The Good Lord Bird (33 page)

“Help me get the rest of the things here?”

“Course.”

As we moved 'bout, making ready to leave, I begun to think on what my plans was. Annie and Martha lived on the Old Man's claim in upstate New York near Canada. I couldn't go up there with them. That would be too hard for me to be near Annie. I decided I would ride the wagon to Pennsylvania country and get off there, with the aim of getting to Philadelphia—if we could make it that far north. It weren't a sure thing, for no matter how you sliced it, I was endangering 'em, surely. We would be rolling through slave country, and since we was traveling with speed, would have to move by day, which was dangerous, for the closer you got to the freedom line of Pennsylvania, the more slave patrols was likely to stop and confront Salmon 'bout whether he was transporting slaves. Salmon was young and strong-headed. He was like his Pa. He wouldn't suffer no fools or slave patrols to stop him while he moved his sister and sister-in-law to safety, and he wouldn't surrender me, neither. Plus he'd have to get back. He'd shoot first.

“I have to fetch some hay,” I told Annie, “for it's better that I ride under the hay in the back of the wagon till we get to Pennsylvania.”

“That's two days,” she said. “Better you sit up with us and pretend to be in bondage.”

But, seeing her pretty face staring at me so kind and innocent, I was losing my taste for pretending. I cut out for the shed without a word. There was some hay stored there, and I brung it to the Conestoga we was preparing to get movin' on. I'd have to ride under the hay, in the wagon, in broad daylight till night for the better part of two days. Better to hide that way than out in the open. But, honest to Jesus, I was getting worn out with hiding by that time. Hiding in every way, I was, and I growed tired of it.

We loaded up the wagon the day before the big attack and left without ceremony. The Captain gived Annie a letter and said, “This is for your Ma and your sisters and brothers. I will see you soon or in the by and by, Lord willing.” To me he said, “Good-bye, Onion. You has fought the good fight and I will see you soon as your people is free, if God wills it.” I wished him luck, and we was off. I jumped inside the bottom of the wagon in the hay. They covered me with a plank that spanned along the side of the wagon and placed Annie on it, while Salmon, who was driving, sat up front with his sister-in-law Martha, Oliver's wife.

Annie was sitting right above me as we moved out, and I could hear her throw out a tear or two amid the clattering of the wagon. After a while she stopped bawling and piped out, “Your people will be free when this is all done, Onion.”

“Yes, they will.”

“And you can go off and get a fiddle and sing and follows your dreams all you want. You can go on about your whole life singing when it's all done.”

I wanted to say to her that I would like to stay where she was going and sing for her the rest of my life. Sing sonnets and religious songs and all them dowdy tunes with the Lord in 'em that she favored; I'd work whatever song she wanted if she asked me to. I wanted to tell her I was gonna turn 'bout, turn over a new leaf, be a new person, be the man that I really was. But I couldn't, for it weren't in me to be a man. I was but a coward, living a lie. When you thunk on it, it weren't a bad lie. Being a Negro means showing your best face to the white man every day. You know his wants, his needs, and watch him proper. But he don't know your wants. He don't know your needs or feelings or what's inside you, for you ain't equal to him in no measure. You just a nigger to him. A thing: like a dog or a shovel or a horse. Your needs and wants got no track, whether you is a girl or a boy, a woman or a man, or shy, or fat, or don't eat biscuits, or can't suffer the change of weather easily. What difference do it make? None to him, for you is living on the bottom rail.

But to you, inside, it do make a difference, and that put me out to the part. A body can't prosper if a person don't know who they are. That makes you poor as a pea, not knowing who you are inside. That's worse than being anything in the world on the outside. Sibonia back in Pikesville showed me that. I reckon that business of Sibonia throwed me off track for life, watching her and her sister Libby take it 'round the neck in Missouri. “Be a man!” she said to that young feller when he fell down on the steps of the scaffold when they was ready to hang him. “Be a man!” They put him to sleep like the rest, strung him up like a shirt on a laundry line, but he done okay. He took it. He reminded me of the Old Man. He had a face change up there on that scaffold before they done him in, like he seen something nobody else could see. That's an expression that lived on the Old Man's face. The Old Man was a lunatic, but he was a good, kind lunatic, and he couldn't no more be a sane man in his transactions with his fellow white man than you and I can bark like a dog, for he didn't speak their language. He was a Bible man. A God man. Crazy as a bedbug. Pure to the truth, which will drive any man off his rocker. But at least he knowed he was crazy. At least he knowed who he was. That's more than I could say for myself.

I rumbled these things in my head while I lay in the bottom of that wagon under the hay like the silly goose I was, offering a pocketful of nothing to myself 'bout what I was supposed to be or what songs I was gonna sing. Annie's Pa was a hero to me. It was him who held the weight of the thing, had the weight of my people on his shoulders. It was him who left house and home behind for something he believed in. I didn't have nothing to believe in. I was just a nigger trying to eat.

“I reckon I will sing a bit once this war is over,” I managed to say to Annie. “Sing here and there.”

Annie looked away, bleary-eyed, as a thought struck her. “I forgot to tell Pa about the azaleas,” she suddenly blurted out.

“The what?”

“The azaleas. I planted some in the yard, and they come up purple. Father told me to tell him if that happened. Said that was a good sign.”

“Well, likely he'll see them.”

“No. He don't look back there. They're deep in the yard, near the thickets.” And she broke down and howled again.

“It's just a flower, Annie,” I said.

“No, it's not. Father said a good sign is signals from heaven. Good omens is important. Like Frederick's Good Lord Bird. That's why he always used those feathers for his army. They're not just feathers. Or passwords. They're omens. They're things you don't forget easily, even in times of trouble. You remember your good omens in times of trouble. You can't forget them.”

A horrible, dread feeling come over me as she said that, for I suddenly remembered that I clean forgot to tell the Captain the password the Rail Man told me to pass on to him at the bridge when they stopped the train. He'd said to tell them the password. He'd say, “Who goes there?” and they'd pass it back, “Jesus is walkin'.” And if he didn't hear that password, he weren't gonna bring his men on.

“Good God,” I said.

“I know,” she howled. “It's just a bad omen.”

I didn't say nothing to her but I lay there as she howled, and God knows it, my heart was pounding something dreadful. To hell with it, was my thinking. Weren't no way in the world I was gonna crawl out from under that hay, walk that toll road in daylight, privy to every paddie slave snatcher between Virginia and Pennsylvania and go back to the Ferry and get shot to pieces. We'd ridden nearly three hours. I felt the sun's heat bouncing off the ground into the bottom of the wagon where I lay. We had to be near Chambersburg by then, just near the Virginia line, smack dab in slave country.

Annie howled a bit more, then steadied herself. “I know you're thinking of Philadelphia, Onion. But I'm wondering . . . I'm wondering if you'll come to North Elba with me,” she said. “Maybe we could start a school together. I know your heart. North Elba is quiet country. Free country. We could start a school together. We could use—I could use a friend.” And she busted into tears again.

Well, that done it. I lay under that hay thinking I weren't no better than them speechifying, low-life reverends and doctors up in Canada who promised to show up for the Old Man's war and likely wouldn't. The whole bit shamed me, just pushed up against me something terrible as she howled. It pushed on me harder with each mile we went, pressing on my heart like a stone. What was I gonna do in Philadelphia? Who was gonna love me? I'd be alone. But in upstate New York, how long could I go on before she'd find out who I was? She'd know it before long. Besides, how can somebody love you if you don't know who you is? I had thoroughly been a girl so long by then that I'd grown to like it, got used to it, got used to not having to lift things, and have folks make excuses for me on account of me not being strong enough, or fast enough, or powerful enough like a boy, on account of my size. But that's the thing. You can play one part in life, but you can't be that thing. You just playing it. You're not real. I was a Negro above all else, and Negroes plays their part, too: Hiding. Smiling. Pretending bondage is okay till they're free, and then what? Free to do what? To be like the white man? Is he so right? Not according to the Old Man. It occurred to me then that you is everything you are in this life at every moment. And that includes loving somebody. If you can't be your own self, how can you love somebody? How can you be free? That pressed on my heart like a vise right then. Just mashed me down. I was head over heels for that girl, I loved her with all my heart, I confess it here, and her father's charge would be against me for the rest of my life if he got killed on account of the Rail Man not hearing the right password. Curse that son of a bitch father of hers! And the Rail Man too! That self-righteous, ignorant, risk-taking, elephant-looking bum! And all them slave-fightin' no-gooders! It would be on my head. The thought of the Captain getting deadened on account of me made me feel ten times worse than Annie not loving me, which if she'd'a knowed what I was, she'd'a been disgusted with me, a nigger, playing a girl, not man enough to be a man, loving her and all, and she wouldn't love me back in the least, or even like me, no matter how much she felt for me at that moment as a full-hearted girlfriend. She was loving a mirage. And I'd have her father's blood on my hands the rest of my life, laying there like a coward under the hay and not being a natural man, man enough to go back and tell him the words that might help him live five minutes longer, for while he was a fool, his life was dear to him as mine's was to me, and he'd risked that life many times on my account. God damn it to hell.

To have the Captain's blood on my hands on account of something I was supposed to do, it was just too much. I couldn't stand it.

The plank she was setting on was propped on two boards. With both hands I pushed it a foot or so forward and burst out the hay and sat up.

“I got to go,” I said.

“What?”

“Tell Salmon to stop.”

“We can't. We in slave country. Get back in that hay!”

“I won't.”

Before she could move to it, I slid out from under the plank, pulled the bonnet off my head, and ripped the dress down to my waist. Her mouth opened in shock.

“I love you, Annie. I won't ever see you again.”

With one swift motion, I grabbed my gunnysack and leaped out the back of the wagon, rolling on the road, her shocked cry echoing into the woods and trees around me. Salmon harred up the wagon and yelled back for me, but he might as well been hollering down an empty hole. I was up the road and gone.

Attack

I
runned down the road like the wind, and caught a ride with an old colored man from Frederick, Maryland, who was driving his master's wagon to the Ferry to pick up a shipment of lumber. It took us a full day to roll back for he was sharp, and had to roll past slave patrollers while stating his marse's business. He dropped me off a few miles from the Ferry on the Maryland side and I done the rest on foot. I made it to the farmhouse late, several hours after dark.

The house was dark as I approached and I couldn't see no candlelight. It was drizzling and there was no moon. I had no timepiece, but I guessed it was close to midnight.

I burst in the door and they were gone. I turned toward the door, and a figure blocked it and a rifle barrel met me right in the face. A light was throwed on me, and behind it stood three of the Old Man's army: Barclay Coppoc, one of the shooting Quakers, Owen, and Francis Merriam, a one-eyed batty feller, crazy as a weasel, who had joined up late in the doings. All three was holding rifles and armed to the teeth with sidearms and broadswords.

“What you doing here?” Owen asked.

“I forgot to give your Pa the password for the Rail Man.”

“Father didn't have a password for him.”

“That's just it. The Rail Man had one for me to give him.”

“It's too late. They left four hours ago.”

“I got to tell him.”

“Sit tight.”

“For what?”

“They'll figure it out. We could use you here. We is guarding the arms and waiting for the colored to hive,” Owen said.

“Well, that is the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life, Owen. Can't you wake up to it?”

I looked at Owen, I swear 'fore God he tried to keep a straight face on it. “I'm dead set against slavery, and anyone who ain't is a fool,” he said. “They'll come. And I will set here and wait till then,” he said. I guess this was his way of showing his faith in his Pa, and also getting out the deal. The farm was five miles from the Ferry, and I reckon the Old Man left him 'cause Owen had seen enough of his crazy Pa's doings. He'd been all through the Kansas Wars and seen the worst of it. Those other two up there, the Old Man probably left them there to relieve them from the action, for Coppoc weren't but twenty, and Merriam was thick as mud in his mind.

“Did the B&O come yet?” I asked.

“I don't know. Haven't heard it.”

“What time is it?”

“One ten in the a.m.”

“It don't come till one twenty-five. I got to warn him,” I said. I moved toward the door.

“Wait,” Owen said. “I'm done pulling you out the fire, Onion. Set here.” But I was out the door and gone.

It was a five-mile run down to the Ferry, pitch-black with a drizzling rain. Had I stayed on the old colored man's wagon and not got off at the Kennedy farm, I could'a ridden right into town and made it in better time, I reckon. But that old man was long gone. I had my satchel throwed around my back with everything I owned, including a change of boy clothes. I was planning on lighting out when it was done. The Rail Man would give me a ride. He weren't staying, he said as much. Had I any sense I would'a throwed a revolver in my sack. There was a dozen of 'em laying in the farmhouse, two setting on the windowsill when I walked in there, likely loaded and primed. But I didn't think of it.

I came hard down that hill, and didn't hear a bit of firing as I came down it, so no shooting had started. But when I hit the bottom and runned along the Potomac, I heard a train whistling and saw a dim light on the other side, 'bout a mile off to the east, curving 'round the edge of the mountain. That was the B&O, not wasting no time, coming out of Baltimore.

I throwed myself down the road fast as my legs could go, running toward the bridge that crossed the Potomac River.

The train got to the other side just before I did. I heard the hissing of the brakes as it stopped short, just as I put my foot on the far side of the bridge coming over. I seen it halted there, setting, hissing, through the bridge span trestles as I ran. The train had stopped 'bout a few yards shy of the station, just as the Rail Man said it would. Normally it stopped at the station, discharged passengers, then moved up a few yards to the water tower to take on water, then headed over the Shenandoah Bridge, where it headed down to Wheeling, Virginia. That weren't normal, for the train to stop there, which meant the Old Man's army had already started their war.

The Shenandoah was a covered bridge, with a wagon road running on one side of it and the train tracks on the other. From my side atop the B&O Bridge, I seen two fellers with rifles approaching the train from the Shenandoah Bridge side where it was stalled, 'bout a quarter mile off from me. I was still making it, running across the B&O Bridge, the train stopped dead, setting there, hissing steam, the lantern at the front of it dangling over the cowcatcher.

From the bridge as I got closer, I recognized the two figures as Oliver and Stewart Taylor, walking along the sides of the train, holding rifles to the engine master and coal slinger as they climbed down the train. They climbed down right into Oliver's hands, they did. He and Taylor moved them along toward the back of the train, but what with the hissing and clanking of the engine, and being where I was, running hard, I couldn't hear what was said. But I was busting it, running hard, almost there, and as I got closer, I could hear their voices talking a little bit.

I was just 'bout across the bridge when I saw the wide, tall silhouette of the Rail Man emerge from a side door of a passenger compartment and climb down the steps. He come down the steps slowly, carefully, reached up, shut the train door behind him, and set off down the tracks on foot. He come right at Oliver, holding a lantern at his side. He didn't wave it. Just held the lantern steady at his side, walking toward Oliver and Taylor, who was walking away from him toward the Ferry with their prisoners. Oliver looked over his shoulder and saw the Rail Man, and he motioned Taylor to keep going with the two prisoners while he broke off and turned back toward the Rail Man, his rifle at his hip. He didn't raise it, but he held it steady there as he came toward the Rail Man.

I runned hard to get there, giving it every string I had. I humped off the bridge on the Ferry side and turned and followed the tracks toward them and hollered as I come. They weren't but two hundred yards off or so, but that train was clanking and banging, and I was in the dark, running down the tracks, and when I seen Oliver close in on the Rail Man, I hollered out, “Oliver! Oliver! Hold it!”

Oliver didn't hear me. He glanced over his shoulder for just a second, then turned back to the Rail Man.

I was close enough to hear as I come now. The Rail Man kept coming at Oliver, and I heard him shout out, “Who goes there?”

“Stay where you are,” Oliver said.

The Rail Man kept coming, said it again, “Who goes there?”

“Stay there!” Oliver snapped.

I hollered out, “Jesus is walkin'!” but I weren't close enough, and neither of them heard me. Oliver didn't turn his back this time, for the Rail Man was on him, not five feet off, still holding that lamp at his side. And he was a big man, and I reckon on account of his size and him coming toward Oliver in that fashion, not being afraid, well, Oliver shouldered his rifle. Oliver was young, only twenty, but he was a Brown, and once them Browns moved on intent, there weren't no stopping. I screamed, “Oliver!”

He turned again. And this time seen me coming at him. “Onion?” he said.

It was dark and I don't know if he seen me clear or not. But the Rail Man did not see me at all. He weren't more than five feet from Oliver, still holding that lamp, and he said to Oliver again, “Who goes there!” impatient this time, and a little nervous. He was trying to give him the word, you see, waiting for it.

Oliver spun back toward him with the rifle on his shoulder now and hissed, “Don't take another step!”

I don't know if the Rail Man got Oliver's intent wrong or not, but he showed his back to Oliver. Just spun around and walked away from him, brisk-like. Oliver still had his gun trained on him, and I reckon Oliver would have let him walk back onto the train if the Rail Man had gone on and done that. But instead, the Rail Man did an odd thing. He stopped and blowed out that lantern, then, instead of walking back onto the train, turned to walk toward the railroad office, which was just a few yards off the track there. Didn't head toward the train. Went toward the rail office. That killed him right there.

“Halt!” Oliver called out. He called it twice, and the second time he called it, the Rail Man dropped the lamp and stepped up toward the office. Double-stepped now.

God knows it, he never did wave that lantern. Or maybe he was disgusted that we wasn't smart enough to know the password, or he just weren't sure what was happening, but when he dropped that lantern and made toward the office, Oliver must'a figured he was going for help, so he let that Sharps speak to him. He cut loose on him once.

That Sharps rifle, them old ones during that time, they barked so loud it was a pity. That thing choked out some fire and offered up a bang so big you could hear it echoing all along the sides of both rivers; it bounced off them mountains like a calling from on high, the sound of that boom traveling across the river and bouncing down the Appalachian valley and up the Potomac like a bowling ball. Sounded big as God's thunder, it did, just made a terrible noise, and it busted a ball straight into the Rail Man's back.

The Rail Man was a big man, over six hands tall. But that ball got his attention. It stood him up. He stood still a few seconds, then moved again like he wasn't hit, kept going toward the railroad office, staggering a bit, stepping over the tracks as he done so, then collapsed at the front door of the railroad station on his face. He flopped down like a bunch of rags, his feet flopping into the air.

Two white men flung open the door and drug him in just as I reached Oliver. He turned to me and said, “Onion! What you doing here?”

“He was with us!” I gasped. “He was flocking the colored!”

“He should'a said it. You seen it. I told him to halt! He didn't say a blamed word!”

There weren't no use in tellin' him now. It was my mistake and I planned to keep it. The Rail Man was dead anyway. He was the first man killed at Harpers Ferry. A colored.

The white folks runned with that later on. They laughed 'bout it. Said, “Oh, John Brown's first shot to free the niggers at Harpers Ferry killed a nigger.” But the fact is, the Rail Man didn't die right off. He lived for twenty-four hours more. Lived longer than Oliver did, it turns out. He had a whole day to tell his story after he was shot, for he bled to death and was conscious before he died, and his wife and children and even his friend the mayor called on him, and he spoke to them all, but he never did tell a soul what he done or who he really was.

I later heard tell that his real name was Haywood Shepherd. The white folks at Harpers Ferry gived him a military funeral when the whole thing was done. They buried him like a hero, for he was one of their niggers. He died with thirty-five hundred dollars in the bank. They never did figure out how he got that much money, being a baggage handler, and what he planned to use it for. But I knowed.

If the Old Man hadn't changed dates on him, making it so the Rail Man gived his password to the wrong person, he'd'a lived another day to spend all that money he saved on freeing his kin. But he brung his words to the wrong man, and the wrong movement.

It was an honest mistake, made in the heat of that moment. And I don't beat myself over the head with it. Fact is, it weren't me who blowed out the Rail Man's lantern and dropped it that night. It was the Rail Man himself that done it. Had he calmed down and waited another second he would'a seen me and waved that thing up and down. But it was hard buying that whole bit deep inside, truth be to tell it, for a lot was wasted.

I told Oliver standing there, “It's my fault.”

“There'll be time enough to count lost chickens later,” he said. “We got to move.”

“You don't understand.”

“Understand later, Onion. We got to roll!”

But I couldn't move, for a sight over Oliver's shoulder froze me in my tracks. I was standing before him, looking down the track behind him, and what I seen made my two little walnuts, packed inside my dress, shrivel up in panic.

In the dim light of the tavern that lit the track, dozens of coloreds, maybe sixty or seventy, poured out of two baggage cars. It was Monday morning in the wee hours, and some was still dressed in Sunday church clothes, for I reckon they'd gone to church the day before. Men in white shirts, and women in dresses. Men, women, children, some in their Sunday best, and others with no shoes, some holding sticks and pikes and even an old rifle or two. They jumped out of them baggage cars like they was on fire, the whole herd of 'em, turning and running off on foot, making tracks back toward Baltimore and Washington, D.C., as fast as their feet could go. They was waiting on the Rail Man to wave that lamp. And when he didn't, they took the tall timber and went home. It didn't take much for a colored to think he'd been tricked by anyone, white or colored, in them days.

Oliver turned and looked back there just as the last of them leaped out the baggage car and hit the tracks running, then turned back to me, puzzled, and said, “What's going on?”

I watched the last of them disappear, dodging in and out of the trees, jumping into the thickets, a few sprinting down the tracks, and said, “We is doomed.”