The Good Lord Bird

by James McBride

  The Old Man’s men was outgunned and his boys fell back farther to the ridge, the creek right at their backs now, no place else to back up. There was a line of timber at the riverbank there, and he shouted quickly to his fellers to mount a line, which they did, just as the rebels charged the riverbank again.

  I don’t know how they held it. The Old Man was stubborn. The Free Staters was badly outnumbered, but they held on until a second party of rebels flanked them from the rear, on the same side of the stream. A few of the Old Man’s team turned ’round to fight them off while the Old Man held his boys on the line, urging his men on. “Hold men. Steady. Aim low. Don’t waste ammunition.” He walked up and down the line shouting directions as bullets and cannon shot tore the leaves and limbs off the trees ’round him.

  Finally, behind him, the Free Staters trying to hold off the rebels in that direction quit and run for it across the river, eating lead the whole way, and several of them breathed their last in the river. It was just too many enemy. The Old Man was cut off from a clean retreat now, taking fire from two sides, with the cannon blasting grape at him and rebels closing from the other way, with the creek behind him. He weren’t going to make it. He was defeated, but he wouldn’t give in. He held his men there.

  The Missourians, cussing and hollering, quit for a minute to move their cannon closer, and took some lead from the Old Man’s men. But they got it mounted up again within fifty yards or so of the Old Man’s line and blowed a big hole in the line, sending several of his men into the water. Only then did he give up. He was done. He hollered, “Back across the river!” The men gladly did it, scrambling fast, but not him. He stood, big as you want, firing and reloading until the last man got out the tree line, hit the bank, and waded across. Owen was the last to go, and when he was at the riverbank and seen his Pa weren’t there, he turned back, hollering, “Come, Father!”

  The Old Man knowed he was defeated, but couldn’t stand it. He squeezed off one more blast from his seven-shooter, turned to run, and as he did, a cannon volley whipped through the tree line and got him. He was hit square in the back and went down like a rag doll, knocked clean off the ridge and back into the bank. He rolled off the ridge down to the river’s edge and didn’t move. He was done.

  Dead.

  He weren’t dead, though, only stunned, for that ball had spent itself before it got to him. It plunked a hole in his coat and pierced the skin of his back and lost juice right as it got to him. The Old Man’s skin was thicker than a mule’s ass, and while that ball drawed blood, it didn’t go deep. He jumped up quick as you can tell it, but the sight of him falling off that ridge toward the water drawed a cheer from the Missourians at the top of the bank who smelled red meat but couldn’t see him at the water’s edge, and several jumped down to the bank after him, only to find the Old Man waiting with that seven-shooter which was still dry and loaded. He busted a cap into the face of the first man, cracked the skull of the second man with the butt of that thing—that gun is heavy as the dickens—and sent a third to his Maker with his broadsword just as easy as you please. A fourth feller ran down toward him, and when the poor bastard got over the ridge and seen the Old Man still living, he tried to stop hisself and scramble back to safety. But Owen had scrambled back to the bank to help his Pa and busted a shot at him and blowed out his spark.

  It was just them two going at it close, and the sight of them two fighting off rebels attacking ’em from all sides now caused a round of cursing and swearing from the Free Staters who made it to the other side of the river, and they blowed several rounds into the rest of the charging Missourians, who was at the top of the ridge near the tree line. The rebels scattered and fell back. This gived the Old Man and Owen time to get across the river.

  I had never seen the Old Man retreat before. He seemed a queer figure there in the river, in a broad straw hat and linen duster, his coattails flung out behind him, arms outspread on the water, as he waded over, a revolver held high in each hand. He climbed onto the opposite bank, out of range of the rebels now, mounted atop his horse, and scrambled his horse up the bank to where I was, followed by the other men, all of ’em joining me on the knoll.

  From that knoll you could see Osawatomie clear, the town blazing brightly in the afternoon sun, every house burning to the ground, and every Free Stater stupid enough to hang ’round and try to put out the fire eating his house getting shot to shit by Reverend Martin and his men, who were drunk, laughing and whooping it up. They defeated the Old Man and hollered it all across Osawatomie, several shouting that he was dead and claiming to be the one who done it, whooping that they’d burned his house to the ground, which they’d done.

  Most of the other Free Staters who survived had taken the tall timber once they got across the creek to our side. Only the Old Man and his sons remained on our side, watching the rebels celebrate: Jason, John, Salmon, the two younger ones Watson and Oliver, who had joined us, Owen course, all of ’em atop their mounts, staring angrily at the town, for their houses was burning up, too.

  But the Old Man didn’t look at it once. When he reached the knoll, he slowly paced his horse back to Frederick and got off it. The rest followed him over.

  Fred was where we left him, his little cap atop his head, the Good Lord Bird atop his chest. The Old Man stood over him.

  “I should’a come out of hiding to help him,” I said, “but I don’t know how to shoot.”

  “And shoot you should not,” the Old Man said. “For you is a girl soon to be a woman. You was a friend to Fred. He was fond of you. And for that I am grateful to you, Little Onion.”

  But he might as well have been talking to a hole in the ground, for even as he spoke, his mind was somewhere else. He knelt over Fred. He looked at him several minutes, and for a moment, the old gray eyes softened and it seemed like a thousand years had washed over the Old Man’s face. He sighed, gently pulled Fred’s cap off his head, pulled a feather off the Good Lord Bird, and rose. He turned and stared at the town grimly, burning in the afternoon sun. He could see it plain, the smoke spiraling up, the Free Staters fleeing, the rebels firing at them, whooping and hollering.

  “God sees it,” he said.

  Jason came up to him. “Father, let’s bury Frederick and let the federals have the fight. They’ll be here soon enough. I don’t want to fight no more. My brothers and me, we had enough. We’re decided on it.”

  The Old Man was silent. He fingered Fred’s cap and eyed his sons.

  “Is that how you want it, Owen?”

  Owen, setting atop his horse, looked away.

  “And Salmon. And John?”

  Six of his sons was there: Salmon, John, Jason, Owen, and the young ones, Watson and Oliver, plus their kin, the Thompson brothers, two of them. They all looked down. They was spent. Not a one of ’em spoke up. Didn’t say a word.

  “Take Little Onion with you,” he said. He tossed Fred’s cap into his saddlebag and made ready to get on his horse.

  “We’ve done enough for the cause, Father,” Jason said. “Stay with us and help us rebuild. The federals will find Rev. Martin. They’d catch him and put him in jail, try him for Fred’s killing.”

  The Old Man ignored him and mounted his horse, then stared out at the land before him. He seemed to be someplace else in his head. “This is beautiful country,” he said. He hold out the feather from the Good Lord Bird. “And this is this beautiful omen that Frederick left behind. It’s a sign from God.” He stuck it in his weathered, beaten straw cap. It stuck straight up in the air. He looked ludicrous.

  “Father, you are not hearing me,” Jason said. “We are done! Stay with us. Help us rebuild.”

  The Old Man stretched his lips in a crazy fashion. It weren’t a real smile, but as close as he could come. Never saw him out and out smile up to that point. It didn’t fit his face. Stretching them wrinkles horizontal gived the impression of him being plumb stark mad. Seemed like h
is peanut had poked out the shell all the way. He was soaked. His jacket and pants, which was always dotted full of holes, was a mass of torn and ripped clothing. On his back was a bit of blood where he’d taken a grape ball. He paid it no attention. “I have only a short time to live,” he said, “and I will die fighting for this cause. There will be no more peace in this land until slavery is done. I will give these slaveholders something to think about. I will carry this war into Africa. Stay here if you want. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a cause worth dying for. Even the rebels have that.”

  He turned his horse ’round. “I have to go and pray and commingle with the Great Father of Justice upon whose blood we live. Bury Fred right. And take care of Little Onion.”

  With that, he turned on his horse and rode off east. I wouldn’t see him again for two years.

  PART II

  SLAVE DEEDS

  (Missouri)

  10

  A Real Gunslinger

  The brothers started haggling not two minutes after the Old Man departed. They stopped their wrangle long enough to bury Frederick atop a knoll that looked down on the town from across the river, plucking some of his Good Lord Bird feathers and giving them out to each of us. Then they hanked among themselves some more about who said this or that, and who shot who and what to do next. It was decided they’d split up and I’d be tagged up with Owen, though Owen weren’t particular about the idea. “I’m going to Iowa to court a young lady, and I can’t move fast with the Onion on me.”

  “You weren’t saying that when you kidnapped her,” Jason said.

  “It was father’s idea to take a girl on the trail!”

  On it went some more, just fussin’. There weren’t no clear leader between them once the Old Man had gone. Nigger Bob was standing ’round as they quarreled. He had run and been plumb gone and disappeared during all the fighting—that nigger had a knack for that—but now that the shooting stopped, he showed up again. I guess wherever he run to weren’t good or safe enough. He stood behind the brothers as they went at it. Hearing them fussin’ ’bout me, he piped up, “I will ride the Onion to Tabor.”

  I weren’t particular about riding with Bob no place, for it was his pushing me along that helped me to my situation of playing girl for the white man. Plus Bob weren’t a shooter, which Owen was. I’d been on the prairie long enough to know that being with a shooter counted a whole mess out there. But I didn’t say nothing.

  “What do you know about girls?” Owen said.

  “I know plenty,” Bob said, “for I have had a couple of my own, and I can look after the Onion easily if it pleases you. I can’t go back to Palmyra nohow.”

  He had a point there, for he was stolen property and was tainted goods no matter how the cut go or come. Nobody would believe nothing he said about his time with John Brown, whether he actually fought with the Old Man or not. He’d likely get sold to New Orleans if, according to his word, things went the way they did among the Pro Slavers, with white folks believing that a slave who tasted freedom weren’t worth a dime.

  Owen groused about it a few minutes but finally said, “All right. I’ll take you both. But I’m going back across the river first to scrounge what’s left of my claim first. Wait here. We’ll head out soon’s I get back.” Off he went, harring up his horse and riding straight into the thickets.

  Course the brothers one by one reckoned they too would scrounge what they could from their claims, and followed him along. John Jr. was the oldest of the Old Man’s sons, but Owen was more like the Old Man, and it was his notions that the rest followed. So Jason, John, Watson and Oliver, and Salmon—they all had different notions ’bout fighting slavery, though all was against it—they followed him out. They rode off, tellin’ me and Bob to wait and watch from across the river and holler a warning if I seen some rebels.

  I didn’t want to do it, but it seemed like the danger had passed. Plus it brought me some comfort being near where Fred slept. So I told ’em I’d holler loud and clear for sure.

  It was afternoon now, and from the knoll where we sat, Bob and I could see clear across the Marais des Cygnes River into Osawatomie. The rebels had mostly cleared out, the last looters hurrying out of town whooping and hollering, with a few bullets of a few early Free Staters who had started to make their way back across the river whistling in their ears. The fight had mostly gone out of everybody.

  The brothers took the logging trail that looped out of our sight for a minute, heading to the shallow part of the river to wade across. From my position, I could see the bank, but after several long minutes of leaning over the knoll to watch them cross the river, I still didn’t see them reach the other side.

  “Where they at?” I asked. I turned ’round but Bob was gone. The Old Man always had a stolen wagon and horse or two tied about, and every firefight usually ended up with all kinds of items laying about as folks scrambled to duck lead. As luck would have it, there was an old fat mule and a prairie wagon setting there among the stolen booty in the thickets just beyond the clearing where we stood. Bob was back there and he was in a hurry, digging out lines and traces from the back of the wagon. He slapped the lines onto the mule, hitched it to the wagon, hopped atop the driver’s seat, and harred that beast up.

  “Let’s scat,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Let’s git.”

  “What about Owen? He said to wait.”

  “Forget him. This is white folks’ business.”

  “But what about Frederick?”

  “What about him?”

  “Reverend Martin shot him. In cold blood. We ought to level things out.”

  “You can seek that if you want, but you ain’t gonna come out clear. I’m gone.”

  No sooner did he utter them words than a bunch of hollering and shooting came from the same direction as the brothers disappeared to, and two horseback-riding rebel riders in red shirts busted through the thicket and into the clearing, circling ’round the long row of trees and coming right at us.

  Bob jumped down from the driver’s seat and commenced to pulling the mule. “Wrap that bonnet tight on your little head,” he said. I done it just as the redshirt riders come through the clearing, saw us in the thicket of trees, and charged us.

  Both of them were young fellers in their twenties, their Colts drawed for business, one of them pulling a mule behind his horse loaded with gunnysacks. The other feller, he seemed to be the leader. He was short and thin, with a lean face and several cigars stuffed in his shirt pocket. The feller pulling the mule was older and had a hard, sallow face. Both their horses was loaded with goods, rolling fat, with bags stuffed busting to the limit with booty taken from the town.

  Bob, trembling, tipped his hat to the leader. “Morning, sir.”

  “Where you going?” the leader asked.

  “Why, I’m taking the missus here to the Lawrence Hotel,” Bob said.

  “You got papers?”

  “Well, suh, the missus here got some,” Bob said. He looked at me.

  I couldn’t explain nothing and didn’t have paper the first. That set me back. God-damned fool put me on the spot. Oh, I stuttered and bellowed like a broke calf. I played it as much as I could, but it weren’t that good. “Well, I don’t need papers in that he is taking me to Lawrence,” I stuttered.

  “Is the nigger taking you?” the leader said, “Or is you taking the nigger?”

  “Why, I’m taking him,” I said. “We is from Palmyra and was passing through this country. There was quite a bit of mess with all the shooting, so I drug him ’round this way.”

  The leader moved in close on his horse, staring. He was a ripe, good-looking drummer, with dark eyes and a rowdy look to him. He stuck a cigar in his mouth and chewed it. His horse clunked like a marching band as he plopped his mount ’round me, circling me. That pinto was loaded down with so much junk it was a pity. She looked re
ady to shut her eyes in death. That beast was carrying a house worth of goods: pots and pans, kettles, whistles, jars, a miniature piano, apple peelers, barrels, dry goods, canned goods, and tin drums. The older feller behind him pulling the mule had twice as much junk. He had the nervous, rough look of a gunfighter, and hadn’t said nothing.

  “What are you?” the leader asked. “Is you part nigger or just a white girl with a dirty face?”

  Well, I was fluffed, wearing that bonnet and dress. But I had some practice being a girl by then, having been one for the several months past. Besides, my arse was on the line, and that’ll unstring your guts quick when you’re in a tight spot. He throwed me a bone and I took it. I mustered myself up and said as proudly as I could, “I am Henrietta Shackleford and you ought not to talk ’bout me like I am a full-blooded nigger, being that I am only half a nigger and all alone in this world. The best part of me nearly as white as you, sir. I just don’t know where I belongs, being a tragic mulatto and all.” Then I busted into tears.

  That boo-hooing moved him. That just stuck him! Whirled him backward! His face got soft and he throwed his Colt in its sleeping place, and nodded at the other feller and told him to do the same.