James McBride - The Good Lord Bird

He forgot all ’bout Osawatomie, where they deadened Frederick and sent him packing, but that was the Old Man’s nature. He never remembered nothing but what he wanted to, and didn’t tell himself nothing but what he only really wanted to believe.

He got downright wistful standing there. “God has blessed us, Onion, for you is a good and courageous girl. Having you with me at this moment of my greatest triumph is like having my Frederick here, who gived his life in favor of the Negro, even though he didn’t know his head from his hindquarters. You has always gived him such joy. It gives me cause to thank our Redeemer and how much He hath given to all of us.” And here he closed his eyes, folded his hands across his chest, and busted into prayer, chanting his thanks to our Great Redeemer Who walked the road to Jericho and so forth, praying ’bout Fred being so lucky as to ride with the angels, and while he said it, he didn’t want to forget to mention some others of his twenty-two children, the ones who’d died from sickness and those who yet had gone to glory: the ones who died first, little Fred, Marcy when she was two, William who died of fever, Ruth who got burned; then he runned down the list of the living ones, then his cousin’s children, and his Pa and Ma, thanking God for accepting them on high and teaching him the Lord’s way. All this with his men standing ’round and the hostages behind him, watching, and a good three hundred white fellers outside, milling around looped and shit-faced, passing ammo and gearing up to make another charge.

There weren’t no Owen to bust him out of that trance—Owen’s the only one had the guts to do it, to my knowledge—for the Old Man’s prayers was serious business, and I seen him pull his heater out on any fool game enough to break off his conversations between him and his Maker. Even his main fellers Kagi and Stevens was scared to do it, and when they done it, they went ’bout it roundabout with no success, breaking drinking glasses at his feet, coughing, hacking, harring up spit, chopping wood, and when that didn’t work, they had target practice and blowed off caps right next to his ear, and still they couldn’t break him out of one his prayer spells. But my arse, or what was left of it, was on the line, and I valued it dearly, so I said, “Captain, I is thirsty! And there is some business at hand. I’m feeling Jesus.”

That snapped him out of his trance. He stood up straightaway, tossed out two or three amens, throwed his arms out wide and said, “Thank Him, Onion! Thank Him! You is on the right road. Give Onion some water, men!” Then he drawed himself up to his full height, pulled out from his belt and held up the sword from Frederick the Great, admiring it, then placed it across his chest. “May this new acceptance of the Son of Man in Onion’s heart serve as a symbol of inspiration to us in our fight for justice for the Negro. May it give us even greater force. Let it inspire us to lend ourselves even more wholly to the cause, and give our enemies something to cry about. Now, men. On to it. We is not done yet!”

Well, he didn’t say nothing ’bout busting out of there. Them’s the words I was looking for. He didn’t breathe a word of that.

He ordered the men and the slaves to chink out the walls, and they got busy. A feller named Phil, a slave feller, got some of the slaves together—there was ’bout twenty-five colored in there in all, some who had come or been gathered thereabouts along with those we brung, plus five white masters who set tight, not movin’—and them coloreds got busy. They chinked out some expert holes with pikes and loaded up the rifles. Lined ’em up one by one so the Old Man’s men could grab one after the other without having to load ’em up, and we prepared for perfect slumber.

The mob outside the gate waited a good hour or so for Colonel Washington to work whatever magic he had supposedly had, to exchange hisself and his Negroes for the white hostages. When it didn’t happen by the second hour, someone hollered out, “Where’s our colonel? How many hostages is you giving up for our colonel and his niggers?”

The Old Man stuck his face in the window and hollered, “None. If you want your colonel, come and get him.”

Oh, they throwed a hissy fit all over again. There was some hollerin’, fussin’, and huddlin’ up, and after a few minutes they walked ’bout two hundred militia through the gate, in uniform, marched ’em in there in formation, turned ’em against the engine house, and told ’em, “Fire!” By God, when they cut loose, it felt like a giant monster kicked the building. The whole engine house shook. Just a roaring and banging. Bricks and mortar chinked everywhere, from the roof pillars on down. Their firing blowed big pieces of brick mortar right clear through the walls of the Engine Works, and even tore off a big piece of the timber that held up the roof, it came crashing down.

But they didn’t overtake us. The Old Man’s men were well trained and they held steady, firing through the holes in the brick made by the militia’s firing, with him hollering, “Calm. Aim low. Make ’em pay dear.” They powered the militia with balls and drove ’em back outside the gate.

The militias gathered outside the walls again, and they was so drunk and mad now it was a pity. All that laughing and joking from the day before was gone now, replaced with full-out rage and frustration in every appearance. Some of them growed chickenhearted from that first charge, for several of their brothers had been hurt or deadened by the Captain’s men, and they peeled off and hauled ass away from the group. But more was coming down to the gate, and after a few minutes, they regrouped and come through the gate again in even greater numbers, for more men had arrived outside the armory to replace those that fell. Still, the Old Man’s men held them off. And that company drew back. They milled around out there by the safety of the gate, yelling and hollering, promising to string the Old Man up by his privates. Shortly after, they brung in a second company from somewhere ’bout. Different uniforms. Marched another two hundred or so into the gate, madder than the first, cussing and hooting, turned ’em on the building, and by the time they busted off their caps, the Old Man’s crew had diced, sliced, and gutted out a good number of ’em, and they broke loose for the gate running faster than the first, leaving a few more gutted or dead ’bout the yard. And each time the Virginians moved to fetch one of their wounded, one of the Old Man’s men poked his Sharps out the chinks in the brick wall and made ’em pay for them thoughts. That just got ’em hotter. They was burning up.

The white hostages, meantime, was dead quiet and terrified. The Old Man put the Coachman and the Emperor in charge of minding ’em, and had a good twenty-five slaves in there running ’bout busy. They wasn’t bewildered no more, them coloreds was with it. And not a peep was heard out of any of them white masters.

Now we wasn’t far from their saviors. We could hear the militia talking and yelling outside, screaming and cussing. That crowd growed bigger and bigger, and with that come more confusion to ’em. They’d say let’s go this way, try this, and someone would shout that plan down, then someone else would holler, “My cousin Rufus is wounded in the yard. We got to get him out,” and someone would say, “You get him!” and a fight would break out among ’em, and a captain would shout more directions, and they’d have to break up the fighting among themselves. They was just discombobulated. And while they done this, the Captain was ordering his men and the colored helpers, in calm fashion, “Reload, people. Aim low. Line the rifles on the walls loaded so you can grab one after you fire the first. We are hurting the enemy.” The men and them slaves was firing and reloading so fast, so efficient, seemed like a machine. Old John Brown knowed his business when it come to fighting a war. They could have used him in the great war that was to come, I’ll say that.