James McBride - The Good Lord Bird

Well, them men was in no hurry to leave, being they’d just got there and was busy stuffing their faces. “What difference do it make,” one feller said. “It can wait a day.”

“The Negro has waited two hundred years,” the Old Man said.

The feller snorted. “Let ’em wait. There ain’t enough food in this camp.” He was a raggedy-dressed feller like the rest, but he was a thick man, bearing a six-shooter and real riding pants. He had a thick, wrinkled neck of a turkey buzzard, and he kept his mouth movin’ on that pheasant as he talked.

“We is not out here to eat, Rev. Martin,” the Old Man said.

“Just because two fools have a fight in Congress don’t mean nothing,” he said. “We has our own fights out here.”

“Rev. Martin, you is on the wrong side of understanding,” the Captain said.

The Reverend munched away and said, “I aim to better my reading so I don’t have to hear your interpretations of things, Captain, which I is no longer sure of. Every time I ride out and come back to your camp, you got another face rooting around, eating. We ain’t got enough food for the men here already.” He nodded at me. “Who’s that there?”

I was stuffing my face with bird fast as I could, for I had my own plan on escaping.

“Rev. Martin, that’s Onion,” Frederick announced proudly.

“Where’d she come from?” he asked.

“Stolen from Dutch Henry’s Tavern.”

The Reverend’s eyes widened and he turned to the Old Man. “Of all the troublemakers in this country, why’d you pick a fight with him?”

“I didn’t pick no fight,” the Old Man said. “I went to scout his territory.”

“Well, you done scouted trouble. I wouldn’t pick a fight with Dutch for a box of crackers. I ain’t come to this country to shoot it out with him.”

“Nobody’s shooting nothing,” the Old Man said. “We are riding for redemption, and the Bible says it, ‘Hold truth to thine own man’s face, and the Lord shall deliver.’”

“Don’t pick no boil with me about the Bible,” the Reverend snorted. “I know more about it than any man here.”

He bit off the wrong end then, for in my 111 years on God’s green earth, I never knowed a man who could spout the Bible off better than Old John Brown. The Old Man straightened up, reared back, and throwed off half a dozen Bible verses right in the Reverend’s face, and when the Reverend tried to back-fire with a couple of his own, the Old Man drowned him out with half dozen more that was better than the first. Just mowed him down. The Rev was outgunned.

“All right already,” he snapped. “But you sporting trouble. Dutch got a mess of Missouri redshirts ’round his place. You just gived him a reason to set ’em loose. He’ll come after us hard.”

“Let him come,” the Old Man said. “Onion’s part of my family, and I aim to keep her free.”

“She ain’t part of mine,” the Reverend said. He sucked a pheasant bone and tossed it down coolly, licking his fingers. “I’m fighting to free Kansas, not to steal oily-headed niggers like this one.”

The Old Man said icily, “I thought you was a Free State man, Reverend.”

“I am a Free State man,” the Reverend said. “That ain’t got nothing to do with getting aired out for stealing somebody’s nigger.”

“You shouldn’t’a rode with this company if you were planning to peck and hoot ’bout the colored being free,” Old Man Brown said.

“I rode with you out of common interest.”

“Well, my interest is freeing the colored in this territory. I’m an abolitionist through and through.”

Now as them two was wrangling, most of the men had finished up eating and sat on their haunches watching.

“That’s Dutch’s nigger. Bought and paid for!”

“He’ll forget about it soon enough.”

“He won’t forget that kind of wrong.”

“Then I’ll clear his memory of it when he comes.”

The Indian, Ottawa Jones, stepped to the Captain and said, “Dutch ain’t a bad sort, Captain. He done some work for me before he got his tavern. He weren’t for slavery then. He should have the chance to change his mind.”

“You just defending him ’cause you had a slave or two yourself,” another man piped up.

“You’re a liar,” Jones said.

That started more disruption, with several leaning this way and that, some with the Old Man, others with the Reverend. The Old Man listened in silence and finally waved ’em quiet.

“I aim to strike a blow at the slavers. We know what they done. They killed Charles Dow. They sent Joe Hamilton to our Maker right in front of his wife. They raped Willamena Tompkin. They’re rapists. Pillagers. Sinners, all. Destroying this whole territory. The Good Book says, ‘Hold thine enemy to his own fire.’ Dutch Henry is an enemy. But I’ll allow if he don’t get in the way, he won’t suffer injury from me.”

“I ain’t going up against Dutch,” Reverend Martin said. “I got no hank with him.”

“Me neither,” another man said. “Dutch gived me a horse on credit. Plus this here army’s got too many angles to it. I didn’t come all the way from Connecticut to ride with Jews.”

The Jew Weiner, standing next to Jones, stepped toward the man with his fists balled. “Peabody, you open your mouth sideways again, I’ll bust you straddle-legged.”

“That’s enough,” the Old Man said. “We riding on Osawatomie tomorrow night. That’s where Pro Slavers are. Whoever wants to ride, come on. Whoever don’t want to can go home. But go north by way of Lawrence. I don’t want anyone riding south to warn Dutch.”

“You wanna ride against Dutch, go ’head,” the Reverend said. “I won’t get in the way. But nobody tells me where to ride—especially not over a nappy-headed, bird-gobbling nigger.” He placed his hand on his shooter, which hung on his left side. Peabody and a couple of other men stepped aside with him, and suddenly, just like that, the Old Man’s army split in half, one side standing with the Old Man, the other angling behind the Rev.

There was a rustle in the crowd behind the Old Man, and the Reverend’s eyes growed to the size of silver dollars, for Fred came at him and he was hot, drawing his hardware as he come. He handled them big seven-shooters like twigs. Quick as you can tell it, he was on the Reverend and mashed both his seven-shooters on the Reverend’s chest. I heard the cocks snap back on both of them.

“If you say another word about my friend Onion here, I’ll bust a charge in your chest,” he said.

The sound of the Old Man’s voice stopped him. “Frederick!”

Fred froze, pistols drawed out.

“Leave him be.”

Frederick stepped away. The Reverend huffed and glared, but he didn’t pull his metal, and he was wise not to, for Owen had stepped out the crowd, and so had two of Brown’s other sons. They was a rough bunch, them Browns. They was holy as Jesus to a man. They didn’t swear, didn’t drink. Didn’t cuss. But God help you if you crossed ’em, for they didn’t take no backwater off nobody. Once they decided something, it was done.

The Reverend gathered his rifle and things, got on his horse, and hit off without a word. Peabody and two others followed. They rode north out the campgrounds, the way the Captain told ’em to do.

The Old Man, Ottawa Jones the Indian, and the Jew Weiner stood together and watched Reverend Martin and his men leave.

“You ought to duck-hunt that Reverend in his back while you got the chance,” Weiner said. “He won’t be out of sight five minutes before he turns south and heads to Dutch’s Crossing. He’ll hoot and holler to Dutch loud as he can.”

“Let him holler,” the Old Man said. “I want everyone to know what I aim to do.”