The Lord God Bird

by Russell Hill

  "Why here?"

  "You bring your lady here and you bring him. We figure out what to do with him when he's here. But we can't leave him out there. Somebody come lookin' for him, we gots to have a plan. Ever since you work for them loggers, I'se afraid of this."

  "Should I bring him back tonight?"

  "Yes. But hobble him so's he can't run. And tie a rope 'round his mouth so he can't yell out. He probly make some noise, but I don't want to wake up the whole woods."

  When I got back to the shack, Robin was still sitting at the back facing the outhouse, leaning against the wall, the .22 across her legs.

  "He yelled at me some," she said. "But he's quiet now."

  "We're taking him back to Robert," I said.

  "Now? In the dark?"

  "Yes."

  I found some rope and, using a short length, tied his legs together, leaving a foot-long piece loose so that he could take short steps. When I pulled him to his feet he cursed again. "You cain't get away with this," he said. "They gonna find you and cut off your balls and stuff 'em in your mouth."

  We set out, Robin going ahead with a lantern, the hobbled man between us. It was slow going and we weren't half way there when Robin stopped and slid to the ground.

  "What's the matter?" I said.

  She had the lantern between her legs and she said, ""Cramps. I've got pains in my belly and my legs. Oh Jake," and she began to cry.

  "Can you walk?" I said.

  "No." She rested her hands on her swollen belly. "It's all wrong," she said.

  I dragged the white man to a tree and kicked his legs out from under him. He collapsed heavily at the base of the tree. I untied his hands, pulled them around the tree and tied them again. I took off my belt and wrapped it around his legs, cinching it up, and then I took off my shirt, tore it into strips and gagged him. I tied another strip around his neck and around the tree and when I was finished he was immobile, unable to move anything.

  I picked up Robin and carried her toward Robert's house while she held the lantern. She was heavier now, but it made no difference. There was a strength in me that was quite remarkable, and I moved quickly, sliding my feet so that I could feel the uneven ground, careful that I didn't trip. She buried her head in my shoulder and her body was clammy and hot and I prayed and I wished I had candles to light for her and I cursed the white man who had sliced his way into our lives.

  At Robert's house I found him waiting outside and he opened the door so that I could stumble in.

  I laid Robin on a bed and Robert's daughter, Esther, knelt beside her. She wiped Robin's face with a wet cloth. She turned and said, "Y'all go outside. Leave us be."

  Her children gathered against the wall, their faces shining in the lantern light. They looked like startled animals, the eyes of possum or deer, not moving, until Esther said again sharply, "Out! Leave us be. You, too," she added, looking at me.

  Outside, Robert asked me where the white man was.

  "He's tied to a tree half an hour from here," I said.

  "We go get him before first light," Robert said.

  We stood in the dark, Robert smoking his pipe, the children somewhere in the darkness. Finally Esther came out, wiping her hands on a towel.

  "What she be doin' this past day?" she asked.

  "Nothing different. But the white man came sometime this afternoon and he threatened her. Did he touch her?"

  "Ain't no sign of that," she said. "She say nothing happen, but I gots to tell you she done lost her chile."

  It was silent and then Robert said, "Sweet Jesus, is the chile goin' to be all right?"

  "I think she be all right, but the chile inside her be halfway out and it not alive."

  I started for the house but she caught my arm.

  "That no place for you," she said. "Not yet. I go back in and tend to her. I call you when it be right for you to come back." She reached up and stroked the side of my face. "You both such childern," she said. "This ain't right, but they's nothin' we can do."

  She went back into the house and Robert and I sat at the edge of the clearing, listening to the night sounds, not speaking. I wanted to cry but I couldn't. All I could think of was finding the man at the base of the tree and taking his knife and cutting his gut out, pulling him apart while he still lived.

  It was beginning to get light when Esther came out again. The children had rolled up in blankets along the side of the house and she bent to touch each of them before she found Robert and me.

  "She goin' to be all right," she said. "She miss-carried her child and that's a fack. She sleepin' now."

  I went into the house and in the dim lantern light I could see Robin on the bed, wrapped in a blanket. Her clothes were in a pile, bloody, and there was a shallow pan with a cloth over it and I knew what it was but I didn't dare lift the cloth. I bent to touch her face, lifted her hair with my fingers, and she stirred. When I went outside, Robert was waiting.

  "We best go find your white man," he said. "She be all right. Esther take good care of her. Now we gots business to take care of."

  A false dawn had lit the sky for a few minutes but by the time we were on the trail, it was dark again.

  23.

  Robert carried two sacks. There was a rope tied around the neck of one of them and he had it on the end of a stick over his shoulder. As he walked, the sack swayed and as it did so, whatever was in the sack moved so that it seemed like a skin with something throbbing in it. He carried the other sack at his side.

  "What you carrying over your shoulder?" " I asked.

  "I'se got a poke full a death," he said.

  "What is it?"

  "You find out soon enough."

  We found the white man still tied to the tree. As we approached he tried to yell through the gag, but all that came out was a hoarse croaking. Robert bent and pulled the gag loose and the man shouted, "Goddamit, let me loose! You goin' to pay for this nigger!"

  Robert touched the man's leg with his bare foot. The man jerked his leg, but the two legs were still tied together and it didn't move.

  "You hog-tied him good," Robert said.

  "They gonna come and burn out you goddam niggers!" the man shouted again. "They gonna torch the whole fucking bunch of you!"

  "You don't have to shout so loud," Robert said. "I'se right here."

  "What do we do now?" I asked.

  "He goin' go to the bayou for a bit." He looked down at the man's legs. "You hobble him good. That's the way the slavers did to the old folks when they moves them from one plantation to another. They puts hobbles on them like you puts on a horse. How you learn to do that?"

  "I remembered it from a book."

  "Book learnin' can be a help," Robert said. "I can't read so it be no good to me, but I tells Esther she gots to get her childern to read some so's they don't get cheated at the store."

  "I first saw the Lord God bird in a book."

  "Is that a fack?" Robert said. Listening to him, you would have thought that the bound white man wasn't at his feet. He looked down.

  "We goin' to untie you now," he said, "only don't make no mistake, we kin kill you quick as a flash so don't do nothin' stupid. Although that may be a hard task for you." He turned and grinned at me.

  I bent and untied the man's wrists behind the tree, put my hands under his armpits and lifted him to his feet.

  "We goin' for a ride in my pirogue," Robert said.

  "Where you taking me, nigger?"

  "We goin' to feed you and give you somethin' to drink and we goin' to take good care of you."

  We walked the man to the bayou, the man taking tiny steps because of the rope hobble. I tried to help steady him, but he shook off my hand.

  "You going to pay for this," he kept saying.

  The three of us got into the pirogue and Robert poled us into the dimness of the early morning. The man was silent now, hunched over, his bound hands behind him, his chest resting on his knees. Robert's two sacks were in the bow of the pirogue, and the
one tied to the stick occasionally moved. Robert took us to the same shack he had taken Robin and me to months before.

  We climbed into the shack, boosting the white man up the ladder and when we were inside, Robert took one of the sacks and opened it, spilling the contents onto the floor. There was a fruit jar filled with a clear liquid, some Johnny cakes, a few pigs knuckles wrapped in a piece of cloth and a pork chop, crusty and brown.

  "Here," Robert said, setting the food in front of the man. "We goin' to untie your hands so's you can eat. This here's some white lightnin' what my cousin makes, and you kin wash your vittles down with it if you is a drinkin' man. If you ain't, then we take it ourselfs."

  I untied the man's hands and he massaged his wrists, then unscrewed the lid of the jar and took a swig. He let out an explosive breath, said "Damn!' and took another mouthful. We watched him eat and when he was finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and picked up the jar again.

  "Why you doing this?" he said

  "Cause you needs to eat." Robert said.

  "What you going to do with me?"

  "Leave you here a bit. You go on, finish up that corn. My cousin make it good."

  "Then what you going to do with me?"

  "Maybe you come to your sense. You wants to live, and you don't want no trouble. Maybe that's the way it play out."

  The man was silent, then took another gulp from the fruit jar.

  "It be a long night," Robert said. "Now we all gets some sleep. You finish that corn 'fore we tie your hands again."

  The man drank the last of the pint, then threw the jar at Robert, who dodged it. The jar smashed against the wall.

  "You going to pay for this, nigger," he said. His speech was beginning to slur.

  "I's a poor man," Robert said. "If I gots to pay, it won't be much." He nodded to me. "Git his arms behind him, Jake,"

  I grabbed for the arms and the man struggled, but I managed to get them behind his back, pressing his body to the floor with my knees. Robert tied his hands with a short length of rope and then we rolled the man against the wall. We waited. Eventually the man fell asleep and Robert said, "Time we end this mess."

  He took the other sack, lifted it by the rope and untied the knot. He took the sack over to the man, held the top of the sack open and suddenly, with a quick swoop, enveloped the man's head. He cinched the neck of the sack tight around the man's neck. There was a writhing inside the sack and the man came alive, his voice muffled by the sack and he thrashed, arms and legs banging against the floor and wall.

  "What's in the sack?" I yelled.

  "Cottonmouths. Three of them. They's not happy right now." He held the sack tight around the man's throat. "This take some time," he said.

  I could not breathe.

  "Why this?" I said.

  `"He can't go back to town. He go there, folks come and burn us out, they find you and your woman, they's no way we can let him go. But if we kill him some other way, they goin' to find out and it be just the same. Man like this who come into the woods lookin' for you, he ain't goin' to tell nobody where he goin'. So his people won't look for him for a day or two. I go to town, tell the sheriff I find a white man in the bayou. Man what take my pirogue and some of my corn liquor and he go off. When I go lookin' for him, I find him here, and it look like he git drunk and git bit by snakes."

  The man still thrashed his legs against the floor, rolling his body back and forth and I could hear him cursing.

  "We git you and your lady off from here. She go first, then you go. We gots a day or so. By then he be all swole up, nobody hardly know who he be."

  The man continued to struggle.

  "Snakes all done," Robert said. "Now they just tryin' to get away from him. This take some time now. But the poison go to his brain real quick and he goin' to be quiet real soon."

  "Jesus," I said, under my breath.

  "Jesus gots nothin' to do with this," Robert said. "Jesus gots nothin' to do with your dead baby, neither. Jesus done left us alone in the bayou, told us to fix things ourselfs. Jesus tell Judas, go ahead, take them pieces of silver. You needs them. They gonna kill me anyway. Jesus know how the world work. The Lord tell Moses, take that serpent by the tail and he done that and it turn into a stick and he led his people into the promised land. Serpents done take care of that white mans what messed with your chile."

  It was light now, the morning sun lighting up patches of the bayou, streaming through the trees. The dawn chorus of birds was almost deafening, and the man was still. Robert took away the sack, closing the mouth of it. He went to the doorway of the shack and tipped the sack into the opening, letting it loose. The snakes cascaded out, falling into the water, swimming immediately, their brown bodies almost invisible, heads above the surface, undulating cords of rope that went off into the bayou.

  "Adders," Robert said. "Moses' people call them adders. You know about Ponce de Leon?"

  "The Spaniard?"

  "That's the one. He come to Florida and then he come all the way to the Mississippi, and when he git here, he be wasted, hardly able to walk. His mens have to carry him."

  "How do you know this?"

  "My grandma's people, the Choctaws, they knows about him. White mens with hard skin that shines in the sun. That be their armor coats. The Choctaws help those poor souls and then poor ol' Ponce, he get bit by a cottonmouth. He swole up and die. He lookin' to be a young buck forever, but he not count on the adder what can swim. My people say if you can handle the adder, you be saved. Some of them say that."

  "You believe that?" I asked.

  "You gots to have strong hoodoo to touch the adder."

  He looked at the motionless body of the white man.

  "That's where I got those adders. I keeps them for a white man what pays for them. He use them in his church. Look like the Lord provide for us. Now we gots to go back to Esther and your woman. We leave him here."

  Robert poled the pirogue silently through the bayou, and I lay back, looking up at the cypress and tupelo trees, imagining Robin high in one of them, the black cloak of feathers covering her body, clinging to the trunk and I could see the ivory bill swooping toward her, its wings outstretched, pulling up as it approached the tree and then the screen went blank. I remembered when I was in school in Arlington Heights, when Mr. Weiner had shown a movie about volcanoes and the projector jammed. Something happened and the film stopped and suddenly the image on the screen had a brown hole in the center of it. Mr. Weiner frantically pulled at something, swearing under his breath, and the hole grew in size, became a white hot light as the film began to burn, the brown edges creeping out until there was a peculiar smell in the room and there was nothing on the screen but the white light of the projector bulb.

  It was like that, looking up into the trees, the pirogue passing from shadow into sunlight and suddenly there was the bright hot light of the sun and the ivory bill was gone, and so was Robin.

  24.

  When we got back to the house the sun was low over the trees and Esther had supper ready. Robin sat up in the bed but Esther wouldn't let her do more than that, bringing her a bowl with broth in it and bits of green floating on top.

  "This here's collard greens and chicken broth and you gots to take some to keep up your strength," she said.

  Robin sipped at the broth.

  "They's something else we gots to do before the sun goes off," Robert said when we had finished eating.

  Esther shook her head but Robert continued. "We gots to bury the chile."

  I wasn't prepared for this. I don't think Robin was either.

  "It not something we wants to do, but we gots to do it," he said.

  Robert did everything. Esther sat next to Robin and talked quietly with her. I couldn't hear what they were saying. I felt as if I were watching from some great distance. The children were quiet, something not usual for them. Robert disappeared with the basin that had the cloth over it and when he came back in, Esther helped Robin to her feet. I took he
r other side and we went out into the field in front of the house.

  "This here field never gonna git plowed," Robert said. "It too wet here, too close to the bayou, so's it be a good place." He had dug a pit and next to it lay the skin of the ivory bill, wrapped so that it looked as if it had, once again, a body.

  "I'se wrapped the chile in the Lord God Bird," he said. "That way the chile has wings. It won't have to walk in the next life."

  We watched while Robert laid the Ivory Bill skin in the pit and began to methodically shovel the dirt back over it. No one said anything. The children held hands. When Robert was finished he walked over the dirt, pressing it down with his bare feet and he held his hands, palms up, and he began to speak and I thought at first it was a prayer but I didn't recognize it.

  "Our Lord," he began, "who lives in this place 'longside these dark waters, you watches over us childern." And then I realized it was the Twenty-third Psalm, something I had learned in Sunday school in Arlington Heights when I was not more than ten years old. But it was changed, and his dark voice intoned the words while he stood on the raw earth covering our stillborn child. I could hear Robin crying and Robert's voice became harsh and he said, "Ou con kouri, ou pa con kotchee," and then he fell to his knees and there were words I didn't understand, not English, something else and I felt Robin's hand clutching mine and Robert rose and said, "Now I gots to finish things off. You two gonna go to Ezra's and stay there while I does what has to be done."

  "What did you pray for, Robert?" I asked.

  "I pray for the chile's soul."

  "What was the other thing you said?"

  "What other thing?"

  "The words that weren't in English?"

  "That be from my grandma. She know it from old folks what come from Haiti, mix with the Choctaw."

  "What's it mean?"

  "Ou con kouri, ou pa con kotcheee. You know how to run but you don't know how to hide. That for the white mans what cause the death of this special chile. Now you and your woman gots to go to Ezra's house 'fore it get dark."