The Good Lord Bird

The sun was coming up when I come out the jailhouse and climbed in old Clarence’s wagon. The air was clear. The fresh breeze was blowing. It was December, but a warm day for a hanging. Charles Town was just waking up. On the road to the Ferry to catch the train to Philadelphia, military men on horseback, a long line of ’em, approached us, riding by twos, carrying flags and wearing colorful uniforms, the line stretching far as the eye could see. They rode past us in the other direction, headed down toward the field past the jailhouse, where the scaffold was already built, waiting for the Old Man. I was glad I weren’t going back to Mr. Caldwell’s place. He gived me my walking papers. Give me money, food, a train ticket to Philadelphia, and from there I was on my own. I didn’t stick around for the hanging. There was enough military there to crowd a field and beyond. I hear tell no colored was allowed within three miles of that hanging. They say the Old Man was taken out by a wagon, made to sit on his own coffin, and driven over from the jailhouse by Captain Avis, his jailer. He told the captain, “This is beautiful country, Captain Avis. I never knowed how beautiful this was till today.” And when he got on the scaffold, told the hangman to make it snappy when he hung him. But like always he had bad luck, and they made him wait a full fifteen minutes with his face hooded and his hands tied while the whole military formation of white folks lined up by the thousands, militia from all over the United States, and U.S. Cavalry from Washington, D.C., and other important people from all over who come to watch him hang: Robert E. Lee, Jeb Stuart, Stonewall Jackson. Them last two would be deadened by the Yanks in the coming years in the very war the Old Man helped start, and Lee would be defeated. And a whole host of others who came there to watch him hang would be deadened, too. I reckon when they got to heaven, they’d be right surprised to find the Old Man waiting for ’em, Bible in hand, lecturing ’em on the evils of slavery. By the time he’d done with ’em, they probably wished they’d gone the other way.

But it was a funny thing. I don’t think they’d have to wait that long. For we rode past a colored church as we moved out of Charles Town, and inside the church you could hear the Negroes singing, singing ’bout Gabriel’s trumpet. That was the Old Man’s favorite song. “Blow Ye Trumpet.” Them Negroes was far away from the doings on the plaza where the Old Man was to hang, way out from it. But they sang it loud and clear... .

Blow ye trumpet blow
Blow ye trumpet blow... .

You could hear their voices for a long way, seemed like they lifted up and carried all the way into the sky, lingering in the air long afterward. And up above the church, high above it, a strange black-and-white bird circled ’round, looking for a tree to roost on, a bad tree, I expect, so he could alight upon it and get busy, so that it would someday fall and feed the others.

The End

Acknowledgments

Deeply grateful to all those who, over the years, have kept the memory of John Brown alive.

James McBride

Solebury Township, Pa.

ALSO BY JAMES MCBRIDE

The Color of Water

Miracle at St. Anna

Song Yet Sung