James McBride - The Good Lord Bird

They had him set up at a big hall there. His handlers had primed the thing. There was a fine, mighty crowd standing outside, waiting to be let in, which meant much money to be collected. But they delayed it. Me and the Old Man was standing behind the big organ pipes in the pulpit, waiting for the crowd to come in, when the Old Man asked one of his handlers who was standing about, “What’s the delay for?”

The man was in a tizzy. He seemed scared. “A federal agent from Kansas has come to this area to arrest you,” he said.

“When?”

“No one knows when or where, but someone spotted him at the train station this morning. You want to cancel today’s event?”

Oh, that primed the Old Man. That drug him out. He loved a fight. He touched his seven-shooters. “He better not show his face in here,” he said. And the others standing around allowed that they agreed, and promised that if the agent showed himself, why, he’d be jumped and shackled. But I had no trust in them Yanks. They weren’t uncivilized like the raw Yanks out west, who would knock you cold and drug you along from a stirrup by one boot and beat you something scandalous like a good Pro Slaver would. These Yanks was civilized.

“There will be no arrest in here today,” the Old Man said. “Open the doors.”

They ran and done as he said, and the crowd filed in. But before he walked out to the pulpit to speak, the Captain pulled me aside and gived me warning. “Stand along the far wall and watch the room,” he said. “Keep your eyes open for that federal agent.”

“What do a federal agent look like?”

“You can smell him. A federal man smells like bear, for he uses bear grease to oil his hair and lives indoors. He don’t cut stove wood or plow a mule. He’ll be clean looking. Yellow and pale.”

I looked into the hall. Seemed like about five hundred folks out there fit that description, not including the women. The Old Man and his boys had taken down a bear or two in our travels, but other than eating the meat and using the fur to warm my gizzards, weren’t nothing I could remember about the bear smell. But I said, “What do I do if I see him?”

“Don’t say nothing or interrupt my talking. Just wave the Good Lord feather in your bonnet.” That was our sign, see. That feather he gived me from the Good Lord Bird, which I gived to Frederick, and got back from Frederick after he died. I kept that thing stuffed in my bonnet flush to my face.

I allowed that I would do as he said, and he went up to the pulpit while I moved into the room.

He walked up to the podium wearing both his seven-shooters and his broadsword with a look on his face that showed he was ready to crust over on some evil. When the Old Man got to boiling and was ready to throw hot grits around and raise hell, he wouldn’t get excited. He’d go the other way. He’d calm up, get holy, and his voice, normally flat like the plains, would get high and tight, curvy and jagged sharp, like the Pennsylvania mountains he favored. First thing he said was, “I has word a federal agent is on my tail. If he is present, let him show himself. I will meet him with an iron fist right here.”

Blessed God if you couldn’t hear a pin drop in there let me drop a corpse by the telling of it. Good God, he put a scare into them Yanks then. They growed quiet when he said that, for he feared ’em up something good. They seen his true nature. Then, after a few moments, they got their courage up, and growed mad, and booed and hissed. They flew hot as the devil, and shouted out they was ready to leap on anyone who would so much as look at the Old Man sideways. That brought me some relief, but not much, for they was cowards and talkers, whereas the Old Man, when he beat his drum wrong about somebody, he’d drug ’em over the quit line without too much tearing his hair out ’bout the whole bit. But he couldn’t kill nobody in there, not with all them people there, and that gived me some comfort.

The room quieted after he shussed ’em and assured ’em no agent would dare show himself anyhow. Then he went on into his normal speech, pissing all over the Pro Slavers as usual, hollering ’bout all the killings they done, without mentioning his own, of course.

I knowed that speech like the back of my hand, having heard it many times by then, so I got bored and fell asleep. Near the end of things, I woke up and runned my eyeballs along the walls, just to be safe, and darned if I didn’t spot a feller who seemed suspicious.

He stood along the back wall among several other fellers who hooted and hollered against the Pro Slavers. He didn’t join them in that. Didn’t gnash his teeth or grind his hands or nod his head, or cry and pull his hair and holler against the Pro Slavers like those around him did. He weren’t enraptured with the Old Man. He stood stone-cold silent, cool as spring water, watching. He was a clean-cut feller. Short, stout, pale from living inside, wearing a bowler cap, white shirt, and bow tie, with a handlebar mustache. When the Old Man paused in his speech for a moment, the crowd shifted, for it growed hot in the room, and the feller removed his hat, showing a mane of thick, oily hair. By the time he pushed back a lick of that oily hair and throwed the hat back on his head, the thought had gathered in my mind. That was an oily-haired man if I ever saw one, and I ought to go over there and at least smell him for bear.

The Old Man had kicked his speech into full-out blast by that time, for near the end of his speech he always worked his talk up full, and was in high spirits anyway for he knowed he was heading west after this last big throw-down. He gived his usual proclamations against the dreaded master and the poor slave not prospering and so forth. The crowd was loving it, the women crying and pulling out their hair and gnashing their teeth—it was a good show—but I was alarmed now, watching that spy.

I weren’t taking no chances. I slung my feather out my bonnet and waved it toward the podium, but the Old Man was in high spirits and had peaked by then. He had launched into the final part of his talk, where he busted loose to God in prayer, which he always done at the end, and course he always done his praying with his eyes closed.

I already done told you how long the Old Man’s prayers went. He could tear into a prayer for two hours and spout the Bible easy as you and I can spout the alphabet, and he could do that alone, by hisself, with nobody standing around. So imagine when he had a few hundred folks setting there listening on his thoughts and pleas to our Great King of Kings who made rubber and trees and honey and jam with biscuits and all them good things. He could go on for hours, and we actually lost money on account of that, for sometimes them Yanks got worn out with his rumblings to our Maker and cleared the hall before the basket got passed. He growed wise to that tactic by that time and begun to keep his speculatings short, which for him meant still at least a half hour, his eyes shut at the pulpit, howling at our Maker to hold him in high stead while he done His duty of murdering the slavers and sending them to Glory or Lucifer, though he had a devil of a time keeping it to that length.

I reckon the agent had spied the show before, ’cause he knowed the Old Man was winding down, too. He saw the Old Man close his eyes to start his Bibling and quickly slipped off the back wall and worked through the crowd gathered along the side aisle of the hall, making his way to the front. I quick waved my feather at the Old Man again, but his eyes was shut tight as he gived the Lord ninety cents on the dollar. There weren’t nothing to do but move with the agent.

I came off the back wall and worked my way around the room behind him fast as I could. He was closer to the stage than I was, and movin’ quick.