James McBride - The Good Lord Bird

In the back of the wagon was a prisoner. An elderly white feller in a beard, dirty white shirt, and suspenders. His hands was free but his feet was roped to a metal circular hook built into the floor of the wagon. He looked downright tight. He sat near the back flap of the wagon, while the rest passed a bottle of joy juice among them, regarding him.

A man rode to the front of them, a sour-looking feller with a face like molded bread, pock-faced. I reckon he was their leader. He dismounted his horse, swayed, two sheets to the wind, then suddenly swerved around and staggered right toward me. He stepped to the woods not two feet off from where I crouched hidden. He swayed so close to my hiding place I saw the inside of his ear, which looked like the cross-section of a cucumber. But he didn’t spot me for he was clean soused. He leaned against the other side of the tree where I hid, and emptied his bladder, then staggered into the clearing again. From his pocket he brung out a rumpled piece of paper and addressed the prisoner.

“Okay, Pardee,” he said. “We gonna try you right here.”

“Kelly, I already told you I weren’t a Yank,” the old man said.

“We’s see,” Kelly mumbled. He held the rumpled piece of paper up to the sunlight. “I got several resolutions here saying the Free State men is liars and law-breaking thieves,” he said. “You read them out loud. Then sign them all.”

Pardee snatched the paper. He held it close to his eyes, then far off at arm’s length, then close again, straining to see. Then he thrust it back at Kelly. “My eyes ain’t what they once was,” he said. “You g’wan and read it.”

“You ain’t got to follow it to the dot,” Kelly barked. “Just put your mark on it and be done with it.”

“I ain’t scratching my name to nothing till I know what it is,” Pardee grumbled.

“Stop making it tough, ya stupid idiot. I’m making it easy for ya.”

Pardee throwed his eyes to the paper again and started reading.

He took his time about it. Five minutes passed. Ten. The sun shone full overhead and the liquor bottle the men passed around was emptied and tossed. Another liquor bottle appeared. They passed that. Twenty minutes passed. He was still reading.

Several fellers dozed off while Kelly sat on the ground, doodling with his gun belt, drunk as a fish. Finally he looked up at Pardee. “What you waiting on, the steamboat?” he snapped. “Just sign it. It’s just a few declarations.”

“I can’t read ’em all at once,” Pardee said.

Well, it occurred to me that Pardee probably couldn’t read at all. But he acted like he could. The men begun to curse him. They cursed him for the better part of ten minutes. He kept on reading. One man went up to Pardee and blowed cigar smoke in his face. Another come up and yelled into his ear. A third come up, hawked, and spit right on his face. That made him put the paper down.

“Hatch, I’m gonna bust you across the jibs once I get clear here,” Pardee growled.

“Just finish!” Kelly said.

“I can’t read with your cousin screwing up my figuring. Now I got to start all over again.”

He throwed the paper to his face again. The men grew more furious. They threatened to tar and feather him. They promised to hold an auction and let the Negro driver sell him. Still, Pardee kept reading. Wouldn’t look up. Finally Kelly stood up.

“I’mma give you one last chance,” he said. He looked serious now.

“Okay,” Pardee said. He thrust the paper out to Kelly. “I’m finished. I can’t sign it. It’s illegal.”

“But it’s signed by a bona fide judge!”

“I don’t care if it’s signed by Jesus H. Christ. I ain’t signing nothin’ that I don’t know what it is. I don’t understand nothin’ in it.”

Now Kelly got mad. “I’m giving you a break, ya watery-mouth, yellow-livered Free Stater. Sign it!”

“That’s some way to treat a feller who rode cattle with you for two years.”

“That’s the only reason you’re drawing air now.”

“You lyin’, bowlegged cockroach. You just tryin’ to stake my claim!”

That stirred the men. Suddenly the thing went the other way. Claim jumpers in Kansas, folks who throwed themselves on another’s land who already made a claim on that land, why, they was almost worse than horse and nigger thieves.

“Is that true, Kelly?” one of them asked. “You trying to stake his land?”

“Course not,” Kelly said hotly.

“He’s straight out been aiming on my land since we got here,” Pardee said. “That’s why you calling me a Yank, ya leech!”

“You’s a blue-bellied, pet house-paupin’ liar!” Kelly roared. He snatched the paper from Pardee and gived it to the driver of the wagon, a Negro.

“Nigger Bob, you read it out loud,” he said. He turned to Pardee. “And whatever that nigger reads off here, if you don’t agree and sign off on it, I’m gonna bust a charge into your neck and be done with you.”

He turned to the Negro. “G’wan and read it, Nigger Bob.”

Nigger Bob was a hardy, tall, fit Negro, not more than twenty-five, setting atop the driver’s bench on the wagon. He took the paper with shaking hands, his eyes wide as silver dollars. That nigger was panicked. “I can’t read, boss,” he stammered.

“Just read it.”

“But I don’t know what it says.”

“G’wan and read it!”

That Negro’s hands shook and he stared at the paper. Finally he blurted nervously, “Een-y. Mean-y. Mine-y. Moe. One-two-three.”

Several men burst out laughing, but Kelly was hot now, as was several others, for the men growed impatient.

“Kelly, let’s hang Pardee and get up the road,” one said.

“Let’s tar and feather him.”

“What you fooling ’round for, Kelly? Let’s go.”

Kelly waved them to silence, then blew out his cheeks, hemming and hawing. He didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. Being full of gulp sauce weren’t helping him, neither. He said, “Let’s vote on it. All in favor of hanging Pardee for being a nigger-loving Free State Yankee and an agent of the New England Emigrant Yellow Belly Society, raise your hand.”

Eight hands were raised.

“All in favor of not hanging?”

Eight more hands went up.

I counted sixteen men. It was a tie.

Kelly stood there swaying, drunk, in a quandary. He tottered over to Nigger Bob, who sat in the wagon driver’s seat, trembling. “Since Pardee here’s an abolitionist, we’ll let Nigger Bob decide. What’s your vote, Nigger Bob? Hang Pardee here or not?”

Pardee, setting in the back of the wagon, suddenly leaped up in a snit. “Hang me then!” he howled. “I’d rather hang than have a nigger vote on me!” he cried, then tried to leap out the wagon, but fell flat on his face, for his feet were tied.

The men howled even more. “You pukin’ abolitionist egghead,” Kelly said, laughing, as he helped Pardee up. “You should’a read them resolutions like I told you.”

“I can’t read!” Pardee said.

That stopped Kelly cold and he took his hands off Pardee like he was electrified. “What? You said you could!”

“I was lying.”

“What about that land title at Big Springs? You said it was ...”

“I don’t know what that was. You wanted it so damn bad!”

“You blockhead!”

Now it was Kelly’s turn to be on the spot while the other men laughed at him! “You should’a said something, ya damn dummy,” he growled. “Whose land is it then?”

“I don’t know,” Pardee sniffed. “But you been told. Now. You read these resolutions to me and I’ll sign ’em.” He thrust the paper out to Kelly.

Kelly hemmed and hawed. He coughed. He blew his nose. He flustered around. “I ain’t much on reading,” he muttered. He snatched the paper from Pardee and turned to the posse. “Who here reads?”