“...weren’t goin’ be slaves no more,” Ladd said.
The door bust open, startling everybody fully awake. George tramped into the kitchen, his face and shirt bathed in sweat. Mud covered his boots and pants up to the knees. He glared at everyone, but didn’t say a word. Redwood opened her eyes and, seeing him, smiled.
“They ran from the Okefenokee Swamp all the way up into the mountains and was free people.” Ladd finished his story. “How do the Seminole call it?”
“Istî siminolî,” Aidan said.
Holding a bloody right hand behind his back, George grabbed food from the table with his left hand and ate hungrily.
Elisa frowned. “You ain’t even give a Christian greeting.”
“Good evening, Aunt. Evening to you all.” George waved a rib bone with scraps of dangling flesh. There wasn’t much meat left. He chewed at the hard gristle. “You bring the deer, Coop? Must be, ’cause ain’t nobody else know where they be hiding.”
Aidan nodded at George.
“I guess it’s thank you then.” George smirked. “How’s that for Christian?”
“Yes, istî siminolî. Free people,” Ladd said. “The hounds couldn’t track ’em, and the paddy rollers just give up and went on home. And you see, all sorts of free folks were mixing ’round up there in them mountains.”
“Yes.” Aidan thought back to when he was a boy.
“Colored still ain’t free nowhere else.” George chomped on a hunk of bread.
“Bet you got a story ’bout them mountain folk, Mr. Cooper,” Ladd said.
George grunted. “You must got stories back to when wild Injuns roamed the land.” He didn’t like Indians any better than he liked white people — double the reason to dislike Aidan.
“Did you tell him the Okefenokee story?” Aidan whispered to Redwood.
She sucked her teeth at him, disgusted. “Of course not.”
Half asleep, Iris fussed in Aidan’s lap. He kissed her head and patted her tummy. She settled down.
“What you know good?” Ladd asked him.
“I heard plenty tall tales from the mountain folk, like how Miss O’Casey met the Thunder Man.”
Aidan’s mama told him her story before someone else could. She wasn’t shamed of who she was or where she come from. His daddy neither. Aidan still couldn’t stand up in the world the way they did and be proud of every bit of who he was no matter what anybody thought. But if his journal had been near, he might have read the story out loud and not just to Redwood, but to Ladd, Elisa, Iris, and the cousins, exactly the way his mother told him. He might have wiped the sneer off George’s greasy face.
Big Thunder and Miss O’Casey
Love is always a good thing.
It was the spring of 1876, darling, and smoke curled from the chimney of a backwoods bordello. No streets of milk and honey, no castles of gold, when you stepped off the boat. Pleasuring poor working men, that was the work there was.
Glass shattered and shouts and curses erupted from the second floor of this house of ill repute. Aislinn O’Casey - your own dear mother - and her older sister Caitlin squeezed through a window wedged at half-mast and stepped out onto the roof. They took a breath of free, clear air under the sparkling stars. Back then Aislinn and Caitlin both had red hair, moss-green eyes, and more freckles than clear skin. Dressed in flimsy white nightgowns and carrying bundles with all they owned in this world, they raced across the roof and shimmied down a Greek column to the muddy ground. It was the Athens Bordello, you see. A naked man stuck his head out the window, screaming bloody murder. He’d paid for both girls, thought he owned them for the night, body and soul.
Aislinn and Caitlin stared up at him, laughed to each other, and then ran like the dickens all through the night. They ran with the energy of dreams, dreams for a new life, if not milk and honey running in the streets, a little less sweat from stinking men. Being the foolish young girls that they were, they got all turned around and thoroughly lost.
Dawn broke open the dark. Aislinn and Caitlin slogged through a swamp and stopped at an island of solid ground. They were hungry and desperate and terrified, fighting with each other about who was to blame for the pickle they were in. They had stolen raggedy coats from their poor customers and thrown these rude garments over their night clothes, which were now filthy. Standing there, scratching at the bugs, they considered going back to the Athens Bordello. Caitlin did anyways, but she hadn’t yet persuaded her sister.
Aislinn heard a thunder of grief. Beyond fluttering swamp grass, a Seminole man stood over his dead wife and a newborn child, still wrinkled and red, an umbilical cord twisted around her neck. The man was a strapping fellow, with an alligator pouch hanging at his waist, a big hunting knife riding on his hip, a bright turban on his head. He sank down, shaking with grief.
Caitlin wanted to run away from this wild Indian, but Aislinn felt his grief and sat on the ground in front of him. It wasn’t right to be alone with death, and this fellow looked grieved enough to do himself harm. Reluctantly, Caitlin clutched Aislinn and sank down too. They did not make a sound. They did not move, and then the sun sank beyond the tall grass. Lightning crackled in the dark above, and the thunder was so big, it rocked their little island, yet no rain cooled the hot night. It was as though the man had called his ancestors to witness with him, to grieve at the wake for his family.
At sunrise, the Thunder Man still sat silently by his dead wife and child. A breeze plowed through saw grass. Aislinn got up, so stiff and achy she walked like an old crow. Caitlin tried to hold her back, but Aislinn was bold and strong-willed. She strode close to the Thunder Man, and with an Irish lilt to her English asked, “Are you fixing on dying too?”
The Thunder Man stared up at her, hurt and loss all over his face.
“Wasting another life would be a shame, sir,” she said.
He jumped up and grabbed her roughly by the shoulders. She did not flinch or wince, but grabbed him back. They stood taking measure of one another with an owl hooting in the distance.
When night came again, the Thunder Man buried his wife and child in a high tree as Aislinn watched. Caitlin huddled on the ground behind them. Aislinn remembered an old Irish prayer and sang it:
She is the queen of every hive
She is the blaze at sunset
She is the grace of every hope
She is the shield protecting your heart
May the blessings of the Earth be on you
Your father, whose name was Big Thunder of course, finally spoke, with a whisper of a Seminole accent, saying, “I’m not dying in captivity.”
“So, where are we going?”
Aidan stroked his red leather journal buried in the bottom of his bag.
“You goin’ tell us or just tease us?” Redwood said. “Your stories are like a trip to the Fair, to the E-LEC-TRI-CITY.” She drew out each syllable. “Or like riding a hot-air balloon to places of adventure and wonder.” She almost melted his heart. “Tell us something, why don’t you?”
“Please! Please!” Becky and Jessie had their eyes open. “A story we haven’t heard.”
Aidan was tempted, but he didn’t want to steal Ladd’s thunder. “Just tall tales, you know, how my folks met. You don’t want to hear that.”
“A regular romantic entertainment, I suspect.” George ate the last hunk of apple pie.
Elisa’s voice turned sharp. “If you can’t be civil, George.”
“I don’t guess anyone wants to hear my tale.” George stomped out the room.
After that, Aidan wouldn’t let hisself be persuaded into telling a story, not even by Redwood, but playing the banjo was another matter. Without coaxing, he was strumming away. Ladd joined him on the spoons and Elisa sang, as long as it wasn’t the Blues. Redwood didn’t add a harmony, but she danced the sleepy children into their bedroom. “We’re not tired,” they protested and almost fell asleep washing their grubby hands and faces. Carrying Iris, Aidan followed Redwood to a room with several bed
s jammed together. The cousins were stuffed between the sheets and already dreaming when he set little Iris’s head on a pillow and tucked a blanket to her chin. She still clutched her carved bear and raccoon. Tiptoeing back into the kitchen, Redwood took Aidan’s arm. Ladd and Elisa pretended not to notice.
“I’ll tell you that story some time,” Aidan said.
“Iris sure loves her some Crazy Coop,” Redwood said.
Aidan blushed and reached for his banjo, fixing to go. “Love goes both ways.”
“Stay the night,” Elisa said.
“I don’t want to trouble you, Ma’am.” Aidan looked from her to Redwood.
“There’s frost in the air.” Elisa shivered. “Your place is a good walk from here.”
“Don’t nag the man.” Ladd put his arms ’round his wife. “Let him find his own mind.”
“I’m just saying.”
Aidan stepped out in the night. Bitter cold cut right through him. He didn’t relish the idea of walking the hour and half home. It was pitch dark too. He’d have to borrow a lamp.
“The moon ain’t up yet.” Redwood stood behind him, radiating warmth.
There was nothing but a jug to go home to. Was he really crazy? Aidan stepped back inside. Elisa was sitting by the fire cleaning her shotgun. Ladd was smoking a pipe.
“If you staying, close the door and keep the heat inside,” Ladd said.
Aidan sat by the fire too and pulled out his red leather journal. After a few moments, he was writing away. Redwood sat next to him, close enough for her thigh to graze his. Reading Of One Blood or The Hidden Self by Pauline Hopkins, she come to the end of a chapter and sighed.
“Good?” He turned the book title over in his mind.
“Oh yes.” Redwood’s eyes flashed with real excitement, like when they were going ’round the Ferris Wheel. “There’s this colored American medical student who gets crowned emperor of a lost kingdom underneath a pyramid in Ethiopia.”
“That’s clear ’cross Africa, to the east, to the horn,” Aidan said. Doc Johnson had a big map of the world on a wall in his library. Aidan could see it plain in his head. “That book must be quite an adventure. I’ll have to read it when you finished.”
She displayed the title page. “Pauline Hopkins is an actress and a singer and a playwright. A colored lady doing all that and writing books too.”
“You don’t say?” Aidan was surprised and impressed. “I ain’t been reading so much. Been hard to find time for anything.” He’d been drinking moonshine ’til he blacked out and could wake up with another haunted night behind him, forgotten.
“What you putting in your book?” she said. “I don’t mean to interrupt.”
“I like to write down what happened on a good day, like this evening with you all, make it last longer that way.”
She traced her fingers along his handwriting. “All that happen today?”
Aidan pulled the journal from her. “I write what I remember too.”
“You got a hidden self, huh?”
“I reckon so.” He glanced at the words.
Coming to Peach Grove
It was 1892 or thereabouts. Big Thunder and Aislinn, jaundiced and sick, rode through the woods, tearing down a mountainside. Aidan was eleven or twelve and riding between them. It was a hot night. Skunk odor filled the air. The horses were skittish and couldn’t always find sure footing. Ahead of Aidan, Big Thunder almost fell from his horse. Aidan cried out.
“Don’t you worry now,” Aislinn said as Big Thunder righted himself. Her voice was thin. “My sister, your Aunt Caitlin, is in Peach Grove. Not far now.”
“You don’t even know where she lives,” Aidan said.
Aislinn and Caitlin had a big falling out over savage Indians and wild mountain folk.
“We’re taking you to a conjure woman. Her people come from the Sea Islands. I knew her growing up. She’ll find your aunt.” Big Thunder gripped his reins and squeezed his knees into the horse’s skinny ribs and they rode on.
Aidan thought his parents might drop dead any moment, and he’d be alone in strange woods. When it started to rain and the gloom thickened, he didn’t know how his daddy would find the way. After several wet hours, they reached somewhere. Aidan smelled cook fires and cow manure and ripe fruit hanging in trees. Peach Grove. Big Thunder and Aislinn tied their horses to scraggly branches and staggered in the dark a ways with Aidan between them. Icy rain pelted their thin coats. It was hot and cold all at once. They finally came to a house with lights burning in the windows and smoke curling from a chimney.
“I can’t go any further,” Aislinn said. “We do it now, or I won’t.”
At the steps to the porch, Aislinn hugged Aidan, and Big Thunder hugged them both. They pushed Aidan up to the door. He clutched a red leather journal, alligator bag, hunting knife, and an orchid. He refused to move.
“Go on, boy,” Big Thunder said, all the rumble gone from his voice.
“Don’t forget to give her the flower, Aidan,” Aislinn said.
“You all not coming?” Aidan said.
“We’ll come for you as soon as…” Aislinn faltered.
“As soon as we can…” Big Thunder said.
Aislinn backed away, holding on to Big Thunder. “My sister will look after you, for a while.”
“Where you all going?” Aidan shouted.
“Cross River,” Big Thunder said.
“Why can’t I come?”
“Remember what we told you,” Aislinn said.
“And if we’re gone a long while, just remember who you are, Aidan Wildfire.” Big Thunder sounded a moment like his old self, and then they disappeared into the rainy dark.
Aidan would have stood at the doorsill all night in the rain, but Garnett Phipps came and pulled him in out of the wet. She wrapped him in a blanket and stood him by the fire.
“Thank you for the orchid,” Miz Garnett said. She was tall and fierce with strong hands and bold features. Her eyes were deep brown with a flash of fire underneath. She let Aidan stare out the window for his parents, even though there was nothing to see. When he started crying, she patted his shoulder and he turned into her, crying full force, and she hugged his sorrow. She smelled of hickory smoke and peach brandy and magnolia.
“What are these tears?” Aunt Caitlin had the same Irish lilt as Aislinn, but it did Aidan no good to hear it. “You’re all grown up since I saw you last. A man almost. Can’t be no more crying.” She was a proper married lady now, Miz Caitlin Cooper. But her life before had messed up her insides, ’til she couldn’t have no children. “You’ll be the son I never had, Aidan Cooper. Put that old mountain life behind you, like a bad dream.”
Aidan didn’t want to let go of Garnett Phipps. He clutched her fiercely.
Miz Garnett smiled at him. “You got a journal, I see. Write yourself down, Aidan. Keep good counsel with your ownself. That’s a powerful spell, a hoodoo trick for whatever ails you.”
The fire was thundering up the chimney and hissing at the cold air. Ladd poked it absent-mindedly. Elisa looked up the barrel of her gun.
Aidan closed the journal quickly. “How we came south out the mountains is nothing fancy like Miz Pauline Hopkins’ adventure.”
“I don’t mean to pry.” Redwood bit at her lip. “Don’t worry. I didn’t read nothing.”
“I just write ’bout my parents, my aunt.” Aidan hugged the journal against his chest. “I write down Ladd’s stories too. All the stories I hear, what happened, and tall tales too.”
Redwood seemed pleased with that. She was right under his nose. He couldn’t help but breathe her in. Her skin was lily of the valley soap, and a sweet nut oil filled her hair. And there was her own scent too.
“You know I’m no good at storying out loud,” he whispered.
“That ain’t true, but if you fixed on believing it.” Redwood shrugged. “I been writing stories that ain’t never happen yet, but it’s like I remember them.”
“Stories you think up you
rself?” Aidan had never considered doing that.
“Why not?”
“Aunt Caitlin used to say writing foolishness was a waste. God only give us so many days.”
“Foolishness?” Redwood sucked her teeth. “Your Aunt Caitlin ain’t never read my stories.”
“You burn ’em up ’fore anybody can read ’em,” Elisa said.
“Speaking of your aunt, may she rest in peace, I just know Miz Caitlin wouldn’t want you to lose that farm now,” Ladd said. “That’s good property, real good soil.”
Aidan had been doing fine with the farm ’til recently. “Don’t see the point sometimes to bringing in the crop.”
“Better than letting it rot on the vine,” Redwood said.
“Miz Caitlin and Mr. Cooper worked too hard,” Ladd said. “To see it all go to ruin.”
Aidan shook his head. “You think the dead care what we do?”
“What kind of talk is that?” Elisa said.
“You bad as George.” Redwood sucked her teeth again, disgusted.
Elisa set down the gun she was cleaning and flicked a cloth at Aidan’s sour expression. “We’re all that’s left of the dead. Of course they care.”
“Caroline Williams be eyeing your land,” Ladd said, deep anger in his voice.
“Well, she can eye it all she wants,” Aidan said. Ladd nodded.
“Daddy sent me this one. I’ll give it to you.” Redwood dropped a picture postcard in his lap. “Where all the train’s meet — the whole world’s riding into Chicago. That’s a true story for your journal book too.”
This postcard of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair featured a lively rendering of Cairo Street. Aidan recognized the temple mosque, market booths, snake charmers, and dancers. He closed his eyes and the Egyptian ladies were doing their belly dance with Redwood. An audience from ’round the world applauded.
“Them grand buildings be long gone. Working men set fire to dreams,” Ladd said.
Redwood and Wildfire Page 12
