James McBride - The Good Lord Bird

“Ain’t nar Bob here,” Libby said. “We got a Dirk, a Lang, a Bum-Bum, a Broadnax, a Pete, a Lucious. Ain’t no Bob. What you want him for anyway?”

“He’s a friend.”

She looked at me a long minute in my dress. Pie had fixed me up nice. I was dressed warm, clean, in a bonnet and warm dress and socks, living good. I looked like a real high-yeller girl, dressed damn near white, and Libby set there dressed in rags. “What a redbone like you need a friend in this yard for?” she asked. Several Negroes working shovels behind her leaned over them and chuckled.

“I ain’t come out here for you to sass me,” I said.

“You sassing yourself,” she said gently, “by the way you look. You own Bob?”

“I wouldn’t own him with your money. But I owes him.”

“Well, you ain’t got to fret about paying him what you owe, so you should be happy. ’Cause he ain’t here.”

“That’s strange, ’cause Miss Abby said she hadn’t sold him.”

“Is that the first lie you heard from white folks?”

“You sure got a smart mouth for an outside nigger.”

“And you got a smarter one for a big-witted, tongue-beating, mule-headed sissy. Walking ’round dressed as you is.”

That flummoxed me right there. She knowed I was a boy. But I was an inside nigger. Privileged. The men in Miss Abby’s liked me. Pie was my mother, practically. She had the run of things. I didn’t need to bother with no mealymouth, lowlife, no-count, starving pen nigger who nobody wouldn’t pay no attention to. I had sauce, and wouldn’t stand nobody but Pie or a white person sassing me like that. That colored woman just cut me off without a wink. I couldn’t stand it.

“How I covers my skin is my business.”

“It’s your load. You carry it. Ain’t nobody judging you out here. But dodging the white man’s evil takes more than a bonnet and some pretty undergarments, child. You’ll learn.”

I ignored that. “I’ll give you a quarter if you tell me where he is.”

“That’s a lot of money,” Libby said. “But I can’t use it where I’m at now.”

“I know my letters. I can show you some.”

“Come back when you ain’t full of lies,” she said. She picked up Sibonia’s box and said, “Come on, sister.”

Sibonia, standing there holding a dripping mud ball in her hand, then did something strange. She glanced at the hotel door, saw it was still closed, then said to Libby in a plain voice, “This child is troubled.”

“Let the devil have him, then,” Libby said.

Sibonia said to her softly, “Go on over yonder with the rest, sister.”

That just about dropped me, the way she was talking. She and Libby looked at each other for a long moment. Seemed like some kind of silent signal passed between ’em. Libby handed Sibonia her wooden crate and Libby slipped away without a word. She stepped clean away to the other side of the fence with the rest of the Negroes who was bent over, tending to the garden and the hogs. She never said a word to me again for the rest of her life, which as it turned out weren’t very long.

Sibonia sat on her box again and stuck her face through the fence, looking at me close. The face peeking through the slats with mud on her cheeks and eyelashes didn’t sport an ounce of foolishness in it now. Her manner had flipped inside out. She had brushed the madness off her face the way you’d brush a fly away. Her face was serious. Deadly. Her eyes glaring at me was strong and calm as the clean barrel of a double-barreled shotgun boring down at my face. There was power in that face.

She runned her fingers in the ground, scooped up some mud, shaped it into a ball, and set it on the ground. Then she made another, wiping her face with her sleeve, keeping her eyes on the ground, and set that new mud ball next to the first. From a distance she looked like a fool setting on a box, piling up mud balls. She spoke with them shotgun eyes staring at the ground, in a voice that was heavy and strong.

“You sporting trouble,” she said, “playing folks for a fool.”

I thought she was talking ’bout the way I dressed, so I said, “I’m doing what I got to do, wearing these clothes.”

“I ain’t talking ’bout that. I’m talking ’bout the other thing. That’s more dangerous.”

“You mean reading?”

“I mean lying about it. Some folks’ll climb a tree to tell a lie before they’ll stand on the ground and tell the truth. That could get you hurt in this country.”

I was a little shook about how she was so tight in her mind, for if I played a girl well, she played a fool even better. There weren’t no fooling somebody like her, I seen that clear, so I said, “I ain’t lying. I’ll get a piece of paper and show you.”

“Don’t bring no paper out here,” she said quickly. “You talk too much. If Darg finds out, he’ll make you suffer.”

“Who’s Darg?”

“You’ll see soon enough. Can you write words?”

“I can draw pictures, too.”

“I ain’t studying no pictures. It’s the words I want. If I was to tell you about your Bob, would you write me something? Like a pass? Or a bill of sale?”

“I would.”

She had her head to the ground, busy, her hands deep in the mud. The hands hesitated and she spoke to the ground. “Maybe you best think on it first. Don’t be a straight fool. Don’t sign no note you can’t deliver on. Not out here. Not with us. ’Cause if you agrees to something with us, you gonna be held to it.”

“I said I would.”

She glanced up and said softly, “Your Bob’s been bounded out.”

“Bounded out?”

“On loan. Miss Abby loaned him out to the sawmill ’cross the village. For a price, of course. He been out there practically since the day he got here. He’ll be back soon. How come he never spoke of you?”

“I don’t know. But I’m worried Miss Abby’s planning on selling him.”

“So what? She’s gonna sell us all. You, too.”

“When?”

“When she’s good and ready.”

“Pie never said nothing about that.”

“Pie,” she said. She smiled grimly and said nothing more. But I didn’t like the way she said it. That pulled at me some. She moved her hands in the mud and packed up another mud ball.

“Can you get word to me about Bob?”

“I might. If you do what you said you would.”

“I said I would.”

“When you hear tell of a Bible meeting for the colored out here in the yard, come on. I’ll get you to your Bob. And I’ll take you up about them letters.”

“All right, then.”

“Don’t stretch your mouth to nobody about this, especially Pie. If you do, I’ll know about it, and you’ll wake up with a heap of knives poking out that pretty neck of yours. Mine’s be the first. Loose talk’ll have us all sleeping on the cooling board.”

And with that she turned, picked up her box, and cackled her way across the yard, movin’ into the center and setting that box deep in the mud again. She sat on it, and the Negroes gathered ’round her again, holding picks and shovels, working the ground all ’round her, glaring at me, picking at the mud ’round her while she set on her box in the middle of ’em, cackling like a chicken.

About a week later, a colored girl from the yard named Nose runned into the saloon carrying a pile of kindling, set it by the stove, and passed by me as she left, whispering, “Bible meeting’s in the slave pen tonight.” That evening I slipped out the back door and found Bob. He was standing near the front gate of the yard, leaning on the fence, alone. He looked tore up. His clothes was a ragged mess, but it was him and he was yet living.

“Where you been?” I asked.