“I has studied your great war pamphlet, Mr. Forbes,” the Old Man said, “and I daresay it is excellent.”
Forbes bowed low again. “You humble me, dear sir, though I do confess my military training duties are underscored by the many victories I experienced on the European continent under the legions of the great General Garibaldi himself.”
“Indeed it is pertinent,” the Old Man said. “For I has a plan that needs your military training and expertise.” He glanced around at the folks gathered ’round them, then at me. “Let us retire to the back room here, whilst my consort counts up the funds from tonight’s gatherers. There is doings of which I needs to discuss with you in private.”
With that, the two went into the back room of the hall while I collected the funds. What they discussed I weren’t privy to, but they commingled there the better part of three hours, and when they emerged, the hall had cleared out.
It was quiet and the streets was safe. I handed the Old Man the $158 collected from that night’s doings, our best take ever. The Old Man produced another pile of bills, counted them up, placed a total of $600 in a brown bag, just ’bout every penny we’d made from our three months of giving speeches and shows up and down the East Coast, raising money for his army, and handed the bag to Mr. Forbes.
Mr. Forbes took the bag and stuffed it in his vest pocket. “I am proud to serve in the legions of a great man. A general in the score of Toussaint-Louverture, Socrates, and Hippocrates.”
“I’m a captain, serving in the army of the Prince of Peace,” Old Man Brown said.
“Ah, but to me you are a general, sir, and I will call you thus for I serve under nothing less.”
With that, he turned and marched down the alley, military style, like a soldier, clickety-clack, erect and proud.
The Old Man watched him all the way till he reached the end of the alley. “I has been trying to find that man for two years,” he announced. “That is why we lingered here so long, Onion. The Lord finally brung him to me. He will meet us in Iowa and train our men. He is from Europe.”
“He is?”
“Yes indeed. A trained expert under Garibaldi himself. We has a true military trainer, Onion. Now, finally, I am ready to go to war.”
Forbes reached the end of the alley, turned to the Old Man, tipped his cap, bowed, and walked away into the night.
The Old Man never saw him again.
20.
Rousing the Hive
We sat in a flophouse in Chester, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia, for two weeks while the Old Man wrote letters, studied maps, and waited for word of the military trainer, Mr. Forbes, arriving in Iowa. When he got a letter from Mr. Kagi saying he hadn’t arrived, he knowed the jig was up. He didn’t mope ’bout it, but rather seen it as a positive sign. “We been had by a wicked snare, Onion. The devil is busy. But the Lord reckons we don’t need training to fight our war. Being on the righteous side of His word is training enough. Besides,” he announced, “my greater plan is ’bout to be unleashed. It is time to hive the queen bees. We is going to Canada.”
“Why, Captain?”
“Is it the white man upon whom the Negro can depend to fight his war, Little Onion? No. It is the Negro himself. We are ’bout to unleash the true gladiators in this hellion against the infernal wickedness. The leaders of the Negro people themselves. Onward.”
I weren’t against it. Being that me and the Old Man traveled as man and consort, the mistress at the flophouse where we stayed made me sleep in the maids’ quarters, a rat-infested sop of a room that reminded me of Kansas. I had gotten spoiled by them Yanks crying over me being a slave and filling me with hasty pudding, smoked turkey, venison, boiled pigeon, lamb, dainty fish, and pumpkin bread every chance they got. The mistress of that tavern weren’t one of those. She didn’t have two cents’ worth of sympathy for no abolitionist, mostly ’cause she was basically a slave herself. She served sour biscuits and gravy, which was fine for herself and the Old Man, for he didn’t have no taste for anything cooked, but my own tastes growed to pumpkin bread, fresh blackberries, turkey, venison, boiled pigeon, lamb, dainty fish, pumpkin bread, and butchered ham with real German sauerkraut like I had up in Boston every time I dropped word on being a slave. I was all for staking out new territory. Besides, Canada was free country. I could stay there and be done with him before he got deadened, which was my thoughts.
We took the train to Detroit, and from there met up with the Old Man’s army, which had growed from nine to twelve. Included in that group was four of the Old Man’s sons: Owen, of course, Salmon, plus two younger ones, Watson and Oliver. Jason and John had quit. A. D. Stevens was still there, grousing, dangerous Yankee that he was. Kagi had commanded them as the Old Man had ordered, and there was some new roughnecks: Charles Tidd, a hot-tempered feller who had served as a soldier with the federals. John Cook was still there, now carrying two six-shooters on his hips, and several others including the Old Man’s sons-in-law, the Thompson boys, and the Coppoc brothers—them last two being shooting Quakers. That was the main ones. With the exception of Cook, who could talk the horns off the devil’s head, they was mostly quiet, serious fellers, men of letters, so to speak. They read newspapers and books, and while they was mellow in polite company, they’d loose their business on you with a muzzle loader and blow a hole in your face in a minute. Them fellers was dangerous, but for the simple reason they had a cause. Ain’t no worse thing in the world than fronting up against one of those, for a man with a cause, right or wrong, has got plenty to prove, and will make you suck sorrow if you get in the way of ’em wrongly.
We wagoneered up to Chatham, Ontario, the men in the back while the Old Man and I rode up front. He was cheerful all the way, allowing that we was heading to a special meeting. “It’s the first of its type,” he announced. “A convention with Negroes from all over America and Canada is hiving to make a resolution against slavery. The war begins in earnest, Onion. We will have numbers. We will have resolution. We will have revolution! It’s percolating!”
It didn’t percolate right off. Only forty-five folks percolated to Chatham, and of that number, nearly a third was the white fellers from the Old Man’s army or was white fellers who picked up and joined us along the way. It was January, cold and snowy, and on account of that or whatever other duties kept them free Negroes home, it was as pitiful a convention as I ever did see. It was held in an old Masons’ lodge in a single day, with lots of speeches and resolving and herebys and halooting ’bout this and that and not a bite to eat; a bunch of them fellers read declarations the Old Man had written up, and there was a lot of hollering ’bout who shot John and what the slave needed to do to prosper and get clear of the white man. There weren’t nothing too good for encouragement in the whole deal from what I could see. Even the Old Man’s pal Mr. Douglass didn’t come, and that made the Old Man’s feathers fall some.
“Frederick never plans well,” he said airily, “and he will regret the lack of planning that caused him to miss one of the great moments in American history. There is great speakers and great minds present here. We is changing the course of this country as we speak, Onion.”
Course, being that he was the main appointed speaker and wrote the constitution and set the bylaws and basically done the whole thing himself, that helped make the thing in his mind seem more important. It was all ’bout him, him, and him. Nobody in America could outdo John Brown when it come to tooting his own whistle. He let the Negroes have their moments, course, and after they blowed out more hot gas and done more grousing ’bout the white man and slavery in that one day than I was to hear in the next thirty years, it was his turn. It was the end of the day, and they had speechified and signed papers and made resolutions and the like, and it was the Old Man’s turn to speak and show his papers and froth his mouth ’bout the whole slavery show. I was dead tired and hungry by then, course, having had nothing to eat being around him as usual, but he was the main event, and that being so, they was all licking their chops for him when he shuffled to the front of the room fluffling his papers, while the room lay quiet, full of expectation.