James McBride - The Good Lord Bird

When all of ’em got to the top and was gathered there, the hangman asked which of them would go first. Sibonia turned to her sister, Libby, and said, “Come on, sister.” She turned to the others and said, “We’ll give you an example, then obey.” She stepped up to the noose to let the rope get drawed around her neck first, and Libby followed.

I wish I could express for you the tension. It seemed like a rope had knotted itself around the sunlight in the sky to keep every leaf and fig in place, for not a soul moved nor did a breeze stir. Not a word was spoken in the crowd. The hangman weren’t pushy nor rude, but rather polite. He let a few more words pass between Sibonia and her sister, then asked if they was ready. They nodded. He turned to reach for the hood to place over their heads. He moved to cover Sibonia’s head first, and as he done so, Sibonia suddenly sprung away from him, jumped high as she could, and fell heavily through the galley hole.

But she only went halfway through. The knotted rope weren’t adjusted right to make her drop all the way. It checked her fall. Instantly her frame, which was halfway down the opening, was convulsed. In her writhing, her feet kicked and instinctively tried to reach back for the landing where she had stood. Her sister, Libby, her face turned toward the rest of the coloreds, put her hand on Sibonia’s side and, leaning forward, held Sibonia’s wriggling body clear of the landing with her arm, and said to the rest, “Let us die like her.” And after a few shaking, quivering moments, it was done.

By God, I would’a passed out, had not the thing gone in the wrong direction entirely, which made the whole of it a lot more interesting right away. Several rebels in the crowd started muttering they didn’t like the business at all, others said it was a damn shame to hang them nine people in the first place, since one colored’ll lie on another just as easily as you can snap your trousers, and nobody knows who done what, and it’s better to hang them all. Still others said the Negroes hadn’t done nothing, and it was all just a bunch of malarkey, ’cause the judge wanted to take over Miss Abby’s businesses, and others said slavery ought to be done with, since it was so much trouble. What’s worse, the colored watching the whole thing become so agitated after seeing Sibonia’s courage that the military rushed up on them to cool them down, which caused even more of a stir. It just didn’t go the way nobody expected it.

The judge seen the thing winging out of control, so they hung the rest of the convicted Negroes fast as they could, and in a few minutes Libby and all the rest was asleep on the ground together.

Afterward I stole off to seek a word of consolation on it. Since Pie hadn’t seen it, I reckoned she’d want to know about it. She stayed in her room during the past few days, for the business of selling tail went on day and night, and in fact increased during times of trouble. But now that the thing was over, it gived me a chance to get back in her graces, passing the news to her, for she always enjoyed hearing gossip, and this was a hot one.

But she got strange on me. I come to the room and knocked. She opened the door, cussed me out a bit, told me to get lost, then slammed the door in my face.

I didn’t think too much of it at first, but I ought to say here while I weren’t for the hanging, I weren’t totally against it neither. Truth is, I didn’t care too much either way. I got plenty chips from it in the way of food and tips for it was a spectacle. That was fine. But the upshot was Miss Abby had lost a great deal of money. Even before the insurrection, she had come to hinting that I could make more money on my back than on my feet. She was preoccupied with the hanging, course, but now that it was done, I should have been worried about her next intentions for me. But they didn’t bother me in the least. I weren’t worried about the hanging, nor Sibonia, nor the whoring, not Bob neither, who didn’t get hanged. My heart was aching only for Pie. She wouldn’t have nothing to do with me. She cut me off.

I didn’t make much of it at first. There was a lot of discombobulation, for it was a troublesome time anyway, for colored and whites. They had hung nine coloreds, and that’s a lot of folks—even for coloreds, that’s a lot of folks. A colored was a lowly dog during slave time, but he was a valuable dog. Several owners whose slaves hung fought against the hanging till the end, for it weren’t never clear who did what and who planned what and what Sibonia’s real plan was and who told who. There was just plain fear and confusion. Some of them Negroes that was hung confessed one way before they died, then turned around confessed another, but their stories banged up against each other, so no one ever knew who to believe, for the ringleader never told it. Sibonia and her sister Libby never sung their song, and left the place more of a mess than it was when they was living, which I reckon was their intent. The upshot was that several slave traders showed up and done a little business for a few days after the hanging, but not much, for slave traders was generally despised. Even Pro Slavers didn’t favor them much, for men who traded cash for blood wasn’t considered working people, but more like thieves or traders in souls and your basic superstitious pioneer didn’t take to them types. Besides, no busy slave trader wanted to journey all the way to Missouri Territory to get a troublesome slave, then run them all the way to the Deep South and sell them, for that troublesome Negro could start an insurrection down south in New Orleans just as easy as he could up here, and word would get back, and that slave trader had a reputation to keep. Them colored from Pikesville was marked as bad goods. Their trading price gone down, for nobody knowed who among them was in the insurrection and who weren’t. That was Sibonia’s gift to them, I reckon. For otherwise, every one of them would’a been gone south. Instead, they stuck where they was, nobody wanting them, and the slave traders left.

But the stink of the thing lingered. Especially with Pie. She had wanted the hanging, but now seemed put out by it. I knowed what she done, or suspected it, tellin’ the judge of the insurrection, but truth is, I didn’t blame her for it. Colored turned tables on one another all the time in them days, just like white folks. What difference does it make? One treachery ain’t no bigger than the other. The white man put his treachery on paper. Niggers put theirs in their mouth. It’s still the same evil. Someone from the pen must’ve told Pie that Sibonia was planning a breakout, and Pie told it to the judge for some kind of favor, and when the stew got boiled down and shared out, why, it weren’t a breakout at all, but rather murder. Them’s two different things. Pie had opened a shit bag, I reckon, and didn’t know it till it was too late. The way I figure it, looking back, Judge Fuggett had his own interests. He didn’t have no slaves, but wanted some. He had everything to gain by Miss Abby going broke, for I’d heard him say later on that he wanted to open his own saloon, and like most white men in town, he was scared and jealous of Miss Abby. The loss of them slaves cost her big time.

I don’t think Pie figured on all that. She wanted to get out. I reckon the judge had made some kind of promise to her to escape, is the way I figure it, and never owned up to it. She never said it, but that’s what you do when you in bondage and aiming on getting out. You make deals. You do what you got to. You turn on who you got to. And if the fish flips out the bucket and on you and jumps back in the lake, well, that’s too bad. Pie had that jar of money under her bed and was learning her letters from me, and turned on Sibonia and them who hated her guts for being yellow and pretty. I didn’t blame her. I was sporting life as a girl myself. Every colored did what they had to do to make it. But the web of slavery is sticky business. And at the end of the day, ain’t nobody clear of it. It whipped back on my poor Pie something terrible.