The Good Lord Bird

“I’d rather blow my brains out than run around dressed like a girl. I can’t do it.”

“Well, save yourself the bullet and go on back to Dutch, then. He’ll send you to New Orleans and death’ll be knocking shortly. I never heard of a nigger escaped from there.”

That done me in. I hadn’t considered none of that. “I don’t know where the Old Man is now,” I said. “I couldn’t find him by myself nohow. I don’t know these parts.”

Bob said slowly, “If I help you find him, you think he could lead me to freedom, too? I’ll dress like a girl for it.”

Well, that sounded too complicated. But I needed a ride. “I can’t say what he’ll do, but he and his sons got a big army. And more guns than you ever saw. And I heard him say it clear, ‘I’m an abolitionist through and through, and I aims to free every colored in this territory.’ I heard him say that many times. So I expect he would take you.”

“What about my wife and children?”

“I don’t know about that.”

Bob thunk on it a long moment.

“I got a cousin down near Middle Creek who knows everything in these parts,” he said. “He’ll know where the Old Man’s hideout is. But if we set here too long, another posse’s gonna roll up, and they might not be drunk like the last. Help me tie that wagon wheel back.”

I hopped to work. We rolled a fallen tree stump under the wagon. He harred the horse up so it pulled the wagon high enough to free the bottom, then tied the rope to a tree and harred the horse up again, creating a winch. We piled planks and stones under it to keep it up. I searched the thickets and found that cotter pin and helped him put the wheel back on and chink it in. The sun was near to noon when we finished, and we was hot and sweaty by the time we got the thing done, but we got that wagon wheel spinning like new, and I hopped aboard the driver’s seat next to him, and we was off in no time.

6. Prisoner Again

We didn’t get two miles down the road before we runned into patrols of every type. The entire territory was in alarm. Armed posses crisscrossed the trail every which way. Every passing wagon had a rider setting up front with a shotgun. Children acted as lookouts for every homestead, with Pas and Mas setting out front in rocking chairs holding shotguns. We passed several wagons pulling terrified Yankees going in the opposite direction, their possessions piled high, hauling ass back east fast as their mules could go, quitting the territory altogether. The Old Man’s killings terrified everyone. But Bob got safe passage, for he was riding his master’s wagon and had papers to show it.

We followed the Pottawatomie Creek on the California Trail toward Palmyra. Then we cut along the Marais des Cygnes River toward North Middle Creek. A short way along the river, Bob stopped the wagon, dismounted, and tied off the horse. “We got to walk from here,” he said.

We walked down a clean-dug trail to a fine, well-built house on the back side of the river. An old Negro was tending flowers at the gate, turning dirt on the walkway as we come. Bob howdied him and he hailed us over.

“Good afternoon, Cousin Herbert,” Bob said.

“What’s good about it?”

“The Captain’s good about it.”

At the mention of the word “Captain,” Herbert glanced at me, shot a nervous look at his master’s house, then fell to turning that dirt again on his hands and knees, getting busy on that dirt, looking down. “I don’t know nothing about no Captain, Bob.”

“C’mon, Herbert.”

The old feller kept his eyes on that dirt, turning it, busy, tending flowers, talking low as he worked. “Git on outta here. Old Brown’s hotter than a pig in shit. What you doing fooling with him? And whose knock-kneed girl is that? She too young for you.”

“Where’s he at?”

“Who?”

“Stop fooling. You know who I’m talking about.”

Herbert glanced up, then back down at his flowers. “There’s posses from here to Lawrence combing this whole country for him. They say he throwed the life spark outta ten white fellers up near Osawatomie. Knocked their heads clean off with swords. Any nigger that mentions his name’ll be shipped outta this territory in pieces. So git away from me. And send that girl home and run on home to your wife.”

“She belongs to the Captain.”

That changed things, and Herbert’s hands stopped a moment as he considered it, still looking down at the dirt, then he started digging again. “What that got to do with me?” Herbert said.

“She’s Captain’s property. He’s running her out this country, outta bondage.”

The old man stopped his work for a minute, glancing at me. “Well, she can suck her thumb at his funeral, then. Git. Both of y’all.”

“That’s a hell of a way to treat your third cousin.”

“Fourth cousin.”

“Third, Herbert.”

“How’s that?”