James McBride - The Good Lord Bird

They came in there in a hurry and all business, kicking over tables and throwing their pistols on every rebel dumb enough to reach for his hardware, and even those that tossed their guns to the floor was aired out, too, for it was a shooting frolic. A few rebels near the back of the room of the dining hall doorway managed to throw up a table as a barrier and fire back on the enemy, backing toward the doorway where I crouched. I stayed where I was once they got there, trying to get up enough guts to make a dash for the stairs in the dining room to check on Pie, for I could hear the girls on the Hot Floor screaming, and could see from my view out the window that several Free Staters had hopped to the second-floor roof from outside by standing on the backs of their horses. I wanted to go up them stairs, but couldn’t bring myself to make a dash for ’em. It was too hot. We was overrun.

I stayed crouched where I was long enough to see the rebels in the saloon make a small comeback, for Darg had been preoccupied somewhere else and come in the saloon fighting like a dog. He smashed a Free Stater in the face with a beer bottle, tossed another Free Stater out the window, and made the dash into the dining room without being hit, despite heavy fire. He took the back stairs to the Hot Floor on the quick. That was the last I ever saw of him, by the way. Not that it mattered, for no sooner had his back disappeared up the stairs than a fresh wave of Free Staters rushed in the front door to add to those that was chewing up the remaining rebels in the saloon, while yours truly was still cowering in the corner near the dining room, where I could see both rooms.

The rebels in the dining room put up a fight, but in the saloon they was outnumbered, and that room was already compromised. Most of the rebels in there was down or dead. In fact, several Free Staters had already gived up the fight for the dining room and pillaged the bar, grabbing bottles and drinking them down. In the midst of that, a tall, rangy feller with a wide-brim hat walked into the busted front door of the saloon and announced, “I’m Captain James Lane of the Free State Militia, and you is all my prisoners!”

Well, there weren’t hardly no prisoners to speak of in the saloon where he spoke, for every Pro Slaver in there had gone across the quit line or was just about to, save for two or three souls squirming on the floor, giving their last kicks. But the rebels who had backed into the dining room caught their breath now and put up a fight. The size of the room favored them, for the dining room was tight and there weren’t room for the superior numbers of Yanks, which made shooting at the remaining Pro Slavers in there sloppy business. There was some panic, too, for several drummers fired within ten feet of each other and missed. Still, a good number of the Free Staters took balls in that frolic and their friends, seeing that, weren’t taking a liking to it. Their attack slowed. Their surprise was gone, and now it was just a hot fight. There was some crazy talk and laughing, too, for one Pro Slaver exclaimed, “God-damn fucker shot my boot,” and there was more laughing. But them rebels done a good enough job to hold them Yanks out the dining room for the moment, and when I seen a path clear to the back door to the alley where the slave pen was, I made for it as quick as I could. I didn’t make for the stairs to help Pie. Whether Darg, her new love, was there and got her out, I didn’t know. But she was on her own. I never did see either of ’em again.

I busted out that back door running. I hustled over to the slave pen, where the Negroes was scrambling trying to break the lock, which was fastened from the outside. I quick undid it and flung open the gate. Broadnax and the rest run out there with hot feet. They didn’t look at me twice. They vanished out the gate quick as you can tell it and hauled ass down the alley.

Bob, though, stood in the corner in the same spot where he always stood, gaping like a fool, his mouth hanging open.

“Bob, let’s roll.”

“I’m done running with you,” he said. “G’wan ’bout your business and leave me be. This is one of your tricks.”

“It ain’t no trick. C’mon!”

Behind me, at the far end of the alley, a group of rebel townsmen on horses rounded the corner and charged the alleyway, hooping and hollering. They fired over our heads at the fleeing Negroes who was making it for the other end of the alley. The alley dead-ended at a T. You had to turn right or left to get to the road on either side. Them coloreds was making for that intersection something terrible.

I didn’t wait. I took off after them. I reckon Bob looked over my shoulder and got a taste of them rebels’ bullets singing over his head, for he jumped up like a rabbit and took off right behind me.

The escaped Negroes from the yard was only about twenty-five yards in front of us. They made it to the end of the alley on a dead run and split apart, some cutting right and the others left, out of sight. Me and Bob headed there, too, but didn’t get no farther than halfway to the end of the alley when a rebel on horseback rounded the corner on that very same end from the main street side where several Negroes had disappeared to. He charged down the alley toward us. He had a Connor rifle in his hand, and when he seen me and Bob coming at him, he charged dead at us and raised his rifle to fire.

We stopped cold in our tracks, for we was caught. The redshirt slowed his horse as it trotted on us, and as he pulled his traces on his horse he said, “Stay right there.” Just as he said it—he weren’t more than five feet from us—a feller stepped out from one of the doorways in the alley and swiped that rebel clean off his horse with a broadsword. Knocked him clean down. The rebel hit the ground cold.

Me and Bob made to hotfoot it around him. But the feller who knocked him down throwed his foot out as I passed, and I tripped clean over it and fell face-first in the mud.

I turned to get up, and found myself staring up into the barrel of an old seven-shooter, a familiar-looking one, and at the end of it was the Old Man, and he didn’t look none too pleased.

“Onion,” he said. “Owen says you is a drunk, using tobacco and swearing. Is that true?”

Behind him, slowly stepping out the alleyway door come his boys: Owen, Watson, Salmon, Oliver, the new man Kagi, and several men I didn’t recognize. They stepped out that doorway slow and steady, never rushing. The Old Man’s army was trained to be calm and cool in a fight as usual. They glanced at rebels down at the other end of the alley firing at us, formed a firm firing line, set up, and opened fire.

Several rebels fell. The rest who got a taste of that trained army bucking lead at them hopped off their horses, and took cover behind the slave pen, returning the favor.

Bullets whizzed back and forth down the alley, but the Old Man, standing over me, paid them no mind. He stared at me, clearly annoyed, waiting for an answer. Well, since he was waiting, I couldn’t tell him a lie.

“Captain,” I said. “It’s true. I fell in love and had my heart broke.”

“Did you commingle with anyone in a fleshly way of nature without being married?”

“No, sir. I am still clean and pure as the day I was born in that fashion.”

He nodded grumpily, then glanced down the alley as bullets zinged past him and struck the shingles of the building next to him, pinging the wood out into the alley in splinters. He was a fool when it come to standing around getting shot at. The men behind him ducked and grimaced as the rebels gived them fire, but the Old Man might as well been standing in a church at choir practice. He stood mute, as usual, apparently thinking something through. His face, always aged, looked even older. It looked absolutely spongy with wrinkles. His beard was now fully white and ragged, and so long it growed down to his chest and could’a doubled for a hawk’s nest. He had gotten a new set of clothes someplace, but they were only worse new versions of the same thing he wore before: black trousers, black vest, frock coat, stiff collar, withered, crumpled, and chewed at the edges. His boots was worse than ever, crumpled like pieces of text paper, curled at the toes. In other words, he looked normal, like his clothes was dying of thirst, and he himself was about to keel over out of plain ugliness.