The Good Lord Bird

Miss Abby commenced to razzing Pie something terrible for me ripping her scarf and causing a ruckus in her business. She cussed Pie’s Ma. She cussed her Pa. She cussed all her relations in all directions.

“I’ll fix it,” Pie protested. “I’ll pay for the scarf.”

“You better. Git that girl out, or I’ll have Darg come up here.”

It growed silent. From where I lay, it felt like all the air had left the room. Pie spoke softly—I could hear the terror in her voice—“You don’t have to do that, missus. I’ll fix it. I promise. And I’ll pay for the scarf, missus.”

“Get busy counting your pennies, then.”

Miss Abby’s feet stomped toward the door and left.

Chase was standing there. I could see his bare feet and his boots from where I was. Suddenly Pie’s hand snatched up his boots, and I reckon she handed them to him, for she said, “Git.”

“I’ll straighten it out, Pie.”

“Skinflint! Dumbass. Who told you to bring me that snaggle-mouth headache here? Git out!”

He put on his boots, grumbling and muttering, then left. Pie slammed the door behind him and stood against it, sighing in the silence. I watched her feet. They slowly came toward the bed. She said softly, “It’s all right, honey. I ain’t gonna hurt ya.”

“You sure?” I said.

“Course, baby. You a young thing. You don’t know nuthin’. Sweet thing, ain’t got nobody in the world, coming here. Lord have mercy. It’s a shame, Miss Abby hollering about some silly old scarf. Missouri! Lord, the devil’s busy in this territory! Don’t be scared, sweetie. You gonna suffocate down there. C’mon out, baby.”

The soft tenderness of that woman’s voice moved my heart so much, I slipped out from under there. I come out on the opposite side of the bed, though, just in case she weren’t good for her word, but she was. I could see it in her face when I stood up, watching me from across the bed now, smiling, warm, dewy. She gestured to me with an arm. “C’mon over here, baby. Come ’round the side of the bed.”

I melted right off. I was in love with her right from the first. She was the mother I never knowed, the sister I never had, my first love. Pie was all woman, one hundred percent, first rate, grade A, right-from-the-start woman. I just loved her.

I said, “Oh, Mama,” and runned ’round the bed to nestle my head between them big brown love knockers, just cram my head in there and sob out my sorrows, for I was but a lonely boy looking for a home. I felt that in my heart. And I was aiming to tell all my story to her and let her make it right. I throwed myself at her and put my heart in hers. I went over there and put my head on her chest, and just as I done so, felt myself being lifted like a pack of feathers and throwed clear across the room.

“God-damn, cockeyed idiot!”

She was on me before I could get up, picked me up by the collar, and whomped me twice, then throwed me on the floor on my stomach, and put a knee on my back. “I’mma send you hooting and hollering down the road, ya goober-faced tart! Ya lying lizard.” She whomped me twice more on the head. “Don’t move,” she said.

I stayed where I was as she got up, frantically pushed the bed aside, then dug at the floorboards underneath it, pulling them out till she found what she was looking for. She reached in and pulled out an old jar. She opened it, checked its contents, seemed satisfied, throwed the jar back in there, and put the whole assembly of floorboards back in place. She slid the bed back in place and said, “Git outta here, cow face. And if any of my money’s missing while you’re in this town, I’ll cut your throat so wide, you’ll have two sets of lips working at the top of your neck.”

“What I done?”

“Git.”

“But I don’t have no place to go.”

“What do I care? Git out.”

Well, I was hurt, so I said, “I ain’t going no place.”

She marched over to me and grabbed me up. She was a strong woman, and while I resisted, I weren’t no match for her. She throwed me over her knee. “Now, you high-yellow heifer, think you so high-siddity? Got me paying for a damn scarf I ain’t never had! I’mma warm your two little buns the way your Ma should’a,” she said.

“Wait!” I hollered, but it was too late. She throwed my dress up, and seed my true nature dangling somewhere down there between her knees at full salute, being that all that wrestling and tugging was a wonderment to the fringlings and tinglings of a twelve-year-old who never knowed nature’s ways firsthand. I couldn’t help myself.

She yelped and throwed me to the floor, her hands cupped her face as she stared. “You done put me in the fryer, you God-damned pebble-mouthed, wart-faced sip of shit. You heathen! Them was women you was in that room with... . Was they working? Lord, course they was!” She was furious. “You gonna get me hanged!”

She leaped at me, throwed me over her knee, and went at it hard again.

“I was kidnapped!” I hollered.

“You lyin’ lizard!” She spanked me some more.

“I ain’t. I was kidnapped by Old John Brown hisself!”

That stopped her flinging and flailing for a second. “Old John Brown’s dead. Chase killed him,” she said.

“No, he’s not,” I hollered.

“What do I care!” She throwed me off her lap and set on the bed. She was cooling off now, though still hot. Lord, she looked prettier burnt up than she did regular, and the sight of them brown eyes boring into me made me feel lower than dirt, for I was plumb in love. Pie just done something to me.

She sat thinking for a long moment. “I knowed Chase was a liar,” she said, “or he would’a gone on and collected that money on Old John Brown’s head. You likely lying, too. Maybe you working with Chase.”

“I ain’t.”

“How’d you get with him?”

I explained how Frederick was killed and how Chase and Randy rolled up on me and Bob when the Old Man’s sons went to town to collect their belongings.

“Randy still here?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hope not. You’ll end up in an urn buried in somebody’s yard fooling with him. There’s a reward out on him.”

“But the Old Man’s alive surely,” I said proudly. “I seen him get up out the river.”

“What do I care? He’ll be dead soon enough, anyway.”

“Why does every colored I meet say that?”

“You ought to worry about your own skin, ya little snit. I had a feeling about you,” she said. “God-damned Chase! Damn cow turd!”

She cussed him some more, then sat a moment, thinking. “Them rebels find out you was on the Hot Floor, peeking at them white whores, they’ll cut out them little grapes hanging between your legs and stick them down your gizzard. Might pull me in on it, too. I can’t take no chances with you. Plus you seen where my money is.”

“I ain’t interested in your money.”

“That’s touching, but everything on this prairie’s a lie, child. Ain’t nothing what it looks like. Look at you. You’s a lie. You got to go. You ain’t gonna make it on the prairie as a girl nohow. I know a feller drives a stagecoach for Wells Fargo. Now he’s a girl. Playing like a man. But whatever she fancies herself, girl or boy, she’s a white thing. And she’s going from place to place as a stagecoach driver. She ain’t setting in one place, selling tail. And that’s what you’d do here, child. Miss Abby got a business here. She got no use for you. Unless you wanna service ... can you still service as a boy? Do that interest you?”

“The only service I know is washing dishes and cutting hair and such. I can do that good. Me and Bob can work tables, too.”

“Forget him. He’s gonna get sold,” she said.

It didn’t seem proper to remind her that she was a Negro herself, for she was ornery, so I said, “He’s a friend.”