James McBride - The Good Lord Bird

I would’a gone whole hog with it and been a pure dee bum, but Sibonia’s hanging brung more trouble. For one thing, several of them dead Negroes was owned by masters who wasn’t agreed to Judge Fuggett’s rulings. A couple of fistfights got started on account of it. Miss Abby, who had argued against it, got called an abolitionist, for she runned her mouth about it considerable too, and that caused more wrangling. Judge Fuggett quit town and run off with a girl named Winky, and reports that Free Staters was causing trouble down in Atchinson was becoming more frequent, and that was troublesome, for Atchinson was cold rebel territory, and it meant the Free Staters was making headway against the shirts, which made everybody nervous. Business at the hotel dropped off, and the town’s business slowed up generally. Work got hard to find for everyone. Chase declared, “Ain’t no more claims to be had around here,” and he quit town to head west, which left me on my own again.

I thought about running, but I’d gotten soft living indoors. The thought of riding on the prairie by myself, with the cold, the mosquitoes, and the howling wolves, weren’t useful. So one night I went to the kitchen and clipped some biscuits and a mug of lemonade and slipped out to see Bob at the slave pen, being that he was the only friend I had left.

He was setting on a crate at the edge of the pen by himself when I come, and he got up and moved off when he seen me coming. “Git away from me,” he said. “My life ain’t worth a plugged nickel ’cause of you.”

“These is for you,” I said. I reached in the pen with the biscuits, which was in a handkerchief, and held them out to him, but he glanced at the others and didn’t touch them.

“Git off from me. You got a lot of nerve comin’ ’round here.”

“What I done now?”

“They say you gived up Sibonia,” he said.

“What?”

Before I could move, several Negro fellers watching from the far side of the pen slipped over closer to us. There was five of them, and one, a young, strong-looking feller, broke off the pack and come over to the fence where I was. He was a stout, handsome, chocolate-skinned Negro named Broadnax who done outside work for Miss Abby. He was wide around the shoulders, with a firm build, and seemed an easygoing feller most times, but he didn’t look that way now. I backed off the fence and moved along the rail quick back to the hotel, but he moved quicker and met me just at the corner of the fence and stuck a thick hand through the fence rail, grabbing my arm.

“Not so fast,” he said.

“What you need me for?”

“Set a minute and talk.”

“I got to go work.”

“Every nigger in this world got to work,” Broadnax said. “What’s your job?”

“What you mean?”

He had my arm tight, and his grip was strong enough to snap my arm in two. He leaned against the fence, speaking calm and evenly. “Now, you could be sproutin’ a lie ’bout what you knowed about Sibonia and what you didn’t know. And ’bout what you said and didn’t say. You could say it to your friend here, or you could say it to me. But without a story, who knows what your job is? Every nigger got the same job.”

“What’s that?”

“Their job is to tell a story the white man likes. What’s your story?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Broadnax squeezed my arm harder. His grip was so tight, I thought my arm might break off. Holding my arm, he peered around to make sure the way was clear. From where we was, you could see the hotel, the alley, and Darg’s house behind the pen. Nobody was about. In normal times, three or four people would wander down that alleyway during the day. But Pikesville had thinned out since Sibonia died. That woman was a stone witch.

“I’m talking letters,” he said. “Your job was to come back and write Sibonia some letters and passes and be quiet about it. You agreed to it. I was here. And you didn’t do it.”

I had stone-cold forgot about my promise to Sibonia by then. By now Broadnax’s friends had slipped up to the fence behind Broadnax and stood nearby holding shovels, movin’ dirt, looking busy, but listening in close.

“There weren’t time to get out here. The white folks was watching me close.”

“You awful close to Pie.”

“I don’t know nothing ’bout Pie’s business,” I said.

“Maybe she told it.”

“Told what?”

“About Sibonia.”

“I don’t know what she done. She don’t tell me nothing.”

“Why would she, you frittering around dressed as you is.”

“You ain’t got to pick my guts about it,” I said. “I’m just trying to make it along like you. But I never had nothing against Sibonia. I wouldn’t stand in the way of her jumping.”

“That lie ain’t worth a pinch of snuff out here.”

The fellers behind Broadnax edged to the corner of that fence, close now. A couple of ’em had plain stopped working altogether. Weren’t no pretense to them working now. I had that two-shot pepperbox sleeping under my dress, and a free hand, but it wouldn’t do nothing against all of them. There was five of them altogether, and they looked mad as the devil.

“God hears it,” I said. “I didn’t know nothing ’bout what she was aiming to do.”

Broadnax peered at me straight. Didn’t blink once. Them words didn’t move him.

“Miss Abby’s selling off the souls in this yard,” Broadnax said. “Did you know that? She’s doing it slow, thinking nobody notices. But even a dumb nigger like me can count. There’s ten souls left in this yard. Two weeks ago there was seventeen. Three of ’em’s been sold off in the past week. Lucious there”—here he pointed to one of the men standing behind him—“Lucious lost both his children. And them children ain’t never been inside Miss Abby’s hotel, so they couldn’t’a told it. Nose, the girl who gived you the word about the Bible meeting, she was sold off two days ago, and Nose didn’t tell it. That makes just us ten left here. We all likely be sold off soon, ’cause Miss Abby thinks we is trouble. But I aim to find out who sung about Sibonia before I leave. And when I do, they gonna suffer. Or their kin. Or”—he glanced at Bob—“their friends.”

Bob stood there trembling. Didn’t say a word.

“Bob ain’t been inside the hotel since Miss Abby throwed him out here,” I said.

“He could’a talked at the sawmill, where he works every day. Told one of them white folks over there. That kind of word’ll pass fast.”

“Bob couldn’t know—’cause I didn’t know. Plus he ain’t one to run his mouth at white folks. He was scared of Sibonia.”

“He should’a been. She didn’t trust him.”

“He ain’t done no wrong. Neither did I.”

“You just trying to save your skin.”

“Why not? It covers my body.”

“Why should I believe a sissy who frolics ’round in a frock and a bonnet?”

“I’m tellin’ you, I didn’t tell nobody nothing. And neither did Bob.”

“Prove it!”

“Bob rode with Old John Brown. So did I. Why didn’t you tell him, Bob?”

Bob was silent. Finally he piped up. “Ain’t nobody gonna believe me.”

That stopped Broadnax. He glanced around at the others. They’d all gathered in close now, they didn’t care who was watching from the hotel. I certainly hoped somebody from the hotel would bust out the back door, but nar soul come. Glancing over to the hotel back door, I seen they’d posted a lookout anyway. A Negro was over there, sweeping the dirt around with his back to the door, so if somebody come busting through, he’d hold that door closed a minute to give ’em all a chance to pop back into place. Them pen colored fellers was organized.