The Good Lord Bird

But still Fred didn’t get it. Fred said, “Morning.” He was smiling. That was his nature.

“Morning,” the Reverend said.

Then Fred’s mind checked itself. You could see his head cock to the side, something whirring in there. He stared at the Reverend. He was trying to figure out whether he knowed him.

He said, “I know you ... ,” and quick as you can tell it, without a word, the Reverend, setting atop his horse, drawed his shooter and took him. Blasted Fred right in the chest, buttered him with lead and powder, and the blessed God, the ground caught him. Fred twitched a few times and breathed his last.

“That’ll teach you to draw on me, you apple-headed, horse-thieving, nigger-loving bastard,” the Reverend said. He come down off his horse and took every single gun Fred was wearing. He turned to the others. “I got me one of Brown’s boys,” he said proudly. “Got the biggest one.”

Then he throwed his eyes to the woods ’round him, where I was hiding. I held tight to where I was. Didn’t move an inch. He knowed I was close.

“Look for the second rider,” he barked. “There was two horses.”

Just then another feller spoke up, a feller sitting on a horse behind the Rev. “You ain’t had to shoot him cold-blooded like that,” he said.

Rev. Martin turned to the man. It was the feller that had caught me in the woods just a while before. He was still holding my squirrel gun, and he weren’t pleased.

“He would’a returned the favor,” the Reverend said.

“We could’a exchanged him for one of ours,” the feller said.

“You wanna change out prisoners or fight a war?” the Rev said.

“He could’a aired me out an hour ago back down the creek there and he didn’t,” the man said.

“He was Free State!”

“I don’t give an owl’s ass if he was George Washington. The man didn’t draw on you and he’s deader’n a turnip. You said you was looking for a cattle rustler and nigger thieves. He ain’t no cattle rustler. And the nigger he had weren’t nobody’s nigger I know. What kind’a war rules is we fighting under here?”

This started a hank between ’em, with several taking this feller’s side and others holding with the Reverend. Several minutes gone by as they wrangled, and by the time they finished, dusk had come. Finally Rev. Martin said, “Brown won’t tarry when he finds his boy dead out here. You wanna wait till he comes?” That done it. That silenced ’em all, for they knowed there was consequences to the whole bit. They took off on their horses without another word.

I come out the clearing in the dusk, and took a long look at my old friend in the growing darkness. His face was clear. He still had a little smile on his face. I can’t say whether his superstition about that Good Lord Bird done him in or not, but I felt low, standing there holding that dumb bird. I wondered if I should wander someplace and fetch a shovel with the aim of burying Fred and the bird together, since he called it an angel and all, but I quit that idea and decided to run off instead. Weren’t nothing to this life of being free and fighting slavery, was how I thunk of it. I was so bothered by the whole bit I can’t tell it. I didn’t know what to do. The idea of running back home to Dutch and trying to work it out, that worked in there, too, truth be to tell it, and I aimed on seeing to that, for Dutch was all I knowed outside the Old Man. But to be honest, I was broke up by the way the whole deal added up, me running ’round as a girl and not knowing what to do. I couldn’t think of nothing to do at the moment, and as usual, the whole business just wore me out. So I set on the ground next to Fred and curled into a ball and fell asleep next to him, holding that Good Lord Bird. And that’s how the Old Man found me the next day.

9. A Sign from God

I woke up to the sound of cannon fire and the Old Man standing before me. “What happened, Little Onion?”

I gently set the Good Lord Bird on Fred’s chest and explained to him who done the deed. He listened, his face grim. Behind him the sound of gunfire and artillery cannon boomed and sent grapeshot slinging through the woods right over his head. Me and Fred had wandered right near Osawatomie, and the fight that Weiner and them had joined in had spilled over into there just as Weiner said it would, with blasting full out. The men ducked low on their horses and held on while the grape whipped past, but none of ’em moved off their mount as the Old Man stood over me. I noted Jason and John among them, but nobody weren’t explaining how they got there and why the Old Man weren’t in federal prison. They was all hot, staring at Fred, especially his brothers. He was still wearing his little cap, with the Good Lord Bird now perched on his chest where I had rested it.

“Is you gonna find the Reverend?” I asked.

“We ain’t got to,” the Old Man said. “He has found us. Stay with Fred till we get back.” He mounted his horse and nodded toward the sound of the fighting. “Let’s go!”