This the Old Man took to be some kind of volunteering, for Pa had said “Lawd” and
“Friend,” he said, “you has made a wise choice. You and your tragic octoroon daughter here is blessed for accepting our blessed Redeemer’s purpose for you to live free and clear, and thus not spend the rest of your lives in this den of iniquity here with these sinning savages. You is now free. Walk out the back door while I hold my rifle on these heathens, and I will lead you to freedom in the name of the King of Zion!”
Now, I don’t know about Pa, but between all that mumbling about kings and heathens and Zions and so forth, and with him waving that Sharps rifle around, I somehow got stuck at the “daughter” section of that speech. True, I wore a potato sack like most colored boys did in them days, and my light skin and curly hair to boot made me the fun of several boys about town, though I evened things out with my fists against those that I could. But everybody in Dutch’s, even the Indians, knowed I was a boy. I weren’t even partial to girls at that age, being that I was raised in a tavern where most of the women smoked cigars, drunk gut sauce, and stunk to high heaven like men. But even those lowly types, who was so braced on joy juice they wouldn’t know a boll weevil from a cotton ball and couldn’t tell one colored from the other, knowed the difference between me and a girl. I opened my mouth to correct the Old Man on that notion, but right then a wave of high-pitched whining seemed to cover the room, and I couldn’t holler past it. It was only after a few moments that I realized that all that bellowing and wailing was coming from my own throat, and I confess here I lost my water.
Pa was panicked. He stood there shaking like a shuck of corn. “Massa, my Henry ain’t a—”
“We’ve no time to rationalize your thoughts of mental dependency, sir!” the Old Man snapped, cutting Pa off, still holding the rifle on the room. “We have to move. Courageous friend, I will take you and your Henrietta to safety.” See, my true name is Henry Shackleford. But the Old Man heard Pa say “Henry ain’t a,” and took it to be “Henrietta,” which is how the Old Man’s mind worked. Whatever he believed, he believed. It didn’t matter to him whether it was really true or not. He just changed the truth till it fit him. He was a real white man.
“But my s—”
“Courage, friend,” he said to Pa, “for we has a ram in the bush. Remember Joel first chapter, fourth verse: ‘That which the palmerworm hath left, hath the locust eaten. And that which the locust hath left, hath the cankerworm eaten. And that which the cankerworm hath left, hath the caterpillar eaten.’”
“What’s that mean?” Pa asked.
“You’ll be eaten alive if you stay here.”
“But my child here ain’t no gi—”
“Shush!” said the Old Man. “We can’t tarry. We can talk raising her to the Holy Word later.”
He grabbed my hand and, still holding that Sharps at the ready, backed toward the rear door. I heard horses charging down the back alley. When he got to the door, he released my hand for a moment to fling it open, and as he did, Pa charged him.
At the same time, Dutch lunged for one of the Colts laying on the floor, snatched it up, pointed the hot end at the Old Man, and fired.
The bullet missed the Old Man and struck the edge of the door, sending a sliver of wood about eight inches long out sideways. The sliver jutted out the side of the door like a knife, straight horizontal, about chest high—and Pa runned right into it. Right into his chest it went.
He staggered back, dropped to the floor, and blowed out his spark right there.
By now the clabbering of horses making their way down the alley at hot speed was on us, and the Old Man kicked the door open wide.
Dutch Henry, setting on the floor, hollered, “Nigger thief! You owe me twelve hundred dollars!”
“Charge it to the Lord, heathen,” the Old Man said. Then he picked me up with one hand, stepped into the alley, and we was gone.
2.
The Good Lord Bird
We drove hard out of town, left the beaten California Trail, and headed straight into Kansas flatlands. There was three of them, the Old Man and two young riders. The two riders charged ahead of us on pintos, and the Old Man and me bounced behind them atop a painted horse with one blue eye and one brown eye. That horse belonged to Dutch. So the Old Man was a horse thief as well.
We rode hard for a couple of hours. The cottonwoods showed some distance off, and the hot wind beat against my face as we flew along. Kansas Territory is flat, wide-open hot earth to the sight, but when you making hot speed atop a horse, it’s hard riding. My arse took a pretty strong beating bouncing atop that horse’s back, for I had never ridden one before. It knotted up to about the size of a small bun, and just when I thought I couldn’t bear it no more, we hit the top of a rise and stopped at a crude camp. It was a clearing with a three-sided tent held up by sticks, stretched along a rock wall with the remnants of a campfire. The Old Man stepped off the horse and helped me down.
“Time to water these horses and rest, my child,” he said. “We can’t tarry. The others is coming soon.” He looked at me for a moment, his wrinkled face frowned up. I reckon he felt guilty for kidnapping me and getting my Pa kilt, for he seemed a little funny about the eyes, and stared at me a long time. Finally he begun ransacking his flea-bitten coat pocket. He rummaged through it and pulled out what appeared to be a ball covered with feathers. He dusted it off and said, “I reckon you is not feeling righteous about what has just transpired thereabouts, but in the name of freedom we is all soldiers of the cross and thus the enemy of slavery. Like as not, you now believes you has no family or may ne’er see what family you has ever again. But the fact is, you is in the human family and is welcome to this one as any. I like that you might hold this, my child, as a token of your newfound freedom and family, joining us as freedom fighters, even though you is a girl and we need to get rid of you as soon as possible.”
He held the thing out to me. I didn’t want whatever it was, but, being that he was white and hurrumped and hawed over the dang thing so much, I reckon I had to take it. It was an onion. Dried, dusty, covered with feathers, cobwebs, lint, and other junk from his pocket. That thing looked worse than dried mule shit. The Old Man had a high tolerance for junk, and in later years, I was to see him produce from his pockets enough odds and ends to fill a five-gallon barrel, but, being that this had been a scouting expedition to Dutch’s, he’d been traveling light.
I took the thing and held it, frightened and afraid, so, not knowing what he wanted, I reckoned he wanted me to eat it. I didn’t want to, of course. But I was hungry from the long ride and I was also his prisoner, after all, so I bit into it. That thing tasted foul as the devil. It went down my gullet like a stone, but I got the job done in seconds.
The Old Man’s eyes widened, and for the first time I seen a look of sheer panic run across his old face, which I took for displeasure, though in later years I learned a look from him could mean just about anything you could render it to.
“That there’s my good-luck charm you just swallowed,” he grunted. “I had that thing for fourteen months and nar a knife has nicked me nar bullet touched my flesh. I reckon the Lord must mean it to be a sign for me to lose it. The Bible says it: ‘Hold no idle objects between thouest and me.’ But even a God-fearing man like myself has a pocketful of sins that flagellate betwixt my head—and my thighs too, truth be to tell it, for I has twenty-two children, twelve of them living, Little Onion. But my good luck lives between your ears now; you has swallowed in your gut my redemption and sin, eatin’ my sin just like Jesus Christ munched on the sins of the world so that you and I might live. Let that be a lesson to me, old man that I am, for allowing sacrilegious objects to stand between me and the great King of Kings.”
I didn’t make head nor tails of what he was saying, for I was to learn that Old John Brown could work the Lord into just about any aspect of his comings and goings in life, including using the privy. That’s one reason I weren’t a believer, having been raised by my Pa, who was a believer and a lunatic, and them things seemed to run together. But it weren’t my place to argue with a white man, especially one who was my kidnapper, so I kept my lips closed.
