Redwood and Wildfire

by Andrea Hairston

  “I know someone who lived in these mountains.” She closed her eyes and looked for young Aidan running through snow.

  “Someone special?” He teased, stopping when he caught her glare. “After they run the Injuns off, it was Scottish and Irish immigrants, poor folk taking land nobody else wanted. Mostly pro-union before the war. Real good fiddle playing in these parts too.”

  “You know some history,” Redwood said, back in a good mood.

  “I confess, I am an educated man from Oberlin College who ran off to the theatre.”

  “You are a mystery Mr. O’Reilly,” Redwood said with theatrical flourish.

  “Likewise, Miss Phipps.” He bowed to her. She dropped a deep curtsey.

  “Is Oberlin a colored institute of higher learning?”

  “No Ma’am, but they let in colored same as white, women same as men. Still a station on the underground railroad to our freedom.” Her face brightened at this. Milton continued. “Alas, look what I have done with this great gift — a theatre vagabond, the very thing my parents hoped to prevent.”

  “I don’t listen to good people talking themselves down.”

  “I think we better get back before Mr. Starks runs off with all our stock.”

  “I don’t leave nothing with Eddie that I want.”

  “He’s not all bad,” Milton said.

  “Well, nobody’s all bad, I guess.” She didn’t feel as sure of that as she used to.

  Eddie was itching to get from Georgia to Tennessee, so after sightseeing they headed right out again, barely resting the horses. “I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Deep South ain’t my stomping grounds.” Eddie refused a detour to Blood Mountain. “How many big rocks do you need to see, gal?”

  “It was a site of a great battle between the Cherokee and the Creek back in the 1600s,” she said.

  “Who won?” Milton asked.

  “The Cherokee, and they called it The Enchanted Land.” Aidan told her how to say it in Cherokee, but she didn’t trust her mouth just now.

  “You know some history too,” Milton declared.

  “Don’t matter,” Eddie said. “White folk own all these mountains now. That’s all the history that counts.”

  He put up a big fuss when Milton had them ride up Lookout Mountain. This time Milton and Redwood didn’t give in to him.

  “We got money in our pockets and prospects for tomorrow,” she said. “It’s not that far out the way.”

  “We’re riding history, man,” Milton said. “Fill yourself up and take it on stage.”

  “Ain’t smarter than me, college boy. Not richer neither. Horses goin’ end up lame.”

  The view from Lookout was better than from the Ferris Wheel. The Tennessee River stretched out below them, a gray snake sunning in yellow fields. Chattanooga hugged the river’s shores, going on and disappearing into forever at the misty horizon. It was a city on the scale of Chicago. “Oh, my,” Redwood said, her heart fluttering. She had never been so far from home ’cept for conjuring herself away. Eddie laughed at her big eyes and breathless sighs.

  “In the war, this is where Grant and Sherman fought the Battle Above the Clouds. They took Chattanooga and sent Johnny Reb skedaddling back into Georgia.” Milton spoke as if this was his personal victory.

  “That war ain’t over,” Redwood said, “we’re still fighting it everyday.”

  Eddie frowned at his partner. “You don’t look good.”

  Milton had been doing better, but Redwood couldn’t get him to heal. If he danced more than a minute or two, his ankle ballooned, and he was limping through the same pain all over again. Eddie was always nagging him ’bout it and doubting Redwood.

  “Warmer in the valley,” Milton said. “And I’ll find something stronger than coffee to chase the chill away.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense. Ain’t no liquor goin’ cure what ails you.” Redwood fussed at Milton, but it wasn’t him drinking hard spirits that had her worried sick.

  Aidan’s hands ached. Plucking at banjo strings, he didn’t feel any music, just wrong notes and noise coming out his fingers. Nothing worth playing since Redwood had to run off. Aidan almost threw the banjo out the window, but she would’ve sucked her teeth, cut her eyes, and been so upset — he set it down gently. When Aidan was fourteen, a stranger passing through Peach Grove from the Blue Ridge Mountains had given him this banjo for no good reason. Stranger claimed he saw music on Aidan’s spirit. Aidan always imagined it was a gift from Big Thunder and Miss O’Casey.

  “Foolish, childish notions,” he muttered. He gripped a jug and headed for the shed. It was goin’ be another long empty day.

  Aidan ran the plow into hard rock, wrenched his wrist, and cussed at Princess. “You damn fool mule! What the hell you think you doing?”

  Princess turned big eyes at him and twitched her long ears while he shouted hisself hoarse. She looked over to the setting sun and back at Aidan, checking if he’d noticed that they done come to the end of sunlight. She needed to go home, eat a good meal, and rest her bones if he wanted her to get any work done tomorrow. Aidan cussed with a chewed-up throat and slapped the reins on her back. Princess strained against the harness, ready to leave his crazy behind in the field, where he could yell at the stars when they come out — if he wanted to.

  “What’s got into you, Aidan Cooper?” Cherokee Will stood in a long shaft of light. “Yelling at your Princess like that.” He kept his distance from the gnashing mule.

  Aidan cleared his throat and spit in the wind. “What you doing here?”

  “You ain’t been right, since…” Cherokee Will smacked a bug sucking his neck. “I come to look see what I could do.”

  “I don’t need your help! So you can just get on now.”

  “What you mad at me for?”

  “I’m mad at everybody.”

  “Of course you are, living alone out here. You need —”

  “Don’t tell me I need the company of good people.”

  “Iona say, you don’t even play your banjo no more.” Cherokee Will took the fight out of Aidan with this. “Well that don’t make no sense.”

  “Music make it worse.” That was a lie. Music called Aidan a coward and left him. He couldn’t even play how sad he felt with tone-deaf fingers. He dropped his head. Dirty hair hung in his face so Cherokee Will didn’t see the tears streaking down. What kind of man stand ’round blubbering in the dirt? “I’m not fit company for my mule.”

  Cherokee Will eyed the jug next to Aidan’s alligator pouch on the ground. Princess sensed an escape opportunity. She stamped her feet and snorted.

  “All right. It is too dark to see.” Aidan pulled off the harness. Princess nipped his side and scampered away as he yelped.

  Cherokee Will laughed. “That’s an ornery critter. Bad as my wife.”

  Aidan sank down in the newly turned earth. He grabbed his jug.

  “I’ll sit with you awhile.” Cherokee Will squatted in the dirt, still limber for an old fellow. He sat too close.

  “Ain’t enough to share.” Aidan took a long swig. “And I ain’t got nothing to say.”

  “If I need some talking, I’ll do it. A man shouldn’t be alone on sorrow mountain.”

  Ten

  Tennessee and Georgia, 1905-1906

  In Chattanooga, just after January New Year, 1905, Redwood took Milton to a conjure woman, Mirabella Fontaine, who had befriended Miz Subie in her wild youth, back in slavery days. A Sea Island woman, landlocked far from the ocean she loved, Mirabella wore seashells ’round her neck and in her white hair. “You all from Peach Grove, nuh?” She ushered them in. A giant conch seashell presided over her front hall. Fans of dried seaweed hung over the doorways, and fishing nets covered the windows. “Subie send a letter now and again, but I got to pay some young fool to read it. I t’ink I save my money.” Her dress and shawl were slippery green and billowy as sea grass. “I got a spell to keep fools from knocking. How’d you find me?”

  “I wr
ote your address for Miz Subie when her eye was too tired,” Redwood said.

  Miz Mirabella hugged Redwood against bony ribs. She was so happy to have a report of her dear friend from somebody’s mouth that she made a big meal and insisted the weary travelers stay the night. Milton wanted to argue.

  “Sheets and springs beat a dirt bed any day,” Eddie said.

  Milton crumpled on the parlor floor. Mirabella examined his puffy ankle and discolored foot. “Maybe you ain’t got dancing feet no more.” She wrapped a poultice ’round the swelling and gave him sweet tea. “Count your blessings, singerman. You lucky to be alive.”

  Eddie pulled a face at this, but Milton took the medicine and the news well. After supper, he snored away in a big white bed like a baby. The mist of hair on his dark brown head and face was scattered with gray all of a sudden. Age had come on him hard in the last few weeks. The ragged scar on his jaw had faded to a wrinkle.

  Mirabella pulled Redwood from his door, back to the parlor. “Tell me ’bout Subie.”

  Eddie paced ’round them, picking dinner from his teeth and sipping peach brandy. Redwood didn’t dare say much with him listening. Her eyes kept straying toward the sleeping chamber.

  “I t’ink Mr. Milton be all right,” Miz Mirabella said. “Subie taught you good t’ing.” She glanced at Eddie. “Take yourself out to the night air, cool your hot head. Leave us women be.” Eddie couldn’t stand anybody telling him what to do, but bossy women really rankled. “I got to tell you twice? Get on now!”

  “I was thinking of a smoke anyhow.” Eddie took his time leaving.

  Miz Mirabella brought out a cigar box. “See what I got here?”

  By the hot glow of an electric lamp, Redwood read Subie’s letters out loud, a few short paragraphs in tight handwriting, one a year for over thirty years. She even spoke the ones Mirabella done heard before, reciting ’til her voice was hoarse and it was late in the night.

  “You sound like Subie, make me t’ink her in the room.” The old conjure woman’s sharp jaw and creased forehead relaxed. “Subie always say reading and writing be a powerful trick in your bag. She learn when them whip you to death for less. You young folk don’t want to hear all that — tired of our stories ’fore they even got told.”

  “Sometime, slavery stories be too painful to hear,” Redwood said. “We want to forget those bad times and think on what we doing right now.”

  “When you want to hear, we’ll be long gone.” Mirabella chortled at this ancient joke on humanity.

  Redwood almost cried, reading Subie’s last letter:

  We have lived some wild times and I’m feeling every minute in these old joints. But my young ones are coming due, so I ain’t worrying over old bones.

  George got an iron spirit. He’ll bend anybody to his will.

  Sweet Iris belong to another world altogether and won’t nobody beat that out of her.

  Aidan got an open heart, so he ain’t scared of the truth. He ain’t scared of change.

  Redwood is my hope, my future, just as sure as if I birthed her. A conjurer like I never seen.

  Dreamers all, and ain’t this the time we need the magic and the might of our dreams?

  “What ’bout you, chile?” Mirabella leaned close and touched Redwood’s belly.

  “I ain’t a dreamer no more.” Redwood told as much of her tale as she could stand in her mouth and pleaded for herbs to make one of her mama’s nasty brews.

  Mirabella sucked her teeth. “Blood’s not that late. Too soon to be sure. I knew a woman — men took her against her will. She didn’t bleed for a year. Put a trick on her own body.”

  “I won’t…I can’t have his baby.”

  “You do dangerous t’ing, maybe you won’t have nobody’s baby, nevermore.”

  “Can’t have no part of him growing inside me.” Redwood balled her fist and pressed it against her lips.

  Mirabella nodded. “We ole folks ain’t the only ones got a hard story to tell.” She stroked Redwood’s hands. “Find you a good man soon. You a grown woman who need good loving. Your time goin’ fly. Rub this bad man out your body as soon as you can. Snatch you some good moments. Hear what I say? Promise me.”

  Redwood hesitated. She didn’t say what she didn’t mean.

  “For pain and sorrow, ain’t no root, ain’t no spell like good loving,” Mirabella said.

  If a good man was a healing spell, Redwood guessed she could do it. “I promise.”

  Aidan lurched down Main Street between Doc and Hiram Johnson. They looked dapper and smart as usual. A warm spring breeze made Aidan sweat through winter britches and a heavy coat. It was March or maybe April, 1906. He’d lived a quarter of a century! Time always got ahead of him. He tugged at an itchy sleeve and the threadbare fabric ripped. He tore it the rest of the way off and stuffed it in a pocket with The Jungle by Upton Sinclair that Doc had just loaned him.

  Clarence Edwards, Doc’s colored driver, an Atlanta man with a graying mustache and bulging muscles, followed a few steps behind them with his eyes on the ground and his ears perked, a damn hound dog waiting for a bone. Aidan was several drinks beyond drunk, but he knew Clarence was sneering at him. What was Aidan to him but another cracker, poor white trash, a drunken fool?

  Doc mocked him too. ““How could you let Jerome steal her away from you and the rest of us too?”

  “Jerome didn’t steal Redwood from me. She always had her heart set on him.” Aidan gritted his teeth. Clarence stared him in the eye, two or three seconds.

  “She was very good at hiding that,” Doc said. Clarence looked down.

  “She had to be,” Aidan said. “Jerome didn’t want that mama of his to know.”

  “I’m sure that’s a burr in Caroline Williams’ britches.” Hiram laughed. “What I don’t understand is Jerome.”

  “Taking to the swamp like a runaway slave or an Injun.” Doc shook his head. “Why not a buggy?”

  “I tole you, Jerome and Redwood call themselves sneaking off north to get married,” Aidan said. “She wanted a big wedding in a church and dancing in the street after.” The only story he ever got good at telling out loud was a barefaced lie.

  Clarence coughed up a good wad and spit.

  “Where are your manners, Clarence?” Doc said.

  Aidan continued. “They were getting lost in the swamp. Love had ’em all turned ’round. I tried to talk sense to ’em, but they were too hardheaded. Istî siminolî. They planned to get on the railroad in Atlanta. At least I pointed ’em in the right direction.”

  “I do recall Jerome saying, tonight’s the night for me and Redwood,” Hiram said.

  “You thought it meant bumping and grinding, not riding on the railroad to New York City.” Doc laughed.

  “I thought he’d tell me the truth,” Hiram said. “He’d been talking about me and him taking a wild trip up north, just getting on the train one afternoon, not telling anybody. Finding us a few obliging lady friends.”

  Aidan almost fell over his own feet. Clarence caught him. “Watch where you going, Clarence.” Aidan shoved him away, panicked. These Johnson boys could make a mess of his lying. “Jerome planned a trip with you?”

  “Naw, Jerome talked a lot of stuff he didn’t mean,” Doc said. “He paid off his debts, cleaned out his account. You should’ve smelled something else coming, Hiram.”

  “Cherokee Will said he arranged a rendezvous for Jerome and that gal in the peach orchard,” Hiram said. “I don’t understand, with all these fine white women to choose from. Why run off with her?”

  “Love’s a mystery. Can’t say today what it’ll make you do tomorrow,” Aidan said.

  Clarence exchanged quick glances with Doc, then glared at the ground.

  Doc scratched his chin. “Hard to believe Jerome loved anybody.”

  “And a nigger gal at that,” Hiram said.

  “Maybe she hoodooed him.” Aidan swayed at a street corner, overwhelmed by the directions he could take. Bad idea, lying at the crossroads.
He leaned against a post.

  “That must be it!” Doc said. “A conjurer, like her mama.”

  Hiram quaked at talk of Garnett. “They got a moving picture over to the fair.” He pointed to distant tents.

  “We got a Nickelodeon coming to Atlanta,” Doc said. He was spending more and more time up in the city.

  “It’s all better in Atlanta. What you doing in Peach Grove?” Hiram walked ahead.

  “Clarence pesters me to come see his Aunt Subie, before the old gal goes blind in both eyes.”

  “Naw, sir. You wanted to see your brother and go hunting with Mr. Cooper.” Clarence looked at Aidan with undisguised hope.

  “What do you say, Coop?” Doc had his arms ’round Aidan’s shoulders.

  “Maybe.” Aidan felt sick all of a sudden. Clarence grinned at him. What did this colored fool want from him? What did he know?

  “You look green, man,” Doc said. “Don’t worry. There’s a fat bonus.”

  “I don’t need your money,” Aidan pulled away and wiped at his sweaty neck, “to be your friend.” Doc nodded and hushed Hiram before he said something smart. Aidan glanced over to Clarence who was contemplating his feet again. Aidan sucked a breath and rubbed bleary eyes. “Maybe on the weekend. Good day to you.”

  “So take me to this foolish tent show,” Doc said as Aidan stumbled away. “Pictures were meant to stay still, you know.”

  On a sticky Saturday, Redwood turned nineteen years old, a woman of the world. Wearing Aidan’s clothes, she hid behind funky curtains in a sweaty third-floor room of the Cherokee Lake Bordello in backcountry Tennessee. She’d been working here a year, singing with The Act. A bad man, a dangerous man, paid top dollar for Elaine, a buxom, high yellow lady whose kinky hair was the only giveaway she wasn’t white. Elaine took the bad man’s crisp bills and pleaded with Redwood to hide in her room and keep a lookout.

  “You a hoodoo, ain’t you, Sequoia?” she whispered as he drank a whiskey. “He’ll feel that and act right! I don’t want to have to shoot nobody tonight.”

  Redwood tingled with pride. Elaine cussed everybody out all the time and had a gun under her pillow, but believed in Redwood to keep her safe. The fellow was middling-sized, didn’t look evil, and he talked sweet to Elaine. Last week Joe Graham looked like a gentleman in fancy clothes, sounded like one too, but slit a woman’s belly, laughing and talking love to her. Stinky Wilson favored sick gals, doing ’em ’til they puked, and Ole Phil liked to leave a souvenir scar, a love nick. Big Jarius was supposed to keep the peace. Three floors of nonsense kept him running, and he didn’t always make it in time. Redwood wouldn’t have believed none of this before, but no matter what Rev. Washington and them say, these were brave, hard-working women at Cherokee Lake who never know what might come at them.