The Good Lord Bird

James McBride's The Good Lord Bird, which won the National Book Award, follows a familiar template in historical fiction. It looks at famous people and events through the eyes of a fictitious person. The other example that struck me was Thomas Berger's Little Big Man, which saw the  Battle of the Little Bighorn from the point of a view of an insignificant participant, telling the story in deep old age.

So too is McBride's story, which is told by a 100-year-old man. He is Henry Shackleford, who as a boy, dressed as a girl and was part of John Brown's army as he raided the armory at Harper's Ferry, one of the precursors to the civil war.

Henry is a boy when his father is killed in Kansas. He is now an orphan, and ends up dressing as a girl by accident. He is "freed" by Brown and his sons, who affectionately call him Onion. But he thinks the old man is crazy, and wants to leave and go back to his master. But Brown thinks of him as a good luck charm, especially after he befriends one of his sons before he is killed and ends up with a feather from an ivory-billed woodpecker, which Brown calls the Good Lord Bird. He watches as Brown and his band attack a pro-slaver household and murder the family in cold blood.

He has to stick with the female disguise, and after Brown is nearly killed, he spends time in a brothel as a sort of lady-in-waiting to a light-skinned black prostitute. He watches as a slave uprising is cruelly put down, and ends up back with Brown again. He travels with him as Brown tries to raise money, and ends up meeting Frederick Douglass, who drunkenly makes a pass at him.

Eventually Henry, still in a dress, ends up with Brown inside the armory where the last stand is made. As I read about Brown recently in Midnight Rising, the facts are true, but the circumstances are bent around Henry's actions. In the novel, it's Henry's failure to give Brown a password from a black railroad man that leads the whole thing to failure.

As I mentioned in that review of Midnight Rising, Brown is one of the most controversial figures in American history, a homicidal maniac who happened to be on the right side of history. McBride, in Henry's memoir, describes him vividly: "The Old Man stretched his lips in a crazy fashion. It weren't a real smile, but as close as he could come. Never saw him out and smile up to that point. It didn't fit his face. Stretching them wrinkles horizontal gived the impression of him being plumb stark mad. Seemed like his peanut had poked out the shell all the way."

Henry is also unstinting in listing Brown's faults, such as his desire for fame: "It was all 'bout him, him, and him. Nobody in America could outdo John Brown when it come to tooting his own whistle."

McBride's creation of the voice of Henry is full of aphorisms, similes, and cracker-barrel wisdom, such as "There ain't nothing gets a Yankee madder than a smart colored person," or "That woman was so ugly, she looked like a death threat." But there is more than comedy. There is feeling behind some of these jibes. such as the downfall of the raid: "By eleven A.M. the Old Man begun making one mistake after another. I say that now, looking back. But at the time it didn't seem so bad. He was delaying, see, waiting for the Negro. Many a fool has done that, waiting for the Negro to do something, including the Negro himself.  And that's gone on a hundred years. But the Old Man didn't have a hundred years. He had but a few hours, and it cost him."

I don't think this will change any view of those who regard John Brown one way or the other. From Henry's point of view, he is a crazy man, but he is also righteous, and despite wanting to flee from him due to the danger he is unable too. Brown is seen today as a martyr for black freedom, despite his questionable tactics, and this book gives us a fresh perspective on him.