The Good Lord Bird

by James McBride

  He glared around at the men. The old fire had returned now, the face hard as granite, the fists removed from his pocket, the thin, drooped body covered by the ratty soot and toeless boots standing erect. “I has more studying to do, and we will commence our battle plans tomorrow. Good night,” he said.

  The men wandered outside. I watched them filter off and slip away, till only one man stood. O. P. Anderson, the only colored among them, was the last to leave. O.P. was a small, slender, delicate feller, a printer, a sharp feller, but he wasn’t overbuilt like the rest of the Old Man’s crew. Most of the Captain’s men were strong and rugged adventurers, or gruff pioneers like Stevens, who carried six-shooters on both sides and picked fights with anyone who came near him. O.P. weren’t like Stevens or the rest of them at all. He was just a drylongso colored feller with good intentions. He weren’t a real soldier or gunfighter, but he was there, and from the fret on his face, he looked to be scared something scandalous.

  When he stepped out the cabin, he slowly lowered the canvas flap and wandered off to a nearby tree and sat. I sauntered over and sat next to him. From where we was, we could see inside the tiny window of the cabin. Inside, the Old Man could be seen standing at his table, still poring over his maps and papers, slowly folding them up, scratching a marking on a couple here and there as he put them away.

  “What you think, Mr. Anderson?” I said. I was hopeful that O.P. thunk what I thunk, which is that the Old Man was crazy as a bedbug and we should skip off right away.

  “I don’t understand it,” he said glumly.

  “Understand what?”

  “Understand why I’m here,” he muttered. He seemed to be speaking to himself.

  “You gonna leave, then?” I asked. I was hopeful.

  From where he sat at the foot of the tree, O.P. looked up and stared at the Old Man, busy inside his cabin, still fiddling with his maps, muttering to himself.

  “Why should I?” he said. “I’m as mad as him.”

  22

  The Spy

  Like most things with the Old Man, what was supposed to take a day took a week. And what was supposed to take two days took two weeks. And what was supposed to take two weeks took four weeks, a month, and two months. And so it went. He was supposed to leave Iowa in June. He didn’t put his hat on his head and tip good-bye to that place till mid-September. By then I was long gone. He had sent me forward into the fight.

  It wasn’t the fight I wanted, but it was better than getting kilt or staying out on the plains. He decided to send one of his men, Mr. Cook, ahead to Harpers Ferry to serve as a spy and to spread the word of his plan amongst the Negroes there. He announced it to his lieutenant Kagi one morning in July, when I was there serving them two breakfast in the Old Man’s cabin.

  Kagi didn’t like the plan. “Cook is a chatterbox,” he said. “He’s a rooster. Plus he’s a ladies’ man. He’s sending letters to his various lady friends saying he’s on a secret mission and he’ll have to leave soon, and they’ll never see him again. He’s brandishing his gun in public and saying he killed five men in Kansas. He got ladies in Tabor fretting all over him, thinking he’s gonna die on a secret mission. He’ll crow our plan all over Virginia.”

  The Old Man considered it. “He’s an irritant and he does have a long tongue,” he said, “but he’s a good talker and can scout the enemy and move about daily life there. Whatever he says about us ain’t gonna harm God’s plan for us, for no one is inclined to believe a blowhard like him anyway. I will advise him that he should use but his eyes and mouth in Virginia to our purpose and nothing more. He’d be a hindrance to us otherwise, for we have a bit more plundering to do to gather weapons and money and he don’t soldier well. We have to use everyone to their best. Cook’s best weapon against an enemy is his mouth.”

  “If you want to hive the Negroes, why not send a Negro to Virginia with him?” Kagi said.

  “I has considered sending Mr. Anderson,” the Old Man said, “but he’s nervous about the proposition overall, and may not toe the line. He may scatter.”

  “I don’t mean him. I mean the Onion,” Kagi said. “She can pose as Cook’s slave. That way she can keep an eye on Cook, and help hive the bees. She’s old enough. And you can trust her.”

  I was standing there when them two was pondering this, and I can’t say I was against the idea. I was anxious to get out of the west before the Old Man got his head blowed off. Iowa was rough living, and the U.S. Cavalry was hot on our trail. We’d had to move several times ’bout Pee Dee and Tabor to keep out of sight, and the thought of grinding over the prairie by wagon and stopping every ten minutes while the Old Man prayed, with federal dragoons riding down on us one way and Pro Slavers hunting us another, weren’t a notion that throwed a lot of sugar in my bowl. Also, I growed fond of the Captain, truth be told. I was partial to him. I’d rather he got killed or smashed up on his own time away from me and I would know he was dead later—much later would be soon enough. I knowed he was insane, and if he wanted to fight against slavery I was all for it. But I myself had no plans on doing a wink of the same. Traveling east to Virginia with Cook put me closer to the freedom line of Philadelphia, and slipping off from him would be easy, ’cause Cook never let his talking hole rest and didn’t look beyond his own self much. So I piped up to the Old Man and Mr. Kagi that it would be a great idea for me to go with Mr. Cook, and I would do my best to hive the Negroes while I was there waiting for the rest to come.

  The Old Man looked me over close. The thing ’bout the Captain was that he never gived you straight-out instruction, unless you was in a shooting fight, of course. But in day-to-day living, he mostly declared, “I’m going this way to fight slavery,” and the men said, “Why, I’m going that way, too,” and off we went. That’s how it was with him. This whole business in the newspapers later ’bout him leading them young fellers around by their noses, that’s hogwash. You couldn’t get them ornery roughnecks to do what you wanted, for while they was roughnecks, they was sweet on a cause, and broad-minded to whoever led them to it. You couldn’t get a two-hundred-dollar mule to tear them fellers away from the Old Man. They wanted to be with him ’cause they was adventurers and the Old Man never told them how to be. He was strict as the devil on the matter of religion when it come to his own self, but if your spiritual purpose took you a different way, why, he’d lecture you a bit, then let you move to your own purpose. So long as you didn’t cuss, drink, or chew tobacco, and was against slavery, he was all for you. There was some straight-out rascals in his army, when I think of it. Stevens, course, was a bad-tempered and disagreeable rascal if I ever seen one, chanting to spirits and arguing about his religious beliefs with Kagi and the rest. Charlie Tidd, a white feller, and Dangerfield Newby, a colored—both of them joined up later—them two was outright dangerous and I don’t know that they had a drop of religion between the two of ’em. Even Owen weren’t all-the-way God-fearing to his Pa’s standard. But so long as you was against slavery, why, you could do just whatever you pleased, for despite his grumpiness, the Old Man always thought the best of folks and misjudged their natures. Looking back, it was a terrible notion to send Cook to spy, and a worse notion to send me as an ambassador to rally the colored, for both of us was wanting for knowledge and wisdom, and neither of us would give a sting for nothing but ourselves. We were the two worst people he could have sent ahead.

  And course he went with it.

  “Splendid idea, Lieutenant Kagi,” he said, “for my Onion here can be trusted. If Cook spills the beans, we will know it.”

  With that, the Old Man went out and stole a fine Conestoga wagon from a Pro Slaver, and had the men load it with picks, shovels, and mining tools which they spread ’bout in the back, and throwed several wooden crates in there marked Mining Tools.

  “Careful with what is in these crates,” the Old Man said to Cook as we loaded up, nodding at the crates marked Mining Tools. “Do not
hurry along the trail. Too much bumping and grinding along and you’ll meet the Great Shepherd in pieces. And watch your tongue. Any man who cannot keep from his friends that which he cannot keep to himself is a fool.” To me he said, “Onion, I will miss you, for you is dutiful and our Good Lord Bird besides. But it is better that you be out of our trek east, for the enemy is close and there is dirty work ahead of us, what with the gathering of means and plunder. You will no doubt be of great assistance to Mr. Cook, who will benefit from having you at his side.” And with that, me and Cook was off on that Conestoga wagon headed for Virginia, and I was one step closer to being free.

  —

  Harpers Ferry is as pretty a town as you’d want to see. It’s set above two rivers that meet. The Potomac runs along the Maryland side. The Shenandoah runs along the Virginia side. The two rivers bang up against each other just outside town, and there’s a peak, an overhang just at the edge of town, where you can stand right there and watch them run cockeyed and smack up against each other. One river hits the other and runs backward. It was a perfect place for Old John Brown to favor, for he was as upside down as them two rivers. On both sides of town is the beautiful blue Appalachian Mountain ranges. At the edge of those ranges was two railroad lines, one running along the Potomac side, heading toward Washington and Baltimore, and the other on the Shenandoah side, running toward west of Virginia.

  Me and Cook got there in no time, sailing along in clear weather with that Conestoga wagon. Cook was a chatterbox. He was a treacherous, handsome scoundrel, with blue eyes and pretty blond curls that traveled down his face. He kept his hair ’round his face like a girl, and would conversate with anyone who came along as easily as molasses can spread on a biscuit. It ain’t no wonder the Old Man sent him, for he had a way ’bout him that made picking information out of folks easy work, and also his favorite subject was hisself. We got along well.

  Once we got to the Ferry we moved with the aim of finding a house near the edge of town for the Old Man’s army where he could also receive all the arms and so forth that the Old Man had arranged to ship down. The Old Man had been clear in his instructions, saying, “Rent something that don’t attract a lot of attention.”

  But attention was Cook’s middle name. He asked ’bout in town and when he didn’t hear what he wanted, went into the town’s biggest tavern, declaring he was a rich miner for a big mining outfit and I was his slave and he needed a house to rent for some miners that was on their way. “Money is no object,” he said, for the Old Man had outfitted him with a pocket full of fatback. Before he left the place, every man in the tavern knowed his name. But a slave owner did come up to us and told Cook he knowed of a settlement nearby that might be up for rent. “It’s the old Kennedy farm,” he said. “It’s a bit out of the way from the Ferry, but it might suit your purpose, for it is large.” We rode out to it and Cook looked it over.

  It was far from the Ferry, ’bout six miles, and it weren’t cheap—thirty-five dollars a month—which Cook was sure the Old Man would squawk ’bout. The farmer had passed away and the widow weren’t budging on the price. The house had two rooms downstairs, a tiny upstairs, a basement, and an outdoor shack to store arms, and across the road, an old barn. It was set back ’bout three hundred yards from the road, which was good, but it was awful close to a neighbor’s house on both sides. If the Old Man had been there he wouldn’t have took it, ’cause anyone peeking from the neighbors’ houses could look in on it and see in. The Old Man had been clear that he needed a house that was set back by itself, not around no other houses, for he’d have a lot of men hiding there and a lot of traffic going in and out, what with shipping arms and gathering men and all. But Cook had a hankering for a fat white maiden he seen hanging laundry down the road when we first rode out to scout the place, and when he seen her, he cashed in his chips on it. “This is it,” he said. He paid the widow owner of the place, told her his boss of the mining company, Mr. Isaac Smith, was coming in a few weeks, and we was in.

  We spent a couple of days setting up, and then Cook said, “I am going to town to joust about and get information on the layouts of the armory and the arms factory. You go roust the coloreds.”

  “Where are they?” I asked.

  “Wherever colored are, I expect,” he said, and was gone.

  I didn’t see him for three days. I sat there the first two days scratching my ass, figuring ’bout my own plans to run off, but I didn’t know nobody and didn’t know if it was safe to walk ’bout. I had to know the lay of the land before I cut, so, not knowing what to do, I sat tight. On the third day there, Cook came busting in the door, laughing and giggling with that same fat, young little blond lady we seen down the road hanging laundry, both of ’em cooing and dewy-eyed. He spied me setting there in the kitchen, and said, “Why didn’t you go roust the colored like you was supposed to?”

  He said this right in front of his lady friend, giving the plan away right off. I didn’t know what to say, so I blurted out, “I don’t know where they are.”

  He turned to the lady with him. “Mary, my slave here”—oh, that boiled me some, him playing it that way. Playing it to the hilt, he was, playing big, after he done gived the whole plan away—“my colored here’s looking for some coloreds to congregates with. Where is the coloreds?”

  “Why, they is everywhere, my peach,” she said.

  “Ain’t they living someplace?”

  “Sure,” she giggled. “They lives everywhere out and ’bout.”

  “Well, as I told you, we is on a secret mission, my sweet. A very important mission. For which you can’t tell a soul, as I told you,” he said.

  “Oh, I knows that,” she said, giggling.

  “And that is why we needs to know exactly where the Onion here can go find some colored friends.”

  She considered it. “Well, there’s always some high-siddity free niggers wandering ’bout town. But they ain’t worth peanuts. And then there’s Colonel Lewis Washington’s nigger plantation. He’s the nephew of George Washington himself. And Alstad’s and the Byrne brothers. They all got colored slaves, nice and proper. There’s no shortage of niggers ’round here.”

  Cook looked at me. “Well? What you waiting for?”

  That needled me, him playing big shot. But I cut out the door. I decided to try the plantations first, for I figgered an ornery and snobbish colored wouldn’t be no use to the Captain. Little was I to learn they could be trusted as much as any slave and was good fighters to boot. But I’d only trusted two coloreds up to that point in my life, not counting my late Pa—Bob and Pie—and neither of them worked out to the dot. I’d got instructions from Cook’s lady friend on where the Washington plantation was, and went out there first, being that it was on the Maryland side of the Potomac, not too far from where we was staying.

  The house was on a wide road where the mountain flattened out. It set behind a wide wrought-iron gate, down a long curved driveway. At the front of that gate, just outside it, a slim colored woman was out gardening and raking leaves. I approached her.

  “Morning,” I said.

  She stopped her raking and stared at me a long time. Finally she blurted out, “Morning.”

  It occurred to me then that she knowed I was a boy. Some colored women just had my number. But this was during bondage time. And when you in bondage, you is drowning, in a manner of speaking. You no more pay attention to the getup of the feller next to you than you do the size of his shoes if he got any, for both of you is drowning in the same river. Unless that feller is tossing you a rope to pull you ashore, his shoes ain’t much of a bother. I reckon that’s why few colored women I come across didn’t scratch at me too much. They had their own problems. Anyway, there weren’t nothing to be done ’bout it then nohow. I had an assignment. And until I figured out the lay of the land, I couldn’t run off no place. I was spying for the Old Man and I was looking out for my own self, too.

 
“I don’t know where I am,” I said.

  “You are where you is,” she said.

  “I’m just looking to get the lay of the land.”

  “It lay before you,” she said.

  We wasn’t getting nowhere, so I said, “I’m wondering if you knowed anybody who wants to know their letters.”

  A nervous look shot across her face. She glanced over her shoulder at the big house, and kept that rake working.

  “Why would somebody want to learn how to do that? Niggers got no cause to read.”

  “Some do,” I said.

  “I don’t know nothing ’bout that,” she said, still working that rake.

  “Well, miss, I’m looking for a job.”

  “Learning how to read? That ain’t no job. That’s trouble.”

  “I knows how to read. I’m looking to teach someone else how to read. For money.”

  She didn’t say another blooming word. She lifted that rake off the ground and showed me the back of her head. She plain walked off.

  I didn’t wait. I got outta sight. Jumped into the thickets right then and there, set tight, thinking she’d gone into the house to squeal to the overseer boss or, even worse, her master. I waited a few minutes, and just as I was ’bout to light out, a coach wagon driven by four huge horses dashed from the back of the house and drove hard toward the gate. That thing was movin’. Up front was a Negro driver, dressed in a fine coach jacket, a top hat, and white gloves. The wagon busted through the front gate and the Negro halted it on a dime just outside the gate where I was.

  He hopped down and looked around into the thickets. Looked right at ’bout where I was. I knowed he couldn’t see me, for the foliage was thick and I crouched low. “Anybody there?” he asked.