The Good Lord Bird

Outside of town, Brown meets up with two other riders and they ride hard for two hours. They stop at a camp and wait for the rest of Brown’s men to arrive. Brown gives Henry an onion that is his good luck charm. Henry eats it, thinking that Brown is giving it to him as food. Brown gives Henry the nickname of Little Onion, and says that he will be his new good luck charm. Then he gives Henry the feather of a Good Lord Bird” (24), but does not explain why, other than saying it is special.

Henry meets the other two men wh0 rode with them. They are Brown’s sons, Fred and Owen. Brown gives Henry a dress and bonnet that belong to his daughter, Ellen. After Henry puts them on, Fred takes him out to teach him to ride. Brown claims that a war is coming and Henry will need to know how to handle a horse. They take two horses outside of camp and Henry realizes that Fred is “slow in his mind” (28). Henry asks for privacy to urinate, and Fred turns his back. Henry jumps on a horse and tries to ride away, but the horse bucks him off. When Henry regains consciousness, he notices that his dress flew up in the fall and Fred now knows that he is a boy. Henry convinces Fred that they shouldn’t tell Brown, because “he’s got a lot on his mind” (30).

Fred shows Henry a woodpecker and says it is a Good Lord Bird, and that “[a] feather from a Good Lord Bird’ll bring you understanding that’ll last your whole life” (31). Henry gives Fred the Good Lord Bird’s feather, which Brown gave to him, and Fred is happy. Fred teaches Henry how to catch pheasants. They trap two birds and head back to camp. 

Fifteen men arrive to meet with Brown: “a ragtag assortment of fifteen of the scrawniest, bummiest, saddest-looking individuals you ever saw” (34). Brown says a long prayer, blessing the roasting pheasants. The prayer goes on for so long that the food grows cold. After dinner, Brown reads a newspaper that a man named Weiner brought to him. He is agitated when he reads that there has been a fight in Congress over the issue of slavery. A man called The Reverend tells Brown that Dutch is not going to stop looking for Henry, who they are all calling Onion now, and that Brown has put them all in danger.

Brown refuses to return Henry to Dutch, and the men argue about how to proceed. The Reverend calls Henry a “nigger” (42). Fred pins him down and threatens to kill him if he ever talks about Henry that way again. The Reverend leaves and Brown is concerned that he might be going to tell Dutch their location. 

Over the next few days, the men travel the country, “stealing from Pro Slavers so we could eat” (42). Henry realizes that he was never hungry as a slave, but now he feels as if he is starving and wants to go back to Dutch’s. One afternoon Brown says that he will lead an attack that night, but does not tell them the target. That evening, four men leave, making various excuses as to why they cannot fight. Brown leads the remaining eight to a group of houses, and Henry believes that Brown is looking for Dutch’s home, although he knows that they are nowhere near it.

Brown stops them at a cabin and says, “I can smell slavery within it” (48). When they prepare to charge Henry turns to run and is attacked by a watchdog. Fred kills the dog with a sword. The men enter the house and find that it is owned by James Doyle, a man who pointed a pistol at Brown during the fight in Dutch’s tavern. Doyle tells Brown that he doesn’t own any slaves, and that because he did not fire his weapon at him in the tavern, he should let him go. Brown doesn’t believe that Doyle is an abolitionist and takes him outside. Doyle recognizes Henry and asks him to tell Brown that he is not a slave owner. Brown orders Fred and Owen to execute Doyle, and they kill him with their swords.

Henry sees another of Brown’s sons, John, running towards the cabin. As Brown chases John, Henry jumps on a horse and rides towards Dutch’s. 

A mile from Dutch’s tavern, Henry hears a wagon and hides in the bushes because slaves are not allowed to travel alone without papers. A black man is driving the wagon, and sixteen white men Henry calls “redshirts” (54) ride behind him. The wagon stops near Henry’s hiding place and he sees an old white prisoner in the back of the wagon. Two of the men; Kelly and Pardee, who is the prisoner; try to read a legal document that contains instructions for how to handle the prisoner’s punishment, but neither of them can read and they argue about what they think it says.

Kelly votes to hang Pardee for being a “nigger-loving Free State Yankee” (58), and eight men agree. Eight are opposed and the vote is a tie. Frustrated, the men ride away, leaving Bob and Pardee behind. Henry listens to them argue because Bob says he isn’t going to give Pardee a ride in his wagon, since his master Mr. Kelly said to bring it back as soon as he was done. Pardee knocks the pins out of the wagon wheels with a stone, immobilizing the vehicle so that Bob will have to walk as well. After Pardee leaves, Henry comes out of hiding and offers to fix the wheel for a ride.

Bob is thrilled that Henry knows Brown. He considers Brown a hero to all abolitionists, and is not worried when Henry tells him that Brown murdered Doyle. They make a deal: Bob will give Henry a ride if Henry takes him to Brown and tries to help him and his family escape to freedom in the North. 

Bob drives them to a house where his fourth cousin, Herbert, is living. Herbert tells Bob how to reach Brown’s secret camp. There are patrols everywhere looking for Brown, now that the murders have become public knowledge. But the crimes being reported are worse than the murder of Doyle: Herbert claims that Brown cut the heads off of at least ten white men and fried their eyeballs. This worries Bob enough that he tells Henry he can no longer help him. Bob leaves and Henry follows Herbert’s directions to Brown’s camp. Brown does not ask about the missing horse than Henry ran away on, but instead welcomes him back as if he had never left.

As they eat, Fred tells Henry that his brothers John and Jason are missing. A rider arrives and tells Brown that his enemy Captain Pate is in the region and is planning to attack a town called Lawrence. The next morning, they ride out to find and fight Pate. 

By December (two months later), they still haven’t found Captain Pate and his army. While searching for them, Brown’s army recruits an additional dozen men, bringing their total to thirty. Fred and Owen teach Henry to read and how to track game in the woods. Henry comes “to enjoy that first winter with the Old Man’s army, especially with Fred” (79).

In the spring, Brown returns to camp one day with a wagon. Bob and five other black men are inside it. When Henry tells Bob that Brown is hunting Pate’s army of sharpshooters, Bob wants to leave. He thought Brown took him just to help him reach the North. He also thought he would be able to earn enough money with Brown to buy his wife and daughter’s freedom. Bob says he is going to sneak away and perhaps steal one of Brown’s horses.

In the morning, Brown says that he has found Pate, who is with his men at Black Jack. He gives Bob a sword and tells him that the time has come to fight for his freedom. On the way to the battlefield, ten men find excuses to leave.

Black Jack is a swamp with a ravine cutting its middle. They crawl to the top of a ridge and look down into the town below. There are over three hundred men gathered to protect the town. A man named Captain Shore arrives with fifty more men who are also fighting against slavery. He sends his men charging down the hill, but they are quickly turned back by Pate’s shooters. They charge Brown’s men and the fighting is intense.

Brown’s men are better trained than Pate’s, and after an hour of fighting, Pate’s men begin to leave the battle. The remaining men wave a white flag and surrender to Brown.

Brown’s army goes down to their captives and treats their wounds as Brown gives them a lecture about the Bible. Captain Pate and Pardee are two of the prisoners. Pate says that John and Jason are being held at Fort Leavenworth, and Brown takes his army and the prisoners to free his sons.

Ten miles away, a uniformed officer approaches Brown, points a pistol at him, and tells him he is under arrest. Brown says he only wants to trade his prisoners for his sons. He says he will wait there for three days for the return of his sons. If they are returned, he agrees to surrender himself. Henry knows this is a lie: “For he didn’t say nothing about surrendering himself to the U.S. Government” (94). He surrenders himself to God alone. 

A local man visits Brown the next morning and tells him that some Missourians are headed to his home, intending to burn it. Brown tells Owen to take Henry and the men to protect the home while he stays to meet with the federals. Before they arrive at the home, Owen is to leave Henry with his sister-in-law Martha or “the Adairs” (96). On the ride, Fred tells Henry that he is jealous that he learned to read, while Fred is still illiterate.

Fred and Henry go hunting for beavers to eat. While Henry is trying to flush one out of a dam, a white man appears and asks why a girl (Henry in his dress) is carrying a rifle. He asks who her master is. Fred runs to Henry and scares the man away. They move to another spot and Fred shoots and kills a large bird. He is horrified to discover that he has shot a Good Lord Bird, which he believes is a sin.

Eight men appear, rushing towards them on horses. Henry hides in the trees. One of them is “Rev. Martin, the feller Fred drawed on back at the Old Man’s camp” (103). He shoots Fred in the chest and kills him. After they leave, Henry sits by Fred’s body, holding the Good Lord Bird, wondering if killing it was bad luck that led to Fred’s death. Brown finds Henry there the next morning. 

Henry tells Brown what happened, and Brown says they are going to the nearby town of Osawatomie, which is so close that they can hear the sound of fighting coming from it. After the men ride away, Henry climbs to the top of a hill and looks down. Reverend Martin’s men have torched many of the houses and are shooting Free Staters who try to put the fires out. Brown’s men fight fiercely, but the rebels have a cannon that keeps pushing them back.

While telling his men to retreat, Brown is struck in the back by a cannonball. It doesn’t kill him, but knocks him into the river. With Owen’s help, he fights his way out of the river and retreats. They return to Fred’s body. Brown takes a feather from the Good Lord Bird and puts it in his hatband. Owen begs him to stop the fight, but Brown says he will never stop until slavery has been abolished. Henry does not see him for two more years after he rides away, alone.