The Good Lord Bird (28 page)

“They better makes sure they got all their back teeth if they do it,” I said. “For when Captain Brown comes I'mma tell him you and your friends here was a hinderance, and y'all will have to deal with him. He'll curdle your cheese for treatin' me like a liar.”

“What you want child, a gold medal? I don't know you from Adam. You come out the blue, spinning a heap of tall yarns for somebody so young. You lucky your lie landed with me, and not with some of these other niggers 'round here, for there's a heap of 'em would hand you over to the slave patrollers for a goosefeather pillow. I'll check your story with Mr. Cook. Either you is lying or you is not. If you lying, you had to work like the devil to dream up that yarn. If you not, you is disobeying God's orders to the limit in some kind of devilish fashion, for ain't no way on God's green earth that Old John Brown, hot as he is, is gonna come here, where all these weapons and soldiers is, to fight for the colored's freedom. He'd be putting his head right in the lion's mouth. He's a brave man if he's living, but he ain't a straight fool.”

“You don't know him,” I said.

But he didn't hear me. He had harred up his horses and was gone.

The Word

T
wo days later, an old colored woman bearing brooms inside a wheelbarrow pushed up to the door of the Kennedy farm and knocked. Cook was fast asleep. He woke up, grabbing his pistol, and runned to the door. He spoke with the door closed, his pistol down by his side. “Who is it?”

“Name's Becky, massa. I'm selling brooms.”

“Don't want none.”

“The Coachman says you did.”

Cook looked at me, puzzled. “That's the feller I told you 'bout,” I said. He stood there blinking a minute, half-sleep. He didn't no more remember what I told him 'bout the Coachman than a dog would remember his birthday. Fat Mary from down the road was wearing him out. He didn't get back to the house the night before till the wee hours. He come in with his disheveled clothes and his hair a mess, smelling like liquor, laughing and whistling.

“All right, then. But come in slow.”

The woman walked in slowly and purposeful, pushing the barrel before her. She was old, slender, deep brown, with furried white hair, a wrinkled face, and a tattered dress. She pulled two new brooms out of the barrel and held one in each hand. “I made these myself,” she said, “fashioned from the best straw and brand-new pine handles. Made from southern pine, the best kinds.”

“We don't need no brooms,” Mr. Cook said.

The woman took a long look around. She saw the boxes marked “Mining” and “Tools.” The clean mining picks and axes, which hadn't seen a bit of dirt. She looked at me once, then again, blinking, then at Cook. “Surely the little missus here”—she nodded at me—“could use a broom to clean up after the young master.”

Cook was sleepy and irritable. “We got brooms enough here.”

“But if you mining and getting all dirtied up, you'll be bringing in all kinds of filth and dirt and so forth, and I wouldn't want the master to get too sullied up.”

“Can't you hear?”

“I'm sorry, then. The Coachman said you'd need brooms.”

“Who is that again?”

“That's the feller I told you 'bout,” I piped up again. Cook looked at me and frowned. He weren't like the Old Man. He didn't quite know what to do with me. He was all right when we was on the trail out west and there weren't nobody else around to shoot the yarn with. But once he got around civilization, he didn't know whether he should act white or colored, or be a soldier or a spy, or shit or go blind. He hadn't paid me the least bit of attention since we got to the Ferry, and what attention he did pay to me weren't respectful. I was just a bother to him. It was all fun to him. I don't know but that he didn't think anything would come of the Old Man's plans, or believed him in the least, for Cook had never been in a real war, and never seen the Old Man fight. “Is she one of them you supposed to be hivin'?” he asked.

“One of 'em,” I said.

“Well, hive her,” he said, “and I will brew us up some coffee.” He picked up a bucket and moved outside. There was a water well out back, and he stumbled out there holding that bucket, rubbing his eyes.

Becky looked at me. “We is here on a mission,” I said. “I reckon the Coachman told you.”

“He told me he met a strange li'l cooter on the road dressed funny, who gived him bad instructions, and was likely stretching his blanket lying.”

“I wish you wouldn't call me names, for I has done you no wrong.”

“I'll be calling you dead if you continues on as you is. You do much harm to yourself when you paddle 'bout, selling fool's gold. Talking 'bout a great man. And talking it into the ears of the wrong folks. The Coachman's wife don't work on the gospel train. She got a mouth like a waterfall. You putting a lot of people in danger, hooting and railing 'bout John Brown like you is.”

“I already had a mouthful 'bout that from the Coachman,” I said. “I don't know nothing 'bout nobody's gospel train, not in no way, form, or fashion. I ain't a runaway and ain't from these parts. I been sent forward to hive the bees. Get the colored together. That's what the Old Man sent me for.”

“Why would he send you?”

“He ain't got but two coloreds in his army. The other ones he weren't too sure 'bout.”

“In what way?”

“Thought they might trot off before they done what the Captain told 'em what to do.”

“The Captain. Who's that?”

“I already told you. John Brown.”

“And what did the Captain tell you to do?”

“Hive the bees. Ain't you heard me?”

Cook came to the kitchen, holding a pot of water. Then moved to put some kindling on the fire to make some hot water. “You hive her yet?” he said gaily. He was just a fool. He was the gayest man I ever saw. It would cost him. He'd be deadened 'cause of it, acting a fool.

“She don't believe it,” I said.

“What part of it?”

“No parts of it.”

He stood up and cleared his throat, agitated. “Now listen, Aunt Polly, we come all this way to fr—”

“Becky's my name, if you please.”

“Becky. A great man's 'bout to come here and free your people. I just got a letter from him. He'll be here in less than three weeks. He needs to hive the bees. Free you all.”

“I done heard all I need to hear about hiving and freeing,” Becky said. “How's all this hiving and freeing gonna happen?”

“I can't right tell all of it. But Old John Brown is coming, surely. From out west. Freedom's nigh for you and your people. Onion here ain't lying.”

“Onion?”

“That's what we call her.”

“Her?”

I piped up quickly, “Miss Becky, if you ain't one to hive or get on board with what John Brown's selling, you ain't got to come.”

“I didn't say that,” she said. “I wants to know what he's selling. Freedom? Here? He might as well be singing to a dead hog if he thinks he's gonna come here and get away scot-free with that. There's a damn armory here.”

“That's why he's coming,” Cook said. “To take the armory.”

“What's he gonna take it with?”

“Men.”

“And what else?”

“And all the Negroes that's gonna join 'em once he takes it over.”

“Mister, you talking crazy.”

Cook was a braggert, and it clean plucked his feathers to talk to a person that didn't believe him or talked back to him. Especially a colored. “Am I?” he said. “Looky here.”

He led her to the other room, where the stacks of the mining boxes marked Mining Tools lay 'bout. He took a crowbar to one and opened it up. Inside, stacked in neat rows, were thirty clean, brand-new Sharps rifles, one after another.

I had never seen the inside of them boxes neither, and the fullness of the thing hit me and Miss Becky at the same time. Her eyes got wide. “Glory,” she said.

Cook snorted, bragging. “We got fourteen boxes here, just like this one. There's more coming by shipment. The Captain's got enough arms to furnish two thousand people.”

“There ain't but ninety slaves in Harpers Ferry, mister.”

That stopped him dead. The smile disappeared from his face.

“I thought there was twelve hundred colored here. That's what the man at the post office said yesterday.”

“That's right. And most of 'em's free colored.”

“That ain't the same,” he muttered.

“It's close enough,” Miss Becky said. “Free colored's connected to bondage, too. Many of 'em's married to those in bondage. I'm free, but my husband, he's a slave. Most free colored's got slave relations. They ain't for slavery. Believe me.”

“Good! Then they'll fight with us.”

“I ain't say that.” She sat down, rubbing her head. “Coachman done sent me into a dilemma,” she mumbled. Then she uttered hotly, “This is some damn trickeration!”

“You ain't got to believe,” Cook said gaily. “Just tell all your friends that Old John Brown is coming in three weeks. We attack on October twenty-third. He gived me the date by letter. Spread that around.”

Now, I was just a young boy dressed like a girl and foolish as a dimwit and not able to hold anybody in their wrong, stupid as I was, but still, I was a young man coming into myself, and even I weren't that dim. It occurred to me that it didn't take but one of them colored angling for a can of peaches or a nice fresh watermelon from their master to rouse the whole bit, to spill the beans, and the jig was up for everybody.

“Mr. Cook,” I said. “We don't know if we can trust this woman.”

“You invited her,” he said.

“Suppose she tells!”

Miss Becky frowned. “You is got some nerve,” she said. “You busted in on Coachman's property, damn near gave him away to his runny-mouth wife, and now you tellin'
me
who can be trusted. It's you we can't trust. You could be selling us a heap of lies, child. You better hope your yarn matches up. If not, the Blacksmith will deaden you right where you is and be done with it. Ain't nobody in this town gonna fret over a nigger child dead in an alley someplace.”

“What I done to him?”

“You endangering his railroad.”

“He owns a railroad?”

“The underground, child.”

“Hold on,” Cook said. “Your Blacksmith ain't deadening nobody. Onion here is like a child to the Old Man. She's his favorite.”

“Sure. And I'm George Washington.”

Now Cook got hot. “Don't get sassy with me. We coming here to rescue you. Not the other way 'round. Onion here, the Captain stole her out of slavery. She's like his kin. So you ought not to talk about your Blacksmith hurting this one here, or nobody else. Your Blacksmith won't be drawing air long, fooling with the Captain's plans. He don't want to be on the wrong side of Captain Brown.”

Becky put her head in her hands. “I reckon I don't know what to believe,” she said. “I don't know what to tell the Coachman.”

“Is he the Negro in charge around here?” Cook asked.

“One of 'em. The main one's the Rail Man.”

“Where's he at?”

“Where you think? On the railroad.”

“The underground?”

“No. The real railroad. The B&O. The one that goes chug-chug. I reckon he's in Baltimore or Washington, D.C., today.”

“Perfect! He can hive the bees there. How can I reach him?”

She stood up. “I'll take my leave, now. I done told you too much already, sir. For all's I know, you could be a slave stealer from New Orleans, come up here to steal souls and sell 'em off down river. You can have one of them brooms. It's a gift. Use it to sweep the lies out this place. Watch the lady next door, if you don't want deputies around. She's a nosybody. Mrs. Huffmaster's her name. And she don't like niggers nor slave stealers nor abolitionists.”

As she moved toward the door, I blurted out, “You ought to check with your people. Check with your Rail Man.”

“I ain't checking with nobody. It's a trick.”

“G'wan, then. You'll see. We don't need you, neither.” She showed me her back, but as she moved to the door, there was a coat hook there, and she noticed the beaten shawl that the General gived me in Canada hanging on it. The shawl from Harriet Tubman herself.

“Where'd you get this?” she asked.

“It's a gift,” I said.

“From who?”

“One of the Captain's friends gived it to me. Said it would be useful. I just brung it 'cause . . . I used it to cover some of my things in the wagon.”

“Did you now . . .” she said. She gently took the General's shawl off the coat hook. She held it in the light, then laid it on the table, her brown fingers spreading it wide. She stared carefully at the designs on it. I hadn't paid them no mind. It weren't nothing but a crude dog in a box with his feet pointed at all four corners of the box, with his snout nearly touching one of the top corners. Something in that design moved her, and she shook her head.

“I don't believe it. Where'd you meet . . . the person that gived you this?”

“I can't say, for I don't know you, neither.”

“Oh, you can tell her,” Cook said, runny mouth that he was.

But I didn't open my mouth a bit. Miss Becky stared at the shawl, her eyes suddenly bright and full. “If you ain't lying, child, it's a great day. Did the soul who gived you this say anything else?”

“No. Well . . . She did say don't change the time, 'cause she was coming herself. With her people. She did say that. To the Captain. Not me.”

Miss Becky stood silent a minute. You'd a thunk I gived her a million dollars, for it seemed like a spell come over her. The old wrinkles in her face evened out and her lips broke into a small smile. The lines in her forehead seemed to vanish. She picked up the shawl and held it out away from her. “Can I keep this?” she asked.

“If it'll help, all right,” I said.

“It helps,” she said. “It helps a great deal. Oh, the Lord is in the blessing business, ain't He? He done blessed me today.” She got in a hurry then, whipping the shawl onto her shoulders, gathering up her brooms and tossing them in the wheelbarrow, as me and Cook stared.

“Where you going?” Cook said.

Miss Becky paused at the door, grabbed the door handle and held it tight, staring at it as she spoke. The happiness fell off her then, and she was all business again. Serious and straight on. “Wait a few days,” she said. “Just wait. And be quiet. Don't say nothing else to nobody, white or colored. If a colored comes here asking 'bout your Captain, be careful. If they don't mention the Blacksmith or the Rail Man in their first breath, draw your knife on 'em and make it count, for we is all blown. You'll get word soon.”

And with that she opened the door, grabbed her wheelbarrow, and left.