James McBride - The Good Lord Bird

“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.

Iwoke 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 see the Old Man and his men take the trail that circled ’round and led to the river and the town on the other side of it. I didn’t want to set ’round with Fred and that dead bird asleep in death, and there weren’t nothing to say to him nohow.

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.

The Old Man’s men was outgunned and his boys fell back farther to the ridge, the creek right at their backs now, no place else to back up. There was a line of timber at the riverbank there, and he shouted quickly to his fellers to mount a line, which they did, just as the rebels charged the riverbank again.

I don’t know how they held it. The Old Man was stubborn. The Free Staters was badly outnumbered, but they held on until a second party of rebels flanked them from the rear, on the same side of the stream. A few of the Old Man’s team turned ’round to fight them off while the Old Man held his boys on the line, urging his men on. “Hold men. Steady. Aim low. Don’t waste ammunition.” He walked up and down the line shouting directions as bullets and cannon shot tore the leaves and limbs off the trees ’round him.

Finally, behind him, the Free Staters trying to hold off the rebels in that direction quit and run for it across the river, eating lead the whole way, and several of them breathed their last in the river. It was just too many enemy. The Old Man was cut off from a clean retreat now, taking fire from two sides, with the cannon blasting grape at him and rebels closing from the other way, with the creek behind him. He weren’t going to make it. He was defeated, but he wouldn’t give in. He held his men there.

The Missourians, cussing and hollering, quit for a minute to move their cannon closer, and took some lead from the Old Man’s men. But they got it mounted up again within fifty yards or so of the Old Man’s line and blowed a big hole in the line, sending several of his men into the water. Only then did he give up. He was done. He hollered, “Back across the river!” The men gladly did it, scrambling fast, but not him. He stood, big as you want, firing and reloading until the last man got out the tree line, hit the bank, and waded across. Owen was the last to go, and when he was at the riverbank and seen his Pa weren’t there, he turned back, hollering, “Come, Father!”