The Good Lord Bird (31 page)

This went on for nearly six weeks. The only solace from that madness was to hive the colored, which got me out the house, or at times, to set out on the porch with Annie in the evenings. That was one of her jobs, to set there serving as lookout and to keep the house looking normal and keep the downstairs presentable to make sure that nobody wandered in and found the hundreds of guns and pikes laying around in crates. Many an evening she asked me to set out on the porch with her, for none of the men was allowed to show themselves, and besides, she saw it as her business to educate me as to the ways of the Bible and living a Christian life. We spent them hours reading the Bible together in the dusk and discussing its passages. I come to enjoy them talks, for even though I'd gotten used to living a lie—being a girl—it come to me this way: Being a Negro's a lie, anyway. Nobody sees the real you. Nobody knows who you are inside. You just judged on what you are on the outside whatever your color. Mulatto, colored, black, it don't matter. You just a Negro to the world. But somehow, setting on the bench of that porch, conversating with her, watching the sun go down over the mountains above the Ferry, made me forget 'bout what was covering me and the fact that the Old Man was aiming to get us all minced to pieces. I come to the understanding that maybe what was on the inside was more important, and that your outer covering didn't count so much as folks thought it did, colored or white, man or woman.

“What do you want to be someday?” Annie asked me one evening as we set out on the porch at sunset.

“What you mean?”

“When this is all done.”

“When what is all done?”

“When this war is over. And the Negro is free.”

“Well, I'll likely be a . . .” I didn't know what to say, for I weren't thinking of the whole bit succeeding. Running to freedom up north was easier, but I had no absolute plans on it that very moment, for setting with her made every minute feel joyous, and time passed quickly and all my plans for the future seemed far off and not important. So I said, “I'll likely buy a fiddle and sing songs the rest of my life. For I enjoys music.”

“Henrietta!” she scolded naughtily. “You never allowed you can sing.”

“Why, you has never asked.”

“Well, sing for me then.”

I sung for her “Dixie” and “When the Coons Go Marching Home.”

We was setting on a swinging bench that the Old Man set up, hung from the ceiling, and as I sat next to her and throwed my singing at her, her face softened, her whole body seemed to grow soft as a marshmallow, settling in that swinging chair, listening. “You sing beautiful,” she said. “But I don't favor them rebel songs. Sing a religious song. Something for the Lord.”

So I sang “Keeping His Bread” and “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

Well, that done her in. She got just dumbstruck happy by them songs. They buttered her up to privilege, practically. She set there swinging back and forth, looking righteously spent, and soft as biscuit dough, her eyes looking moist and dewy. She squirmed a little closer to me.

“Gosh, that is beautiful,” she said. “Oh, I do so love the Lord. Sing another.”

So I sang “Love Is a Twilight Star” and “Sally Got a Furry Pie for Me,” which is an old rebel song from back in Kansas, but I changed “furry pie” to “johnnycake,” and that just cleaned her up. Knocked her out. She got right syrupy, and her brown eyes—by God, them things was pretty as stars and big as quarters—set upon me and she put her arm around me on that bench and looked at me with them big eyes that liked to suck my insides out, and said, “Why, that is the most beautiful song I have ever heard in my life. It just makes my heart flutter. Would that you was a boy, Henrietta. Why, I'd marry you!” And she kissed me on the cheek.

Well, that just ruint my oats, her grazing on me like that, and I made it my purpose right then and there to never go near her again, for I was a fool for her, just a fool, and I knowed no good was gonna come of them feelings.

—

It was a good thing the Old Man set Annie on the porch as lookout, for a constant source of trouble lived just down the road, and was it not for Annie, we'd have been discovered right off. As it was, it set the whole caboodle off in the worst way. And as usual, it was a woman behind it.

Her name was Mrs. Huffmaster, a bit of trouble that Becky had mentioned. She was a barefoot, nosy, dirty-to-the-corn white woman who walked the road with three snot-nosed, biscuit-eating, cob-headed children, poking her nose in every yard but her own. She wandered that road before our headquarters every day, and it weren't long before she invited herself onto the front porch.

Annie normally seen her through the window and dived for the door just before Mrs. Huffmaster could get to the porch so she could hold her out there. Annie told Mrs. Huffmaster and the neighbors that her Pa and Cook runned his mining business on the other side of the valley, which was the excuse for them renting the old farm. But that didn't satisfy that old hag, for she was a nosybody who gobbled up gossip. One morning Mrs. Huffmaster slipped up onto the porch before Annie seen her and knocked on the door, aiming to push it open and step inside. Annie spied her at the last second through the window just as Mrs. Huffmaster's foot hit the porch deck, and she leaned on the door, pinning it shut. It was a good thing, too, for Tidd and Kagi had just unpacked a carton of Sharps rifles and primers, and had Mrs. Huffmaster walked in, she would have stumbled over enough rifles and cartridges laying on the floor to pack a troop of U.S. Cavalry. Annie kept the door shut as Mrs. Huffmaster pushed against it, while me, Kagi, and Tidd scampered around, putting them guns back in the crate.

“Annie is that you?” the old hag said.

“I'm not proper, Mrs. Huffmaster,” Annie said. Her face was white as a sheet.

“What's the matter with this door?”

“I will be right out,” Annie sang.

After a few hot minutes, we got them things put up and Annie slipped out the door, pulling me along with her for support, keeping the woman on the porch.

“Mrs. Huffmaster, we is not prepared for guests,” she said, fluffing herself and setting in her bench on the porch, pulling me next to her. “Would you like some lemonade? I'll be happy to get you some.”

“Ain't thirsty,” Mrs. Huffmaster said. She had the face of a horse after eating. She looked around, trying to peek in the window. She smelled a rat.

There was fifteen men setting in that house upstairs, quiet as mice. They never went out during the day, only at night, and they set there in silence while Annie chewed the fat and run that nosybody off. Still, that woman knowed something was up, and from that day forward, she made it her business to stop off at the house anytime. She lived just down the road, and made it known that Cook had already got her dander up by romancing one of the neighbors' daughters, who her brother had expected to marry. She took that as an affront of some kind, and made it her business to come by the house each day at different times, with her ragged, barefoot, dirty children trailing behind her like ducklings, poking her nose around and picking at Annie. She was a rough, uncouth woman who belonged more in Kansas Territory than back east. She constantly picked on Annie, who was refined and sweet and pretty as a peeled onion. Annie knowed it weren't her business to ruffle that woman's feathers in any way, so she took it standing up, calm as lettuce.

It got so that each afternoon at some point Mrs. Huffmaster would stomp onto the front porch where Annie and I sat and bark out, “What is you doin' today?” and “Where's my pie?” Just straight out bullying and poking. One morning she stomped up there and said, “That is a lot of shirts you is hanging out on your back line there.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Annie said. “My Pa and brothers has a host of shirts. Changes 'em twice a week, sometimes more. Keeps my hands busy all day washing 'em. Ain't that horrible?”

“'Deed it is, especially when but one shirt will serve my husband two or three weeks. How you get so many shirts?”

“Oh, by and by. My father bought them.”

“And what does he do again?”

“Why, he's a miner, Mrs. Huffmaster. And there's a couple of his workers live here, work for him. You know that.”

“And by the way, where is your Pa and them digging again?”

“Oh, I don't ask their business,” Annie said.

“And your Mr. Cook sure do have a way with girls, being that he romanced Mary up the road. Does he work in the mine, too?”

“I reckon he does.”

“Then why's he working the tavern down at the Ferry?”

“I don't know all his business, Mrs. Huffmaster. But he is a dandy talker,” Annie said. “Maybe he got two jobs. One talking and one digging.”

And on and on it went. Time and again Mrs. Huffmaster invited herself inside the house, and each time Annie would put her off by saying, “Oh, I can't finish cooking yet,” or point to me and say, “Oh, Henrietta here is 'bout to take a bath,” or some such thing. But that lady was moved to devilment. After a while she stopped being friendly altogether, and her questions took on a different tone. “Who is the nigger?” she said to Annie one afternoon when she come upon me and Annie setting out reading the Bible and conversating.

“Why, that's Henrietta, Mrs. Huffmaster. She's a member of the family.”

“A slave or free?”

“Why, she's a . . .” and Annie didn't know what to say, so I said, “Why, I'm in bondage, missus. But a happier person in this world you cannot find.”

She glared at me and said, “I didn't ask if you was happy.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“But if you is in bondage, why is you hanging 'bout the railroad down at the Ferry all the time, trying to roust the niggers up? That's the talk 'round town 'bout you,” she said.

That stumped me. “I done no such thing,” I lied.

“Is you lying, nigger?”

Well, I was stumped. And Annie sat there, calm, with a straight face, but I could see the blood rushing to her cheeks, and see the cheerfulness back out of her face, and the angry calm lock itself into place instead—like it did with all them Browns. Once them Browns got to whirring up, once they got their blood to boiling, they got quiet and calm. And dangerous.

“Now, Mrs. Huffmaster,” she said. “Henrietta is my dear friend. And part of my family. And I don't appreciate you speaking to her in such an unkind manner.”

Mrs. Huffmaster shrugged. “You can talk to your niggers however you like. But you better get your story straight. My husband was at the tavern at the Ferry, and he overheard Mr. Cook say that your Pa ain't a miner or slave owner at all, but an abolitionist. And that the darkies is planning something big. Now your nigger here is saying y'all
is
slave owners. And Cook says y'all is not. Which is it?”

“I reckon you is not privy to how we live. For it is none of your business,” Annie said.

“You got a smart mouth for someone so young.”

Well, that woman weren't of the notion that she was talking to a Brown. Man or woman, them Browns didn't knuck to nobody once they got on their hind legs 'bout something. Annie was a young thing, but she flew hot and stood up in a snap, her eyes a-blazing, and for a minute you seen her true nature, cool as ice on the outer part, but a firm, crazy wildness inside there somewhere; that's what drove them Browns. They was strange creatures. Pure outdoor people. They didn't think like normal folks. They thunk more like animals, driven by ideas of purity. I reckon that's why they thought the colored man was equal to the white man. That was her Pa's nature, surely, jumping 'round inside her.

“I'll thank you to step off my porch now,” she said. “And make it quick, or I'll help you to it.”

Well, she throwed down the gauntlet, and I reckon it was coming anyway. That woman left in a huff.

We watched her go, and when she crossed the muddy road out of sight, Annie blurted out, “Father will be angry with me,” and burst into tears.

It was all I could do to keep myself from hugging her then, for my feelings for her was deep, way down deep. She was strong and courageous, a true woman, so kind and decent in her thinking, just like the Old Man. But I couldn't bring myself to it. For if I'd a pressed up against her and held her in my arms, she'd'a knowed my true nature. She'd'a felt my heart banging, she'd'a felt the love busting outta me, and she'd'a knowed I was a man.

The Things Heaven Sent

N
ot a week after Annie put her foot in Mrs. Huffmaster's duff, the Captain upped and laid down the date. “We move on October twenty-third,” he announced. That was a date he'd already called out, and written letters 'bout, and told loudmouth Cook and anybody else he reckoned would need to know it, so it weren't no great secret. But I reckoned it made him feel better to announce it to the men lest they forget or wanted to hightail out of it before the whole deal begun in earnest.

October twenty-third. Remember that date. At the time, that was two Sundays distant.

The men was happy, for while the girls slept downstairs and was right comfortable, yours truly included, the men was packed like rats in the upstairs attic. There was fifteen up there in that tiny space sleeping on mattresses, playing chess, exercising, reading books and newspapers. They was squeezed tighter than Dick's hatband, and had to keep quiet all day lest the neighbors or Mrs. Huffmaster hear them. During thunderstorms they jumped up and down and hollered at the top of their lungs to get their feelings out. At night a few even roamed the yard, but they couldn't venture far or go to the village, and they had gotten so they couldn't stand it. They took to squabbling, especially Stevens, who was disagreeable anyway, and throwed up his fists at any slight. The Old Man brung 'em in too early, is what it was, but he had no place to store 'em. He hadn't planned on keeping 'em cooped up there that long. They come in September. By October it'd been a month. When he announced they was ready to make their charge on October twenty-third, that was three more weeks. Seven weeks total. That's a long time.

Kagi mentioned this to him, but the Old Man said, “They've soldiered this far. They can stand another couple of weeks.” He weren't studying them. He had become fixated on the colored.

Everything depended on their coming, and while he tried not to show he was concerned, he was wound up tight on it—and ought to have been. He had written to all his colored friends from Canada who promised to high heaven they was gonna come. Not too many had written back. He set still through the summer and into September, waiting on them. In early October, he got thunderstruck with an idea and announced he and Kagi was gonna ride to Chambersburg to see his old friend, Mr. Douglass. He decided to take me along as well. “Mr. Douglass is fond of you, Onion. He has asked about you in his letters, and you will make a good attraction for him to come join us.”

Now, the Old Man knowed nothing 'bout Mr. Douglass's drinking and fresh ways, chasing me 'round his study and all as he done, and he weren't gonna know, for one thing you learns when you is a girl is that most women's hearts is full of secrets. And this one was gonna stay with me. But I liked the idea of going to Chambersburg, for I had never been there. Plus, anything to get me out the house and away from my true love was a welcome change, for I was heartbroken on the matter of Annie and was happy to get away from her anytime.

We rode up to Chambersburg in evening, early October, in a horse-drawn, open-backed wagon. We got there in a jiffy. It weren't but fourteen miles. First the Captain called on some colored friends up there, Henry Watson, and a doctor named Martin Delany. Mr. Delany had helped ship arms through to the Ferry, apparently at much danger to himself. And I had a feeling that Mr. Watson was the feller the Rail Man had referred to when he said, “I know a feller in Chambersburg who's worth twenty of them blowhards,” for he was a cool customer. He was an average-size man, dark skinned, slender, and smart. He was cutting hair in his barbershop on the colored edge of town when we come up on him. When he seen the Old Man, he shooed the colored out his shop, closed it down, brung us to his house in the back of it, and produced food, drink, and twelve pistols in a bag marked Dry Goods, which he handed the Old Man without a word. Then he handed the Old Man fifty dollars. “This is from the Freemasons,” he said tersely. His missus was standing behind him as he done all this, closed up his shop and so forth, and she piped out, “And their wives.”

“Oh, yes. And their wives.”

He explained to the Old Man that he'd set up the meeting with Mr. Douglass in a rock quarry at the south edge of town. Frederick Douglass was big doings in them days. He couldn't just walk into town without nobody knowing. He was like the colored president.

Mr. Watson gived the Old Man directions on how to get there. The Old Man took 'em, then Watson said, “I am troubled that the colored may not come.” He seemed worried.

The Old Man smiled and patted Mr. Watson on the shoulder. “They will roust, surely, Mr. Watson. Don't fret on it. I will mention your worries to our fearless leader.”

Watson smirked. “I don't know 'bout him. He gived me a mouthful 'bout finding a safe place. Seems he's slanting every which way on the question of your purpose.”

“I will speak to him. Calm his doubts.”

Mrs. Watson was standing behind them as they talked, and she blurted out to the Old Man, “We got five men for your purpose. Five we can trust. Young. Without children or wives.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“One of them,” she managed to choke out, “one of them's our eldest son.”

The Old Man patted her on the back. Just patted her on the back for courage as she cried a little bit. “The Lord will not forsake us. He is behind our charge,” he said. “Take courage.” He gathered up the guns and money they gived him, shook their hands, and left.

Turns out them five fellers never had to come after all, the way it all worked out, for by the time they was geared up to go, the only place for them to head was due north as fast as their legs could carry them. White folks got insane after the Old Man done his bit, they went on a rampage and attacked coloreds for miles. They was scared outta their minds. I reckon in some fashion, they ain't been the same since.

—

I hears that much has been said 'bout the last meeting between the Old Man and Mr. Douglass. I done heard tell of ten or twenty different variations in different books written on the subject, and various men of letters working their talking holes on the matter. Truth be to tell it, there weren't but four grown men there when the whole thing happened, and none lived long enough to tell their account of it, except for Mr. Douglass himself. He lived a long life afterward, and being that he's a speechifier, he explained it every which way other than in a straight line.

But I was there, too, and I seen it differently.

The Old Man came to that meeting disguised as a fisherman, wearing an oilskin jacket and a fisherman's hat. I don't know why. No disguise would'a worked by then, for he was red hot. His white beard and hard stare was plastered on every wanted poster from Pittsburgh to Alabama. In fact, most of the colored in Chambersburg knowed 'bout that supposed secret meeting, for they must've been two or three dozen that turned out in the dead middle of the night as we rolled in the wagon toward the rock quarry. They whispered greetings from the thickets on the side of the road, some held out blankets, boiled eggs, bread, and candles. They said, “God bless you, Mr. Brown” and “Evening, Mr. Brown” and “I'm all for you, Mr. Brown.”

None said they was coming to fight at the Ferry though, and the Old Man didn't ask it of 'em. But he seen how they held him. And it moved him. He was a half hour late for meeting Mr. Douglass on account of having to stop every ten minutes to howdy the colored, accepting food and pennies and whatever they had for him. They loved the Old Man. And their love for him gived him power. It was a kind of last hurrah for him, turned out, for they wouldn't have time to thank him later on, being that after he moved to the business of killing and deadening white folks at breakneck speed, the white man turned on them something vicious and drove lots of 'em clear outta town, guilty and innocent alike. But they juiced him good, and he was fired up by the time we turned into the rock quarry and bumped down the path toward the back of it. “By gosh, Onion, we will push the infernal institution to ruination!” he cried. “God's willing it!”

The quarry had a big, wide, long ditch at the back of it, big enough for a wagon to roll through. We rolled into that thing smooth business, and an old colored man silently pointed us right through it to the back. At the back of it, standing there, was Mr. Douglass himself.

Mr. Douglass brung with him a stout, dark-skinned Negro with fine curly hair. Called himself Shields Green, though Mr. Douglass called him “Emperor.” Emperor held himself that way, too—straight-backed, firm, and quiet.

Mr. Douglass didn't look at me twice, nor did he hardly greet Mr. Kagi. His face was drawed serious, and after them two embraced, he stood there and listened in dead silence as the Old Man gived him the whole deal: the plan, the attack, the colored flocking to his stead, the army hiding in the mountains, white and colored together, holing up in the mountain passes so tight that the federals and militia couldn't get in. Meanwhile Kagi and the Emperor stood quiet. Not a peep was said by either.

When the Old Man was done, Mr. Douglass said, “What have I said to you to make you think such a plan will work? You are walking into a steel trap. This is the United States Armory you are talking about. They will bring federals from Washington, D.C., at the first shot. You will not be there two minutes before they will have you.”

“But you and I has spoken of it for years,” the Old Man said. “I have planned it to the limit. You yourself at one time pointed out it could be done.”

“I said no such thing,” Mr. Douglass said. “I said it
should
be done. But what
should
be and
could
be are two different things.”

The Old Man pleaded with Mr. Douglass to come. “Come with me, Frederick. I need to hive the bees, and with you there, every Negro will come, surely. The slave needs to take his liberty.”

“Yes. But not by suicide!”

They argued 'bout it some more. Finally the Old Man placed his arm around Mr. Douglass. “Frederick. I promise you. Come with me and I will guard you with my life. Nothing will happen to you.”

But, standing there in his frock coat, Mr. Douglass weren't up to it. He had too many highballs. Too many boiled pigeons and meat jellies and buttered apple pies. He was a man of parlor talk, of silk shirts and fine hats, linen suits and ties. He was a man of words and speeches. “I cannot do it, John.”

The Old Man put on his hat and moved to the wagon. “We will take our leave, then.”

“Good luck to you, old friend,” Mr. Douglass said, but the Old Man had already turned away and climbed into the wagon. Me and Kagi followed. Then Mr. Douglass turned to the feller with him, Shields Green. He said, “Emperor, what is your plan?”

Emperor shrugged and said simply, “I guess I'll go with the Old Man.” And without another word, Emperor climbed into the wagon next to Kagi.

The Old Man harred up his horses, backed away from Mr. Douglass, turned that wagon 'round, and took his leave. He never spoke to Frederick Douglass or ever mentioned his name again.

All the way back to Harpers Ferry he was silent. I could feel his disappointment. It seemed to surge out of him. The way he held the traces, drove them horses at half-trot through the night, the moon behind him, the silhouette of his beard against the moon, his beard shaking as the horses clopped along, his thin lips pursed tight, he seemed like a ghost. He was just knocked down. I guess we all has our share of them things, when the cotton turns yellow and the boll weevil eats out your crops and you just shook down with disappointment. His great heartbreak was his friend Mr. Douglass. Mine's was his daughter. There weren't no way for them things to go but for how God made 'em to go, for everything God made, all His things, all His treasures, all the things heaven sent ain't meant to be enjoyed in this world. That's a thing
he
said, not me, for I weren't a believer in them times. But a spell come over me that night, watching him eat that bad news. A little bit of a change. For the Captain took that news across the jibs and brung hisself back to Harpers Ferry knowing he was done in. He knowed he was gonna lose fighting for the Negro,
on account
of the Negro, and he brung hisself to it anyway, for he trusted in the Lord's word. That's strong stuff. I felt God in my heart for the first time at that moment. I didn't tell
him
, for there weren't no use bothering the Old Man with that truth, 'cause if I'd'a done that, I'd'a had to tell him the other part of it, which is that even as I found God, God was talking to me, too, just like He done him, and God the Father was tellin' me to get the hell out. And plus, I loved his daughter besides. I didn't want to throw that on him. I knowed a thing or two right then. Learned it on the spot. Knowed from the first, really, that there weren't no way Mr. Douglass could'a brung hisself to fight a real war. He was a speeching parlor man. Just like I knowed there weren't no way I could'a brung myself to be a real man, with a real woman, and a white woman besides. Some things in this world just ain't meant to be, not in the times we want 'em to, and the heart has to hold it in this world as a remembrance, a promise for the world that's to come. There's a prize at the end of all of it, but still, that's a heavy load to bear.