The Good Lord Bird

The Negroes gathered at the back of the pen working with shovels and rakes kept working and didn’t say nary a word. But that silly fool in the middle of the yard, a heavyset, settle-aged colored woman setting on a wooden box, cackling and babbling, she got to cackling louder. She had a large, round face. She was really off her knob the closer you got to her, for up close, the box she set on was pushed deep into the muddy ground nearly up to its top, it was wedged so deep, and she set on it, commenting and cackling and warbling about nothing. She seen me and croaked, “Pretty, pretty, yeller, yeller!”

I ignored her and spoke generally. “Anybody seen a feller named Bob?” I asked.

Nobody said nothing, and that feebleminded thing clucked and swished her head ’round like a bird, gobbling like a turkey. “Pretty, pretty, yeller, yeller.”

“He’s a colored feller, ’bout this high,” I said to the others.

But that crazy thing kept her mouth busy. “Knee-deep, knee-deep, goin’ ’round, goin’ ’round!” she cackled.

She was feebleminded. I looked to the other Negroes in the pen. “Anybody see Bob?” I said. I said it loud enough for all of ’em to hear it, and nar soul looked at me twice. They busied themselves on with them hogs and their little garden like I weren’t there.

I climbed the first rung of the fence and stuck my face high over it and said louder, “Anybody see B—” and before I could finish, I was struck in the face by a mud ball. That crazy fool woman setting on the box scooped up another handful of mud by the time I looked, and throwed that in my face.

“Hey!”

“Goin’ ’round. Goin’ ’round!” she howled. She had got up from her box, came to the edge of the fence where I was, picked up another mud ball, and throwed that, and that one got me in the jaw. “Knee-deep!” she crowed.

I flew hot as the devil. “Damn stupid fool!” I said. “Git! Git away from me!” I would have climbed in there and dunked her head in the mud, but another colored woman, a tall, slender slip of water, broke off from the rest on the other side of the pen, dug the crazy woman’s box out the mud, and come over. “Don’t mind her. She’s feebleminded,” she said.

“Don’t I know it.”

She set the crazy woman’s box down by the edge of the fence, set her own down, and said, “Sit by me, Sibonia.” The crazy coot calmed down and done it. The woman turned to me and said, “What you need?”

“She needs a flogging,” I said. “I reckon Miss Abby would flog her righteous if I was to tell it. I works inside, you know.” That was privileged, see, to work inside. That gived you more juice with the white man.

A couple of colored men pushing that hog slop ’round with rakes and shovels glanced over at me, but the woman talking to me shot a look at them, and they looked away. I was a fool, see, for I didn’t know the dangerous waters I was treading in.

“I’m Libby,” she said. “This here’s my sister, Sibonia. You awful young to be talking about flogging. What you want?”

“I am looking for Bob.”

“Don’t know no Bob,” Libby said.

Behind her, Sibonia hooted, “No Bob. No Bob,” and chucked a fresh mud ball at me, which I dodged.

“He’s got to be here.”

“Ain’t nar Bob here,” Libby said. “We got a Dirk, a Lang, a Bum-Bum, a Broadnax, a Pete, a Lucious. Ain’t no Bob. What you want him for anyway?”

“He’s a friend.”

She looked at me a long minute in my dress. Pie had fixed me up nice. I was dressed warm, clean, in a bonnet and warm dress and socks, living good. I looked like a real high-yeller girl, dressed damn near white, and Libby set there dressed in rags. “What a redbone like you need a friend in this yard for?” she asked. Several Negroes working shovels behind her leaned over them and chuckled.

“I ain’t come out here for you to sass me,” I said.

“You sassing yourself,” she said gently, “by the way you look. You own Bob?”

“I wouldn’t own him with your money. But I owes him.”

“Well, you ain’t got to fret about paying him what you owe, so you should be happy. ’Cause he ain’t here.”

“That’s strange, ’cause Miss Abby said she hadn’t sold him.”

“Is that the first lie you heard from white folks?”

“You sure got a smart mouth for an outside nigger.”

“And you got a smarter one for a big-witted, tongue-beating, mule-headed sissy. Walking ’round dressed as you is.”

That flummoxed me right there. She knowed I was a boy. But I was an inside nigger. Privileged. The men in Miss Abby’s liked me. Pie was my mother, practically. She had the run of things. I didn’t need to bother with no mealymouth, lowlife, no-count, starving pen nigger who nobody wouldn’t pay no attention to. I had sauce, and wouldn’t stand nobody but Pie or a white person sassing me like that. That colored woman just cut me off without a wink. I couldn’t stand it.

“How I covers my skin is my business.”

“It’s your load. You carry it. Ain’t nobody judging you out here. But dodging the white man’s evil takes more than a bonnet and some pretty undergarments, child. You’ll learn.”

I ignored that. “I’ll give you a quarter if you tell me where he is.”