The Good Lord Bird полностью

All the way back to Harpers Ferry he was silent. I could feel his disappointment. It seemed to surge out of him. The way he held the traces, drove them horses at half-trot through the night, the moon behind him, the silhouette of his beard against the moon, his beard shaking as the horses clopped along, his thin lips pursed tight, he seemed like a ghost. He was just knocked down. I guess we all has our share of them things, when the cotton turns yellow and the boll weevil eats out your crops and you just shook down with disappointment. His great heartbreak was his friend Mr. Douglass. Mine’s was his daughter. There weren’t no way for them things to go but for how God made ’em to go, for everything God made, all His things, all His treasures, all the things heaven sent ain’t meant to be enjoyed in this world. That’s a thing he said, not me, for I weren’t a believer in them times. But a spell come over me that night, watching him eat that bad news. A little bit of a change. For the Captain took that news across the jibs and brung hisself back to Harpers Ferry knowing he was done in. He knowed he was gonna lose fighting for the Negro, on account of the Negro, and he brung hisself to it anyway, for he trusted in the Lord’s word. That’s strong stuff. I felt God in my heart for the first time at that moment. I didn’t tell him, for there weren’t no use bothering the Old Man with that truth, ’cause if I’d’a done that, I’d’a had to tell him the other part of it, which is that even as I found God, God was talking to me, too, just like He done him, and God the Father was tellin’ me to get the hell out. And plus, I loved his daughter besides. I didn’t want to throw that on him. I knowed a thing or two right then. Learned it on the spot. Knowed from the first, really, that there weren’t no way Mr. Douglass could’a brung hisself to fight a real war. He was a speeching parlor man. Just like I knowed there weren’t no way I could’a brung myself to be a real man, with a real woman, and a white woman besides. Some things in this world just ain’t meant to be, not in the times we want ’em to, and the heart has to hold it in this world as a remembrance, a promise for the world that’s to come. There’s a prize at the end of all of it, but still, that’s a heavy load to bear.

Things was a hot mess the moment we hit the door of the farm back at the Ferry. Time we walked in, the Captain’s son Oliver and Annie were waiting at the door for him. Annie said, “Mrs. Huffmaster called in the sheriff.”

“What?”

“Says she saw one of the coloreds in the yard. She went to the sheriff and denounced us as abolitionists. Brung the sheriff by.”

“What happened?”

“I told him you’d be back Monday. He tried to get in but I wouldn’t let him. Then Oliver came down from upstairs and told him to get off. He was angry when he left. He gave me a mouthful ’bout abolitionists running slaves north. He said, ‘If your Pa’s running a mining company, where’s he mining? If he’s got to move his mining goods, where the cows and the wagons he’s using for that purpose?’ He says he’s coming back with a bunch of deputies to search the house.”

“When?”

“Saturday next.”

The Old Man thunk over it a moment.

“Was one of our men in the yard? One of the Negroes?” Kagi asked.

“It doesn’t matter. Just wait a minute,” the Old Man said.

He lingered a long moment before speaking, standing there, swaying a little. He looked nearly insane by then. His beard flowed nearly to his belt buckle. His suit was ragged to near pieces. He still wore the fisherman’s hat from his disguise, and beneath it his face looked like a wrinkled mop. He had all kinds of problems going on. The curtain was pulled back off the thing. Several men had written letters home to their mamas saying good-bye, causing all kinds of suspicion, with the mamas writing to the Old Man saying, “Send my boy home.” His daughter-in-law Martha, Oliver’s wife, was pregnant and bawling every half hour; some of the white folks who’d given him money for his fight against slavery now wanted it back; others had written letters tellin’ congressmen and government folks ’bout what they’d heard; his money people in Boston was bugging him ’bout how big his army was. He had all kinds of problems with the weapons, too. Had forty thousand primers without the right caps. The house was loaded with men who was tightly wound up and cooped in that tiny attic that was so crowded it was unbearable. The weight of the thing would’a knocked any man insane. But he weren’t a normal man, being that he was already part insane in a manner of speaking. Still, he seemed put out.

He stood there, swaying a minute, and said, “That is not a problem. We’ll move on Sunday.”

“That’s in four days!” Kagi exclaimed.

“If we don’t go now, we may never go.”

“We can’t move in four days! We got everybody coming on the twenty-third!”

“Them that’s coming will be here in four days.”

“The twenty-third is only a week from Sunday.”