The Good Lord Bird

by James McBride

  I got halfway down the hill when I realized I had lost my mind, so I throwed myself to the ground and cowered behind a tree. But that wouldn’t do, for there was lead slapping up against the bark ’round my face, so I found myself rolling down the crest into the ravine right behind the Old Man, who had plopped down next to about ten of his men in a line behind a long log they used for cover.

  Well, that charged up the Old Man when he seen me land down there behind him, for he said to the others, “Look! ‘And a child shall lead them!’ The Onion’s here. Look, men. A girl among us! Thanks be to God to inspire us to glory, to bring us luck and good fortune.”

  The men glanced at me, and while I can’t say whether they was inspired or not, for they was taking fire, I will say this: When I looked down that line of fellers, weren’t a single man from Captain Shore’s company there, except Captain Shore himself. He had somehow got the nerve to come back. His clean uniform and shiny buttons was muddied up now, and his face was drawed-out nervous. His confidence was spent. His men had turned and cut clean out on him. Now it was just the Old Man and his fellers running the show.

  The Old Man looked down the line at his men who lay there in the ravine firing and barked, “Halt. Down.” They done as he said. He used his spyglass to inspect the Missourians’ pickets who was firing from their side. He ordered his men to load up, told ’em exactly where to aim their fire, then said, “Don’t fire till I say so.” Then he got up, and paced back and forth along the log, tellin’ ’em where to shoot as balls whizzed past his head, talking to his men who were reloading and firing. He was cool as ice in a glass. “Take your time,” he said. “Line ’em up in your sights. Aim low. Don’t waste ammunition.”

  Pate’s Sharpshooters wasn’t organized and they was scared. They blowed a lot of ammunition firing willy-nilly and exhausted themselves after a few minutes. They started falling back in numbers on their ridge. The Old Man shouted, “The Missourians are leaving. We must compel them to surrender.” He ordered Weiner and another feller named Biondi to move down the side of the ravine to flank them and shoot their horses, which they done. This caused cussing and more firing from the Missouri side, but the Old Man’s men was confident, shooting dead-on and putting a hurting on ’em. Pate’s men took a lot of bad hits, and several runned off without their horses to avoid capture.

  An hour later, the fight had gone clean out of them. The Old Man’s fellers was organized, whereas Pate’s forces wasn’t. By the time the shooting stopped, there weren’t but thirty or so of Captain Pate’s men left, but it was still a stalemate. Nobody could hit nobody. Each side was tucked behind ridges, and anybody on either side stupid enough to stand up got their balls blowed off, so nobody done it. After about ten minutes of this, the Old Man got impatient. “I will advance some twenty yards by myself,” he said, crouching in the ravine and cocking his revolver, “and when I wave my hat, you all follow.”

  He stepped out into the ravine to run forward, but a sudden wild shout in the air stopped him.

  Frederick, riding a horse, galloped straight past us, down the ravine, across the bottom of the ravine, and up the hill toward the Missourians, waving a sword and screaming, “Hurrah, Father! We got ’em surrounded! Come on, boys! We cut ’em off!”

  Well, he was light as a feather in his mind, and dotty as they come, but the sight of Fred rolling at ’em, huge as he was, hollering to beat the band, wearing enough guns to arm Fort Leavenworth, it was too much for ’em, and they stone quit. A white flag come up from their ravine, and they surrendered. They come out with their hands up.

  Only when they was disarmed did they learn to whose hands they had fallen in, for they hadn’t known it was the Old Man they was shooting at. When the Old Man walked up and grumbled, “I’m John Brown of Osawatomie,” several panicked and looked to sprout tears, for the Old Man in plain view was a frightening sight. After months in the cold woods, his clothes was tattered and worn, so you could see the skin underneath. His boots was more toes than anything. His hair and beard were long and scraggly and white and nearly to his chest. He looked mad as a wood hammer. But the Old Man weren’t the monster they thought he was. He lectured several on their cussing and gived them a word or three on the Bible, which plain wore ’em out, and they calmed down. A few even bantered with his men.

  Me and Bob tended to the wounded while the Old Man and his boys disarmed Pate’s troops. There was a great many of them rolling on the ground in agony. One feller received a bullet through the mouth that tore away his upper lip and shattered his front teeth. Another, a young boy no more than seventeen or so, lay in the grass, moaning. Bob noticed he was wearing spurs. “You think I can have them spurs, since you won’t be needing them no more?” Bob asked.

  The boy nodded, so Bob stooped down to take them off, then said, “There’s only one spur here, sir. Where’s the other?”

  “Well, if one side of the horse goes, the other must,” said the boy. “You won’t need but one.”

  Bob thanked him for his kindness, took his one spur, and the feller expired.

  Up at the top of the ravine, the rest of the men had gathered their prisoners, seventeen in all. Among them was Captain Pate himself and Pardee, who had it out with Bob after he was tried by Kelly and his gang near Dutch’s. He spotted Bob among the Captain’s men and couldn’t stand it. “I should’a beat the butt covers off you before, ya black bastard,” he grumbled.

  “Hush now,” the Old Man said. “I’ll have no swearing ’round me.” He turned to Pate. “Where is my boys John and Jason?”

  “I ain’t got ’em,” Pate said. “They are at Fort Leavenworth, under federal dragoons.”

  “Then we will go there directly and I will exchange you for them.”

  We set off for Fort Leavenworth with the prisoners, their horses, and the rest of the horses that Pate’s men left behind. We had enough horses to stock a horse farm, maybe thirty in all, along with mules, and as much of Pate’s booty as we could carry. Myself, I made off with two pairs of pants, a shirt, a can of paint, a set of spurs, and fourteen corncob pipes I was aiming to trade. The Old Man and his boys didn’t take a thing for themselves, though Fred helped hisself to a couple of Colts and a Springfield rifle.

  It was twenty miles to Fort Leavenworth, and on the way Pate and the Old Man chatted easily. “I’d just as soon aired you out,” Pate said, “if I had known that was you standing down there in that ravine.”

  The Old Man shrugged. “You missed your chance,” he said.

  “We ain’t gonna reach the fort,” Pate said. “This trail is full of rebels looking for you, aiming to collect on your reward.”

  “When they come, I’ll make sure my first charge is in your face,” the Old Man said calmly.

  That quieted Pate up.

  Pate was right, though, for we got about ten miles down the road, near Prairie City, when an armed sentinel in uniform approached. He rode right at us, shouting, “Who goes there?”

  Fred was in the lead and he hollered out, “Free State!”

  The sentry spun his horse ’round, hurried back down the trail, and reappeared with an officer and with several U.S. dragoons, heavily armed. They was federal men, army men, dressed in flashy colored uniforms.

  The officer approached the Old Man. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I’m John Brown of Osawatomie.”

  “Then you are under arrest.”

  “For what?”

  “For violating the laws of Kansas Territory.”

  “I don’t abide by the bogus laws of this territory,” the Old Man said.

  “Well, you will abide by this,” the officer said. He drawed his revolver and pointed it at the Old Man, who stared at the revolver in disdain.

  “I don’t take it personal your threats on my life,” the Old Man said calmly. “For you are given orders to follow. I understand you have a job to do. So go ahead and drop th
e hammer on that thing if you want. You will be a hero to some in this territory if you do it. But should you burst a cap into me, your life won’t be worth a plugged nickel. You will be food for the wolves come evening, for I got a charge to keep from my Maker, Whose home I hope to make my own someday. I done no harm to you and will not. I will let the Lord have you, and that is a far worse outcome than any that you can put forth with what you holding in your hand, which compared to the will of our Maker, ain’t worth a fingernail. My aim is to free the slaves in this territory no matter what you do.”

  “On whose authority?”

  “The authority of our Maker, henceforth and forevermore known as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”

  I don’t know what it is, but every time the Old Man started talking holy, just the mention of his Maker’s name made him downright dangerous. A kind of electricity climbed over him. His voice become like gravel scrapin’ a dirt road. Something raised up in him. His old, tired frame dropped away, and in its place stood a man wound up like a death mill. It was most unsettling thing to see, and the officer got unnerved by it. “I ain’t here to debate you on the premise,” he said. “Tell your men to lay down their arms, and there won’t be no trouble.”

  “Don’t want none. Does your work include taking prisoners and exchanging them?” the Old Man asked.

  “Yes, it does.”

  “I got seventeen prisoners here from Black Jack. I could have killed them directly, for they was intent on taking my life. Instead I am bringing them to Fort Leavenworth for your justice. That ought to be worth something. I want my boys who is held there and nothing more. If you will take these prisoners in exchange for them, I will call it a square deal and hand myself over to you without a fight or harsh word. But if you don’t, you will be worm food, sir. For I am in service of a Greater Power. And my men here will aim for your heart and no one else’s. And while we are outnumbered here two to one, your death will be certain, for they will aim for you alone, and after that, you will suffer the death of a thousand ages, having to explain to your Maker the support of a cause that has enslaved your fellow human beings and entrapped your soul in a way you know not. I have been chosen to do His special work and I aim to keep that charge. You, on the other hand, have not been chosen. So I am not going with you to Fort Leavenworth today, nor am I leaving this territory, until my boys are freed.”

  “Who are they?”

  “They are Browns. They had nothing to do with any killings in this area. They came here to settle the land and have lost everything, including their crops, which were burned by the very rebels you see before you.”

  The officer turned to Pate. “Is that true?” he asked.

  Pate shrugged. “We did burn these nigger-stealer’s crops. Twice. And we will burn their homes if we get the chance, for they are lawbreakers and thieves.”

  That changed up the officer, and he said, “That sounds like a pretty rotten piece of business.”

  “Is you Pro Slave or Free State?” Pate asked.

  “I’m U.S. State,” the officer snapped. “Here to enforce the territorial laws of the United States government, not Missouri or Kansas.” He now turned his gun on Pate and said to Brown, “If I carry your prisoners back to Leavenworth, can I trust you to stay here?”

  “So long as you bring my sons back in exchange for ’em.”

  “I cannot promise that, but I will speak to my superior officer about it.”

  “And who would that be?”

  “Captain Jeb Stuart.”

  “You tell Captain Stuart that Old John Brown of Osawatomie is here at Prairie City awaiting his sons. And if they are not back here in exchange for these prisoners in three days, I will burn this territory.”

  “And if they do come back? Would you surrender yourself?”

  The Old Man folded his hands behind his back.

  “I would do that,” he said.

  “How do I know you’re not lying?”

  The Old Man held up his right hand. “You have it here before God that I, John Brown, will not leave here for three days while I wait for you to bring my boys back. And I will surrender myself to the will of Almighty God upon their return.”

  Well, the officer agreed and set off.

  The Old Man was lying, of course. For he didn’t say nothing about surrendering himself to the U.S. government. Anytime he said something about the will of God, it meant he weren’t going to cooperate or do nothing but as he saw fit. He had no intentions of leaving Kansas Territory or turning himself in or paying attention to what any white soldier told him. He would tell a fib in a minute to help his cause. He was like everybody in war. He believed God was on his side. Everybody got God on their side in a war. Problem is, God ain’t tellin’ nobody who He’s for.

  8

  A Bad Omen

  The Old Man said he’d wait three days for the federals to bring his boys back. He didn’t get to wait that long. The very next morning, a local feller, friendly to our side, come charging in on his horse, breathless, and told him, “The Missourians got a column heading to burn down your homestead.” That was Brown’s Station, where the Old Man and his boys had staked out claims and built homes, near Osawatomie.

  The Old Man considered it. “I can’t leave till the federals come back with John and Jason,” he said. “I gived my word. I can’t go back home and face their wives with empty palms.” Some of his son’s wives wasn’t too fond of the Old Man for pulling their husbands into the war and getting ’em damn near kilt—in fact, before it was over, some of ’em was kilt outright—over the slavery question.

  He turned to Owen and said, “Take Fred, Weiner, Bob, the Onion, and the rest of the men to Osawatomie. See what you see and report back with the men. But leave the Onion in Osawatomie with your sister-in-law Martha or the Adairs, for she has seen enough killing. Don’t tarry.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  He turned to me and said, “Onion, I is sorry I am taking you out the fight. I knows how much you like fighting for your freedom, having seen you in action at Black Jack”—I ain’t done a thing there that I recall other than cower and holler in that ravine when we was taking fire, but the Old Man looked over there and saw me down there with the best of his men, and I reckon he claimed that as bravery. That was the thing with the Old Man. He seen what he wanted to see, for I knowed I was square terrified, and unless you count hollering uncle and curling up into a ball and licking your toes signs of courage and encouragement, there weren’t nothing too courageous about what I done down there. Anyway, he went on: “Brave as you are, we involved here is men, even Bob here, and it is best that you stay in Osawatomie with my friends the Adairs till things calm down, then think about heading north to your freedom where it is safer for a girl to be.”

  Well doggone it I was ready to hit out hooting and hollering that minute. I was done with the smell of gunpowder and blood. Him and his men could pick fights and spur their horses into shoot-outs for the rest of their days as far as I was concerned. I was finished. But I tried not to show too much joy about the whole bit. I said, “Yes, Captain, I will honor your wishes.”

  Osawatomie was a full day’s ride from Prairie City, and Owen decided to lead his men on the main California Trail, which was a little more risky for chance meetings with Pro Slave patrols, but he wanted to get back to his Pa in quick fashion. The Adairs who I was set to stay with lived off that trail too, in the same general direction as Osawatomie, so all the more reason to take the trail. It worked out well at first. As we rode, I gived a thought or two to where I’d slip off to once Owen and the Old Man’s men left. I had a few boy’s items I’d picked up in my travels, and a few little items. But where to go? North? What was that? I didn’t know north in any way, shape, fashion, or form in them days. I was considering this thought as I rode along with Fred, which always made me feel better about myself, for Fred didn’t require but a half a mind to
talk to, being that he weren’t but half a glass, which made him a good talking partner, for I could think one thing to myself and chat to him about another, and he generally was agreeable to anything I said.

  Me and him lingered in the rear of the column, with Weiner and Owen leading up front, and Bob in the middle. Fred seemed blue.

  “I heard Owen say you know all your letters now,” he said.

  “I do,” I said. I was proud of it.

  “I’m wondering why I can’t hold a letter in my head,” he said drearily. “I learns one at a time and forgets ’em right off. Everybody else can hold their letters in their head except me. Even you.”

  “Knowing letters ain’t all it’s cracked up to be,” I said. “I ain’t read but one book. It’s a Bible picture book I got from the Old Man.”

  “You think you could read it to me?”

  “Why, I’d be happy to,” I said.

  When we stopped to water the horses and eat, I got my book out and throwed a few words at Fred. I gived him my version of it anyway, for while I knowed my letters, I didn’t know more than a few words, so I cooked up what I didn’t know. I gived him the book of John, and John’s tellin’ the people of Jesus’s coming and Jesus being so great that John weren’t even worthy to fasten his slippers. The story growed to the size of an elephant in my retelling of it, for when’s the last time you read in the Bible ’bout a horse named Cliff pulling his wagon ’round into the city of Jerusalem wearing slippers? But Fred never said a cross or contrary word as he listened. He liked it fine. “It’s the most dandy reading of the Bible I ever heard,” he declared.