James McBride - The Good Lord Bird

Kagi done like he said while O.P. and Stevens grabbed a couple of extra balls and cartridges for their rifles, throwed them in their pockets, and moved to the back window. I followed. The window faced the back wall of the armory. They busted a few shots out the window, which sent a couple of Virginians who’d wandered back there scrambling, and we three crawled through it and out. We made for the back wall, which led to the bottom of the river at the B&O Bridge. We was over that wall in no time. We runned through an open lot and sprinted across the bridge and made it across only ’cause Oliver and Taylor was giving fits to a small group of the enemy who was trying to drive them off it. We made it with bullets pinging everywhere, and within seconds crossed the bridge to the Maryland side. From there we hustled past two more of the Old Man’s men, crossed the road, and in seconds was climbing through thick thickets up the mountain toward the Kennedy farm—in the clear.

We stopped at a clearing ’bout a half mile up. We could see from our vantage point the crowds and militia growing outside the armory, groups of men now, charging into the armory in fours and fives, firing into the engine house, then backpedaling as the Old Man and his men answered ’em—dropping one or two Virginians each time. The wounded lay in the clear in the armory yard, moaning, just feet from their fellow fighters, some of whom had quit breathing altogether, and the rest of their brothers who stood crowded at the entranceway on Shenandoah Street, cursing angrily, afraid to come in and get them. Oh, it was a hot mess.

We watched, terrified. I knowed I weren’t going back over to the Ferry. The crowd outside the armory had growed to nearly two hundred now and more coming, most of ’em holding bottles of gut sauce in one hand and rifles in the other. Behind them, in the town itself and at Bolivar Heights above it, dozens of folk could be seen fleeing up the hills and out of Harpers Ferry, most of ’em colored, and a good deal of white folk, too.

Stevens kept going up the hill while O.P. and I stood for a moment together, watching.

“You going back there?” I asked O.P.

“If I do,” he muttered, “I’m walking on my hands.”

“What we gonna do?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I wouldn’t go back there if Jesus Christ Himself was down there.”

I silently agreed. We turned and climbed up the mountain, following Stevens, making our way up toward the farmhouse fast as we could go.

We found Cook on a quiet dirt road near the Kennedy farm in a state of excitement. Before we could say a word, he blurted out, “We has hived some bees!” He led us to a nearby schoolhouse, where Tidd and Owen stood over two white men and ’bout ten slaves. The coloreds sat on the porch of the schoolhouse, looking bewildered and like they had just got out of bed. Cook pointed to one of the white men setting among ’em under the barrel of Owen’s rifle. “That’s Colonel Lewis Washington,” he said.

“Who’s he?” O.P. asked.

“He’s the great-nephew of George Washington.”

“ The George Washington?”

“Correct.” He grabbed a shiny, powerful-looking sword lying on the porch floor. “We got this from the mantle of his fireplace.” He turned to O.P. and said, “I presents to you the sword of his great-uncle. It was a gift to Washington from Frederick the Great.”

O.P. looked at that broadsword like it was poison. “Why I got to have it?” he asked.

“The Old Man would want you to. It’s symbolic.”

“I ... I ain’t got no use for it,” O.P. said.

Cook frowned. Stevens snatched it and holstered it in his belt.

I walked over to Colonel Washington to have a look. He was a tall, slender white man in a nightshirt, still wearing his sleeping cap on his head, his face unshaven. He was trembling like a deer. He looked so glum and scared, it was a pity.

“When we busted in his house, he thought we was thieves,” Tidd snorted. “He said, ‘Take my whiskey! Take my slaves. But leave me alone.’ He squawked like a baby.” Tidd leaned down to Colonel Washington. “Be a man!” he barked. “Be a man!”

That got Stevens going, and he was an aggravating soul if I ever saw one. He was overall the best soldier I ever saw, but he was the devilment when it come to wagging his fists and digging into a fight. He strutted over to Colonel Washington and glared down at him, hulking over him. The colonel just shrank beneath him, setting underneath that big feller. “Some colonel you are,” Stevens said. “Ready to trade your slaves for your own wretched life. You ain’t worth a pea thrasher, much less a bottle of whiskey.”

Oh, that riled the colonel, Stevens scratching at him that way, but the colonel held his tongue, for he seen Stevens was mad.

Tidd and Owen produced pikes and rifles and begun handing them out to the coloreds, who, truth be told, looked downright bewildered. Two got up and took them gingerly. Then another grabbed one. “What is the matter with you?” Tidd said. “Ain’t you ready to fight for your freedom?” They said nothing, befuddled by the whole bit. Two of ’em looked like they had just got out of bed. One turned away and refused the weapons handed to him. The rest, after a bit of burbling and showing how chickenhearted they felt ’bout the whole affair, went along more or less, taking whatever weapon was offered and holding them like they was hot potatoes. But I took a notice to one of ’em sitting at the end of the row of the coloreds. He was seated on the floor, this feller in a nightshirt and pantaloons, with his suspenders hung low. He looked familiar, and in my excitement and fear it took me a long minute before I recognized the Coachman.

He weren’t dressed so splendid now, for he weren’t wearing his pretty coachman’s outfit with white gloves, as I seen him before, but it was him, all right.

I started toward him, then turned away, for he seen me and I got the understanding that he didn’t want me to recognize him. I knowed he had some secrets and thought it better to pretend not to know him, with his master there. I didn’t want to get him in trouble. If a feller had the impression that the bottom rail was gonna be on top, he’d act far different if he’d’a knowed that at some point the white man was gonna get the Ferry back and sling the Negro every which way. I seen what was going on down at the Ferry and he did not. Neither did Tidd, Cook, or the rest of the Old Man’s soldiers who stayed back up at the farm. But I saw O.P. pull Tidd aside and give him a mouthful. Tidd said nothing. But the Coachman watched them both, and while he didn’t hear what nar a one of them was saying, I guess he made up his mind at that moment that he weren’t going to play dumb and was going for the whole hog.

He stood up and said, “I am ready to fight,” and grabbed his pike when it was offered. “I needs a pistol as well.” They gave him one of them, too, and some ammunition.

His master, Colonel Washington, was setting on the floor of the schoolhouse porch, watching this, and when he seen the Coachman take them weapons, he couldn’t help hisself. He got snappy. He said, “Why, Jim, sit down!”

The Coachman walked over to Colonel Washington and stood over him with a terrible look on his face.

“I ain’t taking another word from you,” he said. “I been taking words from you for twenty-two years.”

That flummoxed Colonel Washington. Just dropped him. He got hot right there. He stammered, “Why, you ungrateful black bastard! I been good to you. I been good to your family!”

“You skunk!” the Coachman cried. He raised his pike to deaden him right there, and only Stevens and O.P. grabbing him stopped him.