James McBride - The Good Lord Bird

“You don’t know him,” I said.

But he didn’t hear me. He had harred up his horses and was gone.

Two days later, an old colored woman bearing brooms inside a wheelbarrow pushed up to the door of the Kennedy farm and knocked. Cook was fast asleep. He woke up, grabbing his pistol, and runned to the door. He spoke with the door closed, his pistol down by his side. “Who is it?”

“Name’s Becky, massa. I’m selling brooms.”

“Don’t want none.”

“The Coachman says you did.”

Cook looked at me, puzzled. “That’s the feller I told you ’bout,” I said. He stood there blinking a minute, half-sleep. He didn’t no more remember what I told him ’bout the Coachman than a dog would remember his birthday. Fat Mary from down the road was wearing him out. He didn’t get back to the house the night before till the wee hours. He come in with his disheveled clothes and his hair a mess, smelling like liquor, laughing and whistling.

“All right, then. But come in slow.”

The woman walked in slowly and purposeful, pushing the barrel before her. She was old, slender, deep brown, with furried white hair, a wrinkled face, and a tattered dress. She pulled two new brooms out of the barrel and held one in each hand. “I made these myself,” she said, “fashioned from the best straw and brand-new pine handles. Made from southern pine, the best kinds.”

“We don’t need no brooms,” Mr. Cook said.

The woman took a long look around. She saw the boxes marked “Mining” and “Tools.” The clean mining picks and axes, which hadn’t seen a bit of dirt. She looked at me once, then again, blinking, then at Cook. “Surely the little missus here”—she nodded at me—“could use a broom to clean up after the young master.”

Cook was sleepy and irritable. “We got brooms enough here.”

“But if you mining and getting all dirtied up, you’ll be bringing in all kinds of filth and dirt and so forth, and I wouldn’t want the master to get too sullied up.”

“Can’t you hear?”

“I’m sorry, then. The Coachman said you’d need brooms.”

“Who is that again?”

“That’s the feller I told you ’bout,” I piped up again. Cook looked at me and frowned. He weren’t like the Old Man. He didn’t quite know what to do with me. He was all right when we was on the trail out west and there weren’t nobody else around to shoot the yarn with. But once he got around civilization, he didn’t know whether he should act white or colored, or be a soldier or a spy, or shit or go blind. He hadn’t paid me the least bit of attention since we got to the Ferry, and what attention he did pay to me weren’t respectful. I was just a bother to him. It was all fun to him. I don’t know but that he didn’t think anything would come of the Old Man’s plans, or believed him in the least, for Cook had never been in a real war, and never seen the Old Man fight. “Is she one of them you supposed to be hivin’?” he asked.

“One of ’em,” I said.

“Well, hive her,” he said, “and I will brew us up some coffee.” He picked up a bucket and moved outside. There was a water well out back, and he stumbled out there holding that bucket, rubbing his eyes.

Becky looked at me. “We is here on a mission,” I said. “I reckon the Coachman told you.”

“He told me he met a strange li’l cooter on the road dressed funny, who gived him bad instructions, and was likely stretching his blanket lying.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me names, for I has done you no wrong.”

“I’ll be calling you dead if you continues on as you is. You do much harm to yourself when you paddle ’bout, selling fool’s gold. Talking ’bout a great man. And talking it into the ears of the wrong folks. The Coachman’s wife don’t work on the gospel train. She got a mouth like a waterfall. You putting a lot of people in danger, hooting and railing ’bout John Brown like you is.”

“I already had a mouthful ’bout that from the Coachman,” I said. “I don’t know nothing ’bout nobody’s gospel train, not in no way, form, or fashion. I ain’t a runaway and ain’t from these parts. I been sent forward to hive the bees. Get the colored together. That’s what the Old Man sent me for.”

“Why would he send you?”

“He ain’t got but two coloreds in his army. The other ones he weren’t too sure ’bout.”

“In what way?”

“Thought they might trot off before they done what the Captain told ’em what to do.”

“The Captain. Who’s that?”

“I already told you. John Brown.”

“And what did the Captain tell you to do?”

“Hive the bees. Ain’t you heard me?”

Cook came to the kitchen, holding a pot of water. Then moved to put some kindling on the fire to make some hot water. “You hive her yet?” he said gaily. He was just a fool. He was the gayest man I ever saw. It would cost him. He’d be deadened ’cause of it, acting a fool.

“She don’t believe it,” I said.

“What part of it?”

“No parts of it.”

He stood up and cleared his throat, agitated. “Now listen, Aunt Polly, we come all this way to fr—”

“Becky’s my name, if you please.”

“Becky. A great man’s ’bout to come here and free your people. I just got a letter from him. He’ll be here in less than three weeks. He needs to hive the bees. Free you all.”

“I done heard all I need to hear about hiving and freeing,” Becky said. “How’s all this hiving and freeing gonna happen?”

“I can’t right tell all of it. But Old John Brown is coming, surely. From out west. Freedom’s nigh for you and your people. Onion here ain’t lying.”

“Onion?”

“That’s what we call her.”

“Her?”

I piped up quickly, “Miss Becky, if you ain’t one to hive or get on board with what John Brown’s selling, you ain’t got to come.”

“I didn’t say that,” she said. “I wants to know what he’s selling. Freedom? Here? He might as well be singing to a dead hog if he thinks he’s gonna come here and get away scot-free with that. There’s a damn armory here.”

“That’s why he’s coming,” Cook said. “To take the armory.”

“What’s he gonna take it with?”

“Men.”

“And what else?”

“And all the Negroes that’s gonna join ’em once he takes it over.”

“Mister, you talking crazy.”

Cook was a braggert, and it clean plucked his feathers to talk to a person that didn’t believe him or talked back to him. Especially a colored. “Am I?” he said. “Looky here.”

He led her to the other room, where the stacks of the mining boxes marked Mining Tools lay ’bout. He took a crowbar to one and opened it up. Inside, stacked in neat rows, were thirty clean, brand-new Sharps rifles, one after another.

I had never seen the inside of them boxes neither, and the fullness of the thing hit me and Miss Becky at the same time. Her eyes got wide. “Glory,” she said.

Cook snorted, bragging. “We got fourteen boxes here, just like this one. There’s more coming by shipment. The Captain’s got enough arms to furnish two thousand people.”

“There ain’t but ninety slaves in Harpers Ferry, mister.”

That stopped him dead. The smile disappeared from his face.

“I thought there was twelve hundred colored here. That’s what the man at the post office said yesterday.”

“That’s right. And most of ’em’s free colored.”

“That ain’t the same,” he muttered.

“It’s close enough,” Miss Becky said. “Free colored’s connected to bondage, too. Many of ’em’s married to those in bondage. I’m free, but my husband, he’s a slave. Most free colored’s got slave relations. They ain’t for slavery. Believe me.”