The Good Lord Bird

by James McBride

  13

  Insurrection

  About a week later, a colored girl from the yard named Nose runned into the saloon carrying a pile of kindling, set it by the stove, and passed by me as she left, whispering, “Bible meeting’s in the slave pen tonight.” That evening I slipped out the back door and found Bob. He was standing near the front gate of the yard, leaning on the fence, alone. He looked tore up. His clothes was a ragged mess, but it was him and he was yet living.

  “Where you been?” I asked.

  “At the sawmill. They killing me out there.” He glanced at me. “I see you living high.”

  “Why you giving me the evil eye? I ain’t got run of this place.”

  He glanced nervously ’round the pen. “I wish they’d’a kept me at the sawmill. These niggers in here are gonna kill me.”

  “Stop talking crazy,” I said.

  “Nobody talks to me. They don’t say nar word to me. Nothing.” He nodded at Sibonia in the back corner, cackling and crowing on her wooden crate. The coloreds surrounded her, working the ground garden with rakes and shovels, making a silent wall ’round her, pushing dirt, slinging up rocks and weeding. Bob nodded at Sibonia. “That one there, she’s a witch. She’s under a mad spell.”

  “No, she ain’t. I owe her now on account of you.”

  “You owe the devil, then.”

  “I done it for you, brother.”

  “Don’t call me brother. Your favors ain’t worth shit. Look where I got ’cause of you. I can’t hardly bear to look at you. Look at you,” he snorted. “All high-siddity, playing a sissy, eating well, living inside. I’m out here in the cold and rain. And you sportin’ that new, fancy dress.”

  “You said running ’round this way was a good idea!” I hissed.

  “I ain’t say get me kilt!”

  Behind Bob, a sudden hush come over the yard. The rakes and hoes moved quicker, and every head snapped down to the ground like they was tending work hard. Someone whispered in a hurried fashion, “Darg!” and Bob quickly slipped over to the other side of the yard. He got busy with the rest ’round Sibonia, pulling weeds in the garden.

  The back door of a tiny hut on the other side of the slave pen opened up, and a huge colored feller emerged. He was nearly tall as Frederick, but just as wide. He had a thick chest, wide shoulders, and big, thick arms. He wore a straw hat and coveralls and a shawl around his shoulders. His lips was the color of hemp rope, and his eyes was so small and close together, they might as well have been shoved in the same socket. That fool was ugly enough to make you think the Lord put him together with His eyes closed, guessing. But there was power in that man, too, he was raw powerful, and looked big enough to pick up a house. He moved quick, slipping to the edge of the pen a minute and pausing there, peering in, air whooshing out huge nostrils, then he moved along the side to the gate to where I stood.

  I backed off when he come, but when he got close, he removed his hat.

  “Evening, pretty redbone,” he said, “what you need at my pen?”

  “Pie sent me here,” I lied. I didn’t think it was a good thing to bring Miss Abby up, just in case he said something to her about it, for while I had never seen him inside the saloon, knowing he was boss of that yard meant he could pass word to her some kind of way. I weren’t supposed to be there and reckoned he knowed it.

  He licked his lips. “Don’t mention that high-siddity bitch to me. What you need?”

  “Me and my friend here”—I pointed to Bob—“was just having a word.”

  “You soft on Bob, girl?”

  “I ain’t soft on him in no way, form, or fashion. I is here to merely visit him.”

  He smirked. “This is my yard,” he said. “I tends to it. But if the missus say so, it’s all right, it’s all right. If she don’t, you got to move on. You check with her and come back. Unless”—he smiled, showing a row of huge white teeth—“you can be Darg’s friend. Do old Darg a sweet favor, give him a li’l sugar. You old enough.”

  I would step off to hell before I touched that monster-looking nigger with a stick. I backed off quick. “It ain’t that important,” I said, and I was gone. I took one last look at Bob before I cut inside. He had his back turned, pulling weeds in the garden fast as he could, the devil keeping score. I betrayed him, is how he felt. He didn’t want no parts of me. And I couldn’t help him. He was on his own.

  —

  I got nervous about the whole bit and told it to Pie. When she heard I was in the yard, she was furious. “Who told you to consort with them outside niggers?”

  “I was looking in on Bob.”

  “Hell with Bob. You gonna bring trouble for us all! Did Darg say sumpthing ’bout me?”

  “He didn’t bring a word on you.”

  “You’s a bad liar,” she snapped. She cussed Darg for several minutes, then throwed me in for good measure. “Keep off them low-down, no-count niggers. Either that, or don’t come ’round me.”

  Well, that done it. For I loved Pie. She was the mother I never had. The sister I loved. Course I had other ideas, too, ’bout who she was to me, and them ideas was full of stinkin’, down-low thoughts which weren’t all bad when I thunk them up, so that stopped me from thinking about Bob and Sibonia and the pen altogether. Just quit it altogether. Love blinded me. I was busy anyhow. Pie was the busiest whore on the Hot Floor. She had heaps of customers: Pro Slavers, Free Staters, farmers, gamblers, thieves, preachers, even Mexicans and Indians lined up outside her door. Me being her consort, I was privileged to line ’em up in order of importance. I come to know quite a few important people in this fashion, including a judge named Fuggett, who I’ll get to in a minute.

  My days was generally the same. Every afternoon when Pie got up, I brung her coffee and biscuits and we would set and talk about the previous night’s events and so forth, and she’d laugh about some feller who’d made a fool of hisself on the Hot Floor one way or the other. Being that I cavorted all over the tavern and she spent the night working, she missed out on events in the saloon, which privileged me to give her the gossip on who done what and who shot John and the like downstairs. I didn’t mention the slave pen to her no more, but it was always on my mind, for I owed Sibonia, and she didn’t strike me as the type a body ought to owe something to. Every once in a while Sibonia would slip word for me through some colored or other to come out to see her and live up to my promise of teaching her letters. Problem was, getting out there was tough business. The pen could be seen from every window in the hotel, and the slavery question seemed to be putting Pikesville on edge. Even in normal times, fistfights was common out west on the prairie in them days. Kansas and Missouri drawed all types of adventurers—Irishman, German, Russian, land speculators, gold diggers. Between cheap whiskey, land claim disputes, the red man fighting for their land, and low women, your basic western settler was prone to a good dustup at any time. But nothing stirred up a row better than the slavery question, and that seemed to press in on Pikesville at that time. There was so much punching and stabbing and stealing and shouting on account of it, Miss Abby often wondered aloud if she ought to get out of the slave game altogether.

  She often set up in the saloon smoking cigars and playing poker with the men, and one night, while she throwed cards at the table with a few of the more well-off fellers from town, she piped out, “Between the Free Staters and my niggers running off, slavery’s getting to be a bother. The real danger in this territory is there’s too many guns floating around. What if the nigger gets armed?”

  The men at the table, sipping whiskey and holding their cards, laughed her off. “Your basic Negro is trustworthy,” one said.

  “Why, I’d arm my slaves,” said another.

  “I’d trust my slave with my life,” said another. But not long after that, one of his slaves drawed a knife on him, and he sold every single slave he had.

  I was mulling the
se things in my head, course, for I was smelling a rat in all of it. Something was happening outside of town, but word on it was thin. Like most things in life, you don’t know nothing till you want to know it, and don’t see what you don’t want to see, but all that talk about slavery was drawing water for something, and not long after, I found out.

  I was heading past the kitchen, drawing water, and heard a terrible hank coming from the saloon. I peeked in there to find the place packed with redshirts, three deep from the bar, armed to the teeth. Through the front window, I could see the road out front was full of armed men on horseback. The back door leading to the slave alley was shut tight. And before that stood several redshirts, and they was armed. The hotel bar was going full steam, packed tight with rebels bearing weapons of all kinds, and Miss Abby and Judge Fuggett—that same judge who was a good customer of Pie—them two was having a full-out fight.

  Not a fistfight, but a real wrangle. I had to keep movin’ as I worked, lest somebody stop me for lingering, but they was so hot that nobody paid me no mind. Miss Abby was furious. I believe if that room wasn’t full of armed men surrounding Judge Fuggett, she’d’a drawed on him with the heater she carried around on her waistband, but she didn’t. From what I could gather, them two was arguing about money, lots of it. Miss Abby was burning up. “I declare I won’t go along with it,” she said. “That’s a loss of several thousand dollars for me!”

  “I’ll arrest you if I have to,” Judge Fuggett said, “for that business needs doing.” Several men nodded with him. Miss Abby took a backseat then. She backed off, fuming, while the judge took the center of the room and told the others. I lingered with my face behind a post and listened as he told it: There was a planned insurrection. It involved the Negroes from the pen, at least a couple dozen of ’em. They was planning on killing white families by the hundreds, including the town minister, who loved the Negro and preached against slavery. Several pen Negroes, some that belonged to Miss Abby and several others—for slave owners who come to town to do business often parked their Negroes in the yard—was all arrested. Nine was found out. The judge was planning to try all nine the next morning. Four of ’em was Miss Abby’s.

  I run back upstairs to Pie’s room and busted in the door. “There’s big trouble,” I blurted out, and told her what I heard.

  For the rest of my life, I would remember her response. She was setting on the bed as I told it, and when I was done, she didn’t say a word. She got up from her bed, walked to the window, and stared down at the slave pen, which was empty. Then she said over her shoulder, “That’s all? Only nine?”

  “That’s a lot.”

  “They should hang ’em all. Every one of them low-down, no-count niggers.”

  I reckon she saw my face, for she said, “Just be calm. This don’t involve you and me. It’ll pass. But I can’t be seen talking to you right now. Two of us is a crowd. Git out and listen around. Come up when it’s safe and tell me what you hear.”

  “But I ain’t done nothing,” I said, for I was worried about my own tail.

  “Ain’t nothing gonna happen to you. I already fixed it with Miss Abby for me and you. Just be quiet and listen to what’s said. Tell me what you hear. Now get out. And don’t be seen talking to any niggers. Nary a one. Lay low and listen. Find out who them nine is, and when it’s safe, slip back in here and tell me.”

  She shoved me out the door. I ventured down to the saloon, slipped into the kitchen, and listened in as the judge told Miss Abby and the others what was to come. What I heard about made me nervous.

  The judge revealed that he and his men questioned every slave in the yard. The coloreds denied the insurrection plans, but one colored was tricked into confessing or just told it some way or other, I reckon. Somehow they’d got the information about them nine coloreds from somebody, and they snatched them nine from the yard and throwed them in the jailhouse. The judge further explained that he and his men knowed who the leader of the whole thing was, but the leader weren’t talking. They aimed to fix that problem straightaway, which was the reason for all the men and various town folks setting up shop in the saloon, armed to the gizzards, shouting down Miss Abby. For the leader of the insurrection was one of Miss Abby’s slaves, the judge said, downright dangerous, and when they brung Sibonia in twenty minutes later wearing chains on her ankles and feet, I weren’t surprised.

  Sibonia looked worn out, tired, and thin. Her hair was a mess. Her face was puffy and swollen, and her skin shiny. But her eyes shone calm. That was the same face I’d seen in the pen. She was calm as an egg. They slammed her into a chair before Judge Fuggett, and the men surrounded her. Several stood before her, cursing, as the Judge pulled up a chair before her. A table was throwed in front of him, and a drink was set before him. Somebody handed him a cigar. He settled himself behind the table and lit it, puffing and sipping his drink slowly. He weren’t in a hurry, and neither was Sibonia, who sat there silent as the moon, even as several men around her cussed her up and down.

  Finally Judge Fuggett spoke up and shushed everybody. He turned to Sibonia and said, “Sibby, we aims to find out about this murderous plot. We know you is the leader. Several people has said it. So don’t deny it.”

  Sibonia was calm as a blade of grass. She looked straight at the judge and looked neither sideways nor over his head. “I am the woman,” she said, “and I am not ashamed or afraid to confess it.”

  The way she spoke, talking straight at him, in a room crowded full of drunk rebels, that just floored me.

  Judge Fuggett asked her, “Who else is involved?”

  “Me and my sister, Libby, and I ain’t confessing to no other.”

  “We got ways of getting you to tell it if you want.”

  “Do your wants, then, Judge.”

  Well that blowed his top. He went low-grade then, he got so hot it was a pity. He threatened to beat her, whip her, tar and feather her, but she said, “Go ahead. You can even get Darg if you want. But it can’t be whipped out of me nor coerced in any way. I am the woman. I done it. And if I had the chance, I would do it again.”

  Well, the judge and the men around him stomped and hollered something grievous; they railed about how they was gonna grind her to a stump and rip her private parts off and feed her to the pigs if she didn’t tell the names of the others. Judge Fuggett promised they’d start a bonfire in the middle of the town square and throw her in it, but Sibonia said, “Go ahead. You have me, and no other one shall you git through me.”

  I reckon the only reason they didn’t string her up right then and there was them not being sure who the other traitors might be, and worried that there might be bunches more of ’em. That flummoxed ’em, so they harangued some more and threatened to hang her right then and there, told her they’d pull out her teeth and so forth, but at the end of it they got nothing from her and throwed her back in jail. They spent the next few hours trying to figure matters through. They knowed her sister and seven others was involved. But there was twenty to thirty slaves that lived in the pen at various times, not to mention several that passed there every day, for the masters coming to town parked their slaves in the pen when they come to do business. That meant dozens of coloreds from near a hundred miles around might be involved in the plot.

  Well, they argued into the night. It weren’t just the principle of the thing neither. Them slaves was worth big money. Slaves in them days was loaned out, borrowed against, used as collateral for this, that, or the other. Several masters whose slaves was arrested upped and declared their slaves innocent and demanded to get Sibonia back and pull her fingernails out one by one till she gived up who was in the plot with her. One of ’em even challenged the judge, saying, “How is it you knows of the plot in the first place?”

  “I was told in confidence by a colored,” he said.

  “Which one?”

  “I ain’t telling it,” the judge said. “But it’s a colored
that told me—a trusted colored. Known to many of you.”

  That gived me the shivers, too, for there weren’t but one colored in town known to many of them. But I throwed that thought from my mind at the moment, for the judge declared right then and there that it was already three days since they found out about the insurrection, and they had better find a way to make Sibonia give up more names, for he feared the insurrection had already gone past Pikesville. They all agreed.

  That was the monkey wrench she throwed on ’em, and they couldn’t stand it. They was determined to break her, so they thunk and thunk on it. They broke that night and met the next day and talked and thunk on it some more, and finally, late that night on the second day, the judge himself come up with a scheme.

  He called on the town’s minister. This feller ministered to the coloreds in the yard every Sunday evening. Since the plot was favored to murder him and his wife, the judge decided to ask the minister to go to the jailhouse and talk to Sibonia, ’cause the coloreds knowed him as a fair man, and Sibonia was known to respect him.

  It was a master idea, and the rest agreed on it.

  The judge summoned the minister to the saloon. He was a solid, firm-looking man in whiskers, dressed in a button-down jacket and vest. He was clean by prairie standards, and when they brung him before Judge Fuggett, who told him of the plan, the minister nodded his head and agreed. “Sibonia will not be able to lie to me,” he announced, and he marched out the saloon and headed toward the jailhouse.

  Four hours later he staggered back into the saloon exhausted. He had to be helped into a chair. He asked for a drink. A drink was poured for him. He throwed it down his throat and asked for another. He drunk that. Then he demanded another, which they brung him, before he could finally tell Judge Fuggett and the others what happened.