The Good Lord Bird

by James McBride

  But the feeling of that ice cream running down my little red lane in summertime weren’t nothing compared to seeing that bundle of beauty coming down them stairs that first time. She would blow the hat off your head.

  She was a mulatto woman. Skin as brown as a deer’s hide, with high cheekbones and big brown dewy eyes as big as silver dollars. She was a head taller than me but seemed taller. She wore a flowered blue dress of the type whores naturally favored, and that thing was so tight that when she moved, the daisies got all mixed up with the azaleas. She walked like a warm room full of smoke. I weren’t no stranger to nature’s ways then, coming on the age of twelve as I believe I was more or less that age, and having accidentally on purpose peeked into a room or three at Dutch’s place, but the knowing of a thing is different from the doing of it, and them whores at Dutch’s was generally so ugly, they’d make the train leave the track. This woman had the kind of rhythm that you could hear a thousand miles down the Missouri. I wouldn’t throw her outta bed for eating crackers. She was all class.

  She surveyed the room slowly like a priestess, and when she seen Chase, her expression changed. She quick-timed to the bottom of the stairs and kicked him. He toppled off the stair like a rag doll as the men laughed. She came down to the bottom landing and stood over him, her hands on her hips. “Where’s my money?”

  Chase got up sheepishly, dusting himself off. “That’s a hell of a way to treat the man who just killed Old John Brown with his bare hands.”

  “Right. And I quit buying gold claims last year. I don’t care who you killed. You owe me nine dollars.”

  “That much?” he said.

  “Where is it?”

  “Pie, I got something better than nine dollars. Look.” He pointed at me and Bob.

  Pie looked right past Bob. Ignored him. Then she glared at me.

  White fellers on the prairie, even white women, didn’t pay two cents’ worth of attention to a simple colored girl. But Pie was the first colored woman I seen in the two years since I started wearing that getup, and she smelled a rat right off.

  She blew through her lips. “Shit. Whatever that ugly thing is, it sure needs pressing.” She turned to Chase. “You got my money?”

  “What about the girl?” Chase said. “Miss Abby could use her. Wouldn’t that square us?”

  “You got to talk to Miss Abby about that.”

  “But I carried her all the way from Kansas!”

  “Must’a been some party, ya cow head. Kansas ain’t but half a day’s ride. You got my money or not?”

  Chase got up, brushing himself off. “Course I do,” he muttered. “But Abby’ll be hot if she finds out you let this tight little thing shimmy across the road and work for the competition.”

  Pie frowned. He had her there.

  “And I ought to get special favor,” he throwed in, “on account of I had to kill John Brown and save the whole territory and all, just to get back to you. So can we go upstairs?”

  Pie smirked. “I’ll give you five minutes,” she said.

  “I take ten minutes to whiz,” he protested.

  “Whizzes is extra,” she said. “Come on. Bring her, too.” She moved upstairs, then stopped, glaring at Bob, who had started up the stairs behind me. She turned to Chase.

  “You can’t bring that nigger up here. Put him in the nigger pen out back, where everybody parks their niggers.” She pointed to the side door of the dining hall. “Miss Abby’ll give him some work tomorrow.”

  Bob looked at me wild eyed.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but he belongs to me.”

  It was the first thing I said to her, and when she throwed them gorgeous brown eyes on me, I like to have melted like ice in the sun. Pie was something.

  “You can sleep out there with him, too, then, you high-yellow, cornlooking ugler-ation.”

  “Wait a second,” Chase said. “I drug her all this way.”

  “For what?”

  “For the men.”

  “She’s so ugly, she’d curdle a cow. Look, you want me to job you or not?”

  “You can’t leave her in the pen,” Chase said. “She said she ain’t a nigger.”

  Pie laughed. “She’s close enough!”

  “Miss Abby wouldn’t like that. What if she gets hurt out there? Let her come upstairs and send the nigger to the pen. I got a stake in this, too,” he said.

  Pie considered it. She looked at Bob and said, “G’wan to the back door out there. They’ll fetch you some eatings in the yard. You.” She pointed to me. “C’mon up.”

  There weren’t nothing to do. It was late and I was exhausted. I turned to Bob, who looked downright objectable. “Sleepin’ here’s better’n the prairie, Bob,” I said. “I’ll come get you later.”

  I was good to my word, too. I did come for him later, but he never forgave me for sending him out the door that day. That was the end of whatever closeness was between us. Just the way of things.

  —

  We followed Pie upstairs. She stopped at a room, throwed open the door, and pushed Chase inside. Then she turned to me and pointed to a room two doors down. “Go in there. Tell Miss Abby I sent you, and that you come to work. She’ll see you get a hot bath first. You smell like buffalo dung.”

  “I don’t need no bath!”

  She grabbed my hand, stomped down the hall, knocked on a door, flung it open, throwed me into the room, and closed the door behind me.

  I found myself staring at the back of a husky, well-dressed white woman setting at a vanity. She turned away from the vanity and rose up to face me. She was wearing a long white fancy scarf ’round her neck. Atop that neck was a face with enough powder on it to pack the barrel of a cannon. Her lips was thick and painted red and clamped a cigar between them. Her forehead was high, and her face was flushed red and curdled in anger like old cheese. That woman was so ugly, she looked like a death threat. Behind her, the room was dimly lit by candles. The smell of the place was downright infernal. Come to think of it, I have never been in a hotel room in Kansas but that didn’t smell worse than the lowliest flophouse you could find in all of New England. The odor in that place was ripe enough to peel the wallpaper off the worst sitting room in Boston. The sole window in the room hadn’t been disturbed by water for years. It was dotted with specks of dead flies that clung to it like black dots. Along the far wall, which was lit up by two burning candles, two figures lounged on two beds that set side by side. Between the beds sat a tin bathtub that, to my reckoning, in the dim light, appeared to be filled with water and what looked to be a naked woman.

  I started to lose consciousness then, for as my eyes took in the sight of these two figures, two young ones setting on the bed, one combing the other one’s hair, and the older one setting in the tub smoking a pipe, her love bags hanging low into the water, my fluids runned clear out of my head and my knees gived way. I slipped to the floor in a dead faint.

  I was awakened a minute later by a hand slapping my chest. Miss Abby stood over me.

  “You flat as a pancake,” she said dryly. She flipped me over onto my stomach, gripped my arse with a pair of hands that felt like ice tongs. “You small in that department, too,” she grunted, feeling my arse. “You young and homely. Where’d Pie get you?”

  I didn’t wait. I leaped to my feet, and in doing so, that pretty white scarf of hers caught my arm and I heard it tear as I took off. I ripped that thing like paper and hit the door running and scampered out. I hit the hallway at full speed and made for the stairs, but two cowboys were coming up, so I busted into the closest door, which happened to be Pie’s room—just in time to see Chase with trousers down and Pie sitting on her bed with her dress pulled down to her waist.

  The sight of them two chocolate love knobs standing there like fresh biscuits slowed my step, I reckon, long enough for Miss Abby, who was hot on my tail, to grab at my bonn
et and rip it in half just as I dove under Pie’s bed.

  “Git out from under there!” she hollered. It was a tight squeeze—the bedsprings was low—but if it was tight for me, it was tighter for Miss Abby, who was too big to lean over all the way and get at me. The smell under that feather bed was pretty seasoned though, downright rank, the smell of a thousand dreams come true, I reckon, being that its purpose was for nature’s deeds, and if I wasn’t worried ’bout getting broke in half, I would’a moved out from under it.

  Miss Abby tried pulling the bed from side to side to expose me, but I clung to the springs and moved with the bed as she slung it.

  Pie come ’round to the other side of the bed, leaned on all fours and placed her head on the floor. It was a tight fit down there but I could just see her face. “You better come out here,” she said.

  “I ain’t.”

  I heard the click of a Colt’s hammer snapping back. “I’ll get her out,” Chase said.

  Pie stood up and I heard the sound of a slap, then Chase hollered, “Ow!”

  “Put that peashooter up before I beat the cow-walkin’ hell outta you,” Pie said.

  Miss Abby commenced to razzing Pie something terrible for me ripping her scarf and causing a ruckus in her business. She cussed Pie’s Ma. She cussed her Pa. She cussed all her relations in all directions.

  “I’ll fix it,” Pie protested. “I’ll pay for the scarf.”

  “You better. Git that girl out, or I’ll have Darg come up here.”

  It growed silent. From where I lay, it felt like all the air had left the room. Pie spoke softly—I could hear the terror in her voice—“You don’t have to do that, missus. I’ll fix it. I promise. And I’ll pay for the scarf, missus.”

  “Get busy counting your pennies, then.”

  Miss Abby’s feet stomped toward the door and left.

  Chase was standing there. I could see his bare feet and his boots from where I was. Suddenly Pie’s hand snatched up his boots, and I reckon she handed them to him, for she said, “Git.”

  “I’ll straighten it out, Pie.”

  “Skinflint! Dumbass. Who told you to bring me that snaggle-mouth headache here? Git out!”

  He put on his boots, grumbling and muttering, then left. Pie slammed the door behind him and stood against it, sighing in the silence. I watched her feet. They slowly came toward the bed. She said softly, “It’s all right, honey. I ain’t gonna hurt ya.”

  “You sure?” I said.

  “Course, baby. You a young thing. You don’t know nuthin’. Sweet thing, ain’t got nobody in the world, coming here. Lord have mercy. It’s a shame, Miss Abby hollering about some silly old scarf. Missouri! Lord, the devil’s busy in this territory! Don’t be scared, sweetie. You gonna suffocate down there. C’mon out, baby.”

  The soft tenderness of that woman’s voice moved my heart so much, I slipped out from under there. I come out on the opposite side of the bed, though, just in case she weren’t good for her word, but she was. I could see it in her face when I stood up, watching me from across the bed now, smiling, warm, dewy. She gestured to me with an arm. “C’mon over here, baby. Come ’round the side of the bed.”

  I melted right off. I was in love with her right from the first. She was the mother I never knowed, the sister I never had, my first love. Pie was all woman, one hundred percent, first rate, grade A, right-from-the-start woman. I just loved her.

  I said, “Oh, Mama,” and runned ’round the bed to nestle my head between them big brown love knockers, just cram my head in there and sob out my sorrows, for I was but a lonely boy looking for a home. I felt that in my heart. And I was aiming to tell all my story to her and let her make it right. I throwed myself at her and put my heart in hers. I went over there and put my head on her chest, and just as I done so, felt myself being lifted like a pack of feathers and throwed clear across the room.

  “God-damn, cockeyed idiot!”

  She was on me before I could get up, picked me up by the collar, and whomped me twice, then throwed me on the floor on my stomach, and put a knee on my back. “I’mma send you hooting and hollering down the road, ya goober-faced tart! Ya lying lizard.” She whomped me twice more on the head. “Don’t move,” she said.

  I stayed where I was as she got up, frantically pushed the bed aside, then dug at the floorboards underneath it, pulling them out till she found what she was looking for. She reached in and pulled out an old jar. She opened it, checked its contents, seemed satisfied, throwed the jar back in there, and put the whole assembly of floorboards back in place. She slid the bed back in place and said, “Git outta here, cow face. And if any of my money’s missing while you’re in this town, I’ll cut your throat so wide, you’ll have two sets of lips working at the top of your neck.”

  “What I done?”

  “Git.”

  “But I don’t have no place to go.”

  “What do I care? Git out.”

  Well, I was hurt, so I said, “I ain’t going no place.”

  She marched over to me and grabbed me up. She was a strong woman, and while I resisted, I weren’t no match for her. She throwed me over her knee. “Now, you high-yellow heifer, think you so high-siddity? Got me paying for a damn scarf I ain’t never had! I’mma warm your two little buns the way your Ma should’a,” she said.

  “Wait!” I hollered, but it was too late. She throwed my dress up, and seed my true nature dangling somewhere down there between her knees at full salute, being that all that wrestling and tugging was a wonderment to the fringlings and tinglings of a twelve-year-old who never knowed nature’s ways firsthand. I couldn’t help myself.

  She yelped and throwed me to the floor, her hands cupped her face as she stared. “You done put me in the fryer, you God-damned pebble-mouthed, wart-faced sip of shit. You heathen! Them was women you was in that room with. . . . Was they working? Lord, course they was!” She was furious. “You gonna get me hanged!”

  She leaped at me, throwed me over her knee, and went at it hard again.

  “I was kidnapped!” I hollered.

  “You lyin’ lizard!” She spanked me some more.

  “I ain’t. I was kidnapped by Old John Brown hisself!”

  That stopped her flinging and flailing for a second. “Old John Brown’s dead. Chase killed him,” she said.

  “No, he’s not,” I hollered.

  “What do I care!” She throwed me off her lap and set on the bed. She was cooling off now, though still hot. Lord, she looked prettier burnt up than she did regular, and the sight of them brown eyes boring into me made me feel lower than dirt, for I was plumb in love. Pie just done something to me.

  She sat thinking for a long moment. “I knowed Chase was a liar,” she said, “or he would’a gone on and collected that money on Old John Brown’s head. You likely lying, too. Maybe you working with Chase.”

  “I ain’t.”

  “How’d you get with him?”

  I explained how Frederick was killed and how Chase and Randy rolled up on me and Bob when the Old Man’s sons went to town to collect their belongings.

  “Randy still here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I hope not. You’ll end up in an urn buried in somebody’s yard fooling with him. There’s a reward out on him.”

  “But the Old Man’s alive surely,” I said proudly. “I seen him get up out the river.”

  “What do I care? He’ll be dead soon enough, anyway.”

  “Why does every colored I meet say that?”

  “You ought to worry about your own skin, ya little snit. I had a feeling about you,” she said. “God-damned Chase! Damn cow turd!”

  She cussed him some more, then sat a moment, thinking. “Them rebels find out you was on the Hot Floor, peeking at them white whores, they’ll cut out them little grapes hanging between your legs and stick them d
own your gizzard. Might pull me in on it, too. I can’t take no chances with you. Plus you seen where my money is.”

  “I ain’t interested in your money.”

  “That’s touching, but everything on this prairie’s a lie, child. Ain’t nothing what it looks like. Look at you. You’s a lie. You got to go. You ain’t gonna make it on the prairie as a girl nohow. I know a feller drives a stagecoach for Wells Fargo. Now he’s a girl. Playing like a man. But whatever she fancies herself, girl or boy, she’s a white thing. And she’s going from place to place as a stagecoach driver. She ain’t setting in one place, selling tail. And that’s what you’d do here, child. Miss Abby got a business here. She got no use for you. Unless you wanna service . . . can you still service as a boy? Do that interest you?”

  “The only service I know is washing dishes and cutting hair and such. I can do that good. Me and Bob can work tables, too.”

  “Forget him. He’s gonna get sold,” she said.

  It didn’t seem proper to remind her that she was a Negro herself, for she was ornery, so I said, “He’s a friend.”

  “He’s a runaway like you. And he’s getting sold. And you too, unless you let Miss Abby work you. She might work you to death, then sell you.”

  “She can’t do that!”

  She laughed. “Shit. She can do whatever she wants.”

  “I can do other things,” I pleaded. “I knows working ’round taverns. I can clean rooms and spittoons, bake biscuits, do all manner of jobs, till maybe the Captain comes.”

  “What Captain?”

  “Old John Brown. We call him Captain. I’m in his army. He’s gonna ride on this town once they find out I’m here.”

  It was a lie, for I didn’t know whether the Old Man was living or not, or what he was gonna do, but that peaked her feathers some.

  “You sure he’s living?”

  “Sure as I’m standing here. And the fur’s gonna fly if he comes here and finds out Bob’s sold, for Bob’s his’n, too. For all we know, Bob’s likely spreading the word among them niggers downstairs right now, saying he’s a John Brown man. That gets certain niggers rowdy, y’know, talking ’bout John Brown.”