like a girl for it.”

  Well, that sounded too complicated. But I needed a ride. “I can’t say what he’ll do, but he and his sons got a big army. And more guns than you ever saw. And I heard him say it clear, ‘I’m an abolitionist through and through, and I aims to free every colored in this territory.’ I heard him say that many times. So I expect he would take you.”

  “What about my wife and children?”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  Bob thunk on it a long moment.

  “I got a cousin down near Middle Creek who knows everything in these parts,” he said. “He’ll know where the Old Man’s hideout is. But if we set here too long, another posse’s gonna roll up, and they might not be drunk like the last. Help me tie that wagon wheel back.”

  I hopped to work. We
rolled a fallen tree stump under the wagon. He harred the horse up so it pulled the wagon high enough to free the bottom, then tied the rope to a tree and harred the horse up again, creating a winch. We piled planks and stones under it to keep it up. I searched the thickets and found that cotter pin and helped him put the wheel back on and chink it in. The sun was near to noon when we finished, and we was hot and sweaty by the time we got the thing done, but we got that wagon wheel spinning like new, and I hopped aboard the driver’s seat next to him, and we was off in no time.

  6

  Prisoner Again

  We didn’t get two miles down the road before we runned into patrols of every type. The entire territory was in alarm. Armed posses crisscrossed the trail every which way. Every passing wagon had a rider setting up front with a shotgun. Children acted as lookouts for every homestead, with Pas and Mas setting out front in rocking chairs holding shotguns. We passed several wagons pulling terrified Yankees going in the opposite direction, their possessions piled high, hauling ass back east fast as their mules could go, quitting the territory altogether. The Old Man’s killings terrified everyone. But Bob got safe passage, for he was riding his master’s wagon and had papers to show it.

  We followed the Pottawatomie Creek on the California Trail toward Palmyra. Then we cut along the Marais des Cygnes River toward North Middle Creek. A short way along the river, Bob stopped the wagon, dismounted, and tied off the horse. “We got to walk from here,” he said.

  We walked down a clean-dug trail to a fine, well-built house on the back side of the river. An old Negro was tending flowers at the gate, turning dirt on the walkway as we come. Bob howdied him and he hailed us over.

  “Good afternoon, Cousin Herbert,” Bob said.

  “What’s good about it?”

  “The Captain’s good about it.”

  At the mention of the word “Captain,” Herbert glanced at me, shot a nervous look at his master’s house, then fell to turning that dirt again on his hands and knees, getting busy on that dirt, looking down. “I don’t know nothing about no Captain, Bob.”

  “C’mon, Herbert.”

  The old feller kept his eyes on that dirt, turning it, busy, tending flowers, talking low as he worked. “Git on outta here. Old Brown’s hotter than a pig in shit. What you doing fooling with him? And whose knock-kneed girl is that? She too young for you.”