The Good Lord Bird

Finally, they sent an emissary to talk to the Old Man, an important-looking feller in a linen suit and bowler hat, likely a politician of sorts. He marched a few feet into the gate, shouted out at the Old Man to cut out the fooling and stop being a sot, and was met by a rifle shot over his head. That drummer whistled out the gate so fast his hat pulled off his head, and he was back across the road before that thing hit the ground.

Finally around one o’clock, a very old man, dressed like a common worker, broke from the crowd of mumblers and ruffled bystanders standing at the gate at a safe distance across the road in front of the Gault House, shuffled slowly across Shenandoah Street, walked dead into the armory, strode to the front of the engine house door, and knocked. The Old Man peeked at him through the window, his Sharps at the ready. It was full daylight now, and nobody had slept. The Old Man’s face was lined and tight.

“We understands you is Old John Brown of Osawatomie, Kansas,” the old man said politely. “Is that right?”

“That be me.”

“Well, seeing you close, you is old all right,” the feller said.

“I’m fifty-nine,” the Old Man said. “How old are you?”

“I has got you by eight years, sir. I’m sixty-seven. Now, you has got my younger brother in there. He’s sixty-two. And I’d appreciate if you’d let him out, for he is ill.”

“What’s his name?”

“Odgin Hayes.”

The Old Man turned to the room. “Who here’s Odgin Hayes?”

Three old fellers raised their hands and stood up.

The Captain frowned. “That won’t work,” he said. And he commenced to giving all three a lecture on the Bible and the book of Kings, ’bout how Solomon had two women each claiming the same baby, till the king said, I’ll cut the baby in two and give you both half, and one woman said, give it to the other mother, for I can’t stand to see my baby cut in two, so the king gived it to her, for he knowed she was the real mother.

That shamed ’em, or maybe it was the part ’bout being cut in two, or maybe him giving the lecture using his broadsword to make points in this way and that. Whatever it was, two of ’em confessed outright they was lying and sat down, and the real Odgin stayed standing up, and the Old Man let him out.

The old feller outside appreciated the gesture and said so, but as he walked across the armory back out to Shenandoah Street, the crowd had growed now, and several fellers in militia uniforms could be seen milling around, waving swords and guns. The Gault House and the Wager House, both saloons, was doing booming business, and the crowd was full-out drunk, boisterous and unruly, cursing and so forth.

Meanwhile, the prisoners inside, not to mention Stevens, was getting hungry and begun bellowing ’bout food. The Old Man seen this and said, “Hold on.” He hollered out the window at the gate. “Gentlemen. The people here is hungry. I got fifty prisoners here who has not ate since last night, and neither has my men. I’ll exchange one of my prisoners for breakfast.”

“Who you sending out?” someone hollered.

The Old Man named a feller, the drunk who had staggered in the night before and been captured and announced he was the cook at the Gault House.

“Don’t send that souse,” somebody shouted. “He can’t cook to save his life. Keep him in there.”

There was laughing, but then more grumbling and cursing, and finally they agreed on letting the feller out. The cook shuffled over to the Gault House, and in a couple of hours come back with three men carrying plates of food, which he gived out to the prisoners, and a bottle of whiskey. Then he took a drink and went to sleep again. He forgot all ’bout going free.

By now it was near four p.m. The sun was high overhead, and the crowd outside was hot. Apparently the doctor who had treated the Rail Man spread word to the town that the Rail Man was dying. Several men on horseback was seen galloping up through Bolivar Heights—you could see them running up the roads to the houses tucked up there just above the armory, and you could hear them yelling rumors that echoed down the hill: shouts that the armory was taken by a Negro insurrection. That made the thing electric. All the fun went out of it then. The drunk cursing turned to ranting and full-out cussing and swearing and talking ’bout people’s mothers and the raping of white women, and several rifles and guns could be seen brandished among the crowd, but there weren’t no firing from them yet.

Then, at the far end of the armory, across from the rifle works, several townspeople came sprinting out an unguarded building, holding rifles they had stolen. Kagi, Leary, and Copeland, guarding the rifle works at the far end of the yard, saw them through their window and opened up on them.