The Good Lord Bird

by James McBride

  Them women tried to outdo each other with the handling of him, even though he regarded them both like they was cooters and stink bombs. When he took meals, he took them alone at the big mahogany desk in his office. That man gobbled down more in one setting than I seen thirty settlers chunk down in three weeks out in Kansas Territory: steak, potatoes, collard greens, yams, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, chicken, rabbit, pheasant, buck meat, cake, biscuits, rice, cheeses of all types, and kneaded bread; he washed it down with milk, curd, peach juice, cow’s milk, goat’s milk, cherry juice, orange juice, grape juice. Neither did he turn away from alcohol libations and drinks of all sorts, of which several types was kept on hand at the house: beer, lager, wine, seltzer, even bottled water from various springs out west. That man put a hurting on a kitchen.

  I was exhausted with being a girl a week into the stay, for a damsel out west on the trail could spit, chaw tobacco, holler, grunt, and fart, and gather no more attention to herself than a bird would snatching crumbs off the ground. In fact, your basic Pro Slaver found them behaviors downright likable in a girl, for there weren’t nothing better to a feller out on the plains than finding a girl who could play cards like a feller and clean up the bottom of a bottle of whiskey for him when he was pie-eyed. But in Rochester, by God, you couldn’t so much as doodle your fingers without insulting somebody on the question of a lady behaving thus and so, even a colored lady—especially a colored lady, for the high-siddity coloreds up there was all tweet and twit and whistle. “Where’s your bustle?” a colored lady snapped at me when I walked down the street. “Un-nip your naps!” piped up another. “Where’s your wig, child?” asked another.

  I couldn’t stand it and retreated back to the house. All that blitzing and curtsying pressured me, and I got the thirst, needed a jag, a sip of whiskey, to clear me out. Sipping blisters at Miss Abby’s had whetted my whistle for tasting the giddy water when things growed tight, and once I got off the freezing trail and fell into the good-eating life, I growed thirsty from all that squeezed-up, settled-down living. I had the thought of cutting out from the Old Man at that time, slipping off and working in a tavern of some type in Rochester, but them taverns there weren’t nothing compared to taverns in Kansas Territory. They was more like libraries or thinking places, full of old farts in button-down frock coats setting around sipping sherry and wondering about the state of the poor Negro not prospering, or drunk Irishmen learning to read. Women and girls weren’t allowed, mostly. I thunk about getting other jobs, too, for every once in a while a white woman in a bonnet would saunter up to me on the sidewalk and say, “Is you interested in earning three pennies to do laundry, dear?” I was twelve at the time, coming on thirteen or even fourteen is my guess, though I never knowed to be exact. I was still allergic to work no matter what age, so washing folks’ drawers weren’t an idea I was game to surrender to. I had trouble enough keeping my own clothes clean. I was growing short of temper from all this treatment, and I expect them women would’a found out my real nature once something broke wrong and I drawed my heater, which I still kept. For I had come to the notion that on account of my adventures out west with the Captain, I was a gunfighter of sorts, girl or not, and I felt above most of them citified easterners who ate toast with jam and moaned and crowed about not having no blueberries in the winter months.

  But the lack of woozy water chewed at me, and one afternoon I couldn’t stand it no more. I decided to drown my thirst with a taste of muddle sauce that Mr. Douglass kept in his kitchen pantry. He had bottles and bottles of it. So I slipped in there and grabbed a bottle, but no sooner did I take a quick drinkie-poo than I heard somebody coming. I quick put the bottle back just as Miss Ottilie, his white wife, appeared, frowning. I thought she’d busted me flat-footed, but instead she announced, “Mr. Douglass asks to see you in his study now.”

  I proceeded there and found him setting behind his spacious desk. He was a short man, the top of the desk was nearly as high as he was. He had a big head for such a tiny person, and his hair, standing on end like a lion’s mane, loomed over the top of the desk.

  He seen me coming and bid me to close the door. “Since you are in the employ of the Captain, I has got to interview you,” he said, “to make you aware of the plight of the Negro in whose service you has been fighting.”

  Well, I was aware of that plight, being that I am a Negro myself, plus I heard him bleating it about the house, and the truth is, I weren’t interested in fighting for nobody’s cause. But I didn’t want to offend the great man, so I said, “Well, thank you, sir.”

  “First of all, dear,” he said, drawing himself up, “sit down.”

  I done that. Set in a chair just across from his desk.

  “Now,” he said, drawing hisself up. “The Negro comes in all colors. Dark. Black. Blacker. Blackest. Blacker than night. Black as hell. Black as tar. White. Light. Lighter. Lightest. Lighter than light. White as the sun. And almost white. Take me, for example. I am of a brown hue. You, on the other hand, is nearly white, and comely, and that’s a terrible dilemma, is it not?”

  Well, I never thunk of it that way, but since he knowed everything, I gived him my best answer. “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “I’m a mulatto myself,” he said proudly.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Being comely, we mulattoes have therefore various certain experiences that define our existence and set us apart from the other adherents of our racial congruities.”

  “Sir?”

  “We mulattoes are different from most Negroes.”

  “We is?”

  “Of course, my child.”

  “I reckon so, Mr. Douglass, if you say so.”

  “I deedy doody say so indeed-y,” he said.

  I reckoned he said that as a joke, for he chortled and looked at me. “Ain’t that funny?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Cheer up, little Henrietta. Where are you from, dear?”

  “Why, Kansas, Mr. Douglass.”

  “No need to call me Mr. Douglass,” he said, coming from behind his desk and approaching where I sat. “My friends call me Fred.”

  It didn’t seem proper to call a great man like him Fred, for the only Fred I knowed was dumber than doughnuts and deader than yesterday’s beer. Besides, Mr. Douglass was stout as a porcupine about the rules of me calling him “Mr. Douglass” at the train station before. But I didn’t want to offend the great leader, so I said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Not sir. Fred.”

  “Yes, sir, Fred.”

  “Oh, come now. Get cheery. Here. Move. Have a seat here,” he said. He moved to a tiny couch that was as cockeyed and cocky-mamy as anything I ever seen. One side faced one way. One side faced the other. I reckoned the carpenter was drunk. He stood before it. “This is a love seat,” he said, motioning me over with his hands. He done it like he was in a hurry, impatient, like he was used to people listening to his thoughts, which I expect they was, him being a great man. “Would you like to sit here whilst I explain to you further the plight of our people?” he asked.

  “Well, sir, I reckon that plight looks righteous bad now, till you furthers it.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Well, er, with people like you leading the way, why, we can’t go wrong.”

  Here the great man laughed. “You are a country girl,” he chortled. “I love country girls. They’re fast. I’m from the country myself.” He pushed me down in the love seat and sat down on the other side of it. “This love seat’s from Paris,” he said.

  “Is she a friend of yours?”

  “It’s the city of light,” he said, sneaking an arm around my shoulder. “You simply must experience the sunlight coming over the Seine River.”

  “Sunlight over a river? Oh, I seen it come over the Kaw many times. Every day in Kansas, in fact. It rains out there every day sometimes, too, just like it do here.”

 
“My dear,” he said. “You are a waif in the darkness.”

  “I am?”

  “A tree of unborn fruit.”

  “I am?”

  “Yet to be picked.” Here he tugged on my bonnet, which I quickly pushed back in place.

  “Tell me. Where were you born? What is your birthday?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Though I reckon to be about twelve or fourteen.”

  “That’s just it!” he said, hopping up to his feet. “The Negro knows not where he was born, or who his mother is. Or who his father is. Or his real name. He has no home. He has no land. His station is temporary. He is guile and fodder for the slave catcher. He is a stranger in a strange land! He is a slave, even when he is free! He is a renter, an abettor! Even if he owns a home. The Negro is a perpetual lettor!”

  “Like A, B, and C?”

  “No child. A renter.”

  “You rent here?”

  “No, dear. I buy. But that’s not the point. See this?” He squeezed my shoulder. “That is merely flesh. You are natural prey to the carnal wisdom and thirst of the slave owner, that dastardly fiend of fiendishness. Your colored woman knows no freedom. No dignity. Her children are sold down the lane. Her husbands tend the field. While the fiendish slave owner has his way with her.”

  “He do?”

  “Of course he does. And see this?” He squeezed the back of my neck, then stroked it with fat fingers. “This slender neck, the prominent nose—this, too, belongs to the slave owner. They feel it belongs to them. They take what is not rightfully theirs. They know not you, Harlot Shackleford.”

  “Henrietta.”

  “Whatever. They know not you, Henrietta. They know you as property. They know not the spirit inside you that gives you your humanity. They care not about the pounding of your silent and lustful heart, thirsting for freedom; your carnal nature, craving the wide, open spaces that they have procured for themselves. You’re but chattel to them, stolen property, to be squeezed, used, savaged, and occupied.”

  Well, all that tinkering and squeezing and savaging made me right nervous, ’specially since he was doing it his own self, squeezing and savaging my arse, working his hand down toward my mechanicals as he spoke the last, with his eyes all dewy, so I hopped to my feet.

  “I reckons your oration’s done drove me to thirst,” I said. “I wonders if you have some libations around in one of these cabinets here that would help loosen up my gibbles and put me in the right understanding of some of your deepest comminglings about our peoples.”

  “By God, pardon my rudeness! I’ve just the thing!” he said. “Would that I had thought of that first.” He fair dived for his liquor cabinet and pulled out a tall bottle and two tall glasses, pouring me a tall one and a short one for himself. He didn’t know but that I could drink like a man, having already gulped a bit of his hot sauce without his knowing and having absorbed rummy sauce with Pro Slave rebels out west who could hoist a barrel of whiskey down their throats and see double without a hitch. Even your basic pioneer settler church woman out west could outdrink any soft Yank who ate food stored in jars and cabinets and prepared in a hot stove. They could drink him right under the table on the spot.

  He shoved the tall glass of whiskey at me and hoisted the short glass for himself.

  “Here. Let us toast to the education of a country girl who learns about the plights of our people from its greatest orator,” he said. “Careful now, for this is strong.” He turned his glass to his talking hole and drunk it down.

  The effect of that whiskey hitting his gizzards was altogether righteous. He sat up as if electrified. It throwed him. He shook and rattled a bit. His large mane of hair stood on end. His eyes growed wide. He seemed sotted right off. “Whew. That’s a sip, a sot, and a mop!”

  “Why, you is right,” I said. I drunk mine’s down and placed the empty glass on the table. He stared at the empty glass. “Impressive,” he grumbled. “You means business, you little harlot.” He filled both glasses again, this time filling both to the brim.

  “How’s about one for the plights of our people in the South who ain’t here to hear your speech on ’em?” I said, for I aimed to get pixilated, and his whiskey was weak. He poured another and I drunk mine down again.

  “Hear, hear,” he said, and he followed suit, downing his a second time and looking bleary-eyed.

  Mine’s was gone, but I growed to like the taste. “What about the pets who is in slavery, too, suffering in all the heat and cold without your word on ’em?” I said. He poured and I downed it again.

  Well, that surprised him, seeing me throw that essence down so easy. See, I learned my drinking out on the prairie of Kansas and Missouri with redshirts, Pro Slavers, and abolitionists, of which even the women could drain a gallon or three and not get two-fisted so long as somebody else was pouring. It pushed his confidence a bit, seeing a girl outdo him. He couldn’t stand it.

  “Surely,” he said. He refilled both glasses again. “Preach it, my country waif, sing that they needs to hear me everywhere in the world!” He was getting addled now, all his fancy prattling started to drop off him like raindrops bouncing off a roof, and the country in him begun to come out. “Nothin’ like a spree and a jag then a bout!” he barked, and he poured that weepy, sorry, tea-tasting willowy whiskey down his red lane one more time. I followed him.

  Well, we just went on like that. We run through that bottle and then runned into a second. The more stupefied he got, the more he forgot about the hanky-panky he had in mind and instead germinated on what he knowed—orating. First he orated on the plight of the Negro. He just about wore the Negro out. When he was done orating on them, he orated about the fowl, the fishes, the poultry, the white man, the red man, the aunties, uncles, cousins, the second cousins, his cousin Clementine, the bees, the flies, and by the time he worked down to the ants, the butterflies, and the crickets, he was stone-cold, sloppy, clouded-up, sweet-blind drunk, whereas yours truly was simply buzzing, for that tea was weaker than bird piss, though when you drunk it by volume, it growed more to your liking and tasted better each lick. By the third bottle of essence, he had gone to pot completely, tripping over his oration and skunking about the birds and bees, which was the point of it all, I reckon, for while I was not even half-mud-eyed, he was bent on not being outdrunk by a girl. But being the great leader that he was, he never let go of himself, though he seemed to lose his fancy for me. The more bleary-eyed he got, the more he talked like a right regular down-home, pig-knuckle-eatin’ Negro. “I had a mule once,” he bawled, “and she wouldn’t pull the hat off your head. But I loved that damn mule. She was a stinkin’ good mule! When she died, I rolled her in the creek. I would’a buried her, but she was too heavy. A fat thousand-pounder. By God, that mule could single-trot, double-trot. . . .” I rather fancied him then, not in the nature-wanting sort of a way, but knowing that he was a good soul, too muddled to be of much use. But after a while I seen my out, for he was off the edge, wasted and looped beyond redemption, and couldn’t hurt me now. I got up. “I got to go,” I said.

  He was setting in the middle of the floor by then, his suspenders off, clasping the bottle. “Don’t marry two women at once,” he managed to burble. “Colored or white, it’ll whip you scandalous.”

  I made for the door. He took one final dive for me as I made for it, but fell on his face.

  He looked up at me, grinning sheepishly as I opened the door, then said, “It’s hot in here. Open da winder.” Then laid his mighty Negro head, with his mighty hair like a lion’s mane, down flat on his face, and was out cold, snoring when I quietly took my leave.

  19

  Smelling Like Bear

  I didn’t tell the Old Man about his friend’s exploits. I hated to disappoint him and it didn’t seem proper. Besides, once the Old Man made up his mind about somebody, nothing could change him. If the Old Man liked somebody, it didn’t matter whet
her they was heathen or reckless or a boy sporting life as a girl. So long as they was against slavery, that was good enough.

  He left Mr. Douglass’s house roaring pleased, which meant his face weren’t scrunched up like a prune and his mouth weren’t closed like a pair of tight britches. That was unusual for him. “Mr. Douglass gived me his word on something important, Onion,” he said. “That is good news indeed.” We loaded onto a westbound train to Chicago, which didn’t make sense, for Boston was the other way, but I weren’t going to question him. As we settled in for the ride, he proclaimed loudly so that all the passengers to hear, “We is aiming to change in Chicago for horses and wagon to Kansas.”

  We click-clacked along for nearly a day and I fell asleep. A few hours later, the Old Man shook me awake. “Grab our bags, Onion,” he whispered. “We got to jump.”

  “Why, Captain?”

  “No time for questions.”

  I cast a glance outside and it was nearly dawn. In the train car, the rest of the passengers was dead asleep. We moved to a seat near the car’s edge and lollygagged there till the train stopped to take on water, then jumped off. We hid in the thickets on the side of the tracks a good while, waiting for the engine to get up steam and roll again, the Old Man with his hand on one of his seven-shooters. Only when the train pulled away did his hand drop off his hardware.

  “Federal agents is tracking us,” he said. “I want them thinking I’m out west.”

  I watched the train pull away slowly. It was a long stretch of straight track up the mountains, and as the train huffed up it, the Old Man stood up, dusted himself off, and stared at it a long time.

  “Where are we?”

  “Pennsylvania. These is the Allegheny Mountains,” he said, pointing at the winding mountains in the direction of the train, which struggled up the straight track to a winding curve. “This was my boyhood home.”