Good Lord Bird

Most folks never heard of John Brown.

If they have,

all they know is he was hung for being a traitor

and stirring up all kinds of trouble, and starting the Civil War.

Some Black folks love him,

'cause they think trouble needed to be stirred.

But some Black folks hate him

for thinking he was some sort of bullshit white savior.

Me? I knew him.

I loved the man.

The day he was hung

there was only one silver lining:

I could finally stop wearing that dress.

Hallelujah

I met the Old Man

two years earlier, in Bleeding, Kansas.

This was before I fell in love with a prostitute,

got drunk with Frederick Douglass,

before we damn near started the Civil War.

Least, that's how I remembers it.

My pa was a barber by trade without full satisfaction.

So he preached the gospel and offered hot shaves

and trims at Dutch Henry's Tavern.

Dutch's served as a post office,

way station, rumor mill...

and gin house for the Missouri Red Shirts

who came across the Kansas border to drink and throw cards

and holler to the moon about niggers taking over the world

and the white man's constitutional rights

being throwed in the shitter.

Tell me, friend, are you a Bible man?

Well, boss, I surely is.

Know all kinds of Bible verses.

Ah, wonderful.

Tell me, which books of the Bible do you favor?

Oh, I favors them all, but mostly I like...

...Hezekiel.

Ahab, Trotter

and Pontiff the Emperor.

Now, I don't recollect that I know those, and I've read

the Bible through and through.

Well, I-I don't knows them exact.

Whatever verses you know, stranger,

I-I'd be pleased to hear 'em.

Well, here's one for you.

"The Lord puts forth His hand

and touches all evil

and kills it."

Oh, that warms my soul. Give me more.

"Put a Christian in the presence of sin and he will

- leap at its throat." - Come on, stranger.

Yeah, "Free the slave from the tyranny of sin."

- Preach it. - "Scatter the sinners

as stubble so that the slave shall forever be free."

Yes, sir. I feel like I done meet the Lord.

You look familiar.

What's your name?

Shubel Morgan.

What you doing around these parts?

Just looking for work.

Well, I got some wood out back.

Needs chopping.

Give you 50 cents to chop, half a day.

- Mm, no thanks. - Mm, 75 cents?

Nah.

- No. - Mm-mm.

No, well, how about

a dollar, then? Dollar.

That's a lot of money.

I can't.

I am sharing the holy word with a brother Christian.

Why don't you mind your marbles,

friend,

and saw your own wood?

Lest the Lord see you as a fat sow

and a laggard. Mm?

- Mm. - Mm-hmm.

Only a white-livered,

tit-squeezing Yankee

would talk like that.

Get down off that chair.

Fetch the Bible.

I'm going to make you swear on this Bible,

that you is for slavery and the U.S. Constitution.

If you do that, you can walk out of here none the worse.

If you is a lying, blue-bellied free stater,

I'm gonna bust you across the head so hard with this pistol,

yellow will come out of your ears.

Now...

put your hand on that.

What is your name?

Shubel... Isaac.

I thought you said your name was Shubel Morgan.

- Isaac's me middle name. - Mm-hmm.

- How many names you got? - How many do I need?

Why, Dutch, that looks like Old John Brown.

Shit, Dutch.

I believe that is John Brown.

- Is that true? - Is what true?

Is you Old Man Brown?

Did I say that I was?

So you ain't him?

I am the child of my Maker.

Will you stop shitting around,

you goddamn potato head?

Old Man Brown. Is you him or not?

You bite your tongue

when you swear about our Maker,

lest by the power of His Holy Grace,

I be commanded to deliver

holy redemption on His behalf.

And that pistol you're holding

- won't be worth a cent. - Cut the jitter...

For the Lord will lift it...

- Oh, Jesus Christ. - ...out of your hand!

Cut the jitter!

Tell me your name, goddamn it!

Don't swear

- God's name again! - I will swear

His cock-dragging name whenever I goddamn please!

And then I will shove it down your shit-eating Yankee throat,

you goddamn nigger turned inside out!

Oh, shit...

Oh, son of a...

Oh, shit...

My name

is Osawatomie John Brown,

captain of the Pottawatomie Rifles,

and I am here with the Lord's blessing

to free

every colored person in this territory, and any man

that stands against me will eat

lead grape and powder!

Lordy, Lordy.

I will take you and your octoroon daughter to freedom

in the name of the King of Zion.

- Massa, my Henry ain't a... - Everybody in Dutch's

knowed I was a boy.

My name is Henry Shackleford.

But the Old Man heard Pa say,

"Henry ain't a" and took it for "Henrietta."

Whatever he believed, he believed.

It didn't matter if it was true or not.

He was a real white man.

I will take you and y-your Henrietta to safety.

But my child here ain't...

We can discuss raising her...

Oh...

Go!

Oh, you nigger thief! You owe me $1,200!

Charge it to the Lord, heathen!

_

I reckon you're not feeling very righteous

about what just transpired,

seeing as you lost all the family you had,

and whatever family you may have left,

you're probably never gonna see again.

But I know that feeling well.

I know that feeling well. I've lost many family.

I lost my first wife.

I lost my mother when I was younger than you.

Come on, now.

I lost my father, I lost Jesus, of course.

I had a pet squirrel for 17 years and she died.

But I have a token for you.

A little gift to show my appreciation

and a gift for your freedom.

And as a welcome to the Lord's family.

Course, as you are a girl,

we're gonna have to get rid of you as soon as possible.

That onion looked worse than dry mule shit.

But being that he was white and I was his prisoner

and hungry from the long ride, I bit into the foulness

and it went down my gullet like a stone.

Mm, that's Father's good luck charm you just swallowed.

I had that onion for 14 months and nare a bullet nor a knife

scraped nor touched my flesh.

I reckon the Lord must mean for you not to have it.

- I don't, I... - "Those who cling

to worthless objects turn away from God."

That's true. That's good.

That's-that's good, boys. That's Proverbs.

Even a godly man like myself has a pocketful of sins.

One of them freed ponies is lame.

Want to put her in the pot?

But you, my little onion-eating girl,

chewed up my sins like Jesus Christ of Nazareth

devoured the sins of the world.

Let's call her Little Onion, then.

Yes.

Yes.

Let that be a lesson to me, boys.

Putting idle objects between me and the great King of Kings!

Mmm.

I have more for you.

Take this.

Took this off a soldier, and he'd want you to have it.

Take-take this, that's my old journal. Uh...

Where is it? Where'd it go?

Boys.