The Good Lord Bird

by James McBride

  That made my heart leap with happiness.

  “How will they go?” Kagi asked.

  “My son Salmon’ll take ’em up to Philadelphia. They can take the train to upstate New York from there. No more time to talk, Lieutenant. Let’s move.”

  —

  I hustled down the rail yard at the Ferry singing like a bird, happy as all get-out. I waited under the bank for the one twenty-five B&O, hoping it weren’t late, for I didn’t want to be left behind. I weren’t gonna miss my ride out of there in no way, shape, form, or fashion. I would let them drop me off in Philadelphia. I had waited a long time to get there. I could leave guilt-free. The Old Man had gived me his blessing.

  Thanks be to God, that thing rolled in on time. I waited till all the passengers emptied. The train had to huff and chug up another few feet to take on water, and when it stopped at the water tower, I runned down to seek out the Rail Man. I saw him near the back of the train, movin’ passengers’ bags into the station and onto waiting wagons. I waited till he was done. He moved to the other side of the train near the caboose and congregated with another colored porter. I approached him there, and when the other porter seen me coming, that feller slipped away. He knowed my deal and I was arsenic to him, but the Rail Man seen me, and without a word nodded to the spot under the bank where we met before and stepped back onto the train.

  I rushed down to the bank and waited for him, standing in the shadow of the trestle, so as not to be seen. He came down shortly and he was hot. He placed his back on the trestle post and he talked with his back to me. But he was still hot. “Didn’t I tell you not to come here?” he said.

  “Change of plans. The Old Man’s rolling in four days.”

  “Four days? You funning me!” he said.

  “I ain’t,” I said. “I’m just tellin’ you.”

  “Tell him I can’t get that many people together in four days. I just got the ball rolling.”

  “Bring what you got, then, for he is dedicated to that time,” I said.

  “I need another week. The twenty-third is what he said.”

  “The twenty-third is out. He’s going this Sunday.”

  “The General is sick. Don’t he know that?”

  “That ain’t my problem.”

  “Course it ain’t. All’s you worried ’bout is your own skin, you little ferret.”

  “You raising a ruckus with the wrong person. Whyn’t you pick on somebody your own size?”

  “Watch your mouth or I’ll level you off, ya varmint.”

  “Least I ain’t a thief. For all I know, you done took the Old Man’s money for nothing and gonna not show up like the rest.”

  The Rail Man was a big man, and he had his back to me. But now he turned and grabbed me by the dress and lifted me clear off the ground.

  “One more cockeyed word out that fast little hole in your face, you little snit, and I’ll throw you in the river.”

  “I’m just tellin’ you what the Old Man said! He said he’s movin’ in four days!”

  “I heard it! Saddle your tongue with the rest. I’ll have here who I can. Tell your Old Man to stop the train before it gets to the bridge on the Potomac. Don’t let it get across. Stop it there and give me a password.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A word. A sign. Ain’t they got passwords and all they use on your side?”

  “Nobody said nothing ’bout that.”

  He placed me down. “Shit. Some kind of damn operation this is.”

  “So can I tell the Captain you know?”

  “Tell ’em I know. Tell ’em I’ll bring who I can.”

  “What else?”

  “Tell ’em we need a password. And stop the train before it gets on the bridge. Not at the station. Otherwise the passengers will get out. Stop it at the bridge and I’ll come out and see what’s the matter. I’ll hold a lantern out. I’ll walk along the train and say whatever password we figure on. Can you remember that? Stop the train before the bridge.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell you what, since you’re thick, I’ll give you a password. It’s got to be something normal. So I’ll say, ‘Who goes there?’ And whoever is there will say, ‘Jesus is walkin’.’ Can you remember that?”

  “Who goes there? Jesus is walkin’. I got it.”

  “Don’t forget. ‘Who goes there?’ and ‘Jesus is walkin’.’ If they don’t say that, then by God I ain’t gonna wave the lamp for them that’s behind me. I’ll have a baggage car full of colored behind me, and maybe a wagonload coming alongside the trail as well. I’d have got more but I can’t roust ’em up in four days’ time.”

  “Understood.”

  “After I wave that lamp from the tracks, the colored’ll know what to do. They’ll jump off the back, come up, take the conductor and engineer, and hold ’em as prisoners for the Captain. The rest will take a few rail tools I give ’em and destroy the tracks behind the train so it can’t back up. I’ll hold the train for that.”

  “How you gonna do that?”

  “There’s another colored porter and a colored coalman, too. They’re with us. In a fashion.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Means they know ’bout it and staying out the way. Everybody in this world ain’t a fool like me. But they’re trustworthy. If they wasn’t, you’d’a been deadened already. Hanging ’round the station like you is, runnin’ off at the mouth. Every colored at the Ferry knows what’s going on. Anyway, them two will hold the train under the pretense of being dumb niggers, long enough for the colored in the baggage car and wagons to get out. Understood?”

  “All right, then.”

  “Once them niggers clear the train, I’m out. You pass that word to the Old Man. Tell him thus: Once they’re off the train, the Rail Man is out. And without that password, too, I ain’t movin’. ‘Who goes there?’ and ‘Jesus is walkin’.’ I don’t hear them words, that lamp won’t swing from my hand. If that lamp don’t swing, them niggers won’t move. And it’s done, whatever it is. Anyway, my part ends right there, no matter how the cut comes or goes. You understand?”

  “I got it.”

  “All right. Git along, then, ya half-assed rascal. You’s an odd something. Slavery done made some odd weasels outta us, and I surely hope you don’t see the end of your days looking the way you do now. If you see me again in life on the road or anyplace else in this man’s world, never speak to me again or even nod in my direction. I wish I never met you.”

  And with that, he moved off quick, slipping down the bank and under the trestle, up the slope to the hissing train and climbed on it. By the time I hustled across the covered bridge back onto the Maryland side and made my way up to the road that followed the Potomac along toward the Kennedy farm, that thing was chugging toward Virginia and out of sight.

  —

  When I got back to the house, it was chaos. That place was rolling like a military fort under fire. The fellers scrambled ’bout every which way, toting crates, suitcases, guns, powder, muskets, boxes of ammunition. They was relieved to get movin’, having been crushed in that tiny space so long it was a pity, and so they moved at full speed, busting with pep and excitement. Annie and Martha scurried ’bout, ready to leave, too. Everyone in that small farmhouse moved with purpose, pushing and shoving past me, while I lingered a bit. I moved to slow purpose them next two days, for I wanted to say good-bye to the Old Man.

  He weren’t studyin’ me. He was in his glory, movin’ through the place like a hurricane. He was covered in soot and gunpowder, racing from upstairs to downstairs and back again, giving orders. “Mr. Tidd, dip them tow balls in oil so we can fire the bridges with ’em. Mr. Copeland, throw more cartridges into that rifle box there. Move with speed, men. Quick. We are in the right and will resist the universe!” I watched him the better part of two days as he ducked from one room to t
he next, ignoring me altogether. I gived up after the second day and slipped into a corner of the kitchen to feed my face, for I was always hungry and it was near time to leave. I got in there just in time to see Annie slip in and sit down, exhausted. She looked out the window a minute, not noticing me, and the look on her face made me just plain forget ’bout where I was.

  She sat there near the stove, glum, then slowly picked up a few pots and pans and things to pack up, trying to keep a brave face on. Not a single one of them Browns ever lacked confidence in their Pa, I’ll say that for ’em. Just like him, they believed in the Negro being free and equal and all. Course they was out of their minds at the time, but they can be excused, being that they all growed-up religious fools, following the Bible to the letter. But Annie was wound down. She was feeling low. I couldn’t bear seeing her so spent, so I slipped over to her, and when she seen me she said, “I got a terrible feeling, Onion.”

  “Ain’t no need to worry ’bout nothing,” I said.

  “I knows I shouldn’t. But it’s hard to be brave about it, Onion.” Then she smiled. “I’m glad you coming with me and Martha.”

  Why, I was so happy my heart could bust, but course I couldn’t say it, so I downplayed it like usual. “Yes, I am, too,” was all I could say.

  “Help me get the rest of the things here?”

  “Course.”

  As we moved ’bout, making ready to leave, I begun to think on what my plans was. Annie and Martha lived on the Old Man’s claim in upstate New York near Canada. I couldn’t go up there with them. That would be too hard for me to be near Annie. I decided I would ride the wagon to Pennsylvania country and get off there, with the aim of getting to Philadelphia—if we could make it that far north. It weren’t a sure thing, for no matter how you sliced it, I was endangering ’em, surely. We would be rolling through slave country, and since we was traveling with speed, would have to move by day, which was dangerous, for the closer you got to the freedom line of Pennsylvania, the more slave patrols was likely to stop and confront Salmon ’bout whether he was transporting slaves. Salmon was young and strong-headed. He was like his Pa. He wouldn’t suffer no fools or slave patrols to stop him while he moved his sister and sister-in-law to safety, and he wouldn’t surrender me, neither. Plus he’d have to get back. He’d shoot first.

  “I have to fetch some hay,” I told Annie, “for it’s better that I ride under the hay in the back of the wagon till we get to Pennsylvania.”

  “That’s two days,” she said. “Better you sit up with us and pretend to be in bondage.”

  But, seeing her pretty face staring at me so kind and innocent, I was losing my taste for pretending. I cut out for the shed without a word. There was some hay stored there, and I brung it to the Conestoga we was preparing to get movin’ on. I’d have to ride under the hay, in the wagon, in broad daylight till night for the better part of two days. Better to hide that way than out in the open. But, honest to Jesus, I was getting worn out with hiding by that time. Hiding in every way, I was, and I growed tired of it.

  We loaded up the wagon the day before the big attack and left without ceremony. The Captain gived Annie a letter and said, “This is for your Ma and your sisters and brothers. I will see you soon or in the by and by, Lord willing.” To me he said, “Good-bye, Onion. You has fought the good fight and I will see you soon as your people is free, if God wills it.” I wished him luck, and we was off. I jumped inside the bottom of the wagon in the hay. They covered me with a plank that spanned along the side of the wagon and placed Annie on it, while Salmon, who was driving, sat up front with his sister-in-law Martha, Oliver’s wife.

  Annie was sitting right above me as we moved out, and I could hear her throw out a tear or two amid the clattering of the wagon. After a while she stopped bawling and piped out, “Your people will be free when this is all done, Onion.”

  “Yes, they will.”

  “And you can go off and get a fiddle and sing and follows your dreams all you want. You can go on about your whole life singing when it’s all done.”

  I wanted to say to her that I would like to stay where she was going and sing for her the rest of my life. Sing sonnets and religious songs and all them dowdy tunes with the Lord in ’em that she favored; I’d work whatever song she wanted if she asked me to. I wanted to tell her I was gonna turn ’bout, turn over a new leaf, be a new person, be the man that I really was. But I couldn’t, for it weren’t in me to be a man. I was but a coward, living a lie. When you thunk on it, it weren’t a bad lie. Being a Negro means showing your best face to the white man every day. You know his wants, his needs, and watch him proper. But he don’t know your wants. He don’t know your needs or feelings or what’s inside you, for you ain’t equal to him in no measure. You just a nigger to him. A thing: like a dog or a shovel or a horse. Your needs and wants got no track, whether you is a girl or a boy, a woman or a man, or shy, or fat, or don’t eat biscuits, or can’t suffer the change of weather easily. What difference do it make? None to him, for you is living on the bottom rail.

  But to you, inside, it do make a difference, and that put me out to the part. A body can’t prosper if a person don’t know who they are. That makes you poor as a pea, not knowing who you are inside. That’s worse than being anything in the world on the outside. Sibonia back in Pikesville showed me that. I reckon that business of Sibonia throwed me off track for life, watching her and her sister Libby take it ’round the neck in Missouri. “Be a man!” she said to that young feller when he fell down on the steps of the scaffold when they was ready to hang him. “Be a man!” They put him to sleep like the rest, strung him up like a shirt on a laundry line, but he done okay. He took it. He reminded me of the Old Man. He had a face change up there on that scaffold before they done him in, like he seen something nobody else could see. That’s an expression that lived on the Old Man’s face. The Old Man was a lunatic, but he was a good, kind lunatic, and he couldn’t no more be a sane man in his transactions with his fellow white man than you and I can bark like a dog, for he didn’t speak their language. He was a Bible man. A God man. Crazy as a bedbug. Pure to the truth, which will drive any man off his rocker. But at least he knowed he was crazy. At least he knowed who he was. That’s more than I could say for myself.

  I rumbled these things in my head while I lay in the bottom of that wagon under the hay like the silly goose I was, offering a pocketful of nothing to myself ’bout what I was supposed to be or what songs I was gonna sing. Annie’s Pa was a hero to me. It was him who held the weight of the thing, had the weight of my people on his shoulders. It was him who left house and home behind for something he believed in. I didn’t have nothing to believe in. I was just a nigger trying to eat.

  “I reckon I will sing a bit once this war is over,” I managed to say to Annie. “Sing here and there.”

  Annie looked away, bleary-eyed, as a thought struck her. “I forgot to tell Pa about the azaleas,” she suddenly blurted out.

  “The what?”

  “The azaleas. I planted some in the yard, and they come up purple. Father told me to tell him if that happened. Said that was a good sign.”

  “Well, likely he’ll see them.”

  “No. He don’t look back there. They’re deep in the yard, near the thickets.” And she broke down and howled again.

  “It’s just a flower, Annie,” I said.

  “No, it’s not. Father said a good sign is signals from heaven. Good omens is important. Like Frederick’s Good Lord Bird. That’s why he always used those feathers for his army. They’re not just feathers. Or passwords. They’re omens. They’re things you don’t forget easily, even in times of trouble. You remember your good omens in times of trouble. You can’t forget them.”

  A horrible, dread feeling come over me as she said that, for I suddenly remembered that I clean forgot to tell the Captain the password the Rail Man told me to pass on to him at the bridge when they
stopped the train. He’d said to tell them the password. He’d say, “Who goes there?” and they’d pass it back, “Jesus is walkin’.” And if he didn’t hear that password, he weren’t gonna bring his men on.

  “Good God,” I said.

  “I know,” she howled. “It’s just a bad omen.”

  I didn’t say nothing to her but I lay there as she howled, and God knows it, my heart was pounding something dreadful. To hell with it, was my thinking. Weren’t no way in the world I was gonna crawl out from under that hay, walk that toll road in daylight, privy to every paddie slave snatcher between Virginia and Pennsylvania and go back to the Ferry and get shot to pieces. We’d ridden nearly three hours. I felt the sun’s heat bouncing off the ground into the bottom of the wagon where I lay. We had to be near Chambersburg by then, just near the Virginia line, smack dab in slave country.

  Annie howled a bit more, then steadied herself. “I know you’re thinking of Philadelphia, Onion. But I’m wondering . . . I’m wondering if you’ll come to North Elba with me,” she said. “Maybe we could start a school together. I know your heart. North Elba is quiet country. Free country. We could start a school together. We could use—I could use a friend.” And she busted into tears again.

  Well, that done it. I lay under that hay thinking I weren’t no better than them speechifying, low-life reverends and doctors up in Canada who promised to show up for the Old Man’s war and likely wouldn’t. The whole bit shamed me, just pushed up against me something terrible as she howled. It pushed on me harder with each mile we went, pressing on my heart like a stone. What was I gonna do in Philadelphia? Who was gonna love me? I’d be alone. But in upstate New York, how long could I go on before she’d find out who I was? She’d know it before long. Besides, how can somebody love you if you don’t know who you is? I had thoroughly been a girl so long by then that I’d grown to like it, got used to it, got used to not having to lift things, and have folks make excuses for me on account of me not being strong enough, or fast enough, or powerful enough like a boy, on account of my size. But that’s the thing. You can play one part in life, but you can’t be that thing. You just playing it. You’re not real. I was a Negro above all else, and Negroes plays their part, too: Hiding. Smiling. Pretending bondage is okay till they’re free, and then what? Free to do what? To be like the white man? Is he so right? Not according to the Old Man. It occurred to me then that you is everything you are in this life at every moment. And that includes loving somebody. If you can’t be your own self, how can you love somebody? How can you be free? That pressed on my heart like a vise right then. Just mashed me down. I was head over heels for that girl, I loved her with all my heart, I confess it here, and her father’s charge would be against me for the rest of my life if he got killed on account of the Rail Man not hearing the right password. Curse that son of a bitch father of hers! And the Rail Man too! That self-righteous, ignorant, risk-taking, elephant-looking bum! And all them slave-fightin’ no-gooders! It would be on my head. The thought of the Captain getting deadened on account of me made me feel ten times worse than Annie not loving me, which if she’d’a knowed what I was, she’d’a been disgusted with me, a nigger, playing a girl, not man enough to be a man, loving her and all, and she wouldn’t love me back in the least, or even like me, no matter how much she felt for me at that moment as a full-hearted girlfriend. She was loving a mirage. And I’d have her father’s blood on my hands the rest of my life, laying there like a coward under the hay and not being a natural man, man enough to go back and tell him the words that might help him live five minutes longer, for while he was a fool, his life was dear to him as mine’s was to me, and he’d risked that life many times on my account. God damn it to hell.