The Good Lord Bird

by James McBride

For the first time, he turned to me. He sucked his teeth. “Your Captain, God bless him, he’s gonna go home in threes when they done with him here. And whatever colored is stupid enough to follow him’s gonna get shot to pieces, God damn him.”

  “Why you so mad? He ain’t done nothing to you.”

  “I got a wife and three children in bondage here,” he snapped. “These white folks is gonna donate every bullet they got to elephant-hunt the Negro once they kill Old John Brown. They’ll be right raw for years. And whatever coloreds they don’t stick in a death wedge in the ground they’ll send off. They’ll sell every soul in bondage ’round here who even looks colored. Right down the river to New Orleans they’ll go, God damn him. I ain’t saved up enough to buy my children yet. I only got enough for one. I got to decide now. Today. If he comes—”

  He shut up. That ate at him. Just tore at him and he looked away. I seen he was troubled, so I said, “You ain’t got to worry. I seen plenty more Negroes who promised to come. Up at a big meeting in Canada. They speeched ’bout it all day. They was angry. Lots of ’em. These were big-time fellers. Reading men. Men of letters. They promised to come—”

  “Oh, hogwash!” he snorted. “Them uppity, long-breathed niggers ain’t got enough sand in the lot of ’em to fill a God-damned thimble!”

  He fumed, looking away, then pointed to the train on the trestle above us. “That train there,” he said, “that’s the B&O line. It rolls outta Washington, D.C., and Baltimore every day. Rolls north a bit and connects up with the train out of Philadelphia and New York City twice a week. I seen every single colored that’s ever been on that train for the last nine years. And I can tell you, half of them Negro leaders of your’n can’t afford a ticket on that train that would take ’em more’n ten yards. And them that could, they’d blow their wives’ head off with a pistol for a single glass of the white man’s milk.”

  He sighed angrily, blowing through his nose now. “Oh, they talk a good game, writing stories for the abolitionist papers and such. But writing stories in the paper and making speeches ain’t the same as being out here doing the job. On the line. On the front line. The freedom line. They talk a whole heap, them stuffed-shirt, tidy-looking, tea-drinking, gizzard lickers, running around New England in their fine silk shirts, letting white folks wipe their tears and all. Box Car Brown. Frederick Douglass. Shit! I know a colored feller in Chambersburg worth twenty of them blowhards.”

  “Henry Watson?”

  “Forget names. You ask too many questions and know too God-damned much now.”

  “You ought not to use God’s name in vain. Not when the Captain comes.”

  “I ain’t studying him. I been working the gospel train for years. I know his doings. Been hearing of ’em for as long as I been doing this. I like the Captain. I love him. Many a night I prayed for him. And now he . . .” He groused and cursed some more. “He’s deader than yesterday’s dinner, is what it is. How many’s in his army?”

  “Well, last count there was . . . sixteen or so.”

  The Rail Man laughed. “That ain’t hardly enough for dice. The Old Man’s lost his buttons. At least I ain’t the only one that’s crazy.” He sat down at the water’s edge now, then tossed a rock in the water. It made a tiny splash. The moon shone down on him brightly. He looked terrifically sad. “Gimme the rest,” he said.

  “Of what?”

  “The plan.”

  I gived it to him from soup to nuts. He listened closely. I told him all ’bout taking the night watchman in the front and back entrance, then fleeing to the mountains. After I was finished, he nodded. He seemed calmer. “Well, the Ferry can be took, that much the Captain’s right ’bout. There ain’t but two watchmen. But it’s the second part I don’t get. Where’s he expecting his coloreds to come from, Africa?”

  “It’s in the plan,” I said, but I felt like sheep bleating.

  He shook his head. “John Brown is a great man. God bless him. He ain’t lacking in courage, that’s for sure. But God’s wisdom has escaped him this time. I can’t tell him how to do his business, but he’s wrong.”

  “He says he’s studied it for years.”

  “He ain’t the first person who’s studied insurrection. Coloreds been studying it for a hundred years. His plan can’t work. It ain’t practical.”

  “Could you make it so, then? Being that you’s a big wheel in the gospel train around here? You know which coloreds would fight, don’t you?”

  “I can’t make two hundred coloreds get up outta Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and come up here. He needs at least that many to bust out the armory and get to the mountains once he’s got what he wants. Where’s he gonna get them kind of numbers? He’d need to run souls from Baltimore up through Detroit and down to Alabama.”

  “Ain’t that what you do?”

  “Running one or two souls ’cross the freedom line to Philadelphia is one thing. Running two hundred souls from D.C. and Baltimore this way is another. That’s impossible. He’d have to spread the word far and wide, all the way down to Alabama to make sure he gets them kind of numbers. The gospel train can carry a word fast, but not that fast. Not in three weeks.”

  “You saying it can’t be done?”

  “I’m saying it can’t be done in three weeks. Takes a letter a solid week to get from here to Pittsburgh. Sometimes a rumor travels faster’n a letter—”

  He thought a minute.

  “You say he’s throwing big metal at ’em in three weeks?”

  “October twenty-third. In three weeks.”

  “There ain’t no time, really. It’s a God-damn shame. Criminal, really. Except . . .” He fingered his jaw, thinking. “Y’know what? Tell you what. Pass the word on to the Old Captain thusly—you let him decide on it. For if I speaks it, and someone asks it of me, I’m bound by the Lord’s word to tell the truth, and I don’t want that. I’m a good friend of the mayor of this town, Fontaine Beckham. He’s a good friend to the colored, and to me. I got to be able to tell him, if he asks, ‘Mr. Mayor, I knows nothing ’bout this whole bit.’ I can’t lie to him. Y’understand?”

  I nodded.

  “Pass word to the Old Man thusly: There’s hundreds of coloreds in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., itching for a chance to fight slavery. But they got no telegraph and gets no letters.”

  “So?”

  “So how would you pass word fast to thousands of folks who got no telegraph and gets no letters? What’s the fastest way from point A to point B?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The railroad, child. That gets you to the city. But then you got to get to the colored. And I know just how to do it. Listen. I knows a few in Baltimore runs a numbers game. They collect numbers every day from both those in bondage and those that’s free. They pays out to the winner no matter what. Hundreds plays it every single day. I plays it myself. If you can get the Old Man to give me some money to grease them feller’s palms, the numbers men will spread the word fast. It’ll go everywhere within a day or two, for them types don’t fear the law. And if there’s a penny in it for them, that’s all they care ’bout.”

  “How much money?”

  “’Bout two hundred and fifty oughta do it. That’s twenty-five apiece. Some for them in Washington and some for the men in Baltimore. There’s ten of ’em I can think of.”

  “Two hundred and fifty dollars! The Old Man ain’t got five dollars.”

  “Well, that’s what he got to work with. Get me that money and I’ll spread it around in Baltimore and D.C. And if he throws in another two hundred fifty, I’ll have a set of wagons and horses to throw at it, so them fellers that wants to join him—I expect it’ll be women, too, lots of ’em—they’ll ride here. Ain’t but a day’s ride from here.”

  “How many wagons?”

  “Five oughta do it.”

  “Where they gonna come from?”

&nb
sp; “They’ll follow the tracks. Tracks cut a pretty straight path here from Baltimore. A dirt trail follows it along. There’s a couple of bad patches of trail—I’ll school the Negroes on it—but the trail is all right. The train don’t travel but twenty or thirty miles an hour. It stops every fifteen minutes to pick up passengers or water. They’ll be able to keep up all right. They won’t fall far behind.”

  He paused a moment, staring out at the water, nodding, thinking, hatching it in his head as he spoke it. “I’ll ride in here on the train. It comes in at one twenty-five a.m. every night, the B&O out of Baltimore. Remember that. One twenty-five in the a.m. The B&O. I’ll be on it. When you and the Old Man’s army give me the signal, I’ll signal the fellers in the wagons on the road that it’s time to move in.”

  “That sounds a little thin to me, Mr. Rail Man.”

  “You got a better plan?”

  “No.”

  “That’s it, then. Tell the Captain he’s got to stop the train at one twenty-five, just before it crosses the B&O Bridge. I’ll get you the rest of what to do later. I got to git. Tell the Old Man to send me five hundred dollars. I’ll be back in two days on the next run. One twenty-five a.m. sharp. Meet me right here at that time. After that, don’t never speak to me again.”

  He turned and left. I ran up to Cook, who stood at the top of the bank. Cook watched him leave.

  “Well?”

  “He says we’ll need five hundred dollars to hive the bees.”

  “Five hundred dollars? Ungrateful wretches. Suppose he takes off with it. We coming to unslave them. How do you like that? The Old Man’ll never pay it.”

  But when he found out, the Old Man did pay it, and a lot more. Too bad he did, too, for it cost him big-time, and by then the whole thing was blowed wide open and there weren’t no way of sending it backward, which I wish he could have, on account of a few mistakes I made, which cost everybody, including the Rail Man, pretty heavy.

  25

  Annie

  Cook wrote the Old Man directly with the Rail Man’s request, and within a week, a colored man from Chambersburg rolled up to the house in a wagon, knocked on the door, and handed Cook a box labeled Mining Tools. He left without a word. Inside the box was a few tools, supplies, five hundred dollars in a sack, and a letter from the Old Man tellin’ him the army was arriving within a week. The Old Man wrote that his army would sprinkle in, by twos and threes, at night, so as not to attract suspicion.

  Cook throwed the money sack into a lunch pail with some vittles and gived it to me, and I slung out to the Ferry to wait for the B&O train out of Baltimore at one twenty-five a.m. The Rail Man was the last to come off the train after the passengers and crew left out. I hailed him and gived him the lunch pail, tellin’ him out loud that it was lunch for the journey back to Baltimore—just in case anyone was within hearing. He took it without a word and moved on.

  Two weeks later, the Old Man arrived alone, gruff and stern as usual. He fluffed ’bout the farm for a few minutes, checking the supplies and the roads and other matters thereabout, before he sat down and let Cook give him the lay of the land.

  “I take it you has been shy of speaking our business,” he said to Cook.

  “Quiet as a mouse,” Cook said.

  “Good, for my army is coming soon.”

  Later that day, the first of them arrived—and she was quite a surprise.

  She was a girl, a white girl, sixteen, with dark hair and steady brown eyes that seemed to hold lots of surprises and a ready laugh behind them. She wore her hair pinned back in a bun, a yellow ribbon ’round her neck, and a simple farm-girl dress. Her name was Annie, and she was one of the Old Man’s older daughters. The Old Man had twelve living children altogether, but I reckon Annie had to be the best of the female lot. She was pretty as the day was long, quiet in nature, modest, obedient, and pious as the Old Man was. That took her out of my world, course, being that if a woman weren’t a low-down dirty stinker who drank rotgut and smoked cigars and throwed poker cards, there weren’t nothing she could do to mash my button, but Annie was easy on the eyes and a welcome surprise. She arrived in quiet fashion with Martha, sixteen, who was the wife of his son Oliver, who came trickling in to join us with the rest of the Old Man’s army from Iowa.

  The Old Man introduced me to the girls and announced, “I knows you is not partial to housework, Onion, being more of a soldier than a home cooker. But it is time you learn the ways of women as well. These two is to help you put the house in shape. You three can tend to the men’s needs and make the farm look normal to the neighbors.”

  It was a fine notion, for the Old Man knowed my girl limits and that I couldn’t cook for a pinch of snuff, but when he announced the sleeping arrangements, my feathers fell. We three girls was to sleep downstairs in the house, while the men slept upstairs. I agreed course, but the minute he hopped upstairs, Annie moved to the kitchen, drawed water for a bath, throwed her clothes off, and hopped into the tub, which caused me to scat from the kitchen and slam the door shut behind me, standing in the drawing room with my back to the door.

  “Oh, you is a shy thing,” she said from behind the door.

  “Yes I is, Annie,” I said from the other side, “and I appreciate your understanding. For I is ashamed to undress around white folks, being colored and all, and having my mind on the upcoming freeing of my people. I don’t yet know the ways of white people, having lived around the colored so long.”

  “But Father says you was a friend to my dear brother Frederick!” Annie shouted from the tub behind the door. “And you has lived on with Father and his men for the better part of three years.”

  “Yes, I has, but that was on the trail,” I shouted back from my side. “I needs time to ready myself for indoors living and being free, for my people don’t know how yet to live civilized, being slaved and all. Therefore, I am glad you is here, to show me the ways of righteousness behind God’s doings in my life as a free person.”

  Oh, I was a scoundrel, for she bit the whole thing off. “Oh, that is so sweet of you,” she said. I heard her splashing and scrubbing and finally getting out the tub. “I will be glad to do it. We can read the Bible together and rejoice in learning and sharing the Lord’s word and knowledge, and all His ways of encouragement and doings.”

  It was all a lie course, for I weren’t no more interested in the Bible than a hog knows a holiday. I decided to keep out the house, knowing them arrangements just wouldn’t do, for while she was a bit dowdy compared to the swinging lowlifes I lusted after out west—in fact right dusty-looking in bonnet and hat when she come in, from days of riding from the family’s home in upstate New York—I glimpsed a good part of the inner package when she throwed herself in that tub, and there was enough there, by God, ripe and plump, to build as much of a fire ’round as I could imagine. I couldn’t stand it, for I was then fourteen, near as I can tell it, and had yet to experience nature’s ways, and what I knowed of it filled me with dread and wanting and confusion, thanks to Pie. I had to fill my mind with other doings lest my true nature show itself. I didn’t have a decent bone in my body, God seed it, so I resolved to keep off from her and out the house “hiving the bees” as much as possible.

  That didn’t look to be easy, for we was charged to look after the Old Man’s army, which begun arriving in twos and threes right after the girls did. Luckily the Old Man needed me to consort and help him with his maps and papers, for that afternoon he rescued me from the kitchen by calling me to the drawing room directly to assist him in his drawings and plans. As Annie and Martha scampered ’bout the kitchen, preparing it for big work, he pulled several large canvas scrolls out his box and said, “We has finally raised the ante. The war begins in earnest. Help me spread these maps on the floor, Onion.”

  His maps, papers, and letters had sprouted some in size. The small packet of papers, news clippings, bills, letters, and maps he once crammed in
to his saddlebags back in Kansas had growed to piles of papers thick as the Bible. His maps was scrolled on large canvas paper, unfurled to nearly as tall as me. I helped him spread them on the floor and sharpened his pencils and fed him cups of tea as he set on his hands and knees poring over them, scribbling and planning, while the girls fed us both. The Old Man never ate much. Usually he gobbled down a raw onion, which he bit into like an apple and washed down with black coffee, a conglomeration which made his breath ripe enough to draw the wrinkles out a shirt and starch it clean. Sometimes he throwed a little hominy down his gizzards just for variation, but whatever he didn’t eat, I polished off for him, for food was always scarce around him. And with more men arriving by the day, I knowed by then to furnish my innards as much as possible for the day when there wouldn’t be no furnishings to line it, which I expected wouldn’t be far off.

  We worked like that for a day or two till one afternoon, poring over his map, he said to me, “Has Mr. Cook held his tongue whilst you was here?”

  I couldn’t lie. But I didn’t want to discourage him, so I said, “More or less, Captain. But not to the limit.”

  Staring at his map on all fours, the Old Man nodded. “As I figured. It doesn’t matter. Our army will be here in full within a week. Once they’re here, we will gather the pikes and go to arms. I goes as Isaac Smith in public ’round here, Onion, don’t forget it. If anyone asks, I’m a miner, which is true, for I mines the souls of men, the conscience of a nation, the gold of the insane institution! Now, give me my report on the colored, which you and Cook has no doubt been hoeing and cultivating and hiving.”

  I gived him the clean side of it, that I had found the Rail Man. I left out the part ’bout the Coachman’s wife and her maybe spilling the beans. “You has done a good job, Onion,” he said. “Hiving the bees is the most important part of our strategy. They will come, no doubt, by the thousands, and we must be ready for them. Now, in lieu of cooking and cleaning for our army, I suggest you continue your work. Hive on, my child. Spread the word among your people. You are majestic!”