The Good Lord Bird

by James McBride

  I just weren’t fixated on that particular way of dying, the method of it, being throwed off a wagon or getting aired out for trying to run, but it occurred to me I might be crossing the quit line anyway once we hit the bottom of the hill, for I was on the side where it would fall if it overturned if the Coachman tried to pull into the turn going too fast. Blessed God, that upset me, and I don’t know why. So I fixed my mind on jumping. That turn at the bottom was sharp enough to pull them wheels off. I knowed the Coachman’d have to slow down to make that sharp twist left and head toward the Ferry. He’d have to break it down some kind of way. I figured to make my move then. Leap off.

  O.P. had the same idea. He said, “I’m jumping when we get to the bottom.”

  There was a slight curve just before we hit bottom, and as we came around it and made it hard for the river, we both seen we was fixed for disappointment. There was militia in formation on the road, marching right through the intersection, just as the Coachman was making for it.

  He seen them militia, and didn’t brake much, God bless him, he hit that T-intersection straight on, hard as them horses could stand it, drove right into the middle of the militia, busted ’em up, scattered ’em like flies. Then he backed up, turned left, and stung them horses up with his whip and put it on ’em. That nigger could drive a mule up a gnat’s ass. Put some distance between us and them fellers in an instant, and he needed to, for once they recovered and seen all them raggedy niggers hanging off Colonel Washington’s fancy coach without no explanation, they drawed their hardware and cut loose. Sent balls a-whizzing. But the Coachman outdistanced them, and we lost them in the curve of the mountain road.

  We could see the Ferry from where we was. We was still across the river from it. But we seen the smoke and could hear the firing. It looked hot. The road in front of us was spotted with militia hurrying to and fro, but they was from different companies and different counties, dressed in different uniforms, and they didn’t know one from the other and let us pass without a word. They had no idea the ones from behind us was firing at us, for the blasting of the ones behind us melted into the shooting coming from across the Potomac. Nobody knowed who was doing what. The Coachman played it smart. He drove right past them, hollering, “I got the colonel here. I got Colonel Washington! He’s exchanging hisself for the hostages!” They moved aside to let us pass. There weren’t no stopping him, which made it bad for me, for I couldn’t drop off that thing with all that militia around. I had to hang on.

  Sure as God would have it, when we got to the B&O Bridge—that thing was loaded with militia, creaking down under the weight of ’em—Colonel Washington done just as he was told, followed orders to the dot, and we was waved through. Some even cheered as we passed, hollering, “The colonel’s here! Hooray!” They didn’t give it a thought, for a good number of ’em was drunk. Couldn’t have been less than a hundred men on that bridge, the very same bridge that Oliver and Taylor guarded just a day before by themselves in total darkness and weren’t a soul on it. The Old Man had blowed his chance to get out.

  As we crossed the bridge, I had a clear sight of the armory from above. By God, there was three hundred militiamen down there if there was one, milling around the gate and walls and more coming from town and Bolivar Heights above it, cramming at the entrance, lining the riverbank, all along the sides of the armory walls. All white men. Not a single colored in sight. The armory walls was surrounded. We was riding into death.

  I got light-headed on God then. The devil flew off my back and the Lord latched Hisself to my heart. I said, “Jesus! The blood.” I said them words and felt His spirit pass through me. My heart felt like it busted out the penitentiary, my soul swelled up, and everything ’bout me, the trees, the bridge, the town, became clear. I then and there decided if I ever cleared things, I would tell the Old Man what I’d felt, clear it with him ’bout all that religious blabbing he’d done, that it weren’t for naught, and also clear it with him ’bout not saying nothing ’bout the Rail Man and a few other assorted lies I told. I didn’t think I’d have the chance, to be honest, which I reckon means I weren’t totally given to the spirit. But I thunk on the notion anyway.

  As we cleared the bridge and the wagon turned toward the armory, I turned to O.P., who was hanging on the running board by his fingernails. I said, “Good-bye, O.P.”

  “Good-bye,” he said, and he done something that just knocked me out. He dropped off that wagon to his death and rolled down the bank into the Potomac. Rolled like a potato into the water, and that was the last I seen of him. Must’a been a good twenty feet. Rolled into the water. He weren’t going back to the armory to get shot up. He chose his own death. Chalk up a second colored to the Old Man’s scheme. To count, I’d seen with my own eyes the first two folks deadened in the Old Man’s army on account of him freeing the colored was the colored themselves.

  We come to the armory gate with the Coachman hollering all the way that we had Colonel Washington, rolled right through that mob, and busted into the yard clear. The mob weren’t going to stop us. The colonel was in the wagon. They knowed his coach and knowed who he was. I reckoned they parted on account of an important man being inside there, but when we come through the gate and hit the yard clean, I seen the real reason why.

  That yard was dead as a cornfield. Quiet as a mouse pissing on cotton.

  What I couldn’t see from the bridge, I seen from the ground in front of the engine house. The Old Man had been busy. There was several dead men laying out in the open, white men and a couple of colored, too, all within shooting range of the engine house and buildings around it. The Old Man weren’t fooling. That’s why them militia congregated outside the armory gate and walls. They was still scared to go inside. He’d been beating ’em off.

  The Coachman wheeled that wagon around a couple of chewed-up dead fellers and finally got tired of steering around them and just aimed the wagon straight for the engine house, bouncing over the heads of a couple of the dead—it didn’t bother them nohow, they didn’t feel nothing. He stopped dead directly in front of the engine house, those inside flung the door open, and we rushed inside, the door closing behind us.

  That place stunk something ferocious. There was thirty or so hostages in there. Whites was gathered on one side of the room and the colored on another side, separated by a wall, but it weren’t a continuous wall to the ceiling, so you could move between the two sides. Nar privy was on either side of the room, and if you thunk whites and coloreds was different, you ain’t got a big put up to the truth when you get a whiff of their nature doings and comes to the understanding that one pea don’t grow to no higher grade than the other. That place reminded me of them Kansas taverns, but worse. It was downright infernal.

  The Captain stood by a window, holding a rifle and his seven-shooter, looking calm as a corn shoot, but a little beaten down, truth be to tell it. His face, old and wrinkled even in normal times, was covered in grit and powder. His white beard looked like it’d been dipped in a bag of dirt, and his jacket was flecked with holes and gunpowder burns. He’d been up thirty hours without sleep and no food. Still, compared to the rest of his men, he looked fit as a fiddle. The others, young men, Oliver, Watson—who had been flushed off the Shenandoah—Taylor, looked clean run out, their faces white, pale as ghosts. They knowed what they was looking at. Only the Emperor seemed calm. That was a bodacious Negro there. And other than O.P., a braver man I never saw.

  Stevens handed the Old Man Colonel Washington’s sword, which the Captain held high. “That is righteous,” he said. He turned to Colonel Washington’s slaves who had just come off the wagon and entered the Engine Works and said, “In the name of the Provisional Government of the United States, I, President John Brown emeritus elected, E pluribus unum, with all rights and privileges hereto, selected by a Congress of your brethren, I hereby pronounces you is all free. Go in peace, my brother Negroes!”

  Them Negroes looked downright
befuddled, of course. Weren’t but eight of ’em. Plus a few more lined up against the wall as hostages already, and they weren’t going nowhere, so that added to their confusion. Them Negroes didn’t move nor spout a blaming word between ’em.

  Since nobody said nothing, the Old Man added, “Course if you want, since we is all here fighting a war against slavery. If you wants to join us in battling for your freedom, why, we is all for that, too. And for that cause, and for the cause of your freedom in the days ahead, so that no one can wrest it from you, we is going to arm you.”

  “We done that,” Stevens said. “But their pikes fell off in the ride down.”

  “Oh. Well, we got more. Where’s O.P. and the others?”

  “I don’t know,” Stevens said. “I thought they was on the wagon. I reckon they’re hiving more bees.”

  The Old Man nodded. “Yes, of course!” he said, looking at the flock we just brought in. He went down the line of Negroes, shaking a hand or two, welcoming them. The Negroes looked glum, which he ignored course, talking to Stevens as he shook their hands. “This is working exactly the way I figured it, Stevens. Prayer works, Stevens. Spiritualist that you is, you really ought to become a believer. Remind me to share with you a few words from our Maker when there is time, for I knows you have it in you yet to turn to the ways of our Great Humbler.”

  He had plain gone off the deep end, of course. O.P. weren’t hiving nothing but the bottom of the Potomac. Cook, Tidd, Merriam, and Owen, they’d taken the tall timber back at the Kennedy farm. They was gone, I was sure. I never held that against them, by the way. They valued their skin. There was weak spots in them men, and I knowed all ’bout that, for I had weak spots myself—all over. I weren’t against ’em.

  The Old Man suddenly noticed me standing there and said, “Stevens, why is Onion here?”

  “She come back to the Ferry on her own,” Stevens said.

  The Old Man didn’t like it. “She ought not be here,” he said. “The fighting’s gotten a bit dirty. She ought to be hiving more bees in safety.”

  “She wanted to come,” Stevens said.

  That was a damn lie. I hadn’t said a thing ’bout going back to the Ferry. Stevens gived orders at the schoolhouse, and like usual, I done what he said.

  The Old Man placed his hand on my shoulder and said, “It does my heart good to see you here, Onion, for we needs children to witness the liberation of your people and to tell stories of it to future generations of Negroes and whites alike. This day will be remembered. Besides, you is always a good omen. I have never lost a battle when you is about.”

  He forgot all ’bout Osawatomie, where they deadened Frederick and sent him packing, but that was the Old Man’s nature. He never remembered nothing but what he wanted to, and didn’t tell himself nothing but what he only really wanted to believe.

  He got downright wistful standing there. “God has blessed us, Onion, for you is a good and courageous girl. Having you with me at this moment of my greatest triumph is like having my Frederick here, who gived his life in favor of the Negro, even though he didn’t know his head from his hindquarters. You has always gived him such joy. It gives me cause to thank our Redeemer and how much He hath given to all of us.” And here he closed his eyes, folded his hands across his chest, and busted into prayer, chanting his thanks to our Great Redeemer Who walked the road to Jericho and so forth, praying ’bout Fred being so lucky as to ride with the angels, and while he said it, he didn’t want to forget to mention some others of his twenty-two children, the ones who’d died from sickness and those who yet had gone to glory: the ones who died first, little Fred, Marcy when she was two, William who died of fever, Ruth who got burned; then he runned down the list of the living ones, then his cousin’s children, and his Pa and Ma, thanking God for accepting them on high and teaching him the Lord’s way. All this with his men standing ’round and the hostages behind him, watching, and a good three hundred white fellers outside, milling around looped and shit-faced, passing ammo and gearing up to make another charge.

  There weren’t no Owen to bust him out of that trance—Owen’s the only one had the guts to do it, to my knowledge—for the Old Man’s prayers was serious business, and I seen him pull his heater out on any fool game enough to break off his conversations between him and his Maker. Even his main fellers Kagi and Stevens was scared to do it, and when they done it, they went ’bout it roundabout with no success, breaking drinking glasses at his feet, coughing, hacking, harring up spit, chopping wood, and when that didn’t work, they had target practice and blowed off caps right next to his ear, and still they couldn’t break him out of one his prayer spells. But my arse, or what was left of it, was on the line, and I valued it dearly, so I said, “Captain, I is thirsty! And there is some business at hand. I’m feeling Jesus.”

  That snapped him out of his trance. He stood up straightaway, tossed out two or three amens, throwed his arms out wide and said, “Thank Him, Onion! Thank Him! You is on the right road. Give Onion some water, men!” Then he drawed himself up to his full height, pulled out from his belt and held up the sword from Frederick the Great, admiring it, then placed it across his chest. “May this new acceptance of the Son of Man in Onion’s heart serve as a symbol of inspiration to us in our fight for justice for the Negro. May it give us even greater force. Let it inspire us to lend ourselves even more wholly to the cause, and give our enemies something to cry about. Now, men. On to it. We is not done yet!”

  Well, he didn’t say nothing ’bout busting out of there. Them’s the words I was looking for. He didn’t breathe a word of that.

  He ordered the men and the slaves to chink out the walls, and they got busy. A feller named Phil, a slave feller, got some of the slaves together—there was ’bout twenty-five colored in there in all, some who had come or been gathered thereabouts along with those we brung, plus five white masters who set tight, not movin’—and them coloreds got busy. They chinked out some expert holes with pikes and loaded up the rifles. Lined ’em up one by one so the Old Man’s men could grab one after the other without having to load ’em up, and we prepared for perfect slumber.

  31

  Last Stand

  The mob outside the gate waited a good hour or so for Colonel Washington to work whatever magic he had supposedly had, to exchange hisself and his Negroes for the white hostages. When it didn’t happen by the second hour, someone hollered out, “Where’s our colonel? How many hostages is you giving up for our colonel and his niggers?”

  The Old Man stuck his face in the window and hollered, “None. If you want your colonel, come and get him.”

  Oh, they throwed a hissy fit all over again. There was some hollerin’, fussin’, and huddlin’ up, and after a few minutes they walked ’bout two hundred militia through the gate, in uniform, marched ’em in there in formation, turned ’em against the engine house, and told ’em, “Fire!” By God, when they cut loose, it felt like a giant monster kicked the building. The whole engine house shook. Just a roaring and banging. Bricks and mortar chinked everywhere, from the roof pillars on down. Their firing blowed big pieces of brick mortar right clear through the walls of the Engine Works, and even tore off a big piece of the timber that held up the roof, it came crashing down.

  But they didn’t overtake us. The Old Man’s men were well trained and they held steady, firing through the holes in the brick made by the militia’s firing, with him hollering, “Calm. Aim low. Make ’em pay dear.” They powered the militia with balls and drove ’em back outside the gate.

  The militias gathered outside the walls again, and they was so drunk and mad now it was a pity. All that laughing and joking from the day before was gone now, replaced with full-out rage and frustration in every appearance. Some of them growed chickenhearted from that first charge, for several of their brothers had been hurt or deadened by the Captain’s men, and they peeled off and hauled ass away from the group. But more was coming
down to the gate, and after a few minutes, they regrouped and come through the gate again in even greater numbers, for more men had arrived outside the armory to replace those that fell. Still, the Old Man’s men held them off. And that company drew back. They milled around out there by the safety of the gate, yelling and hollering, promising to string the Old Man up by his privates. Shortly after, they brung in a second company from somewhere ’bout. Different uniforms. Marched another two hundred or so into the gate, madder than the first, cussing and hooting, turned ’em on the building, and by the time they busted off their caps, the Old Man’s crew had diced, sliced, and gutted out a good number of ’em, and they broke loose for the gate running faster than the first, leaving a few more gutted or dead ’bout the yard. And each time the Virginians moved to fetch one of their wounded, one of the Old Man’s men poked his Sharps out the chinks in the brick wall and made ’em pay for them thoughts. That just got ’em hotter. They was burning up.

  The white hostages, meantime, was dead quiet and terrified. The Old Man put the Coachman and the Emperor in charge of minding ’em, and had a good twenty-five slaves in there running ’bout busy. They wasn’t bewildered no more, them coloreds was with it. And not a peep was heard out of any of them white masters.

  Now we wasn’t far from their saviors. We could hear the militia talking and yelling outside, screaming and cussing. That crowd growed bigger and bigger, and with that come more confusion to ’em. They’d say let’s go this way, try this, and someone would shout that plan down, then someone else would holler, “My cousin Rufus is wounded in the yard. We got to get him out,” and someone would say, “You get him!” and a fight would break out among ’em, and a captain would shout more directions, and they’d have to break up the fighting among themselves. They was just discombobulated. And while they done this, the Captain was ordering his men and the colored helpers, in calm fashion, “Reload, people. Aim low. Line the rifles on the walls loaded so you can grab one after you fire the first. We are hurting the enemy.” The men and them slaves was firing and reloading so fast, so efficient, seemed like a machine. Old John Brown knowed his business when it come to fighting a war. They could have used him in the great war that was to come, I’ll say that.