The Good Lord Bird

They brung everything but food, and the aroma of the birds drawed them to the fire right off. They stood around it in a circle. One of ’em, the Jew named Weiner, a thin, taut, lean feller wearing suspenders, was bearing a newspaper which he gived to Owen. “Hold it till after we eat,” he said, staring at the fire. “Otherwise the Captain will want to ride off directly.”

But the Old Man come up and seen him and he snatched the newspaper. “Mr. Weiner, no doubt the news from Lawrence is pressing,” he said. “But worry not, for I has had a vision on it already.” He turned to the others and said, “Men, before you stuff your gullets, let us thank our Holy Provider for these victuals, since we is after all spreading freedom in His name.”

The men stood in a circle with their heads bowed while the Old Man stood in the center, hat in hand, bowing his wrinkled old face over the roasted birds and the fire.

Thirty minutes later the fire was out, the dinner as cold as Dick’s ice house, and he was still prattling on. I ought to give you a full sample of Old John Brown’s prayers, but I reckon they wouldn’t make sense to the dear reader who’s no doubt setting in a warm church basement a hundred years distant, reading these words wearing Stacy Adams shoes and a fake fur coat, and not having to do no more than waddle over to the wall and flick a button to warm his arse and heat his coffee. The Old Man’s prayers was more sight than sound, really, more sense than sensibility. You had to be there: the aroma of burnt pheasant rolling through the air, the wide, Kansas prairie about, the smell of buffalo dung, the mosquitoes and wind eating at you one way, and him chawing at the wind the other. He was a plain terror in the praying department. Just when he seemed to wrap up one thought, another come tumbling out and crashed up against the first, and then another crashed up against that one, and after a while they all bumped and crashed and commingled against one another till you didn’t know who was who and why he was praying it, for the whole thing come together like the tornadoes that whipped across the plains, gathering up the sagebrush and boll weevils and homesteads and tossing them about like dust. The effort of it drawed his sweat, which poured down his leathery neck and runned down his shirt, while he spouted about burnt offerings and blood from the lamp stand of Jesus and so forth; all the while that dress of mine itched to high heaven and the mosquitoes gnawed at my guts, eating me alive. Finally Owen murmured, “Pa! We got to get up the trail! There’s a posse riding!”

That brung the Old Man to his senses. He coughed, throwed out a couple more Hail Marys and Thank You Lords, then wound the whole business down. “I ought to give Thee a full prayer,” he grumbled, “rather than just a few bumbling words to our Great Redeemer Who hath paid in blood and to Whose service we is obliged.” He was given to saying “thees” and “thous” in his talks.

The men collapsed on their haunches and ate while the Old Man read the newspaper. As he done so, his face darkened, and after a few moments he balled the newspaper up in a large, wrinkled fist and shouted, “Why, they attacked our man!”

“Who’s that?” Owen asked.

“Our man in Congress!” He uncrinkled the newspaper and read it aloud to everyone. From what I could gather, two fellers got into a wrangle about slavery in the top hall of the U.S. government in Washington, D.C., and one of them knocked the other cold. Seemed like a feller from Massachusetts named Sumner got the worst end of it, being that a feller from South Carolina broke his cane over Sumner’s head and got a bunch of new canes in the mail from people that liked his side of the whole bit.

The Old Man throwed the newspaper down. “Roust up the horses and break down the tent. We shall strike back tonight. Hurry, men, we have work to do!”

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?”