The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
26
The Things Heaven Sent
Not 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. ?
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.
27
Escape
Things was a hot mess the moment we hit the door of the farm back at the Ferry. Time we walked in, the Captain’s son Oliver and Annie were waiting at the door for him. Annie said, “Mrs. Huffmaster called in the sheriff.”
“What?”
“Says she saw one of the coloreds in the yard. She went to the sheriff and denounced us as abolitionists. Brung the sheriff by.”
“What happened?”
“I told him you’d be back Monday. He tried to get in but I wouldn’t let him. Then Oliver came down from upstairs and told him to get off. He was angry when he left. He gave me a mouthful ’bout abolitionists running slaves north. He said, ‘If your Pa’s running a mining company, where’s he mining? If he’s got to move his mining goods, where the cows and the wagons he’s using for that purpose?’ He says he’s coming back with a bunch of deputies to search the house.”
“When?”
“Saturday next.”
The Old Man thunk over it a moment.
“Was one of our men in the yard? One of the Negroes?” Kagi asked.
“It doesn’t matter. Just wait a minute,” the Old Man said.
He lingered a long moment before speaking, standing there, swaying a little. He looked nearly insane by then. His beard flowed nearly to his belt buckle. His suit was ragged to near pieces. He still wore the fisherman’s hat from his disguise, and beneath it his face looked like a wrinkled mop. He had all kinds of problems going on. The curtain was pulled back off the thing. Several men had written letters home to their mamas saying good-bye, causing all kinds of suspicion, with the mamas writing to the Old Man saying, “Send my boy home.” His daughter-in-law Martha, Oliver’s wife, was pregnant and bawling every half hour; some of the white folks who’d given him money for his fight against slavery now wanted it back; others had written letters tellin’ congressmen and government folks ’bout what they’d heard; his money people in Boston was bugging him ’bout how big his army was. He had all kinds of problems with the weapons, too. Had forty thousand primers without the right caps. The house was loaded with men who was tightly wound up and cooped in that tiny attic that was so crowded it was unbearable. The weight of the thing would’a knocked any man insane. But he weren’t a normal man, being that he was already part insane in a manner of speaking. Still, he seemed put out.
He stood there, swaying a minute, and said, “That is not a problem. We’ll move on Sunday.”
“That’s in four days!” Kagi exclaimed.
“If we don’t go now, we may never go.”
“We can’t move in four days! We got everybody coming on the twenty-third!”
“Them that’s coming will be here in four days.”
“The twenty-third is only a week from Sunday.”
“We haven’t got a week,” the Old Man snort
Kagi didn’t need to do that, for several was gathered ’round listening and had already written home, being cooped up in the attic with nothing to do but write. “How we gonna pass the word to the colored?” Stevens asked.
“We don’t need to. Most of the colored that’s supposed to be here will come. We got five from Chambersburg, five from Boston that Merriman’s promised. Plus the men from around here. Plus those from Canada.”
“I wouldn’t count the men from Canada,” Kagi said. “Not without Douglass.”
The Old Man frowned. “We still got twenty-nine overall men to my count,” he said.
“Fourteen who ain’t present and accounted for,” Kagi said.
The Old Man shrugged. “They’ll hive from everywhere once we get started. The Bible says, ‘He who moves without trust cannot be trusted.’ Trust in God, Lieutenant.”
“I don’t believe in God.”
“Doesn’t matter. He believes in you.”
“What about the General?”
“I just got a letter from her,” the Old Man said. “She’s ill and can’t come. She gived us the Rail Man. That’s enough. He’ll spread the word among her people.”
He turned to me. “Onion, hurry down to the Ferry and wait for the train. When the B&O comes in, tell the Rail Man we’re movin’ on the sixteenth, not the twenty-third. That’s a week early.”
“I better do that,” Kagi said.
“No,” the Old Man said. “They’re onto us now. You’ll be stopped and questioned. They won’t bother with a colored girl. I need you men here. We got a lot to do. Got to fetch the rest of the Sharps rifles and prep ’em. Got to get the tow balls and primers ready, got the pikes to unpack. And we got to get Annie and Martha up the highway within a day, two at most. Onion will ready them when she gets back. For she’s going with them. I’ll not have women here when we make our charge.”