The Good Lord Bird

by James McBride

  The rest of the Negroes that was doomed, they watched the Emperor. He come to be kind of the leader to them, for they’d seen his courage through the night, and their eyes followed him after the Old Man spoke to him. He stood at the window, staring out, thinking. It was pitch-black in there, you couldn’t see a thing ’cept what little light the moon let into the portholes, for the Old Man wouldn’t let anyone light a lantern. The Emperor just stared out, then he paced a little, then stared out some more. Coachman, Phil, and the other Negroes who was sure to hang followed him with their eyes. They all followed him, for they believed in his courage.

  After a little while the Emperor called them over to his corner, and they bunched around him. I came, too, for I knowed whatever punishment awaited them was mine’s, too. You could feel their despair as they gathered around him close and listened, for he spoke in a whisper.

  “Just before light, the Old Man’s gonna start a shoot-up out front and let the colored out the back window. If you want out, you can climb out the back window when the shooting starts, make for the river, and be gone.”

  “What ’bout my wife?” the Coachman asked. “She’s still in bondage at the colonel’s house.”

  “I can’t tell you what to do ’bout that,” the Emperor said. “But if you is caught, make up a lie. Say you was a hostage. You gonna swing for sure otherwise.”

  He was silent, letting this sink in.

  “The Old Man’s giving us an out,” he said. “Take it or not. He and those that’s left got some tow balls dipped in oil which he’ll fire. He’ll throw them out into the yard to make a lot of smoke, then shoot behind it. You can do your best to get gone out the back window and over the back wall when that happens. Whoever here wants to try it can do it.”

  “Is you gonna try it?” the Coachman asked.

  The Emperor didn’t answer. “Y’all oughta sleep some,” he said.

  They all reckoned they would, and retired to sleep for a couple of hours, for no one had slept in more than forty hours hence. That raid started on a Sunday. It was now Monday night going to Tuesday.

  Most of the room slept, but I couldn’t, for I knowed what was coming, too. The Emperor didn’t sleep, neither. He stood by the window, staring out, listening to Watson groaning his death moans. Of all the coloreds in the Old Man’s army, the Emperor weren’t my favorite. I didn’t know him that well, but he weren’t short on courage. I went over to him.

  “You gonna make a try for freedom, Emperor?”

  “I am free,” he said.

  “You mean you a free Negro?”

  He smiled in the dark light. I could see his white teeth, but he didn’t say more.

  “I’m wondering,” I said, “if there’s some way I can’t swing.”

  He looked at me and smirked. I could see his face by the light of the moon through the porthole window. He was a dark man, chocolate skinned, with wide lips, curly hair, and a smooth face. I could see his silhouette. His head stood still in the window, and the breeze that blowed off his face seemed cool and refreshing. It was like the wind seemed to part around his face. He leaned over to me and said softly, “You don’t get it, do ya?”

  “I get it.”

  “Then why you asking questions to answers you already know? They gonna hang every colored in here. Hell, if you even looked at them white hostages funny you’ll hang—and you done more than that, surely.”

  “They don’t know me,” I said.

  “They know you sure as God’s standing over the world. They know you just as well as they know me. You ought to take it standing up.”

  I swallowed hard. I had to do it. Couldn’t stand it, but I had to do it.

  “What if one of us is different from what they know?” I whispered.

  “Ain’t no difference between us when it come to the white man.”

  “Yes, there is,” I said. I grabbed his hand and stuck it right on my privates in the dark. Just to let him touch my secrets. I felt him take in his breath, then he snatched his hand back.

  “They don’t know me,” I said.

  There was a long pause. Then the Emperor chuckled. “Good God. That ain’t hardly a conflageration,” he said.

  “A what?” For the Emperor couldn’t read, and he come up with words that didn’t make no sense.

  “A conflageration. A parade. You ain’t got enough fruit there to squeeze,” he snorted. “You’d have to work all night just to find them peanuts,” and he chortled in the dark some more. He just couldn’t stop chuckling.

  That weren’t funny to me. But I’d already thunk it through. I needed some boy clothes. There was but two in the engine house whose clothes I could take, and no one would notice. A colored slave who got shot and died that previous afternoon, and Watson, the Old Man’s boy, who was not quite dead but almost there. The slave was too big for me, plus he was hit by a ball in the chest and his clothes was soiled with his blood. But they was nice clothes—he was obviously an inside slave—and they would have to do. Blood or not.

  “I wonder if you do me a favor,” I said. “If I could just get a pair of pantaloons and shirt off that feller there,” I whispered, nodding at the slave, whose silhouette could be seen in the moonlight. “Maybe with your help, I could slip them on and move out with the rest of the colored. When the Old Man lets us out.”

  The Emperor thought ’bout it a long moment.

  “Don’t you wanna die like a man?”

  “That’s just it,” I said. “I’m but fourteen. How can I die like a man if I ain’t lived like one yet? I ain’t had nature’s way with a girl once. I ain’t yet kissed a girl. I think a feller ought to have the chance to be himself at least one time in this world, ’fore he moves on to the next. If not just to praise His name as his own self, rather than as somebody else. For I done found the Lord.”

  There was a long silence. The Emperor rubbed his jaw a moment. “Set here,” he said.

  He went over and woke the Coachman and Phil and pulled them into a corner. There was some whispering between the three, and by God if I didn’t hear them chortling and laughing. I couldn’t see them in the dark but I could hear them, and I couldn’t get past that. Them three laughing at me, so I said, “What’s so funny!”

  I heard the footsteps of the Emperor’s boots coming to me. I felt a pair of pantaloons shoved in my face in the dark. And a shirt.

  “If them federals find you out, they’ll splatter you all over the creek. But it’d cause a regular frolic in here among us if you was to get out clear.”

  The shirt was huge, and the pants, when I put them on, were even bigger. “Whose pants is these?” I asked.

  “The Coachman’s.”

  “What’s the Coachman gonna wear? He’s gonna run out the window in his drawers?”

  “What do you care?” he said. For the first time I noticed he was shirtless. “He ain’t going nowhere. Neither is Phil. And here”—he stuffed in my hand a worn-out old feather—“this is the last of the Good Lord Bird. The Old Man gived it to me. His last feather. I’m the only one he gived one to, I think.”

  “I already got my feather. I don’t need yours, Emperor.”

  “Keep it.”

  “What ’bout these pants? They’re huge.”

  “You fit ’em good enough. The white man don’t care what you wear. You just another shabby nigger to him. Just play it smart. At dawn, when the Captain gives the order, we’ll fire them tow balls, throw a couple out the front and back, and send a few charges out the window, and then you get gone out that window quick. Them white folks ain’t gonna pay you no more attention than they do a hole in the ground if you can get clear of the Ferry. Tell ’em you belongs to Mr. Harold Gourhand. Mr. H. Gourhand, got it? He’s a white man lives near the Kennedy farm. The Coachman knows him. He says Gourhand’s got a slave boy ’bout your age and size, and both of ’em’s out of town.”
>
  “Somebody’ll know him!”

  “No, they won’t. The federals out there, they ain’t from this country. They’re from Washington, D.C. They won’t know the difference. They can’t tell one of us from the other anyway.”

  —

  At dawn, the Old Man gived the order. They fired the tow balls, tossed ’em, and commenced blasting out the window, letting the colored slip out the back window of the engine house. I went right along with ’em, four of us altogether went, and we more or less fell right into the arms of the U.S. Cavalry. They was on us the second we hit the ground, and pulled us clear of the engine house while their brothers fired on it something fierce. At the back gate, under the railroad tracks, they gathered around us, asking ’bout the white folks inside, and asking where is you from, and who does you belong to, and is the white folks hurt. That was the main thing they wanted to know, was the white folks hurt. When we said no, they asked was we part of the Old Man’s army. To a man we swore up and down we was not. You never seen such ignorant Negroes in your life. By God, we acted like they was our saviors, and dropped to our knees and prayed and cried and thanked God for bringing them to save us and so forth.

  They took pity on us, them federal marshals, and the Emperor was right. They had cleared the entire area around the armory of local militia. The soldiers doing the asking weren’t locals from the Ferry. They was federal men who come up from Washington, D.C., and they bought our story, though they was suspicious enough. But, see, the fight was still raging while they questioned us, and they wanted to go back and get the local prize, which was the Old Man hisself, so they let us take our leave. But one soldier, he smelled a rat. He asked me, “Who do you belong to?” I used the name Master Gourhand and told him where Master Gourhand lived, up near Bolivar Heights, near the Kennedy farm.

  He said, “I’ll give you a ride there.”

  I hopped aboard his mount and got me a ride clear up to the Kennedy farm. I directed him there, hoping none of the enemy knowed yet ’bout the Old Man using it as his headquarters. Luckily they didn’t, for when we reached it, it was all quiet up there.

  We charged into the yard on horseback, me riding behind the federal, and when we charged in there, who but O. P. Anderson was standing out front, drawing water from the well with another colored slave he’d picked up someplace. That fool was yet living. He had no rifle and was dressed like a slave. You couldn’t tell him from the other slave. His hair uncombed, he was dressed as poor as the other feller, looking rough as an orange peel. Them two could’a been brothers.

  But the sight of me without my bonnet, dressed in men’s clothing, just knocked O.P. out.

  “Whose nigger is this?” the soldier said.

  O.P. blinked the shock out his face. He had trouble with his tongue for a moment.

  “Huh?”

  “He said he lives ’round these parts with a Mr. Gourhand,” the soldier said. “Poor creature was kidnapped and was held prisoner at the Ferry.”

  O.P. seemed to have trouble speaking, then finally got right with the program. “I has heard the news, master,” he said, “and I am glad you brung this child back. I will wake the master and tell him.”

  “There ain’t no need,” Owen said, coming out the cabin and stepping on the porch. “I is the master and I is awake.” I reckon he was hiding inside along with Tidd, a feller named Hazlett, and Cook. I got nervous then, for I’m sure them three had drawed a bead on that soldier from inside the house the minute he clomped up there. Owen stepping outside likely saved that soldier’s life, for them men had grabbed a few hours’ sleep and was bent on leaving in a hurry.

  Owen stepped off the porch, took a step toward me and suddenly recognized me—seen me dressed as a boy for the first time. He didn’t have to play it slick. His shock was genuine. He liked to fell out. “Onion!” he said. “By God! Is that you?”

  The soldier seen it weren’t no ruse then. He was a nice feller. “This nigger’s had quite a night. He says he belongs to Mr. Gourhand, who lives up the road, but I understand he is out of town.”

  “That is correct,” Owen said, rolling with the lie. “But if you will hand his colored over to me, I will keep him safe for Mr. Gourhand, for it is a dangerous time to be about, what with what is going on ’round here. I thank you for bringing her back to me,” Owen said.

  The soldier smirked. “Her?” he said. “That’s a he, sir,” he scolded. “Can’t y’all tell your niggers one from the other? No wonder y’all got insurrections all ’round here. You treat your colored so damn bad you don’t know one from the other. We’d never treat our niggers this way in Alabama.”

  And with that, he turned on his mount and took off.

  —

  I didn’t have time to give ’em the full word on the Old Man’s situation, and didn’t need to. They didn’t need to ask. They knowed what happened. And neither did they ask ’bout my new look as a boy. They were in a hurry and making ready to run for their lives. They had slept a few hours from sheer exhaustion, but now that it was light it was time to go. They packed up on the quick and we took the tall timber together—me, O.P., Owen, Tidd, Cook, Hazlett, and Merriam. Straight up the mountain behind the Kennedy farm we went, with the sun coming up behind us. There was some fussin’ and fightin’ when we got to the top of the mountain, for everyone except O.P. wanted to take the mountain route direct north, and O.P. said he knowed another way. A safer way and more roundabout. Southwest through Charles Town and then farther west via the Underground Railroad to Martinsburg and then over to Chambersburg. But the others weren’t for it. Said Charles Town would be too out of the way and we were too hot. O.P. gived ’em a mouthful on it and that brought on more hard words, for there weren’t a lot of time, not with patrols likely rolling by then. So them five went their own way, direct up toward Chambersburg, while O.P. went southwest for Charles Town. I decided to cast my lot with him.

  It was a good thing, for Cook and Hazlett got caught up in Pennsylvania a day or two later. Owen and Merriam and Tidd somehow got away. I never did see any of them ever again. I heard Merriam killed hisself in Europe. But I never did see Owen again, though I heard he lived a long life.

  Me and O.P. got free through Mr. George Caldwell and his wife, Connie, who got us through Charles Town. They’re dead now, so it don’t hurt none giving ’em up. There was lots working on that underground gospel train that nobody knowed ’bout. A colored farmer drove us by wagon to Mr. Caldwell’s barbershop, and when Mr. Caldwell found out who we were, he and his wife decided to split us up. We was too hot. They sent O.P. off with a wagonload of coffins to Philadelphia driven by two Methodist abolitionists, and I don’t know what happened to him, whether he died or not, for I never heard from him again. Me, I was kept with the Caldwells. I had to sit with them, wait it out underneath their house and in the back room of Mr. Caldwell’s barbershop for four months before rolling ahead. It was on account of being ’bout the back room of the barbershop that I learned what happened to the Old Man.

  Seems that Jeb Stuart and the U.S. Cavalry busted in the engine house with killing on their minds just minutes after I got out, and got to it. They overrun the engine house, killed Dauphin, Thompson, brother of Will, the Coachman, Phil, and Taylor. Watson and Oliver, both the Old Man’s boys, was done in. Killed every one in there, good and bad, all but the Emperor. The Emperor somehow lived, long enough to hang anyway.

  And as for the Old Man?

  Well, Old John Brown lived, too. They tried killing him, according to Mr. Caldwell. When they busted down the door, a lieutenant runned a sword right into the Old Man’s head as the Captain was trying to reload. Mr. Caldwell said the Lord saved him. The lieutenant was called to emergency duty on account of the uprising and was in a hurry when he left his house. He was so hot to get out, he grabbed the wrong sword off his mantelpiece as he runned out the door. He snatched up his military parade sword instead of his regular broadswor
d. Had he used a regular sword, he would’a deadened the Old Man easily. “But the Lord didn’t want him killed,” Mr. Caldwell said proudly. “He still got more work for him.”

  That may be true, but Providence laid down a hard hand for the Negroes in Charles Town in them days following the Old Man’s defeat, for he was jailed and scheduled to be put on trial. I lived hidden in the back room of Mr. Caldwell’s barbershop during them weeks and heard it all. Charles Town was just up the road from Harpers Ferry, and white folks there was in a state of panic that bordered on insanity. They was plain terrified. Every day the constable would bust into Mr. Caldwell’s shop and rouse up Negro customers. He drug two or three men out at a time, brung them to the jail to question them ’bout the insurrection, then jailed some and released some. Even the most trusted Negroes in the slave owner’s houses was put out in the fields to work, for their masters didn’t trust them to work in the house, thinking their slaves would turn on ’em and kill ’em. Dozens of slaved Negroes was sold south, and dozens more run off, thinking they’d be sold. One colored slave come into Mr. Caldwell’s shop, complaining that if a rat’s tail touched the wall in his master’s house in the middle of the night, the entire house was roused, guns was grabbed, and this feller would be sent downstairs first to go see ’bout it. The white newspaper said that Baltimore arms dealers sold ten thousand guns to Virginians during Old John Brown’s trial. One Negro in the barbershop joked, “The Colt Company ought to do something nice for Captain Brown’s family.” Several fires were set on Charles Town plantations, and nobody knowed who done it. And a story in the Charles Town paper said that slave owners was complaining that their horses and sheep was dying suddenly, as if they’d been poisoned. I’d heard that one, too, whispered in the back of Mr. Caldwell’s barbershop. And when I heard it, I said to Mr. Caldwell, “Would that all these fellers doing that devilment today had showed up at the Ferry. It would have been a different game.”