James McBride - The Good Lord Bird

Well, I was hurt, so I said, “I ain’t going no place.”

She marched over to me and grabbed me up. She was a strong woman, and while I resisted, I weren’t no match for her. She throwed me over her knee. “Now, you high-yellow heifer, think you so high-siddity? Got me paying for a damn scarf I ain’t never had! I’mma warm your two little buns the way your Ma should’a,” she said.

“Wait!” I hollered, but it was too late. She throwed my dress up, and seed my true nature dangling somewhere down there between her knees at full salute, being that all that wrestling and tugging was a wonderment to the fringlings and tinglings of a twelve-year-old who never knowed nature’s ways firsthand. I couldn’t help myself.

She yelped and throwed me to the floor, her hands cupped her face as she stared. “You done put me in the fryer, you God-damned pebble-mouthed, wart-faced sip of shit. You heathen! Them was women you was in that room with... . Was they working? Lord, course they was!” She was furious. “You gonna get me hanged!”

She leaped at me, throwed me over her knee, and went at it hard again.

“I was kidnapped!” I hollered.

“You lyin’ lizard!” She spanked me some more.

“I ain’t. I was kidnapped by Old John Brown hisself!”

That stopped her flinging and flailing for a second. “Old John Brown’s dead. Chase killed him,” she said.

“No, he’s not,” I hollered.

“What do I care!” She throwed me off her lap and set on the bed. She was cooling off now, though still hot. Lord, she looked prettier burnt up than she did regular, and the sight of them brown eyes boring into me made me feel lower than dirt, for I was plumb in love. Pie just done something to me.

She sat thinking for a long moment. “I knowed Chase was a liar,” she said, “or he would’a gone on and collected that money on Old John Brown’s head. You likely lying, too. Maybe you working with Chase.”

“I ain’t.”

“How’d you get with him?”

I explained how Frederick was killed and how Chase and Randy rolled up on me and Bob when the Old Man’s sons went to town to collect their belongings.

“Randy still here?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hope not. You’ll end up in an urn buried in somebody’s yard fooling with him. There’s a reward out on him.”

“But the Old Man’s alive surely,” I said proudly. “I seen him get up out the river.”

“What do I care? He’ll be dead soon enough, anyway.”

“Why does every colored I meet say that?”

“You ought to worry about your own skin, ya little snit. I had a feeling about you,” she said. “God-damned Chase! Damn cow turd!”

She cussed him some more, then sat a moment, thinking. “Them rebels find out you was on the Hot Floor, peeking at them white whores, they’ll cut out them little grapes hanging between your legs and stick them down your gizzard. Might pull me in on it, too. I can’t take no chances with you. Plus you seen where my money is.”

“I ain’t interested in your money.”

“That’s touching, but everything on this prairie’s a lie, child. Ain’t nothing what it looks like. Look at you. You’s a lie. You got to go. You ain’t gonna make it on the prairie as a girl nohow. I know a feller drives a stagecoach for Wells Fargo. Now he’s a girl. Playing like a man. But whatever she fancies herself, girl or boy, she’s a white thing. And she’s going from place to place as a stagecoach driver. She ain’t setting in one place, selling tail. And that’s what you’d do here, child. Miss Abby got a business here. She got no use for you. Unless you wanna service ... can you still service as a boy? Do that interest you?”

“The only service I know is washing dishes and cutting hair and such. I can do that good. Me and Bob can work tables, too.”

“Forget him. He’s gonna get sold,” she said.

It didn’t seem proper to remind her that she was a Negro herself, for she was ornery, so I said, “He’s a friend.”

“He’s a runaway like you. And he’s getting sold. And you too, unless you let Miss Abby work you. She might work you to death, then sell you.”

“She can’t do that!”

She laughed. “Shit. She can do whatever she wants.”

“I can do other things,” I pleaded. “I knows working ’round taverns. I can clean rooms and spittoons, bake biscuits, do all manner of jobs, till maybe the Captain comes.”

“What Captain?”

“Old John Brown. We call him Captain. I’m in his army. He’s gonna ride on this town once they find out I’m here.”

It was a lie, for I didn’t know whether the Old Man was living or not, or what he was gonna do, but that peaked her feathers some.

“You sure he’s living?”

“Sure as I’m standing here. And the fur’s gonna fly if he comes here and finds out Bob’s sold, for Bob’s his’n, too. For all we know, Bob’s likely spreading the word among them niggers downstairs right now, saying he’s a John Brown man. That gets certain niggers rowdy, y’know, talking ’bout John Brown.”

Fear creased that pretty little face of hers. Old Brown scared the shit outta every living soul on the prairie. “That’s all I need,” she said. “Old John Brown riding here, screwing things up and whipping them pen niggers into a frenzy. It’ll drive these white folks crazy. They’ll wail away on every nigger in sight. If it was up to me, every nigger in that pen would be sold down the river.”

She sighed and sat down on the bed, then flattened her hair, and pulled her dress up tighter ’round them love lumps of hers. Lord, she was beautiful. “I don’t want no parts of what Old John Brown’s selling,” she said. “Let him come. I got my own plans. But what I’m gonna do with you?”

“If you take me back to Dutch’s Tavern, that might help me.”

“Where’s that?”

“Off Santa Fe Road on the border with Missouri. West of here. About thirty-five miles. Old Dutch might take me back.”

“Thirty-five miles? I can’t go thirty-five feet out this hotel without papers.”

“I can get you papers. I can write ’em. I know my letters.”

Her eyes widened, and the hardness fell away from her face. For a moment she seemed fresh as a young child on a spring morning, and the dew climbed back into her face again. Just as fast, though, the dew hit the road, and her face hardened again.

“I can’t ride no place, child. Even with a pass, too many people ’round here know me. Still, it’d be nice to pass the time reading dime books like the other girls. I seen it done,” she said.

She smirked at me. “Can you really read? Knowing your letters is something you can’t lie about, y’know.”

“I ain’t lying.”

“I expect you can prove that out. Tell you what. You teach me letters, and I’ll girl you up and work it out with Miss Abby so you start out cleaning beds and emptying piss pots and things to pay off her scarf and your keep. That’ll give you a little time. But keep away from the girls. If these rebels find out about that little nub swinging between your legs, they’ll pour tar down your throat. I reckon that’ll work for a while till Miss Abby decides you old enough to work the trade. Then you on your own. How long’ll it take me to learn my letters?”

“Not long.”

“Well, however long that takes, that’s how much time you got. After that, I’m done with you. Wait here while I fetch you another bonnet to cover them nigger naps and a clean something to wear.”

She rose, and by the time she disappeared out the door and shut it behind her, I missed her already, and she hadn’t been gone but a few seconds.

Isettled into Pikesville pretty easy. It weren’t hard. Pie set me up good. She done me up like a real girl: Cleaned me up, fixed my hair, sewed me a dress, taught me to curtsey before visitors, and advised me against smoking cigars and acting like the rest of them walking hangovers who worked Miss Abby’s place. She had to twist Miss Abby into keeping me, for the old lady didn’t want me at first. She weren’t anxious to have another mouth to feed. But I knowed a thing or two about working in taverns, and after she seen how I emptied spittoons, cleaned up tables, scrubbed floors, emptied chamber pots, carted water up to the girls all night, and gived haircuts for the gamblers and jackals in her tavern, she growed satisfied with me. “Just watch the men,” she said. “Keep ’em liquored up. The girls upstairs will do the rest,” she said.