James McBride - The Good Lord Bird

I was heading past the kitchen, drawing water, and heard a terrible hank coming from the saloon. I peeked in there to find the place packed with redshirts, three deep from the bar, armed to the teeth. Through the front window, I could see the road out front was full of armed men on horseback. The back door leading to the slave alley was shut tight. And before that stood several redshirts, and they was armed. The hotel bar was going full steam, packed tight with rebels bearing weapons of all kinds, and Miss Abby and Judge Fuggett—that same judge who was a good customer of Pie—them two was having a full-out fight.

Not a fistfight, but a real wrangle. I had to keep movin’ as I worked, lest somebody stop me for lingering, but they was so hot that nobody paid me no mind. Miss Abby was furious. I believe if that room wasn’t full of armed men surrounding Judge Fuggett, she’d’a drawed on him with the heater she carried around on her waistband, but she didn’t. From what I could gather, them two was arguing about money, lots of it. Miss Abby was burning up. “I declare I won’t go along with it,” she said. “That’s a loss of several thousand dollars for me!”

“I’ll arrest you if I have to,” Judge Fuggett said, “for that business needs doing.” Several men nodded with him. Miss Abby took a backseat then. She backed off, fuming, while the judge took the center of the room and told the others. I lingered with my face behind a post and listened as he told it: There was a planned insurrection. It involved the Negroes from the pen, at least a couple dozen of ’em. They was planning on killing white families by the hundreds, including the town minister, who loved the Negro and preached against slavery. Several pen Negroes, some that belonged to Miss Abby and several others—for slave owners who come to town to do business often parked their Negroes in the yard—was all arrested. Nine was found out. The judge was planning to try all nine the next morning. Four of ’em was Miss Abby’s.

I run back upstairs to Pie’s room and busted in the door. “There’s big trouble,” I blurted out, and told her what I heard.

For the rest of my life, I would remember her response. She was setting on the bed as I told it, and when I was done, she didn’t say a word. She got up from her bed, walked to the window, and stared down at the slave pen, which was empty. Then she said over her shoulder, “That’s all? Only nine?”

“That’s a lot.”

“They should hang ’em all. Every one of them low-down, no-count niggers.”

I reckon she saw my face, for she said, “Just be calm. This don’t involve you and me. It’ll pass. But I can’t be seen talking to you right now. Two of us is a crowd. Git out and listen around. Come up when it’s safe and tell me what you hear.”

“But I ain’t done nothing,” I said, for I was worried about my own tail.

“Ain’t nothing gonna happen to you. I already fixed it with Miss Abby for me and you. Just be quiet and listen to what’s said. Tell me what you hear. Now get out. And don’t be seen talking to any niggers. Nary a one. Lay low and listen. Find out who them nine is, and when it’s safe, slip back in here and tell me.”

She shoved me out the door. I ventured down to the saloon, slipped into the kitchen, and listened in as the judge told Miss Abby and the others what was to come. What I heard about made me nervous.

The judge revealed that he and his men questioned every slave in the yard. The coloreds denied the insurrection plans, but one colored was tricked into confessing or just told it some way or other, I reckon. Somehow they’d got the information about them nine coloreds from somebody, and they snatched them nine from the yard and throwed them in the jailhouse. The judge further explained that he and his men knowed who the leader of the whole thing was, but the leader weren’t talking. They aimed to fix that problem straightaway, which was the reason for all the men and various town folks setting up shop in the saloon, armed to the gizzards, shouting down Miss Abby. For the leader of the insurrection was one of Miss Abby’s slaves, the judge said, downright dangerous, and when they brung Sibonia in twenty minutes later wearing chains on her ankles and feet, I weren’t surprised.

Sibonia looked worn out, tired, and thin. Her hair was a mess. Her face was puffy and swollen, and her skin shiny. But her eyes shone calm. That was the same face I’d seen in the pen. She was calm as an egg. They slammed her into a chair before Judge Fuggett, and the men surrounded her. Several stood before her, cursing, as the Judge pulled up a chair before her. A table was throwed in front of him, and a drink was set before him. Somebody handed him a cigar. He settled himself behind the table and lit it, puffing and sipping his drink slowly. He weren’t in a hurry, and neither was Sibonia, who sat there silent as the moon, even as several men around her cussed her up and down.

Finally Judge Fuggett spoke up and shushed everybody. He turned to Sibonia and said, “Sibby, we aims to find out about this murderous plot. We know you is the leader. Several people has said it. So don’t deny it.”

Sibonia was calm as a blade of grass. She looked straight at the judge and looked neither sideways nor over his head. “I am the woman,” she said, “and I am not ashamed or afraid to confess it.”

The way she spoke, talking straight at him, in a room crowded full of drunk rebels, that just floored me.

Judge Fuggett asked her, “Who else is involved?”

“Me and my sister, Libby, and I ain’t confessing to no other.”

“We got ways of getting you to tell it if you want.”

“Do your wants, then, Judge.”

Well that blowed his top. He went low-grade then, he got so hot it was a pity. He threatened to beat her, whip her, tar and feather her, but she said, “Go ahead. You can even get Darg if you want. But it can’t be whipped out of me nor coerced in any way. I am the woman. I done it. And if I had the chance, I would do it again.”

Well, the judge and the men around him stomped and hollered something grievous; they railed about how they was gonna grind her to a stump and rip her private parts off and feed her to the pigs if she didn’t tell the names of the others. Judge Fuggett promised they’d start a bonfire in the middle of the town square and throw her in it, but Sibonia said, “Go ahead. You have me, and no other one shall you git through me.”

I reckon the only reason they didn’t string her up right then and there was them not being sure who the other traitors might be, and worried that there might be bunches more of ’em. That flummoxed ’em, so they harangued some more and threatened to hang her right then and there, told her they’d pull out her teeth and so forth, but at the end of it they got nothing from her and throwed her back in jail. They spent the next few hours trying to figure matters through. They knowed her sister and seven others was involved. But there was twenty to thirty slaves that lived in the pen at various times, not to mention several that passed there every day, for the masters coming to town parked their slaves in the pen when they come to do business. That meant dozens of coloreds from near a hundred miles around might be involved in the plot.

Well, they argued into the night. It weren’t just the principle of the thing neither. Them slaves was worth big money. Slaves in them days was loaned out, borrowed against, used as collateral for this, that, or the other. Several masters whose slaves was arrested upped and declared their slaves innocent and demanded to get Sibonia back and pull her fingernails out one by one till she gived up who was in the plot with her. One of ’em even challenged the judge, saying, “How is it you knows of the plot in the first place?”