The Good Lord Bird

“That warms my soul!” Pa said, leaping up and clapping his hands. “Gimme more!”

The old coot was rolling now. “Put a Christian in the presence of sin and he will spring at its throat!” he said.

“C’mon, stranger!”

“Free the slave from the tyranny of sin!” the old coot nearly shouted.

“Preach it!”

“And scatter the sinners as stubble so that the slave shall forever be free!”

“Yes, sir!”

Now, them two was setting dead center in Dutch Henry’s Tavern as they went at it, and there must’ve been ten people milling ’bout within five feet of them, traders, Mormons, Indians, whores—even the Old John Brown hisself—who could’a leaned over to Pa and whispered a word or two that would have saved his life, for the question of slavery had throwed Kansas Territory into war. Lawrence was sacked. The governor had fled. There weren’t no law to speak of. Every Yankee settler from Palmyra to Kansas City was getting his duff kicked from front to back by Missouri roughriders. But Pa didn’t know nothing ’bout that. He had never been more than a mile from Dutch’s Tavern. But nobody said a word. And Pa, being a lunatic for the Lord, hopped about, clicking his scissors and laughing. “Oh, the Holy Spirit’s a’comin’! The blood of Christ! Yes indeedy. Scatter that stubble! Scatter it! I feel like I done met the Lawd!”

All around him, the tavern had quieted up.

And just then, Dutch Henry walked into the room.

Dutch Henry Sherman was a German feller, big in feature, standing six hands tall without his boots. He had hands the size of meat cleavers, lips the color of veal, and a rumbling voice. He owned me, Pa, my aunt and uncle, and several Indian squaws, which he used for privilege. It weren’t beyond old Dutch to use a white man in that manner, too, if he could buy his goods that way. Pa was Dutch’s very first slave, so Pa was privileged. He come and go as he pleased. But at noon every day, Dutch came in to collect his money, which Pa faithfully kept in a cigar box behind the barber’s chair. And as luck would have it, it was noon.

Dutch walked over, reached behind Pa’s barber chair to the cashbox, removed his money, and was about to turn away when he glanced at the old man setting in Pa’s barber chair and saw something he didn’t like.

“You look familiar,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Shubel Morgan,” the Old Man said.

“What you doing ’round these parts?”

“Looking for work.”

Dutch paused a moment, peering at the Old Man. He smelled a rat. “I got some wood out back needs chopping,” he said. “I’ll give you fifty cents to chop wood half a day.”

“No, thanks,” the Old Man said.

“Seventy-five cents.”

“Naw.”

“How about a dollar, then?” Dutch asked. “A dollar is a lot of money.”

“I can’t,” the Old Man grunted. “I’m waiting on the steamer to come down the Kaw.”

“That steamer don’t come for two weeks,” Dutch said.

The Old Man frowned. “I am setting here sharing the Holy Word with a brother Christian, if you don’t mind,” he said. “So why don’t you mind your marbles, friend, and saw your wood your own self, lest the Lord see you as a fat sow and a laggard.”

Dutch carried a pepperbox in them days. Tight little gun. Got four barrels on it. Nasty close up. He kept it in his front pocket for easy pickings. Not in a holster. Right in his front pocket. He reached in that pocket and drawed it out, and held it, barrel down, all four barrels pointed to the floor, talking to that wrinkled Old Man with a gun in his hand now.

“Only a white-livered, tit-squeezing Yankee would talk like that,” he said. Several men got up and walked out. But the Old Man sat there, calm as an egg. “Sir,” he said to Dutch, “that’s an insult.”

Now, I ought to say right here that my sympathies was with Dutch. He weren’t a bad feller. Fact is, Dutch took good care of me, Pa, my aunt and uncle, and several Indian squaws, which he used for rootin’-tootin’ purpose. He had two younger brothers, William and Drury, and he kept them in chips, plus he sent money back to his maw in Germany, plus fed and clothed all the various squaws and assorted whores his brother William drug in from Mosquite Creek and thereabouts, which was considerable, for William weren’t worth a shit and made friends with everybody in Kansas Territory but his own wife and children. Not to mention Dutch had a stall barn, several cows and chickens, two mules, two horses, a slaughterhouse, and a tavern. Dutch had a lot on him. He didn’t sleep but two or three hours a night. Fact is, looking back, Dutch Henry was something like a slave himself.

He backed off the Old Man a step, still holding that pepperbox pointed to the floor, and said, “Get down off that chair.”

The barber’s chair was set on a wood pallet. The Old Man slowly stepped off it. Dutch turned to the bartender and said, “Hand me a Bible,” which the bartender done. Then he stepped up to the Old Man, holding the Bible in one hand and his pepperbox in the other.