The Good Lord Bird

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

They struggled with him mightily. Stevens was a heavy man, a big mule-strong feller, as tough a man as there was, but he could barely hold the Coachman. “That’s enough!” Stevens hollered. “That’s enough. There’s fight enough at the Ferry.” They wrestled him back away from the colonel, but the Coachman couldn’t stand it.

“He’s as big a skunk as ever sneaked in the woods!” the Coachman cried. “He sold my mother off!” and he went at Colonel Washington again even harder this time, and this time even Stevens, big as he was, couldn’t handle him. It took all four of them—Tidd, Stevens, Cook, and O.P.—to keep him from killing his former master. They had to grapple with him for several minutes. The Coachman gived all four of them all they could handle, and when they finally pinned him back, Stevens was so hot, he pulled his hardware and stuck it in the Coachman’s face.

“You do that again, I’ll air you out myself,” he said. “I’ll not have you spilling blood here. This is a war of liberation, not retribution.”

“I don’t care what name you calls it,” the Coachman said. “You keep him away from me.”

By God, the thing had winged so far out of control, it weren’t funny. Stevens turned to O.P. and said, “We got to move these people now. Let’s move them to the Ferry. The Captain needs reinforcements. I’ll tend to the others. You keep him away from the colonel.” He nodded at the Coachman.

O.P. weren’t for it. “You know what’s waiting for us at the Ferry.”

“We got orders,” Stevens said, “and I aims to follow ’em.”

“How we gonna get to the Ferry? We’d have to fight our way in. It’s closed off by now.”

Stevens peered at Washington out the corner of his eye. “We ain’t got to fight our way in. We can walk in. I got a plan.”

* * *

The road from the schoolhouse on the Maryland side going down to the Ferry is a dangerous one. It’s a steep, sharp hill. At the top of it, the road arcs like the curve of an egg. You bounce high over that, and from there you can see the Ferry and the Potomac clear, then you hit that hill and fly down that till you hit the bottom. Right there, at the bottom, is the Potomac River. You got to turn left hard to follow the road to the bridge back over to the Ferry. You can’t take that hill too fast coming off that mountain, ’cause if you come down too fast, it’s too steep to stop. Many a wagon, I reckon, has bent and broken an axle or two at the bottom, trying to take that turn too fast. You got to take that thing with your horses reined up tight and your brake pulled in hard, otherwise you’ll end up in the Potomac.

The Coachman took that road in Colonel Washington’s four-horse coach like the devil was whipping him. He bounced down that hill so fast, it felt like the wind was gonna pull me off. Stevens, Colonel Washington, and the other slave owner rode inside, while the slaves, me, and O.P. rode the running boards, hanging on for dear life.

’Bout a half mile from the bottom, before that dangerous turn come up, Stevens—thank God for him—he hollered out the window to the Coachman to har them horses and stop the wagon, which the Coachman done.

I was standing on the running board, watching, with my head at the window. Stevens, sitting next to Washington, removed his revolver from his holster, primed it, pulled the hammer back, and stuck it into Washington’s side. Then he covered it with his coat so it couldn’t be seen.

“We is going across the B&O Bridge,” he said. “If we get stopped by militia there, you’ll get us through,” he said.

“They won’t let us!” Colonel Washington said. Ooooo, he growed chickenhearted right there. Big man like that, crowing like a bird.

“Surely they will,” Stevens said. “You’re a colonel in the militia. You just say, ‘I have made arrangements to exchange myself and my Negroes for the white prisoners inside the engine house.’ That’s all you say.”

“I can’t do it.”

“Yes, you can. If you open your mouth in any other direction at the bridge, I’ll bust a charge in you. Nothing will happen to you if you follow my directions.”

He stuck his head out the window and said to the Coachman, “Let’s go.”

The Coachman didn’t hesitate. He harred up them horses and sent that wagon raking down that road again. I hung on from my fingernails down, glum as could be. I would’a jumped off that thing when it stopped, but there weren’t no scampering off with Stevens around. And now, with that thing up to speed again, if I’d’a jumped off on that hill, I’d’a been busted into a million pieces by them wagon’s wheels, which was thick across as my four fingers, if Stevens didn’t shoot me first, he was so mad.