The Good Lord Bird

by James McBride

  Fear creased that pretty little face of hers. Old Brown scared the shit outta every living soul on the prairie. “That’s all I need,” she said. “Old John Brown riding here, screwing things up and whipping them pen niggers into a frenzy. It’ll drive these white folks crazy. They’ll wail away on every nigger in sight. If it was up to me, every nigger in that pen would be sold down the river.”

  She sighed and sat down on the bed, then flattened her hair, and pulled her dress up tighter ’round them love lumps of hers. Lord, she was beautiful. “I don’t want no parts of what Old John Brown’s selling,” she said. “Let him come. I got my own plans. But what I’m gonna do with you?”

  “If you take me back to Dutch’s Tavern, that might help me.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Off Santa Fe Road on the border with Missouri. West of here. About thirty-five miles. Old Dutch might take me back.”

  “Thirty-five miles? I can’t go thirty-five feet out this hotel without papers.”

  “I can get you papers. I can write ’em. I know my letters.”

  Her eyes widened, and the hardness fell away from her face. For a moment she seemed fresh as a young child on a spring morning, and the dew climbed back into her face again. Just as fast, though, the dew hit the road, and her face hardened again.

  “I can’t ride no place, child. Even with a pass, too many people ’round here know me. Still, it’d be nice to pass the time reading dime books like the other girls. I seen it done,” she said.

  She smirked at me. “Can you really read? Knowing your letters is something you can’t lie about, y’know.”

  “I ain’t lying.”

  “I expect you can prove that out. Tell you what. You teach me letters, and I’ll girl you up and work it out with Miss Abby so you start out cleaning beds and emptying piss pots and things to pay off her scarf and your keep. That’ll give you a little time. But keep away from the girls. If these rebels find out about that little nub swinging between your legs, they’ll pour tar down your throat. I reckon that’ll work for a while till Miss Abby decides you old enough to work the trade. Then you on your own. How long’ll it take me to learn my letters?”

  “Not long.”

  “Well, however long that takes, that’s how much time you got. After that, I’m done with you. Wait here while I fetch you another bonnet to cover them nigger naps and a clean something to wear.”

  She rose, and by the time she disappeared out the door and shut it behind her, I missed her already, and she hadn’t been gone but a few seconds.

  12

  Sibonia

  I settled into Pikesville pretty easy. It weren’t hard. Pie set me up good. She done me up like a real girl: Cleaned me up, fixed my hair, sewed me a dress, taught me to curtsey before visitors, and advised me against smoking cigars and acting like the rest of them walking hangovers who worked Miss Abby’s place. She had to twist Miss Abby into keeping me, for the old lady didn’t want me at first. She weren’t anxious to have another mouth to feed. But I knowed a thing or two about working in taverns, and after she seen how I emptied spittoons, cleaned up tables, scrubbed floors, emptied chamber pots, carted water up to the girls all night, and gived haircuts for the gamblers and jackals in her tavern, she growed satisfied with me. “Just watch the men,” she said. “Keep ’em liquored up. The girls upstairs will do the rest,” she said.

  I know this was a whorehouse, but it weren’t bad at all. Fact is, I never knowed a Negro from that day to this but who couldn’t lie to themselves about their own evil while pointing out the white man’s wrong, and I weren’t no exception. Miss Abby was a slaveholder true enough, but she was a good slaveholder. She was a lot like Dutch. She runned a lot of businesses, which meant the businesses mostly runned her. Whoring was almost a sideline for her. She also runned a sawmill, a hog pen, a slave pen, kept a gambling house, had a tin-making machine, plus she was in competition with the tavern across the street that didn’t have a colored slave like Pie to bring in money, for Pie was her main attraction. I was right at home in her place, living ’round gamblers and pickpockets who drank rotgut and pounded each other’s brains out over card games. I was back in bondage, true, but slavery ain’t too troublesome when you’re in the doing of it and growed used to it. Your meals is free. Your roof is paid for. Somebody else got to bother themselves about you. It was easier than being on the trail, running from posses and sharing a roasted squirrel with five others while the Old Man was hollering over the whole roasted business to the Lord for an hour before you could even get to the vittles, and even then there weren’t enough meat on it to knock the edges off the hunger you was feeling. I was living well and clean forgot about Bob. Just plain forgot about him.

  But you could see the slave pen from Pie’s window. They had couple of huts back there, a canvas cover that stretched over part of it that was fenced all ’round, and once in a while, between my scamperings ’round working, I’d stop, scratch out a clean spot on the glass, and take a peek. If it weren’t raining, you could see the colored congregated and bunched up out in the yard near a little garden they put together. Otherwise, if it was raining or cold, they stayed under the canvas. From time to time I’d take a look out the window to see if I could spot old Bob. Never could, and after a few weeks I got to wondering about him. I spoke to Pie about it one afternoon while she sat on her bed combing her hair.

  “Oh, he’s around,” she said. “Miss Abby ain’t sold him. Let him be, darling.”

  “I thought I might bring him some victuals to eat.”

  “Leave them niggers in the yard alone,” she said. “They’re trouble.”

  I found that confusing, for they done her no wrong, and nothing they could do would hurt Pie’s game. She was right popular. Miss Abby gived her the run of the place, let her choose her own customers more or less, and live as she wanted. Pie even closed down the saloon at times. Them coloreds couldn’t hurt her game. But I kept quiet on it, and one evening I couldn’t stand it no more. I slipped down to the slave pen to see about Bob.

  The slave pen was in an alley behind the hotel, right off the dining room back door. Soon as you opened that door you stepped into an alley, and two steps across it and you was there. It was a penned-in area, and beside it was a little open area in the back where the colored set on crates, played cards, and had a little vegetable garden. Behind that was a hog pen, which opened right to the colored pen for easy tending of Miss Abby’s hogs.

  Inside both them pens combined—the pen where they fed the pigs and the pen where the slaves lived and kept a garden—I reckon it was about twenty men, women, and children in there. Up close it weren’t the same sight that it was from above, and right then I knowed why Pie kept away and wanted me off from it. It was evening, for most of ’em was out working during the day, and the dusk settling on that place, and the swill of them Negroes—most of ’em dark-skinned, pure Negroes like Bob—was downright troubling. The smell of the place was infernal. Most was dressed in mostly rags and some without shoes. They wandered ’round the pen, some setting, doing nothing, others fooling ’round a bit in the garden, and there in the middle of ’em, they kinda circled ’round a figure, a wild woman cackling and babbling like a chicken. She sounded like her mind was a little soft, babbling like she was, but I couldn’t make out no words.

  I walked to the fence. Several men and women were working along the back end of it, feeding hogs and tending the garden there, and when they seed me they glanced up, but never stopped working. It was twilight now. Just about dark. I stuck my face to the fence and said, “Anybody see Bob?”

  The Negroes gathered at the back of the pen working with shovels and rakes kept working and didn’t say nary a word. But that silly fool in the middle of the yard, a heavyset, settle-aged colored woman setting on a wooden box, cackling and babbling, she got to cackling louder. She had a large, round face. She was really off her knob the closer you
got to her, for up close, the box she set on was pushed deep into the muddy ground nearly up to its top, it was wedged so deep, and she set on it, commenting and cackling and warbling about nothing. She seen me and croaked, “Pretty, pretty, yeller, yeller!”

  I ignored her and spoke generally. “Anybody seen a feller named Bob?” I asked.

  Nobody said nothing, and that feebleminded thing clucked and swished her head ’round like a bird, gobbling like a turkey. “Pretty, pretty, yeller, yeller.”

  “He’s a colored feller, ’bout this high,” I said to the others.

  But that crazy thing kept her mouth busy. “Knee-deep, knee-deep, goin’ ’round, goin’ ’round!” she cackled.

  She was feebleminded. I looked to the other Negroes in the pen. “Anybody see Bob?” I said. I said it loud enough for all of ’em to hear it, and nar soul looked at me twice. They busied themselves on with them hogs and their little garden like I weren’t there.

  I climbed the first rung of the fence and stuck my face high over it and said louder, “Anybody see B—” and before I could finish, I was struck in the face by a mud ball. That crazy fool woman setting on the box scooped up another handful of mud by the time I looked, and throwed that in my face.

  “Hey!”

  “Goin’ ’round. Goin’ ’round!” she howled. She had got up from her box, came to the edge of the fence where I was, picked up another mud ball, and throwed that, and that one got me in the jaw. “Knee-deep!” she crowed.

  I flew hot as the devil. “Damn stupid fool!” I said. “Git! Git away from me!” I would have climbed in there and dunked her head in the mud, but another colored woman, a tall, slender slip of water, broke off from the rest on the other side of the pen, dug the crazy woman’s box out the mud, and come over. “Don’t mind her. She’s feebleminded,” she said.

  “Don’t I know it.”

  She set the crazy woman’s box down by the edge of the fence, set her own down, and said, “Sit by me, Sibonia.” The crazy coot calmed down and done it. The woman turned to me and said, “What you need?”

  “She needs a flogging,” I said. “I reckon Miss Abby would flog her righteous if I was to tell it. I works inside, you know.” That was privileged, see, to work inside. That gived you more juice with the white man.

  A couple of colored men pushing that hog slop ’round with rakes and shovels glanced over at me, but the woman talking to me shot a look at them, and they looked away. I was a fool, see, for I didn’t know the dangerous waters I was treading in.

  “I’m Libby,” she said. “This here’s my sister, Sibonia. You awful young to be talking about flogging. What you want?”

  “I am looking for Bob.”

  “Don’t know no Bob,” Libby said.

  Behind her, Sibonia hooted, “No Bob. No Bob,” and chucked a fresh mud ball at me, which I dodged.

  “He’s got to be here.”

  “Ain’t nar Bob here,” Libby said. “We got a Dirk, a Lang, a Bum-Bum, a Broadnax, a Pete, a Lucious. Ain’t no Bob. What you want him for anyway?”

  “He’s a friend.”

  She looked at me a long minute in my dress. Pie had fixed me up nice. I was dressed warm, clean, in a bonnet and warm dress and socks, living good. I looked like a real high-yeller girl, dressed damn near white, and Libby set there dressed in rags. “What a redbone like you need a friend in this yard for?” she asked. Several Negroes working shovels behind her leaned over them and chuckled.

  “I ain’t come out here for you to sass me,” I said.

  “You sassing yourself,” she said gently, “by the way you look. You own Bob?”

  “I wouldn’t own him with your money. But I owes him.”

  “Well, you ain’t got to fret about paying him what you owe, so you should be happy. ’Cause he ain’t here.”

  “That’s strange, ’cause Miss Abby said she hadn’t sold him.”

  “Is that the first lie you heard from white folks?”

  “You sure got a smart mouth for an outside nigger.”

  “And you got a smarter one for a big-witted, tongue-beating, mule-headed sissy. Walking ’round dressed as you is.”

  That flummoxed me right there. She knowed I was a boy. But I was an inside nigger. Privileged. The men in Miss Abby’s liked me. Pie was my mother, practically. She had the run of things. I didn’t need to bother with no mealymouth, lowlife, no-count, starving pen nigger who nobody wouldn’t pay no attention to. I had sauce, and wouldn’t stand nobody but Pie or a white person sassing me like that. That colored woman just cut me off without a wink. I couldn’t stand it.

  “How I covers my skin is my business.”

  “It’s your load. You carry it. Ain’t nobody judging you out here. But dodging the white man’s evil takes more than a bonnet and some pretty undergarments, child. You’ll learn.”

  I ignored that. “I’ll give you a quarter if you tell me where he is.”

  “That’s a lot of money,” Libby said. “But I can’t use it where I’m at now.”

  “I know my letters. I can show you some.”

  “Come back when you ain’t full of lies,” she said. She picked up Sibonia’s box and said, “Come on, sister.”

  Sibonia, standing there holding a dripping mud ball in her hand, then did something strange. She glanced at the hotel door, saw it was still closed, then said to Libby in a plain voice, “This child is troubled.”

  “Let the devil have him, then,” Libby said.

  Sibonia said to her softly, “Go on over yonder with the rest, sister.”

  That just about dropped me, the way she was talking. She and Libby looked at each other for a long moment. Seemed like some kind of silent signal passed between ’em. Libby handed Sibonia her wooden crate and Libby slipped away without a word. She stepped clean away to the other side of the fence with the rest of the Negroes who was bent over, tending to the garden and the hogs. She never said a word to me again for the rest of her life, which as it turned out weren’t very long.

  Sibonia sat on her box again and stuck her face through the fence, looking at me close. The face peeking through the slats with mud on her cheeks and eyelashes didn’t sport an ounce of foolishness in it now. Her manner had flipped inside out. She had brushed the madness off her face the way you’d brush a fly away. Her face was serious. Deadly. Her eyes glaring at me was strong and calm as the clean barrel of a double-barreled shotgun boring down at my face. There was power in that face.

  She runned her fingers in the ground, scooped up some mud, shaped it into a ball, and set it on the ground. Then she made another, wiping her face with her sleeve, keeping her eyes on the ground, and set that new mud ball next to the first. From a distance she looked like a fool setting on a box, piling up mud balls. She spoke with them shotgun eyes staring at the ground, in a voice that was heavy and strong.

  “You sporting trouble,” she said, “playing folks for a fool.”

  I thought she was talking ’bout the way I dressed, so I said, “I’m doing what I got to do, wearing these clothes.”

  “I ain’t talking ’bout that. I’m talking ’bout the other thing. That’s more dangerous.”

  “You mean reading?”

  “I mean lying about it. Some folks’ll climb a tree to tell a lie before they’ll stand on the ground and tell the truth. That could get you hurt in this country.”

  I was a little shook about how she was so tight in her mind, for if I played a girl well, she played a fool even better. There weren’t no fooling somebody like her, I seen that clear, so I said, “I ain’t lying. I’ll get a piece of paper and show you.”

  “Don’t bring no paper out here,” she said quickly. “You talk too much. If Darg finds out, he’ll make you suffer.”

  “Who’s Darg?”

  “You’ll see soon enough. Can you write words?”

  “I can d
raw pictures, too.”

  “I ain’t studying no pictures. It’s the words I want. If I was to tell you about your Bob, would you write me something? Like a pass? Or a bill of sale?”

  “I would.”

  She had her head to the ground, busy, her hands deep in the mud. The hands hesitated and she spoke to the ground. “Maybe you best think on it first. Don’t be a straight fool. Don’t sign no note you can’t deliver on. Not out here. Not with us. ’Cause if you agrees to something with us, you gonna be held to it.”

  “I said I would.”

  She glanced up and said softly, “Your Bob’s been bounded out.”

  “Bounded out?”

  “On loan. Miss Abby loaned him out to the sawmill ’cross the village. For a price, of course. He been out there practically since the day he got here. He’ll be back soon. How come he never spoke of you?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m worried Miss Abby’s planning on selling him.”

  “So what? She’s gonna sell us all. You, too.”

  “When?”

  “When she’s good and ready.”

  “Pie never said nothing about that.”

  “Pie,” she said. She smiled grimly and said nothing more. But I didn’t like the way she said it. That pulled at me some. She moved her hands in the mud and packed up another mud ball.

  “Can you get word to me about Bob?”

  “I might. If you do what you said you would.”

  “I said I would.”

  “When you hear tell of a Bible meeting for the colored out here in the yard, come on. I’ll get you to your Bob. And I’ll take you up about them letters.”

  “All right, then.”

  “Don’t stretch your mouth to nobody about this, especially Pie. If you do, I’ll know about it, and you’ll wake up with a heap of knives poking out that pretty neck of yours. Mine’s be the first. Loose talk’ll have us all sleeping on the cooling board.”

  And with that she turned, picked up her box, and cackled her way across the yard, movin’ into the center and setting that box deep in the mud again. She sat on it, and the Negroes gathered ’round her again, holding picks and shovels, working the ground all ’round her, glaring at me, picking at the mud ’round her while she set on her box in the middle of ’em, cackling like a chicken.