by Russell Hill
Robin turned to me. "I was raised Catholic," she said.
"This isn't a Catholic church."
"I know that." She turned and went toward the altar and I stayed, watching her walk slowly to the front of the church. When she got to the altar, a table with a cloth draped over it, an open Bible, and two unlit candles, she paused, crossed herself and dipped her shoulders ever so slightly, as if she knew that I was watching and didn't want me to think she was doing something in this church that wasn't right. She stood there for a few moments, looked back at me, then turned again to the altar. There was a small box of kitchen matches next to one of the candles, and she struck a match, lighting the candle. She blew out the match, stepped back, and knelt. I waited.
She rose, blew out the candle and came back toward me.
"We light candles in the Catholic church," she said, "when we say a prayer for someone."
"Who did you say a prayer for?"
"Not you. Not me," she said.
"Why did you blow out the candle?"
"Because it's a wooden church."
"We could stay here," I said.
"They would find us."
"In the old days, a church was a sanctuary. The king's soldiers couldn't touch you if you were in a church."
"These aren't the king's soldiers," Robin said. "If they found us they would drag us out and they would lock you up if they didn't beat you to death." She waited at the church door, opening it a crack to look outside.
"There's someone there," she whispered.
"The sheriff?"
"No, it's a black man. He's standing in the road, looking at the church."
"We'll wait," I said. "He'll go on."
"What if he saw us come in here?"
"We'll wait."
Robin left the door open a crack, and when she looked again, the man was still standing in the road.
"He hasn't moved," she said.
Then we heard the voice. "Y'all in the church," the voice called. "No need to hide. I'se not going to harm you. I'se all by myself."
Robin opened the door a crack wider. A tall black man wearing bib overalls stood in the middle of the road, facing the church. He had no shoes on, and his hands were clasped in front of him. His black skin shone in the hot sun.
"What do we do?" Robin asked.
"Open the door. See what he does."
She opened the door and we stepped back into the shadow of the church.
"Is you the lady what dresses like the Lord God bird?" the man called out. "And her man what shot the cracker up to Woods County?"
I stepped into the doorway. "What if we are?" I said.
"Y'all need to know the sheriff be here yesterday and he put a price on your heads."
"A fat sheriff from north of the woods?"
"Him and the sheriff of Union Parish."
"And he put a price on us?"
"A hundred dollars on each of your heads. Alive."
Robin and I were worth one hundred dollars each. Which would be a king's ransom to the poor blacks of Union parish. Apparently we were in Union Parish in Louisiana and now we knew they were looking for us here. The sheriff must have gone to the boat, found it missing, and now he was looking for where we might come out.
The black man remained where he was, motionless in the hot sun.
"My name be Robert," he said. "You can't stay in the church. They find you there."
"We weren't going to stay here," I said.
"And where do you s'pose you goin' to go?" he asked.
"We don't know."
"That cracker sheriff wants your blood."
"We know that."
"You saw the Lord God Bird. He knows you seed it."
I held out the stuffed trousers and said, "It's here. I've got the skin."
"Lord God," he said. "Them white folks been lookin' for that bird. Used to be they was lots of them, but not no more."
"I'se Choctaw, he said. "My people be half black and half Choctaw. When they marched those folks to Oklahoma, my grandmother be one of them. She run off and marry a free slave over to Mississippi. The Choctaws, they held that bird in high esteem. They make a crown of the head and the bill. My grandma use to tell me 'bout it. When I be a boy if we seed a woodpecker she say Lord God ever time. Even if it weren't no Lord God bird. They's some peckers what looks like it" He laughed. "I mean some woodpeckers, not folks like the one what you put a bullet in."
"Then you're not going to turn us in for the money?"
"Lord, no. They promise the money but one of us black folk tells them, the money just don't show up. And that's a fack. More we keep outta their way, the easier it be for all."
"Is there some place we can hide?"
"You mean hide 'til they stops lookin' for you?"
"Yes."
"Hardly."
"We could go back to our boat and go back into the bayou."
"No. You ain't got a boat no more."
"What happened to it?"
"A cousin take it down river. Then he cut it loose. Mebbe it'll fetch up on the gulf."
Robin stepped into the doorway so that the black man could see her.
"Can you help us?" she asked.
"You the girl what dress like the Lord God bird?"
"Yes."
"They say you look just like the bird."
"I had my hair cut like the bird. I dyed it red."
"Even so, you a bitty thing."
"Can you help us?"
"Not for long. They gonna come back and they probly bring some dogs. Mebbe you might could go in the night to a cousin. You might go to Texas. They's goin' to look for you to go south. Ever'body go south."
"Why would you help us?" I asked.
"That cracker shot a Lord God bird. You shot the cracker. That strike me as justice. Ain't no justice in you getting' kilt."
"I put a bullet in his brain. He won't ever be the same."
"I suspect they's all a bit crazy. Some of them crackers just as soon set fire to a black man as go to church."
"Where can we go now?"
"You foller me," he said. He walked across the weedy yard of the church and disappeared around the corner. Robin and I came out into the sun and followed. He was several yards ahead of us and didn't look back
"Should we catch up?" Robin asked.
"I'm not sure."
So we stayed behind Robert as he stepped into a cotton field, and we kept twenty paces behind him, sweating now, until we came to another woods, this one with thinly standing trees. Once in the shade, he stopped. When we caught up with him, he said, "I wants to see the Lord God bird."
I laid the trousers on the ground and pulled the feather cloak out, unrolling it. I stretched the skin out so that the wings were like arms and the body and wings formed a crucifix.
Robert kneeled and stroked the feathers at the back of the head with a finger. "It's not red," he said.
"It's a female. The crest on the male is red, the females are black."
He fingered the long stout bill. "I ain't seed one of these since I was a boy," he said. "What you gonna do with it?"
"I don't know. It's proof they're still alive. It ought to go to somebody who cares about them. Maybe a museum or a college. But I don't know how to do that."
"You suppose they's another one up there in the bayou, with a red head, lookin' for this lady bird?"
"I don't know."
"You was up the tree when it come?" he asked Robin.
"Yes."
"You think it come to you 'cause you had your hair red?"
"I called out to it."
"What you say?"
Robin lifted her head and suddenly there was the nasal KENK! KENK! so like the sound I had heard years ago in the high school auditorium, as if Robin had swallowed that sound and it came belching out and Robert pressed his hands to the bird skin and said, "Oh, Lord God, I hear that voice when I be just a boy. My grandma, she say, Robert, listen, that the Lord God Bird. How come you know that voice?"
"Jake gave it to me," she said.
"A man named Tanner gave it to me," I said. "He lived for a while in the woods. He was the last man to see them."
"Maybe he the last white man to see them. Sometime you all think there be nobody else in the world but folks with white skin. Some black man come to you and say, I seed the Lord God Bird, and people say, no, how could we trust a old black man. If you gives me this Lord God Bird, I see you gets away from that sheriff."
"What would you do with it?"
"I keep it where nobody can steal it. I tell people the Lord God Bird still be here."
Robin bent and picked up the feather cloak. She slipped her arms into the arm holes, and drew it around her, lifting her head again and I could imagine the ivory beak and the yellow eyes. Robert, too, watched as she took a step and then another, and she opened her arms, the cloak spreading like wings, and her thin arms were the leading edges of the wings, pale white, glowing with sweat, like the exposed bones of the bird. She was no longer a nineteen-year-old girl, but an old creature, something so old that I felt childlike in her presence. She turned to us and said, "if I had dyed my hair black, a different bird would have come," and I knew that the bird whose skin and feathers were in Robert's hands had come to the tree because Robin had willed it to do so. She had willed it to do so because I wanted to see it and she had brought it to me as a gift.
Robert stood, the bird skin in his hands.
"If you gives this to me to keep safe, we see 'bout keeping you safe from that sheriff."
We had no choice. Robert told us to continue on through the woods.
"Listen for dogs," he said. "You get close enough to my cousin, you hear his dogs. He got a whole bunch of hounds and they makes a racket like nothin' else. When you hear the dogs, go slow. You come to the edge of the woods, you see his house. You make sure there ain't no white folks there. You waits a bit. Ezra, he come to see what his dogs is raisin' a fuss 'bout. But you waits in the trees. Don't go out in the clear. When he gits close, you call out, tell him Robert send you. Tell him Robert say for him to keep you this night.."
He rolled the ivory bill skin tightly.
"The skin isn't cured," I said. "You'll need borax or salt, Don't let it get too hot or it will dry and crack and the feathers will come out. Try to pick off any little bits of flesh."
"I been curin' animal skins since before you was born, young man. I knows how to do it. You go on now. Ezra, he take you in. You tell him I be sendin' him word by one of the childern." He looked at Robin. "What you gonna do, child, with them wings?"
Robin raised the cloak again and it looked as if she were about to fly.
"Take it with me,"
"No, child, that won't work. Anybody sees it, they knows who you be. You gots to grow your hair out and that takes time, but they's folks what shaves their heads in the summer so maybe you get away with that, but them black and white feathers, they a sign. You leave it with me, too. I takes care of it."
19.
We did as Robert told us, picking our way through the wood until we heard the dogs. We could see a clearing and another crude house and a half dozen mangy dogs milled in front of it, facing us, their barking mixed with yelps and then a man's voice.
"Shut up! Stop that racket!" But the dogs kept up and a black man came out onto the lean-to porch and stood looking at the woods. I was sure he could see us. He took a few steps off the porch and I called out, "Ezra! Robert sent us!"
He stopped. The dogs swirled around him and he reached out and cuffed the nearest one on the side of its head. It yelped and scurried under the house.
"Show yourself," he called out.
Robin and I stepped to the edge of the wood.
"What you white folks want with me?" he called out.
"Robert said to tell you he sent us. He said he would send a child later."
"I knows who you be. You be the white folks what the sheriff wants. You can't stay here."
`"Robert said you would take us for the night."
"Robert a crazy nigger if he want me to take you in. That sheriff come here and find you, and me and my whole family goin' to end up in the bayou."
"There's a price on our heads. If he finds us here, you could collect it."
"If you think that, you as crazy as Robert."
The dogs had stopped barking. But they stayed at his side, their heads fixed on the two of us at the edge of the trees. We waited. Robin turned to me and said, "What if he won't hide us?"
"Then we keep on running."
Ezra called out again.
"Y'all come out."
We crossed the clearing toward the house and as we got closer he said, "I'se probly as crazy as Robert, but I heerd what you done up to the other side of Despair Bayou and I'se just dumb enough to do what Robert say to do. You be lucky Robert take to you. He got hoodoo charms what can fix things that go wrong so I ain't about to cross him. You stays one night. Then you be gone."
The house was one room, oppressively hot. There were no windows, only two openings on either side of the door. There was a metal sink and a hand pump at the end of it and a small wood stove in the center of the room. It was, I realized, a copy of the house Robin and I had rented. Muslin curtains covered the window openings.
A woman stood at the sink, snapping beans, and four children stood, wide-eyed at the appearance of two white people, one a girl with a shiny bald head.
"This here's Naomi," Ezra said. "These our childerns."
The woman looked at us and then at Ezra.
"You lose your mind?" she said. "You bring them two in here? You mought just as well bring a bucket of cottonmouths and spill 'em on the floor."
"Robert sent them."
"Robert ain't here. We is. That sheriff come here, you gonna tell him to go find Robert and hang him from the nearest tree?"
"It just for tonight."
`"That what Jesus say 'fore they come for him."
Ezra motioned to the children to move and they fluttered to the side of the room, like black birds, backing against the wall, still staring at us.
"We don't have to stay," I said.
"You leave, you find white folks lookin' for you. You gots a price on your heads." He turned to his wife.
"They stays."
Eventually the children went outside and came back only when Naomi called them to supper. We ate at a simple table with homemade stools. Because Robin and I were there, two of the children took their plates outside. Dinner consisted of cold johnnycakes with sorghum, sweet tea, and the snap beans that Naomi had cooked in bacon drippings on the little stove. It was growing dark and suddenly the children outside came bursting into the house.
"They's white mens comin'!" they said, and Ezra looked outside.
"Where?" he said.
"They's over to the woods," the tall child said.
He looked across the clearing and then said to us, "Quick! Foller me," and we went outside and around the house.
"In there," he said, pointing to the outhouse, a small square lean-to at the edge of the clearing.
"But they'll look in there for us," I said.
"Ain't no choice. Not likely, though. White mans rather shit in the woods than go where some black man put his ass."
It stank in the outhouse, and there were flies. There were two holes in the plank seat and Robin and I sat on them, waiting. We heard voices and then nothing, and the light in the cracks in the boards faded as the sun set.
"It's my fault," Robin finally whispered.
"You didn't shoot anybody."
"No, but if I hadn't dressed like the ivory bill and gone up that tree, they wouldn't have come and none of this would have happened."
"The ivory bill wouldn't have come, either. We saw the Lord God bird."
"It would still be alive if I hadn't gone up that tree."
"It would still be alive if that ignorant son of a bitch hadn't shot it."
I held her, and felt her hot skin, ran my hands over the sm
ooth wetness of her sweaty arms and belly and I wanted only to be far away from the hot stink of the south. I thought about the snow in the vacant lot next to the house on Mitchell Street and I told Robin about the scarlet tananger and we waited.
It seemed like hours before Ezra opened the door of the outhouse. It was dark outside, fireflies winking in the trees and the house was a dark blot in the clearing.
"Y'all goin' to have to sleep on the floor and 'fore first light you best be goin' back to Robert. The mens what come say they know you somewhere 'round here. I say to let them use my dogs, but they say they gots their own dogs and they goin' to use them."
"Was it the sheriff?"
"No. But they a price on your head and they's lots a white folks what could use that so ain't no use in you runnin' south. I don't know what Robert goin' do with you but you be gone first light. I sends a chile to Robert so he know you comin'."
We spent the night on the floor of the house, half-awake, listening to the movement of the dogs under the house, and the restless sounds of children sleeping on straw mats in the hot room. A rumble of thunder came and lightning flashed, lighting up the window openings and the rain came in a sudden rush, accompanied by loud cracks of thunder and then the rain fell off and the rumblings faded and there was the steady dripping of water from the roof.
It was still dark when Ezra told us to gather ourselves and follow him.
We went across the wet clearing, followed by two of the dogs and when we got to the edge of the woods, he said. "Moon be just about down." He pointed to a sliver of moon hanging beyond the woods. "It goin' to set just about where the church be. You follows this path. It the one we use when we goes to church. You keep the moon ahead of you, you comes out just about where you goes in. Robert be there. If he ain't, then you waits. Sun come up behind you if you in the right place."
And then he and the dogs were gone.
20.
Robert was there. He stood at the edge of the woods, his hands at his sides, wearing the same bib overalls,, his face impassive.
