The Good Lord Bird (7 page)

“I know it,” I said.

“My brother John who run off, we never found him. My brother Jason, too. We can't find neither.”

“Where you think they gone?”

“Wherever they are,” he said glumly. “We gonna fetch 'em.”

“Do we got to?”

He glanced furtively at his Pa, then sighed and looked away. “I missed you, Little Onion. Where'd you run off to?”

I was about to tell him when a horse and rider charged into camp. The rider cornered the Old Man and spoke to him, and a few moments later, the Captain called us to order, standing in the middle of the camp by the fire while the men gathered around.

“Good news, men. My old enemy Captain Pate has a posse raiding homes on the Santa Fe Road and planning to attack Lawrence. He got Jason and John with him. They are likely to drop 'em at Fort Leavenworth for imprisonment. We going after them.”

“How big is his army?” Owen asked.

“A hundred fifty to two hundred, I'm told,” Old Man Brown said.

I looked around. I counted twenty-three among us, including me.

“We only got ammo for a day's fight,” Owen said.

“Doesn't matter.”

“What we gonna use when we run out? Harsh language?”

But the Old Man was already movin', grabbing his saddlebags. “Lord's riding on high, men! Remember the army of Zion! Mount up!”

“Tomorrow's Sunday, Father,” Owen said.

“So what?”

“What say we wait till Monday and catch Pate then. He's likely headed to Lawrence. He won't attack Lawrence on a Sunday.”

“In fact, that's
exactly
when he'll attack,” the Old Man said, “knowing I'm a God-fearing man and likely to rest on the Lord's day. We'll ride up by way of Prairie City and cut him off at Black Jack. Let's pray, men.”

Well, there weren't no stopping him. The men gathered around him in a circle. The Old Man dropped to his knees, stretched out his hands, palms toward the sky, looking like Moses of old, his beard angling down like a bird's nest. He commenced to praying.

Thirty minutes later Fred lay on the ground snoring, Owen stared into space, and the others milled about, smoking and doodling with saddlebags and scrawling letters home while the Old Man carried on, hollering up to the Anointed One with his eyes closed, till Owen finally piped out, “Pa, we got to ride! Jason and John is prisoner and headed to Fort Leavenworth, remember?”

That broke the spell. The Old Man, still on his knees, opened his eyes, irritated. “Every time I gets to the balance of my words of thanks to my Savior, I gets interrupted,” he grumbled, getting to his feet. “But I expect the God of Gods has understanding about the patience of the young, who don't favors Him to the necessary ends so as to give Him proper thanks for blessings which He giveth so freely.”

With that, we saddled up and rode due north, to meet Captain Pate and his posse, and I was full-blown back in his army and the business of being a girl again.

Black Jack

L
ike most things the Old Man planned out, the attack against Captain Pate's Sharpshooters didn't work out the way he drawed it up. For one thing, the Old Man always got bad information. We rode out against Captain Pate on a Saturday in October. Come December, we still hadn't found him . . . Everywhere we went, the story changed. We'd roll toward Palmyra and a settler on the trail would holler, “There's a fight with the rebels yonder in Lawrence,” and off we'd go toward Lawrence, only to find the fight two days past and the rebels gone. A few days later a woman on her porch would exclaim, “I seen Captain Pate over near Fort Leavenworth,” and the Old Man would say, “We have him now! Go men!” and off we'd bust out again, full of pluck, riding two days, only to find out it weren't true. Back and forth we went, till the men was plumb wore out. We went like that all the way into February, the Old Man spoiling for a fight, and getting none.

We picked up another dozen or so Free Staters this way though, wandering around southern Kansas near the Missouri border, till we growed to about thirty men. We was feared, but the truth is, the Pottawatomie Rifles weren't nothing but a bunch of hungry boys with big ideas running 'round looking for boiled grits and sour bread to stuff their faces with in late February. Winter come full on then, and it growed too cold to fight. Snow blanketed the prairie. Ice formed eighteen inches deep. Water froze in pitchers overnight. Huge trees, covered with icicles, crackled like giant skeletons. Those in the Old Man's army who could stand it stayed in camp, huddled under the tent. The rest, including me and the Old Man and his sons, spent the winter keeping warm wherever we could. It's one thing to say you's an abolitionist, but riding for weeks on the plains in winter, with no spare victuals, you weeding a bad hoe for satisfaction to test a man's principles that way. Some of the Old Man's men was turned toward slavery by the time winter was over.

But truth be to tell it, it weren't killing me to be with the Old Man. Lazy slob that I was, I growed used to being outside, riding the plains looking for ruffians, stealing from Pro Slavers, and not having no exact job, for the Old Man changed the rules for girls in his army after he seen how I'd been put to scrubbing back and forth. He announced, “Henceforth every man in his company has to shift for himself. Wash your own shirts. Do your own mending. Fix your own plate.” He made it clear that every man was there to fight slavery, not get his washing done by the only girl in the outfit who happened to be colored. Fighting slavery is easy when you ain't got that load. Fact is, it was pretty easy altogether, unless you was the slave, course, for you mostly rode around and talked up how wrong the whole deal was, then you stole whatever you could from the Pro Slavers, and off you went. You weren't waking up regular to cart the same water, chop the same wood, shine the same boots, and hear the same stories every day. Slave fighting makes you a hero, a legend in your own mind, and after a while the thought of going back to Dutch's to be sold down to New Orleans, and barbering and shining shoes and my skin smacking against that rough old potato sack I wore versus the nice soft, warm wool dress I had begun to favor, not to mention the various buffalo hides I covered myself with, growed less and less sweet. I weren't for being a girl, mind you. But there was certain advantages, like not having to lift nothing heavy, and not having to carry a pistol or rifle, and fellers admiring you for being tough as a boy, and figuring you is tired when you is not, and just general niceness in the way folks render you. Course in them days colored girls had to work harder than white girls, but that was by normal white folks' standards. In Old Brown's camp,
everyone
around him worked, colored or white, and fact is, he busied all of us so much that at times slavery seemed no different than being free, for we was all on a schedule: The Old Man woke everyone at four a.m. to pray and mumble and blubber over the Bible for an hour. Then he put Owen on me to teach me letters. Then he throwed Fred on me to teach me the way of the woods, then he throwed me back to Owen again, who showed me how to throw a bullet into a breechloader and fire it. “Every soul has got to learn to defend God's word,” the Old Man said. “And these is all defenses of it. Letters, defense, survival. Man, woman, girl, boy, colored or white, and Indians, needs to know these things.” He teached me himself how to make baskets and bottom chairs. How you do it is simple: You take white oak, split it, and then it's just a manner of folding. Inside a month I could make any kind of basket you wanted: musket basket, clothes basket, feed basket, fish basket—I caught catfish big and wide across as your hand. On long afternoons while we waited for the enemy to cross the trail, Fred and I went and made sorghum syrup from sugar maple trees. There weren't nothing to it. You sap it out the tree, pour it in a pan, fire it over a fire, skim them skimmings off the top with a stick or fork, and you done. Most of your job is to put the syrup away from the skimmings on the top. When you cook it right, you got the best sugar there is.

I come to enjoy that first winter with the Old Man's army, especially with Fred. He was as good a friend as a feller—or a girl who was really a feller—could want. He was more like a child than a man, which meant we fit together well. We never run short on playthings. The Old Man's army stole everything from the Pro Slavers a child could want: fiddles, saltshakers, mirrors, tin cups, a wooden rocking horse. What we couldn't keep, we used for target practice and blasted up. It weren't a bad life, and I growed used to it and forgot all about running off.

Spring came on like it always did, and one morning the Old Man went out scouting by himself, looking for Pate's Sharpshooters, and come back driving a big schooner wagon instead. I was setting by the campfire, making a fish basket when he rolled in. I looked up at the wagon as it rolled past and saw it had a busted-up back wheel with the hardwood brake shorn off. I said, “I knows that wagon,” and no sooner had I said it than Nigger Bob and five Negroes tumbled out the back.

He seen me right off, and while the rest tumbled out to follow the Old Man to the campfire to eat, he cornered me.

“I see you is still working your show,” he said.

I had changed over the winter. I had been out some. Seen a little bit. And I weren't the meek little thing he had seen the fall before. “I thought you said you weren't going to join this army,” I said.

“I come to live large like you,” he said happily. He glanced 'round, seen nobody was close, and then whispered, “Do they know you're . . . ?” and he done his hand in a wiggly way.

“They don't know nothing,” I said.

“I won't tell,” he said. But I didn't like him having that on me.

“You plan on riding with us?” I asked.

“Not hardly. The Captain said he had but a few things to do and then we's gone to freedom.”

“He's riding against Captain Pate's Sharpshooters.”

That floored Bob. “Shit. When?”

“Whenever he finds 'em.”

“Count me out. There's two hundred in Pate's army. Probably more. Pate got so many rebels wanting to join you'd think he was selling Calpurnia's flapjacks. He's turning 'em away. I thought Old Brown was working the freedom train. Riding north. Ain't that what you said last fall?”

“I don't know what I said then. I don't remember.”

“That's what you said. Said he was riding for freedom. Gosh darnit. What other surprises is around here? What's his plan?”

“I don't know. He don't tell me. Whyn't you ask him?”

“He favors you. You ought to ask.”

“I ain't gonna ask him them things,” I said.

“Ain't you angling on freedom? What you routin' 'round here for then?”

I didn't know. Up till then, escaping back to Dutch's was in my plans. Once that changed, it was day-to-day living. I never was one to look too far past angling meat and gravy and biscuits down my throat. Bob, on the other hand, mostly had a family to consider, I reckon, and he had his mind on the freedom line, which weren't my problem. I growed used to the Old Man and his sons. “I reckon being practiced on a sword and a pistol is what I been learning 'round here,” I said. “And reading the Bible. They do lots of that, too.”

“I ain't come here to read nobody's Bible and fight nobody's slavery,” Bob said. “I come to get myself out from under it.” He looked at me and frowned. “I guess you don't have to worry about it, the way you playing it, being a girl and all.”

“You the one that told me to do it.”

“I ain't tell you to get me kilt!”

“You come here 'cause of me?”

“I come here 'cause you said the word ‘freedom.' Sheesh!” He was mad. “My wife and children's still in bondage. How I'm gonna plan on earning money to buy them if he's monkeying 'round, fighting the Missourians?”

“You didn't ask him?”

“There weren't no asking,” Bob said. “My marse and I was rolling to town. I heard a noise. Next thing I know, he stepped out the woods holding a rifle in marse's face. He said, ‘I'm taking your wagon and freeing your colored man.' He didn't ask me if I wanted to be free. Course I come along 'cause I had to. But I thought he was gonna free me to the north. Nobody said nothing about fighting nobody.”

That was the thing. The Old Man done the same to me. He reckoned every colored wanted to fight for his freedom. It never occurred to him that they would feel any other way.

Bob stood there, fuming. He was hot. “I done gone from the frying pan to the fire. Captain Pate's rebels is gonna burn us up!”

“Maybe the Captain'll find somebody else to fight. He ain't the only abolitionist 'round these parts.”

“He's the only one that counts. Cousin Herbert said there's two companies of U.S. dragoons combing this country, looking for this outfit. That's U.S. Army, I'm talking. From back east. That ain't no posse. They gonna blame us for whatever he does when he's caught, you can bet on it.”

“What we done wrong?”

“We here, ain't we? If we's caught, you can bet whatever they do to him, they'll double the potion on the niggers. We'll be in deep grease. You never thunk that, did you?”

“You didn't sing that song when you told me to run with him.”

“You didn't ask it,” Bob said. He got up, looking toward the campfire, where the smell of food beckoned. “Fight for freedom,” he said, sucking his teeth. “Sheesh.” He turned and spotted the bevy of stolen horses tied to the outer barrier, where several scouts stood. Looked to be at least twenty horses there and a couple of wagons to boot.

He looked at them and back to me. “Whose horses is those?”

“He always got a bunch of stolen horses around.”

“I aim to take one of them and get gone. You can come if you want.”

“Where to?”

“Jump across the Missouri, then find Tabor, Iowa. They say there's a gospel train there. Underground Railroad. That'll run you north to Canada. Distant country.”

“You can't run a horse that far.”

“We'll take two, then. The Old Man won't mind one or two missing.”

“I wouldn't snatch a horse from him.”

“He ain't gonna live long, child. He's crazy. He thinks the nigger's equal to the white man. He showed that on the way here. Calling the coloreds in the wagon ‘mister' and ‘missus' and so forth.”

“So what? He does that all the time.”

“They gonna kill him for being so dumb. He ain't right in his mind. Ain't you seen that?”

Well, he had a point, for the Old Man weren't normal. For one thing, he rarely ate, and he seemed to sleep mostly atop his horse. He was old compared to his men, wrinkled and wiry, but nearly as strong as every one of them except Fred. He marched for hours without stopping, his shoes full of holes, and was overall gruff and hard generally. But at night he seemed to soften some. He'd pass Frederick sleeping in his roll, lean over, and tuck the giant's blanket roll tightly with the gentleness of a woman. There weren't a dumb beast under God's creation—cow, ox, goat, mule, or sheep—that he couldn't calm or tame to touch. He had nicknames for everything. Table was “floor tacker,” walking was “tricking.” Good was “dowdy.” And I was “the Onion.” He sprinkled most of his conversation with Bible talk, “thees” and “thous” and “takest” and so forth. He mangled the Bible more than any man I ever knowed, including my Pa, but with a bigger purpose, 'cause he knowed more words. Only when he got hot did the Old Man quote the Bible exact to the letter, and then it was trouble, for it meant someone was about to walk to the quit line. He was a lot to deal with, Old Brown.

“Maybe we ought to warn him,” I said.

“'Bout what?” Bob said. “About dying for niggers? He made that choice. I ain't getting into no hank with no rebels about slavery. We'll be colored when the day's done, no matter how the cut comes or goes. These fellers can go back to being Pro Slavers anytime they want.”

“If you stealing from the Old Man, I don't want to know about it,” I said.

“Just keep shut 'bout me,” he said, “and I'll keep quiet 'bout you.” And with that he got up and headed over to the campfire to eat.

—

I decided to warn the Old Man about Bob the next morning, but no sooner did I consider it than he marched into the middle of camp and shouted, “We found 'em boys! We found Pate! He's close by. Mount up! On to Black Jack!”

The men tumbled out of their rolls, grabbed their weapons, and staggered to their horses, tripping over pots and pans and junk, getting ready to roll outta camp, but the Old Man halted 'em and said, “Wait a minute. I got to pray.”

He done it quick—twenty minutes, which was fast for him, sawing away at God for His goodwill, advice, benefit, and so forth, while the men stood around, jumping on one foot to keep warm, which gived Bob a chance to prowl the camp and arm himself with every little bit of foodstuff that was left, which weren't much. I seen him on the outside of the circle, nobody bothering him, for the Old Man's camp was full of every abolitionist and colored who needed a gun or a hot meal. The Captain didn't mind it a bit, for while he was big on stealing swords, guns, pikes, and horses from Pro Slavers, he didn't mind anyone in his camp helping themselves to one of them things, so long as they was all for the good cause of the abolitionists. Still, Bob rooting around a bunch of rifles lined against a tree while everyone else was looking for food perked his interest, for he thought Bob wanted to arm himself. After his prayer, while the men broke camp and placed pikes, Sharps rifles, and broadswords in a wagon, the Captain marched over to Bob and said, “Good sir, I see you is ready to strike a blow for your own freedom!”