The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
We mounted up and followed the trail that crossed to the north side of the Marais des Cygnes River, which cuts through Osawatomie. We were passing close to the Brown settlement but not quite at it, when the smell of smoke and hollering suddenly drifted into the wind.
Owen rode ahead to look, then returned at full gallop. “The Missourians is having it out with a bunch of Free State Indians, looks like. Maybe we should run back and fetch Father.”
“No. Let’s join the Indians and attack the rebels,” Weiner said.
“We got orders from our Pa,” Owen said.
Them two argued about it, with Weiner favoring joining the Indians and attacking the redshirts, and Owen in favor of obeying the Old Man’s orders and movin’ on to check on Osawatomie, or at least run back and fetch the Old Man. “By the time we get anywhere, the redshirts will have burned them Indians out and moved into Osawatomie,” Weiner said.
“We got my orders to ride on,” Owen said.
Weiner was itching mad but kept quiet. He was a stout, stubborn man who loved a good fight, and you couldn’t tell him nothing. We rode closer and seen the Free State Indians and Missourians engaging through the thin pine trees of the wooded area in the clearing. It weren’t a big fight, but them Indians defending their free settlement was outnumbered, and when Weiner spied it, he couldn’t help hisself. He rode off, busting through the woods on his horse, leaning low. The other men followed him.
Owen watched them go, frowning. He turned on his horse and said, “Fred, you and Onion ride forward toward Osawatomie and wait outside the settlement while we chase off these Missourians. I’ll be back shortly.” And off he went.
Now, Bob was setting there on his mount and he watched them ride off. And nobody said nothing to him. And he rode off in another direction. Said, “I’m gone,” and took off. That nigger ran off a total of seven times, I believe, from John Brown. Never did get free from the Old Man right off. He had to run all the way back to slavery—to Missouri territory—to get free. But I’ll get to that in a minute.
That left me and Fred setting there on our stolen ponies. Fred looked itching for a fight, too, for he was a Brown, and them Browns liked a good gunfight. But no way in God’s kingdom was I gonna go over there and fight it out with the Missourians. I was done. So I said, just to distract him, “Gosh, this little girl is hungry.”
That snapped him right to me. “Ohhh, I will get you some eatings, Little Onion,” he said. “Nobody lets my Little Onion go hungry, for you is halfway to being growed now, and you needs your rest and victuals so you’ll grow into a great big sissy.” He didn’t mean nothing by it and I took no offense from it, for neither of us knowed what the word really meant, though the leanings of it from what I knowed weren’t flattering. Still, it was the first time he said the word sissy since he first come to knowing of my secret some time back. And I took note of it and was glad to be leaving him before he gived me away.
We rode forward into a patch of thick woods about a mile farther up the trail, then cut off it to follow an old logging trail. It was peaceful and quiet, once we drawed away from the shooting. We crossed a creek and come to where the old logging trail picked up again on the other side and tied our horses off there. Fred pulled off his hardware and got his blanket and hunting things out—beads, dried corn, dried yams. Took him several minutes to unstrap them guns, for he was loaded. Once he done that, he give me a squirrel rifle and took one for hisself. “Normally I wouldn’t use this,” he said, “but there’s enough shooting ’round here so it won’t draw no attention, not if we hurry.”
It weren’t dark yet but evening was coming. We walked about a half mile along the creek bank, with Fred showing me the markings and the likes of where a beaver family was busy making a dam. He said, “I’ll cross the creek and work him from the other side. You come up this way, and when he hears you coming, that’ll flush him out, and we’ll just meet yonder near where the creek bends to get him.”
He crept over on the other side and disappeared in the thickets, while I come up on the other side of it. I was about halfway to where we was to meet when I turned and seen a white man standing about five yards off, holding a rifle.
“What you doing with that rifle, missy?” he said.
“Nuthin’, sir,” I said.
“Put it down, then.”
I done like he said, and he come up on me, snatched my rifle from the ground, and, still holding his rifle on me, said, “Where’s your master?”
“Oh, he’s ’cross the creek.”
“Ain’t you got a sir in your mouth, nigger?”
I was out of practice, see. I hadn’t been ’round normal white folks in months, demanding you call ’em sir and what all. The Old Man didn’t allow none of that. But I righted up. I said, “Yes, sir.”
“What’s your marse’s name?”
I couldn’t think of nothing, so I said, “Fred.”
“What?”
“Just Fred.”
“You call your marse Fred or just Fred or Marse Fred or Fred sir?”
Well, that tied me in knots. I should’a named Dutch, but Dutch seemed a long way away, and I was confused.
“Come with me,” he said.
We started off through the woods away from the creek, and I followed on foot. We hadn’t gotten five steps when I heard Fred holler. “Where you going?”
The man stopped and turned. Fred was standing dead in the middle of the creek, his squirrel gun cocked to his face. He was a sight to see, big as he was, frightening to look at with dead intent, and he weren’t no more than ten yards off.
“She belong to you?” the man said.
“That ain’t your business, mister.”
“You Pro Slave or Free State?”
“You say one more thing, and I’mma deaden where you is. Turn her loose and git your foot up that road.”
Well, Fred could’a burned him, but he didn’t. The feller turned me loose and trotted off, still holding my squirrel rifle.
Fred climbed out of the water and said, “Let’s come off this creek and head back toward where the others is. It’s too dangerous out here. There’s another creek on the other side from where they left.”
We went back to where the horses were tied off, mounted, and rode a half hour or so north, this time to a clearing near where another, bigger creek widened out. Fred said, “We can catch a duck or a pheasant or even a hawk here. It’s gonna be dark soon and they’ll be collecting their last vittles of the day. Stay here, Little Onion, and don’t make a sound.” He dismounted and left, still holding his squirrel rifle.
I stuck close to the spot where he left me and watched him move through the woods. He was smooth business out there, quiet as a deer, not a sound come out of him. He didn’t go far. Maybe thirty yards off, I could see his silhouette in the trees, then he spotted something up in a long birch that stretched skyward. He raised his rifle and let a charge go, and a huge bird fell to the earth.
We run up on it and Fred paled. It was a fat, beautiful catch, black, with a long red-and-white stripe on its back, and a strange, long beak. It was a nice bird, plenty meat, about twenty inches long. Wingspan must’ve been nearly a yard. Big as any bird you’d want to eat. “That’s a hell of a hawk,” I said. “Let’s move away from here just in case somebody heard the shot.” I moved to grab it.
“Don’t touch it!” Fred said. He was pale as a ghost. “That ain’t no hawk. That’s a Good Lord Bird. Lord!”
He sat on the ground, just ripped up. “I never saw it clear. I only had one shot. See that?” He held up the squirrel rifle. “Damn thing. Only got one shot. Don’t take much. Man sins without knowing, and sins come without warning, Onion. The Bible says it. ‘He who sins knows not the Lord. He does not know Him.’ You think Jesus knows my heart?”
I growed tired of his mumbling confusion ’bout the Lord. I was hungry. I was supposed
“I got to pray,” he said. “That’s what Father would do.”
That wouldn’t do. It was almost dark now, and the others hadn’t caught up to us yet, and I worried that the shot would draw somebody. But there ain’t nothing to tell a white man, or any man, who’s made up his mind to a prayerful thing. Fred set there on his knees and prayed just like the Old Man, fluffering and blubbering to the Lord to come to his favor and this and that. He weren’t nearly as good as his Pa in the praying department, being that he weren’t able to attach one thought to the next. The Old Man’s prayers growed up right before your eyes; they was all connected, like stairways running from one floor to another in a house, whereas Fred’s prayers was more like barrels and clothing chests throwed about a fine sitting room. His prayers shot this way and that, cutting hither and yon, and in this way an hour passed. But it was a precious hour which I’ll tell you about in a minute. After he gived up them various mumblings and jumblings he gently picked up the bird, gived it to me, and said, “Hold it for Pa. He’ll pray on it and favor God to fix the whole thing up righteously.”
I grabbed it, and as I done, we heard horses coming fast on the other side of the creek. Fred snapped over his shoulder, “Hide quick!”
I had just enough time to jump into the thickets holding that bird as several horses splashed across the creek, came straight up the bank, and busted through the thickets and to where Fred was standing. They came straight on him.
There wasn’t nowhere to run, for we had tied our horses a quarter mile off, and they’d come from that very direction, which meant they likely found our mounts anyway. I had just enough time to dive deep into the thickets before they sloshed up the bank and marched up to Fred. He stood there smiling, wearing all his hardware, but his seven-shooters wasn’t drawn. The only gun he had in his hand was that squirrel gun, and it was spent.
They sloshed up the bank right to him quick as you can tell it. There were maybe eight of ’em, redshirts, and riding in the lead of ’em was Rev. Martin, the feller Fred drawed on back at the Old Man’s camp.
Now Fred was thick, but he weren’t an altogether fool. He knowed how to survive in the woods and do lots of outdoor things. But he weren’t a quick thinker, for if he was, he’d’a drawed his heater. But two or three thoughts at once was more than he could handle. Plus he didn’t recognize the Reverend right off. That cost him.
The Reverend was riding with two men on either side of him bearing six-shooters and the rest behind him heavily armed. The Rev hisself wore his two shiny pearl-handled numbers on his belt, which he likely stole off some dead Free Stater, for he hadn’t had them things before.
He rode right up to Fred while his men surrounded Fred, cutting off his escape.
But still Fred didn’t get it. Fred said, “Morning.” He was smiling. That was his nature.
“Morning,” the Reverend said.
Then Fred’s mind checked itself. You could see his head cock to the side, something whirring in there. He stared at the Reverend. He was trying to figure out whether he knowed him.
He said, “I know you . . . ,” and quick as you can tell it, without a word, the Reverend, setting atop his horse, drawed his shooter and took him. Blasted Fred right in the chest, buttered him with lead and powder, and the blessed God, the ground caught him. Fred twitched a few times and breathed his last.
“That’ll teach you to draw on me, you apple-headed, horse-thieving, nigger-loving bastard,” the Reverend said. He come down off his horse and took every single gun Fred was wearing. He turned to the others. “I got me one of Brown’s boys,” he said proudly. “Got the biggest one.”
Then he throwed his eyes to the woods ’round him, where I was hiding. I held tight to where I was. Didn’t move an inch. He knowed I was close.
“Look for the second rider,” he barked. “There was two horses.”
Just then another feller spoke up, a feller sitting on a horse behind the Rev. “You ain’t had to shoot him cold-blooded like that,” he said.
Rev. Martin turned to the man. It was the feller that had caught me in the woods just a while before. He was still holding my squirrel gun, and he weren’t pleased.
“He would’a returned the favor,” the Reverend said.
“We could’a exchanged him for one of ours,” the feller said.
“You wanna change out prisoners or fight a war?” the Rev said.
“He could’a aired me out an hour ago back down the creek there and he didn’t,” the man said.
“He was Free State!”
“I don’t give an owl’s ass if he was George Washington. The man didn’t draw on you and he’s deader’n a turnip. You said you was looking for a cattle rustler and nigger thieves. He ain’t no cattle rustler. And the nigger he had weren’t nobody’s nigger I know. What kind’a war rules is we fighting under here?”
This started a hank between ’em, with several taking this feller’s side and others holding with the Reverend. Several minutes gone by as they wrangled, and by the time they finished, dusk had come. Finally Rev. Martin said, “Brown won’t tarry when he finds his boy dead out here. You wanna wait till he comes?” That done it. That silenced ’em all, for they knowed there was consequences to the whole bit. They took off on their horses without another word.
I come out the clearing in the dusk, and took a long look at my old friend in the growing darkness. His face was clear. He still had a little smile on his face. I can’t say whether his superstition about that Good Lord Bird done him in or not, but I felt low, standing there holding that dumb bird. I wondered if I should wander someplace and fetch a shovel with the aim of burying Fred and the bird together, since he called it an angel and all, but I quit that idea and decided to run off instead. Weren’t nothing to this life of being free and fighting slavery, was how I thunk of it. I was so bothered by the whole bit I can’t tell it. I didn’t know what to do. The idea of running back home to Dutch and trying to work it out, that worked in there, too, truth be to tell it, and I aimed on seeing to that, for Dutch was all I knowed outside the Old Man. But to be honest, I was broke up by the way the whole deal added up, me running ’round as a girl and not knowing what to do. I couldn’t think of nothing to do at the moment, and as usual, the whole business just wore me out. So I set on the ground next to Fred and curled into a ball and fell asleep next to him, holding that Good Lord Bird. And that’s how the Old Man found me the next day.
9
A Sign from God
I woke up to the sound of cannon fire and the Old Man standing before me. “What happened, Little Onion?”
I gently set the Good Lord Bird on Fred’s chest and explained to him who done the deed. He listened, his face grim. Behind him the sound of gunfire and artillery cannon boomed and sent grapeshot slinging through the woods right over his head. Me and Fred had wandered right near Osawatomie, and the fight that Weiner and them had joined in had spilled over into there just as Weiner said it would, with blasting full out. The men ducked low on their horses and held on while the grape whipped past, but none of ’em moved off their mount as the Old Man stood over me. I noted Jason and John among them, but nobody weren’t explaining how they got there and why the Old Man weren’t in federal prison. They was all hot, staring at Fred, especially his brothers. He was still wearing his little cap, with the Good Lord Bird now perched on his chest where I had rested it.
“Is you gonna find the Reverend?” I asked.
“We ain’t got to,” the Old Man said. “He has found us. Stay with Fred till we get back.” He mounted his horse and nodded toward the sound of the fighting. “Let’s go!”
They dashed toward Osawatomie. The town weren’t but a short distance off, and I cut through the woods a few steps to a high knoll, where I could
From where I was, I could see the town. The bridge crossing the Marais des Cygnes River leading to Osawatomie was swarming with rebels who had hauled two cannons over it. A few hundred yards off was the first cannon, which was perched downstream, along a grassy ridge, where you could wade across the water. There were several Free Staters firing on our side, trying to make it across there, but rebels on the other side was holding them off, and every time a group of Free Staters got close in, that cannon cleaned them out.
The Old Man and his boys busted right through them and charged down the hill and into the shallow water like wild men. They come up on the other side firing, and just like that sent the rebels on the other bank scrambling.
This fight was hotter than Black Jack. The town was in a state of panic and there were women and children about, scattering every which way. Several homesteaders was desperately trying to douse the fires on their homes, for the Reverend’s riders had torched several houses, and the Rev’s men shot them as they tried to put out the flames, which gived the busy homesteaders one less task to do, being that they was deadened. Altogether the Free Staters in town was badly organized. The Missourians’ second cannon was on the other side of town, blasting away, and between that one barking on one end of town, and the other barking at the riverbank on the other end, they was cleaning up the Free Staters.
The Old Man and his men charged out the water with guns blazing and cut to the right toward the first cannon that was downstream. The Free Staters who couldn’t cross on account of that cannon took courage when the Old Man’s army come and runned past them to take the bank, but the rebels at the cannon held. The Old Man’s men hacked and shot their way halfway to the cannon working alongside the creek, which ridged up as it reached the cannon. They pushed the enemy back, but more enemy arrived on horses, dismounted, regrouped, and swung that cannon to bear on them. That thing blowed off to deadly effect and halted the Old Man’s charge cold. Sent grapeshot whistling into the trees and cut down several Free Staters, who fell down the riverbank into the creek and didn’t get up. The Old Man mounted a charge again, but the cannon sent another volley that sent the Old Man and his men backward again, this time several falling halfway down the riverbank. And this time the rebels leaped out from behind the cannon and charged.