Redwood and Wildfire

by Andrea Hairston

  “Only folk I ever met expecting something for nothing was rich folk.” Redwood muttered what George would say. “Poor folk know they got to break their backs taking care of themselves and lazy rich folk too!”

  Two altos stared at Redwood who was talking loud to herself. She clamped her lips and clutched a scrap a paper that Miz Subie had passed to her in front of the church.

  “I wrote a list, if ain’t enough time for everything, y’all just find me some man root.” Subie had hurried off before Rev. Washington saw her.

  Aidan had invited Redwood for a canoe ride to his secret hut, his chickee, to fix new bottles in the demon-catching tree. He always took care with hoodoo rituals and helped Redwood hunt down roots for Miz Subie’s spells that nobody else could find. Josie didn’t know squat ’bout Redwood going in the swamp with her husband. Nobody ’cept Subie did, but that wasn’t sinning if Redwood didn’t lie. That was keeping a secret.

  “I ain’t goin’ let nobody turn me around!” Rev. Washington declared.

  Redwood had to agree with him on that.

  Wandering through the crisp Sunday morning after church, Redwood stumbled into the ruins of the Hiller plantation. Rock walls, brick chimneys, and stone foundations peeked through silvery grass and orange leaves. Trees, vines, and bushes had claimed the place. Droopy evergreens and dried out moss looked sad. A hardy ice plant in a sunny spot was still in bloom, purple daisy faces smiling at her.

  “Why you come down here? I said meet me up on the road.” Aidan offered Redwood a hand up onto his Princess. “Yankee soldiers torched this place. Killed everybody. Slaves were locked up and burned to death too. Haints ’round here still be mad. Don’t nobody walk this way.” Aidan knew the story of every pile of rocks or stand of weeds for miles around.

  “You ain’t scared of those haints,” Redwood said. “Me neither.” She leaned against his back as they rode off. They were quiet, content to be in each other’s company, but melancholy. Princess, however, was stepping high all the way to the swamp.

  Rusty cypress needles rained down as a strong wind gusted through the trees. Redwood dipped her paddle in the black swamp water, dodging crimson lily pads and wispy orange leaves. Songbirds feasted on purple berries, coppery fruits, and gingery seedpods hanging from vine trellises ’cross the water. Golden grasses whistled in the breezy sunlight. They didn’t see or hear another soul. (Aidan knew how to avoid any nosy body.) A sleepy looking bear gurgled at them from a tree branch. He was munching something good. Aidan gurgled back.

  “Does he have a scar on his cheek look like a star?” Redwood asked.

  Aidan shrugged. “He say, we got to sing our way home. Bring some cheer to November.”

  “Did he now?” Redwood laughed.

  After stringing up bright-colored bottles at his chickee, they paddled the broken glass that had done the job to a watery crossroads. Aidan threw the shards in the fast-moving stream and they paddled away without looking back.

  On the return trip, Redwood let Aidan do all the singing, Irish ballads, Blues, and songs he conjured up in the moment. His music snatched the chill out of her chest. Coming ’round the bend toward Princess’s corral, Redwood’s arms ached, but her breath was good enough to join in at the refrain. Coughing took over after that.

  “You don’t sound good,” Aidan said. “You taking care of yourself?”

  “Of course.” Redwood swallowed a cough. “I’m just restless.” The gate to the corral was wide open. Princess had gotten out. “Where your mule gone to?”

  “Home I guess.” Aidan looked worried.

  Searching for her, they plowed through Spanish moss that had gone to seed. Tiny orange fruits had split open and spit out hairy filaments. Redwood was covered with the scratchy things and wanted to cuss. She had to blame somebody for the long trek back to Peach Grove. “Walking, we won’t get home ’til after midnight.”

  “Heya now!” Cherokee Will held out sweet grass and oats to Princess. The mule nibbled at his hands, but every time he took hold of her bridle and hoisted hisself toward her back, she kicked her rear legs and pulled away.

  “You trying to steal my mule?” Aidan said. “She don’t like nobody, hardly.”

  “She was standing out here by herself.” The old man scratched his bowlegs and fanned his white head with a straw hat. “How would I know she belong to you?”

  “I see.” Aidan laughed good-naturedly. “You were trying to rescue her?”

  Princess nuzzled Redwood, but kept a wary eye on Cherokee Will.

  “What do I need to steal your mule for?” Cherokee Will slapped the hat on his head. “Who are you calling a thief? Any direction you look, that was my daddy’s place. And beyond that, all Indian land.”

  “We know.” Aidan hushed him up before he started in ’bout slavery times and how much land and people he owned once.

  “You be telling everybody all the time,” Redwood said.

  “I am a great elder. I am of this land. You have just arrived.”

  Irritated, Redwood jumped on Princess. Aidan was ’bout to leap up behind her, but Cherokee Will broke out wailing. Tears poured down his wrinkled cheeks. He tottered, as if at the edge of a cliff.

  “Everybody always making fun. You too, just like the rest. Calling me a thief.”

  “I’m sorry.” Aidan grabbed Will so he didn’t fall. “What’s weighing on you?”

  “Jerome and Caroline Williams stole my orchard.”

  “How’d they do that?” Redwood said.

  “I ain’t the only one. Look how they done Graham Wright. His ma is Choctaw. He ain’t nobody to these white folks.”

  “They said Graham owed taxes,” Aidan said.

  “I’m an old fool, but we were a mighty people once! People to be reckoned with, not people you could beat up with a tax.” Will reminded her of George. “It was said, they shall never become blue, yet now look at me.”

  “I see a fine man,” Aidan said. “A man full of good life.”

  “Do you think we’ll ever be great again?” Cherokee Will gripped him. “Do I live and die to nothing?”

  Aidan glanced at Redwood.

  “Of course not.” She sucked down a coughing fit and stared a hole in the sky. “There’s a land of the future with wonders yet to be wrought, and we…we just ain’t reached it yet, but it’s coming.”

  “Yes,” Aidan said. “When I was a boy, you told me, on the path we don’t see what’s ahead, but every step we take is a prayer.”

  “What else to say to a child?” Cherokee Will groaned.

  “Every step’s a spell, conjuring what’s to come,” Redwood said. “You’re painting the next horizon for us.”

  Cherokee Will let go of Aidan and stumbled a step each direction. “Thank you, Mr. Cooper,” he said as if Redwood hadn’t spoken. “You’re like a bundle carrier from the old days.”

  “I don’t know ’bout that.” Aidan leapt up on the mule.

  “Wait. Don’t go.” Cherokee Will tromped about, gathering leaves and hairy little roots and then pulled a red moss from a ratty pouch that hung on a string at his waist. Redwood gazed at Aidan, who shrugged. Will pulled crumpled paper from his pocket and scrawled strange figures on it.

  “Cherokee writing.” He wrapped the words with the root medicine in a scrap of cloth. “Sikwayi, a great man, he invented our letters, the talking leaves. Sikwayi is Sequoia, your name in Cherokee.” He held it out to Redwood.

  “Sikwayi?” She hesitated from taking his offering.

  “Good for women problems.” Will stood up tall, a fierce fellow thrusting a medicine bag at her. “Boil and inhale smoke. You looking poorly. Cold stuck ’round your heart.”

  Redwood fell back into Aidan’s chest. Princess whinny-heehawed and stepped toward Will. Redwood let him put the medicine in her hand. “Thank you, sir.”

  “You take care of yourself too,” Aidan said; then they rode off.

  Redwood turned to look at Will standing bent over in the bare cypress trees. “You
think he’ll keep our secret?” Aunt and Uncle wouldn’t let her run off to the swamp with a grown man, a married, white man whose wife would pitch a fit if she knew. Who in colored or white Peach Grove would understand what they were to each other?

  “Nobody listens to Cherokee Will, right? They don’t think he knows anything.”

  Redwood squirmed at the bitter truth in that. “I’ll be listening more from now on.” She leaned against Aidan. “He’s a sad man sometimes and lonely too I guess.”

  “Will didn’t walk the deadly trail to Oklahoma. His daddy’s second wife was an Irish lady.”

  “Like your mama.”

  Aidan’s chest heaved against her back. “Yes.”

  “Please, tell me more. If it’s a secret I know I can keep it.”

  “Shouldn’t be no secret.” Aidan sounded hurt and mad.

  “I’m listening and I won’t make fun.”

  On the way home Aidan told her what he knew of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Choctaw, and Seminole, and how white men called them civilized, but stole their land anyway, demolished their towns and farms, and marched them to hell in Oklahoma on a trail of tears. “Sagonege, blue, is Cherokee color for the north, for disappointment and failure. They shall never become blue means good fortune always. My daddy say Georgia had a public lottery to steal Indian territory. One-hundred-sixty-acre land lots and forty-acre gold lots were given away to citizens. An Indian wasn’t a citizen. Still ain’t.”

  “Oh.” She never much cared ’bout being a citizen. It didn’t seem to do colored folks much good. “Why’d they —”

  “For gold in the mountains, for cotton and corn in the fields. They stole the sunrise and the distant sea breeze. They tore the people from the place of their ancestors, leaving spirits to roam and no one to take heed.”

  “Hmm hmm,” Redwood murmured. “I’ve seen them spirits sometime. Didn’t know who they were, so I didn’t know how to act.”

  “I used to think, just seeing the old ones was paying respect, but —”

  “The Seminole didn’t all get routed,” Redwood said. “They gathered with old enemies to forgive what could be forgiven, and then together they made a long walk into the grassy water. Istî siminolî, they were free. I remember what you said.”

  “I guess you do.” Aidan sounded pleased at that. “Still in Florida too.”

  After sneaking through plantation ruins and trotting overgrown roads, they were getting close to home. “I’ll walk from here.” Redwood slipped off Princess.

  “The people got driven from their land only one lifetime ago, and it’s all but forgotten.” Aidan clutched the reins so tight, she saw ribbons of blood.

  She put her hands on his. “We’ll carry the story one more lifetime at least.”

  For the next week, using Cherokee Will’s cure, Redwood got a little better. When the medicine was gone, she was coughing up a storm and so hoarse she didn’t talk. Uncle Ladd was so frightened by the sound of her, he made her go see Doc Johnson.

  “Ladd’s mama died of consumption. I don’t think you will,” Miz Subie said when Doc threw up his hands and sent Redwood back to her. “Don’t do nothing wild for a while. No stealing heartbeats for a sightseeing trip with Mr. Cooper. You might meet the boneyard baron and never come back. Risk yourself on something that really matters.”

  “Like what?”

  “You’ll know.” She tied nine devil’s shoestrings ’round Redwood’s aching ankles and gave her some ole nasty tea to drink. After one swallow, Redwood was gagging and feeling worse. “It’s foot-track magic,” Miz Subie said. “I swear you done crossed your ownself. You the one got to break this spell, ’less you want to stay sick.”

  “Oh.” No denying it, Redwood hadn’t been right since conjuring herself and Aidan to the Chicago Fair. She come back to Georgia so restless and lonely, so full of daydreams and nightmares, she didn’t know what to do. Out in the fields picking winter greens, eyes open or closed, she’d see herself dancing in bright Chicago lights. Stage houses were filled with fancy audiences from the world over. From Abyssinia and China, folks were jumping to their feet, clapping for her. An hour or two could go by with her wandering the rows of vegetables. She might pluck a few weeds, rout a slug or two, but nothing much else. Uncle Ladd tried to scold her, but Elisa would hush him up and pat Redwood’s back or make her drink some of Subie’s bitter tea.

  “How am I ever goin’ find my heart’s desire in Peach Grove, Georgia?”

  Auntie would nod, rub Redwood’s belly with a cool cloth, but she didn’t understand. Redwood wanted to do something wonderful. Didn’t she have stories to tell and powerful spells to conjure? Sick folk were probably the same everywhere, but there were so many other tricks Redwood didn’t know yet — like how to call up the world she see or the world she want to see. Didn’t everybody say that life was short? She had to get on the road and make a bright destiny. That’s what nobody could understand ’cept maybe Aidan. Nasty tea, Indian medicine, wool scarves, and devil’s shoestrings wouldn’t help her know how to make herself grand as those folks from Dahomey or them dancers on Cairo Street.

  And today, Aunt Elisa be inviting Bubba Jackson over for Sunday supper. He’d had a change a heart ’bout Redwood, but she wasn’t studying that boy. The Jackson’s weren’t rich colored people like the Wilsons or the Garretts, but close enough, so Elisa was wringing the necks of the fattest chickens and plucking white feathers. She had kale simmering, beans soaking, and three pies baking. Smokehouse bacon was sizzling in a pan. Christmas jam and pickles come up from the cellar early. Elisa made the cousins stay in their Sunday best long after church service, with a whipping promised if they cut the fool and got dirty. Redwood wore one of Mama’s old dresses and pouted like she was ten. Her hips and bosom had filled out, and she cut a fine figure. That’s all Bubba was after — a gal with big tiddies who didn’t want him back.

  “Once he gets his paws on me, he won’t want me no more,” Redwood said.

  For once George agreed with her. “Bubba Jackson is the last person she should marry.”

  “Miz Subie never got a husband and she do just fine,” Redwood said, her throat aching something awful.

  “Subie a conjure woman. That life ain’t for everybody,” Elisa said.

  “I don’t see why I got to marry a fool, ’cause he come sniffing ’round, flashing fast cash and talking big.”

  “I don’t know ’bout that.” Elisa waved a bloody knife. “You gotta marry somebody.”

  Redwood grabbed a box of tools and headed for Aidan’s place.

  “We be eating at four,” Elisa yelled.

  “I won’t stay away long.”

  Redwood hadn’t seen much of Aidan since the baby started walking. Josie pitched a fit over his trips to the swamp, leaving her alone with a feisty toddler. So Aidan didn’t take off on her too much. Redwood had so many secrets saved up to tell him, she was starting to forget. On a short visit before supper, wouldn’t be enough time for all their stories, even if they talked fast.

  Walking at a good pace for an hour and getting close to his place, she was feeling better. Maybe he’d even have a new song to play her. They could stroll down to the creek and get away from everything for a few minutes. Josie claim the banjo plucked at her nerves. Something had to be wrong with that woman she didn’t like Aidan singing to her. Course Redwood had never heard somebody’s good music she couldn’t hear again and again.

  Orange-haired Josie busted out Aidan’s front door with a bundle of belongings and a crying baby on her hip. Josie’s cheeks were red and so were her puffy eyes. She headed for a buckboard. The horse turned to watch Josie and the few satchels she’d loaded up. The baby was shrieking. Josie stopped, trying to rock her son quiet.

  “You that hoodoo gal, ain’t you?” She looked Redwood up and down, pretending she couldn’t remember her.

  “My uncle say thank you to Mr. Cooper.” Redwood held up the box of tools.

  “Aidan ain’t here. Mean son of a snak
e run off somewhere to get drunk.” Josie got in the buggy and laid her son in a basket in the back. He had orange hair and red cheeks, same as his mama, and a tight little angry scream. Didn’t look nothing like Aidan. Josie rocked his basket. “Watch out. Aidan ain’t worth a damn.”

  “Why you say that?”

  “You know how some white men do, running off to colored gals.”

  “Aidan and me, just friends.” Redwood’s breath fluttered into a nasty cough. “Don’t be jealous.”

  Josie sniffled, almost satisfied. “You ain’t the only colored gal ’round. Plenty dark meat this side of the creek.”

  “He faithful to you if that’s your worry.”

  “How you know?”

  “I’m a hoodoo, ain’t I?”

  “I s’pose he is faithful.” She gave up on quieting the baby. “I could take him laying up with a darky.”

  “Uh huh,” Redwood said even though Josie was lying to herself.

  “He’s a man with a biiiggg appetite.” She sat up straight, squeezing herself, like she could feel how good doing it with Aidan was. “I can hold my own against —”

  “I tell you, he ain’t going with no other woman. I did a good-luck spell for you two.”

  Josie guffawed and scared her son quiet. “Aidan brought in two of the best crops ever. We don’t have no debts, ’cept Leroy Richards.”

  “Moonshine?”

  Flushing pink at the edges, Josie lifted the reins.

  “So you going away ’cause Mr. Cooper be feeling low?”

  “I’m leaving him.” Josie wiped at sudden tears spilling down her face. “A haint been after Aidan since before we got married. Spooked him last night. Well, then it’s one jug after another.”

  “He did right by you when —”