The Good Lord Bird

by James McBride

  “I will do just that if you tells me where you is from, dear maiden,” he said.

  “Many places, stranger,” I said, for I was of the habit about lying about myself, and the “dear maiden” part of his talking meant that he was prone to perhaps buy me a second bottle of that buttercup whiskey after we finished the first. Fact is, when I thunk on it, seemed like he hadn’t drunk much at all, and seemed to enjoy watching me do all the sipping and soaking of the alkie for him, which at that point was more than a thrill, for I was already two sheets to the wind and wanted more. I said, “If you buy us a second bottle of moral suasion, I’ll give you the whole sad story, plus a haircut, stranger. Then I’ll sing ‘Dixie Is My Home’ for you, which will stir your spirits and put you right to sleep.”

  “I will do that,” the feller said, “but first I needs a favor. I got a saddlebag on my horse, which is tied outside on the alley side of the hotel. That saddlebag needs cleaning. On account of my arm”—and here he pointed to his arm, which was hung in a sling—“I can’t lift it. So if I can trust you to go out and fetch that saddlebag and bring it inside and lather it up with saddle soap, why, I’ll give you two bits or even three and you can buy your own whiskey. I rides the brown-and-white pinto.”

  “I will be happy to do that, friend,” I said.

  I went outside and untied his saddlebag from his pinto in a jiffy, but it was loaded up full, and that thing was heavy. Plus I was pixilated. I lost my grip on it when I got it loose from the horse and it fell to the ground, and the leather top flap popped open. When I bent to close the flap, I noticed in the moonlight an odd thing sticking out the top of that flap.

  It was a feather. A long, black-and-white feather with a touch of red on it. Drunk as I was, I still knowed what it was. I hadn’t seen a feather like that in two years. I seen a plume of them very same type feathers on Frederick Brown’s chest when he was buried. A Good Lord Bird.

  I quick stuffed it back into the saddlebag, turned to go inside, and walked straight into the feller who’d sent me out there. “Onion?” he said.

  I was two sheets to the wind and seeing double, and he was so tall standing up there in that dark alley that I couldn’t quite make out his face, and I was seeing threes anyway. Then he pulled off his hat, throwed back his hair, leaned down to look at me close, and I seen past his beard into his face, and found myself staring at Owen Brown.

  “I been seeking you for two years,” he said. “What is you doing here, carousing around like a drunk?”

  I was shocked out my petticoat, practically, and didn’t know what to cook up to tell him on the spot, for lying takes wit, and that was on a high shelf in my brain on account of that essence, which tied up my tongue, so I blurted the truth: “I has fallen in love with someone who don’t want no parts of me,” I said.

  To my surprise, Owen said, “I understands. I too has fallen in love with someone who don’t want no parts of me. I went to Iowa to fetch a young lady but she said I am too grumpy. She wants prosperity and a man with a farm, not a poor abolitionist. But that didn’t turn me into a drunk like you. Is I too grumpy, by the way?”

  Fact is, there weren’t a soul in Kansas Territory more grumpy than Owen Brown, who would grumble to Jesus Himself on account of just about anything that weren’t to his liking. But it weren’t for me to say. Instead I said, “Where was you at Osawatomie? We was waiting for you.”

  “We runned into some rebels.”

  “Whyn’t you come back and get me and Bob?”

  “I’m here, ain’t I?”

  He frowned, glanced up and down the alley, then picked up his saddlebag, and throwed it on his horse with one hand, tying it, using his teeth to hold one of the straps as he did so. “Set tight,” he said. “We’ll be ridin’ here soon. And quit sipping that joy juice.”

  He mounted up on his horse. “Where’s the Old Man?” I hissed. “Is he dead?”

  But he had already turned his horse up the alley and was gone.

  16

  Busting Out

  It was the next day before I got a chance to slip out to the pen. Someone had tipped off the town that the Free Staters was coming, and that made the white folks get busy and also watch the niggers close. The town loaded up all over again. They never really geared down after Sibonia’s hanging, truth be told, but now the sure sign of Free Staters picked things up. The saloon bar was packed three deep with rebels and militia armed to the teeth. They made plans to block off the streets to the town, this time with cannons on both sides, facing outward. They posted watchouts on both ends and on the hills around the town. They knowed trouble was coming.

  I was sent to draw water after lunch the next afternoon, and got out to the yard. I found Bob pining at the edge of the pen by himself as usual. He looked about low as a man can get, like a feller waiting for his execution, which I reckon he was. As I trotted to the gate, Broadnax and his men seen me and peeled away from their side, where they was working with the hogs, and come on over. Broadnax stuck his face inside the rails.

  “I got news,” I said.

  The words hadn’t left my mouth when the back door of the hut on the other side of the alley opened and Darg rolled out. That big Negro always moved fast. The slaves scattered when he came, except for Broadnax, who stood alone at the gate.

  Darg stomped up to the gate and glared inside the pen. “Git along the back of the fence there, Broadnax, so I can make my count.”

  Broadnax took his face out the fence railing and stood up straight, facing Darg.

  “Git along,” Darg said.

  “I ain’t got to jump like a chicken every time you open that hole in your face,” Broadnax said.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  Without a word, Darg removed his shawl, pulled out his whip, and moved to unwire the gate and unlock the fence to go inside.

  I couldn’t stand it. There was rebels three deep in the saloon just inside. A dustup between them two would bring Miss Abby and twenty-five armed redshirts out of the back door ready to throw lead at every colored out there, including them two. I couldn’t have that, not with freedom so close. Owen said he was coming, and his word was good.

  I stepped in front of Darg and said, “Why, Mr. Darg, I am glad you is here. I come out here to check on my Bob, and Lord these niggers is ornery. I don’t know how to thank you on account of your kindness and bravery for keeping these yard niggers in check. I just don’t know how to thank you.”

  That tickled him. He chuckled and said, “Oh, I can think of many ways to thank me, high yeller, which I’ll get to in a minute.” He flung the gate open.

  When he done that, I fell out. Fainted dead out right in the mud, just like I seen the white ladies do.

  Gosh darnit, that done it. He hustled over to me, leaned over, and picked me up clear off the ground by the collar with one hand. He stuck his face close to mine’s. I didn’t want that, so I come out my swoon and said, “Lordy, don’t do that. Pie might be looking out the window!”

  Well, he dropped me to the ground like a hot potato, and I bounced in the mud and played dead again. He shook me a couple of times, but I didn’t come to right off this time. I played possum good as I could for a few seconds. Finally I come to and said, “Oh, Lord, I is ill. Is it possible for a gallant gentleman like you to get a girl a glass of water? I’m ever so shook now with gratefulness, having been jooped and jaloped around by your kind protection.”

  That done him. He was right loopy over me. “Wait here, little sweetness,” he grumbled. “Darg’ll take care of you.”

  He bounced up and runned toward the alley of the hotel, for there was a big water barrel along the side of it that the kitchen used. The moment he scampered off, I pulled my head out the mud long enough to bark at Broadnax, who stood there, and he caught my words.

  “Be ready,” I said.

  That’s all I h
ad the chance to do, for Darg came racing back holding a ladle. I played sick while he picked up my head and throwed a slug of nasty, putrid water down my gullet. It tasted so terrible I thought he’d poisoned me. Suddenly I heard a bang, and the ladle knocked into the fence post, which was right next to my head. The thing struck that fence post so hard, I thought that nigger had figured my ruse out and swung at me with it and missed. Then I heard another bang, and that fence post was nearly sheared off, and I knowed it weren’t no ladle that busted that wood apart, but steel and powder. I heard more blasts. Them was bullets. The back door of the hotel suddenly flung open, and somebody from inside hollered, “Darg, come quick!”

  There was blasting out front, a lot of it.

  He dropped me and rushed inside the hotel. I picked myself out the mud and followed.

  There was chaos inside. Soon as I hit the kitchen doorway, two Indian cooks knocked me over scrambling for the back door. I got up and scampered through the dining room, and hit the saloon just in time to see the front window blast inward and shower several rebels with pieces of glass. Several Free Staters followed the glass in, leaping into the room and blasting as they come. Behind them, outside the broken window, at least a dozen more could be seen charging on horses down Main Street, firing. At the front door, about the same number kicked their way inside.

  They came in there in a hurry and all business, kicking over tables and throwing their pistols on every rebel dumb enough to reach for his hardware, and even those that tossed their guns to the floor was aired out, too, for it was a shooting frolic. A few rebels near the back of the room of the dining hall doorway managed to throw up a table as a barrier and fire back on the enemy, backing toward the doorway where I crouched. I stayed where I was once they got there, trying to get up enough guts to make a dash for the stairs in the dining room to check on Pie, for I could hear the girls on the Hot Floor screaming, and could see from my view out the window that several Free Staters had hopped to the second-floor roof from outside by standing on the backs of their horses. I wanted to go up them stairs, but couldn’t bring myself to make a dash for ’em. It was too hot. We was overrun.

  I stayed crouched where I was long enough to see the rebels in the saloon make a small comeback, for Darg had been preoccupied somewhere else and come in the saloon fighting like a dog. He smashed a Free Stater in the face with a beer bottle, tossed another Free Stater out the window, and made the dash into the dining room without being hit, despite heavy fire. He took the back stairs to the Hot Floor on the quick. That was the last I ever saw of him, by the way. Not that it mattered, for no sooner had his back disappeared up the stairs than a fresh wave of Free Staters rushed in the front door to add to those that was chewing up the remaining rebels in the saloon, while yours truly was still cowering in the corner near the dining room, where I could see both rooms.

  The rebels in the dining room put up a fight, but in the saloon they was outnumbered, and that room was already compromised. Most of the rebels in there was down or dead. In fact, several Free Staters had already gived up the fight for the dining room and pillaged the bar, grabbing bottles and drinking them down. In the midst of that, a tall, rangy feller with a wide-brim hat walked into the busted front door of the saloon and announced, “I’m Captain James Lane of the Free State Militia, and you is all my prisoners!”

  Well, there weren’t hardly no prisoners to speak of in the saloon where he spoke, for every Pro Slaver in there had gone across the quit line or was just about to, save for two or three souls squirming on the floor, giving their last kicks. But the rebels who had backed into the dining room caught their breath now and put up a fight. The size of the room favored them, for the dining room was tight and there weren’t room for the superior numbers of Yanks, which made shooting at the remaining Pro Slavers in there sloppy business. There was some panic, too, for several drummers fired within ten feet of each other and missed. Still, a good number of the Free Staters took balls in that frolic and their friends, seeing that, weren’t taking a liking to it. Their attack slowed. Their surprise was gone, and now it was just a hot fight. There was some crazy talk and laughing, too, for one Pro Slaver exclaimed, “God-damn fucker shot my boot,” and there was more laughing. But them rebels done a good enough job to hold them Yanks out the dining room for the moment, and when I seen a path clear to the back door to the alley where the slave pen was, I made for it as quick as I could. I didn’t make for the stairs to help Pie. Whether Darg, her new love, was there and got her out, I didn’t know. But she was on her own. I never did see either of ’em again.

  I busted out that back door running. I hustled over to the slave pen, where the Negroes was scrambling trying to break the lock, which was fastened from the outside. I quick undid it and flung open the gate. Broadnax and the rest run out there with hot feet. They didn’t look at me twice. They vanished out the gate quick as you can tell it and hauled ass down the alley.

  Bob, though, stood in the corner in the same spot where he always stood, gaping like a fool, his mouth hanging open.

  “Bob, let’s roll.”

  “I’m done running with you,” he said. “G’wan ’bout your business and leave me be. This is one of your tricks.”

  “It ain’t no trick. C’mon!”

  Behind me, at the far end of the alley, a group of rebel townsmen on horses rounded the corner and charged the alleyway, hooping and hollering. They fired over our heads at the fleeing Negroes who was making it for the other end of the alley. The alley dead-ended at a T. You had to turn right or left to get to the road on either side. Them coloreds was making for that intersection something terrible.

  I didn’t wait. I took off after them. I reckon Bob looked over my shoulder and got a taste of them rebels’ bullets singing over his head, for he jumped up like a rabbit and took off right behind me.

  The escaped Negroes from the yard was only about twenty-five yards in front of us. They made it to the end of the alley on a dead run and split apart, some cutting right and the others left, out of sight. Me and Bob headed there, too, but didn’t get no farther than halfway to the end of the alley when a rebel on horseback rounded the corner on that very same end from the main street side where several Negroes had disappeared to. He charged down the alley toward us. He had a Connor rifle in his hand, and when he seen me and Bob coming at him, he charged dead at us and raised his rifle to fire.

  We stopped cold in our tracks, for we was caught. The redshirt slowed his horse as it trotted on us, and as he pulled his traces on his horse he said, “Stay right there.” Just as he said it—he weren’t more than five feet from us—a feller stepped out from one of the doorways in the alley and swiped that rebel clean off his horse with a broadsword. Knocked him clean down. The rebel hit the ground cold.

  Me and Bob made to hotfoot it around him. But the feller who knocked him down throwed his foot out as I passed, and I tripped clean over it and fell face-first in the mud.

  I turned to get up, and found myself staring up into the barrel of an old seven-shooter, a familiar-looking one, and at the end of it was the Old Man, and he didn’t look none too pleased.

  “Onion,” he said. “Owen says you is a drunk, using tobacco and swearing. Is that true?”

  Behind him, slowly stepping out the alleyway door come his boys: Owen, Watson, Salmon, Oliver, the new man Kagi, and several men I didn’t recognize. They stepped out that doorway slow and steady, never rushing. The Old Man’s army was trained to be calm and cool in a fight as usual. They glanced at rebels down at the other end of the alley firing at us, formed a firm firing line, set up, and opened fire.

  Several rebels fell. The rest who got a taste of that trained army bucking lead at them hopped off their horses, and took cover behind the slave pen, returning the favor.

  Bullets whizzed back and forth down the alley, but the Old Man, standing over me, paid them no mind. He stared at me, clearly annoyed, waiting for an answer.
Well, since he was waiting, I couldn’t tell him a lie.

  “Captain,” I said. “It’s true. I fell in love and had my heart broke.”

  “Did you commingle with anyone in a fleshly way of nature without being married?”

  “No, sir. I am still clean and pure as the day I was born in that fashion.”

  He nodded grumpily, then glanced down the alley as bullets zinged past him and struck the shingles of the building next to him, pinging the wood out into the alley in splinters. He was a fool when it come to standing around getting shot at. The men behind him ducked and grimaced as the rebels gived them fire, but the Old Man might as well been standing in a church at choir practice. He stood mute, as usual, apparently thinking something through. His face, always aged, looked even older. It looked absolutely spongy with wrinkles. His beard was now fully white and ragged, and so long it growed down to his chest and could’a doubled for a hawk’s nest. He had gotten a new set of clothes someplace, but they were only worse new versions of the same thing he wore before: black trousers, black vest, frock coat, stiff collar, withered, crumpled, and chewed at the edges. His boots was worse than ever, crumpled like pieces of text paper, curled at the toes. In other words, he looked normal, like his clothes was dying of thirst, and he himself was about to keel over out of plain ugliness.

  “That is a good thing, Little Onion,” he said. “The Good Book says in Ezekiel sixteen, eight: ‘When I passed by thee and looked upon thee behold, that was the time of love and the Lord spread his skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness.’ You has kept your nakedness covered?”

  “Much as possible, Captain.”

  “Been reading the Bible?”

  “Not too much, Captain. But I been thinking in a godly way.”

  “Well, that’s something at least,” he said. “For if you stand to the Lord’s willingness, He will stand for you. Did I ever tell you the story of King Solomon and the two mothers with one baby? I will tell you that one, for you ought to know it.”