James McBride - The Good Lord Bird

“That is a good thing, Little Onion,” he said. “The Good Book says in Ezekiel sixteen, eight: ‘When I passed by thee and looked upon thee behold, that was the time of love and the Lord spread his skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness.’ You has kept your nakedness covered?”

“Much as possible, Captain.”

“Been reading the Bible?”

“Not too much, Captain. But I been thinking in a godly way.”

“Well, that’s something at least,” he said. “For if you stand to the Lord’s willingness, He will stand for you. Did I ever tell you the story of King Solomon and the two mothers with one baby? I will tell you that one, for you ought to know it.”

I was aching for him to move, for the firing had ramped up even more. Bullets zinged high overhead and kicked around his boots and near my face, but he stood where he was a good five minutes, lecturing his thoughts on King Solomon and about me not reading the Good Book. Meanwhile, just behind him at the near end of the alley, which he couldn’t see, Broadnax and his band from the slave yard had made their return. They somehow got hold of the rebels’ cannon, which had been parked at the edge of town, and they plumb rolled that thing back to the end of the alley and swung the hot end to face the rebels. The barrel of that thing was just over the Old Man’s shoulder. He didn’t notice, course, for he was preaching. His sermon about the Holy Word and King Solomon and the two mothers with one baby was clearly important to him. He went on warbling about his sermon as one of Broadnax’s Negroes flared a light and set fire to the cannon’s fuse.

The Old Man didn’t pay it a lick of mind. He was still bellowing on about King Solomon and the two mothers when Owen piped up, “Pa! We got to go. Captain Lane’s riding outta town and gonna leave us.”

The Old Man looked down the alley as bullets whizzed past his head and at the lit cannon over his shoulder, then down at the rebels firing and cussing at the other end of the alley gathered behind the slave pen, trying to mount up the nerve to charge. Behind him, the fuse of Broadnax’s cannon was lit and was kicking out thick smoke as it headed home. The Negroes backed away from it in awe, watching the fuse burn. The Old Man, watching them, seemed straight-out irritated that they was taking the fight from him, for he wanted the glory.

He stepped out in the clear, right in the middle of the alley, and shouted to the rebels who was shooting at us from the slave pen. “I’m Captain John Brown! Now in the name of the Holy Redeemer, the King of Kings, the Man of Trinity, I hereby orders you to git. Git in His holy name! Git! For He is always on the right side of justice!”

Well, I don’t know if it was that lit cannon belching smoke over his shoulder that done it, or them rebels losing heart when they seen the Old Man hisself in person standing in the clear, untouched with their bullets zinging past his face, but they turned and took the tall timber. They took off. And with that cannon fuse lit and burning home to its maker, the Old Man stood right next to it and watched the fuse burn to nothing and fizzle out. It didn’t hit the hammer. The thing was dead.

Looking back, I reckon cannon fuses blowed out all the time. But that cannon not firing only gived the Old Man more reason to believe in divine intrusions, beliefs of which he weren’t never short. He watched the fuse fizzle out and said, “Good Lord. God’s blessing is eternal and everlasting, and now I sees yet another sign that His ideas which has come to me lately is on the dot and that He is speaking to me directly.”

He turned to Owen and said, “I don’t want to run behind Jim Lane no more. I come this far only to gather up Little Onion, who is a good-luck charm to me and this army and also a reminder of our dear Frederick, who lies sleeping in this territory. Now that I has got what I come for, our Redeemer has sprung forth yet another rain bucket of ideas for me to lead the way to freedom for the multitudes of His children, like Little Onion here. I have been making some hatchings of various sundry plans, with God’s help, and after we help ourselves to some of God’s gifts from the hardware and dry-goods stores of these heathen slave owners, we will gather our bees for hiving to a greater purpose. Kansas Territory don’t need me no more. We have great work. To the east, men! Onward!”

And with that the Old Man plopped me on his horse, and we sped down that alley, right past that cannon, out of Pikesville, and into legend.

Ablizzard set on top of us as we moved out of Pikesville with three men on horses and the rest on wagons. Snow fell for a straight day and covered the trail. It left snow nearly a foot high in every direction. A warm snap followed for a day, melting some of the snow, then a deep freeze came. Ice on trees was two inches thick. Water froze in canteens by morning. We lay out under canvases wrapped in roll blankets, with snow blowing over our faces and wolves howling nearby. The Old Man had a new army, a bigger one, and each man took turns keeping the fires going, though they didn’t help much. The outdoors never bothered the Old Man, of course. He could sense a change in the weather like an old farmer, walk through the dead of night through a dark woods without nary a light, and step through a thunderstorm like it weren’t there. But I was hitting the trail after two years of smooth, dry, easy living and shoving rotgut ale down my throat. The second day I come down with a bad case of the ague. Lucky for me, the Old Man fell ill with the ague, too, so he announced, during the middle of the third day when yet another snowstorm fell, “Men, I has word from on high that there is a slave or two that needs freeing here in Missouri. We is heading to Vernon County.”

There weren’t no arguing with him in that weather. He had changed considerably since I seen him two years hence. He was a fearsome sight. His face was wrinkled like a raisin. His gnarled old hands looked like leather claws. His face was stern as a rock. His eyes were like gray granite. His speech changed some, too. He declared he had moved to the woods alone to study the works of some feller named Cromwell, and I reckon it moved him mightily, for he sprinkled his talk with more “thees” and “thous” and “thithers” than ever. Sitting atop his horse with snow falling off his flecked wool coat, sticking to his beard, he looked even more like Moses of old. “I ought to be a general,” he remarked one morning as we trudged through the freezing woods of Vernon County, “but our Redeemer of Trinity Who controlleth the weather and is Commander of all stations deems it fit to keep me at His feet. I was enjoined with nature for nearly a year, Onion, living in the woods on my own, studying my battle plans and commingling with our great King of Kings, I come away with the understanding that I serves His will as a Captain, Onion, that is the title He has charged me with. Nothing higher.”

“Why don’t God’s Captain take us to warm shelter,” Owen grumbled.

The Old Man snorted. “God protects us in winter, Owen. No Pro Slavers will be seen in this country till the grass grows green again. That allows us to do our work.”

He was right about that, for no creature with a brain would venture out into that snow. We trudged along through southwest Missouri territory for four days that way, freezing, not finding no slaves to free, till finally the Old Man declared, “Slavery in Vernon County is vanquished. We will march east to Iowa by land.”

“Whyn’t we take the ferry?” Owen asked. “That’s the fastest way east.”