The Good Lord Bird (37 page)

Stevens didn't want to do it. “The time to move into the mountains was about noon,” he said. “Yesterday.”

“Have faith, Lieutenant. The game is not up yet.”

Stevens grumbled and roughly grabbed a hostage and nodded at young Watson, who dutifully followed. The engine house door was actually three double doors, and they had roped them all shut. They unwrapped the rope from the center door, slowly pushed it open, and walked out.

The Old Man put his face to the window. “We is negotiating hostages in exchange for safe passage of my Negro army,” he shouted. Then he added, “In good faith.”

He was answered by a blast of grape that drove him back from the window and knocked him clear onto the floor. The Frederick the Great sword which he'd stuck in his belt, the one we'd captured from Colonel Washington, clattered away.

The Old Man weren't badly wounded nor dead, but by the time he dusted himself off and got his sword back in his belt and went back to look out the window, Stevens lay on the ground outside badly wounded, and Watson was gut shot, banging desperately on the door of the engine house with a death wound.

The men opened the door for Watson, who came tumbling in there, spilling blood and guts. He lay on the floor, and the Old Man went over to him. He looked at his son, gut shot and moaning, just stood over him. It hurt him. You could see it. He shook his head.

“They just don't understand,” he said.

He knelt over his son and felt his head, then his neck pulse. Watson's eyes was shut, but he was still breathing.

“You done your duty well, son.”

“Thank you, Father,” Watson said.

“Die like a man,” he said.

“Yes, Father.”

It would take Watson ten hours, but he done just as his Father asked him to.

Getting Gone

N
ight came. The militia had retreated again, this time with their wounded and with Stevens, who was still living. They lit lanterns outside and it got deathly quiet. All the shouts and hollering outside was pushed across the street and gone. The mob was moved away from the armory gates. Some kind of new order had come over out there. Something else was going on. The Old Man ordered the Emperor to climb up to the hole in the roof blowed out by the fallen timber to take a look, which he done.

He came back down and said, “The federals is out there, from Washington, D.C. I seen their flag and their uniforms.” The Old Man shrugged.

They sent over a man, who walked over to one of those wooden doors that was lashed shut. He stuck his eye in a chink hole in the door and knocked. He called out, “I want Mr. Smith.” That was the name the Old Man used at the Kennedy farm when he went around in disguise at the Ferry.

The Old Man came to the door but didn't open it. “What is it?”

The big eye peered inside. “I am Lieutenant Jeb Stuart of the United States Cavalry. I have orders here from my commander, Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee. Colonel Lee is outside the gates and demands your surrender.”

“I demands freedom for the Negro race of people that is living in bondage in this land.”

Stuart might as well have been singing to a dead hog. “What is it you want at this direct moment, sir, in addition to that demand?” he asked.

“Nothing else. If you can cede that immediately, we will withdraw. But I don't think it's in your power to do so.”

“Who am I speaking with? Can you show your face?”

The wood door had a panel in it for seeing. The Old Man slid it back. Stuart blinked a moment in surprise, then stood back and scratched his head. “Why, ain't you Old Osawatomie Brown? Who gived us so much trouble in Kansas Territory?”

“I am.”

“You are surrounded by twelve hundred federal troops. You have to surrender.”

“I will not. I will exchange the prisoners I have in return for the safe passage of me and my men across the B&O Bridge. That is a possibility.”

“That cannot be arranged,” Stuart said.

“Then our business is done.”

Stuart stood there a moment, disbelieving.

“Well, go on, then,” the Old Man said. “Our business is finished, unless you yourself can free the Negro from bondage.” He slammed the porthole shut.

Stuart went back to the gate and disappeared. But inside the engine house, the hostages begun to sense the change in things. The bottom rail had been on top the whole night, but the minute they got a sense the Old Man was doomed, them slave owners started chirping out their views. There was five of 'em setting along the wall together, including Colonel Washington, and he started chirping at the Captain, which gived the rest courage to start in on him also.

“You're committing treason,” he said.

“You'll hang, old man,” said another.

“You ought to give yourself up. You'll get a fair trial,” said another.

The Emperor strode over to them. “Shut up,” he barked.

They shrank back, except for Colonel Washington. He was snippy to the end. “You're gonna look good ducking through a hangman's noose, you impudent nigger.”

“If that's the case, then I'll spot you,” the Emperor said, “and blast you now in spite of redemption.”

“You'll do no such thing,” the Old Man said. The Captain stood by the window, alone, staring out thoughtfully. He spoke to the Emperor without looking at him. “Emperor, come over here.”

The Emperor came over to the corner and the Old Man placed his arms around the colored man's shoulders and whispered to him. Whispered to him quite a long time. From the back, I saw the Emperor's shoulders bunch up and he shook his head several times in “no” fashion. The Old Man whispered to him some more, in a firm fashion, then left him to watch the window again, leaving the Emperor to himself.

The Emperor suddenly seemed spent. He drifted away from the Old Man and stopped in the farthest corner of the engine house, away from the prisoners. He seemed, for the first time, downright glum. The wind gone right out of him at that moment, and he stared out the window into the night.

It growed quiet now.

Up to that point there was so much going on in the engine house, there weren't no time to think of what it all meant. But now that darkness fell and it was quiet outside the armory and inside it too, there was time to think of consequences. There was 'bout twenty-five colored in that room. Of that number I reckon at least nine, ten, maybe more, was gonna hang surely and knowed it: Phil, the Coachman, three Negro women, and four Negro men, all of them was enthusiastic helping the Old Man's army, loading weapons, chinking out holes, organizing ammunition. The white hostages in that room would squeal on them surely. Only God knows what their names was, but their masters knowed 'em. They was in trouble, for they got right busy fighting for their freedom once they figured what the game was. They was doomed. Weren't no bargaining left for them. Of the rest, I'd say maybe half of that number, five or six, helped but was less enthusiastic 'bout fighting. They done it but had to be ordered to do it. They knowed their masters was watching and was never enthusiastic. And then the last of them, that last five, they wouldn't hang, for they sucked up to their masters to the limit. They didn't do nothing but what they was forced to do. A couple even fell asleep during the fighting.

Now that the thing was swinging the other way, them last five was setting pretty. But the ones in the middle, them that was on the fence and had half a chance to live, they swung back toward their masters something terrible. They sucked up to 'em full stride, angling to get back to their good graces. One of 'em, a feller named Otis, said, “Marse, this is a bad dream.” His marse ignored him. Didn't say a word to him. I can't blame that Negro for sucking up the way he done. He knowed he was dead up a hog's ass if his master put a bad word out on him, and the master weren't playing his hold card. Not yet. They wasn't out the woods yet.

The rest of the Negroes that was doomed, they watched the Emperor. He come to be kind of the leader to them, for they'd seen his courage through the night, and their eyes followed him after the Old Man spoke to him. He stood at the window, staring out, thinking. It was pitch-black in there, you couldn't see a thing 'cept what little light the moon let into the portholes, for the Old Man wouldn't let anyone light a lantern. The Emperor just stared out, then he paced a little, then stared out some more. Coachman, Phil, and the other Negroes who was sure to hang followed him with their eyes. They all followed him, for they believed in his courage.

After a little while the Emperor called them over to his corner, and they bunched around him. I came, too, for I knowed whatever punishment awaited them was mine's, too. You could feel their despair as they gathered around him close and listened, for he spoke in a whisper.

“Just before light, the Old Man's gonna start a shoot-up out front and let the colored out the back window. If you want out, you can climb out the back window when the shooting starts, make for the river, and be gone.”

“What 'bout my wife?” the Coachman asked. “She's still in bondage at the colonel's house.”

“I can't tell you what to do 'bout that,” the Emperor said. “But if you is caught, make up a lie. Say you was a hostage. You gonna swing for sure otherwise.”

He was silent, letting this sink in.

“The Old Man's giving us an out,” he said. “Take it or not. He and those that's left got some tow balls dipped in oil which he'll fire. He'll throw them out into the yard to make a lot of smoke, then shoot behind it. You can do your best to get gone out the back window and over the back wall when that happens. Whoever here wants to try it can do it.”

“Is you gonna try it?” the Coachman asked.

The Emperor didn't answer. “Y'all oughta sleep some,” he said.

They all reckoned they would, and retired to sleep for a couple of hours, for no one had slept in more than forty hours hence. That raid started on a Sunday. It was now Monday night going to Tuesday.

Most of the room slept, but I couldn't, for I knowed what was coming, too. The Emperor didn't sleep, neither. He stood by the window, staring out, listening to Watson groaning his death moans. Of all the coloreds in the Old Man's army, the Emperor weren't my favorite. I didn't know him that well, but he weren't short on courage. I went over to him.

“You gonna make a try for freedom, Emperor?”

“I am free,” he said.

“You mean you a free Negro?”

He smiled in the dark light. I could see his white teeth, but he didn't say more.

“I'm wondering,” I said, “if there's some way I can't swing.”

He looked at me and smirked. I could see his face by the light of the moon through the porthole window. He was a dark man, chocolate skinned, with wide lips, curly hair, and a smooth face. I could see his silhouette. His head stood still in the window, and the breeze that blowed off his face seemed cool and refreshing. It was like the wind seemed to part around his face. He leaned over to me and said softly, “You don't get it, do ya?”

“I get it.”

“Then why you asking questions to answers you already know? They gonna hang every colored in here. Hell, if you even looked at them white hostages funny you'll hang—and you done more than that, surely.”

“They don't know me,” I said.

“They know you sure as God's standing over the world. They know you just as well as they know me. You ought to take it standing up.”

I swallowed hard. I had to do it. Couldn't stand it, but I had to do it.

“What if one of us is different from what they know?” I whispered.

“Ain't no difference between us when it come to the white man.”

“Yes, there is,” I said. I grabbed his hand and stuck it right on my privates in the dark. Just to let him touch my secrets. I felt him take in his breath, then he snatched his hand back.

“They don't know me,” I said.

There was a long pause. Then the Emperor chuckled. “Good God. That ain't hardly a conflageration,” he said.

“A what?” For the Emperor couldn't read, and he come up with words that didn't make no sense.

“A conflageration. A parade. You ain't got enough fruit there to squeeze,” he snorted. “You'd have to work all night just to find them peanuts,” and he chortled in the dark some more. He just couldn't stop chuckling.

That weren't funny to me. But I'd already thunk it through. I needed some boy clothes. There was but two in the engine house whose clothes I could take, and no one would notice. A colored slave who got shot and died that previous afternoon, and Watson, the Old Man's boy, who was not quite dead but almost there. The slave was too big for me, plus he was hit by a ball in the chest and his clothes was soiled with his blood. But they was nice clothes—he was obviously an inside slave—and they would have to do. Blood or not.

“I wonder if you do me a favor,” I said. “If I could just get a pair of pantaloons and shirt off that feller there,” I whispered, nodding at the slave, whose silhouette could be seen in the moonlight. “Maybe with your help, I could slip them on and move out with the rest of the colored. When the Old Man lets us out.”

The Emperor thought 'bout it a long moment.

“Don't you wanna die like a man?”

“That's just it,” I said. “I'm but fourteen. How can I die like a man if I ain't lived like one yet? I ain't had nature's way with a girl once. I ain't yet kissed a girl. I think a feller ought to have the chance to be himself at least one time in this world, 'fore he moves on to the next. If not just to praise His name as his own self, rather than as somebody else. For I done found the Lord.”

There was a long silence. The Emperor rubbed his jaw a moment. “Set here,” he said.

He went over and woke the Coachman and Phil and pulled them into a corner. There was some whispering between the three, and by God if I didn't hear them chortling and laughing. I couldn't see them in the dark but I could hear them, and I couldn't get past that. Them three laughing at me, so I said, “What's so funny!”

I heard the footsteps of the Emperor's boots coming to me. I felt a pair of pantaloons shoved in my face in the dark. And a shirt.

“If them federals find you out, they'll splatter you all over the creek. But it'd cause a regular frolic in here among us if you was to get out clear.”

The shirt was huge, and the pants, when I put them on, were even bigger. “Whose pants is these?” I asked.

“The Coachman's.”

“What's the Coachman gonna wear? He's gonna run out the window in his drawers?”

“What do you care?” he said. For the first time I noticed he was shirtless. “He ain't going nowhere. Neither is Phil. And here”—he stuffed in my hand a worn-out old feather—“this is the last of the Good Lord Bird. The Old Man gived it to me. His last feather. I'm the only one he gived one to, I think.”

“I already got my feather. I don't need yours, Emperor.”

“Keep it.”

“What 'bout these pants? They're huge.”

“You fit 'em good enough. The white man don't care what you wear. You just another shabby nigger to him. Just play it smart. At dawn, when the Captain gives the order, we'll fire them tow balls, throw a couple out the front and back, and send a few charges out the window, and then you get gone out that window quick. Them white folks ain't gonna pay you no more attention than they do a hole in the ground if you can get clear of the Ferry. Tell 'em you belongs to Mr. Harold Gourhand. Mr. H. Gourhand, got it? He's a white man lives near the Kennedy farm. The Coachman knows him. He says Gourhand's got a slave boy 'bout your age and size, and both of 'em's out of town.”