Redwood and Wildfire

by Andrea Hairston

  Hiram talked loudly at Doc’s back. “Yellow skin, sticking to shadows ’cause of what you call photophobia, light paining the eyes and making the skin ache. What’s that?”

  Doc pushed the door open. “Hasn’t been any yellow fever since 1905 on account of some Cuban gent and Dr. Walter Reed going after mosquitoes.”

  “Must have missed the grubs in Peach Grove,” Aidan said as they went inside.

  Doc chuckled at the gallows humor and gave Aidan a look that he’d been giving him for years that Aidan could never figure out. His eyes were high-spirited and sad, as if he and Aidan were buddies who shared a hard secret or faced hard times without running away. Maybe if Doc wasn’t a rich man, they’d have really been friends.

  The parlor smelled like the inside of a piss pot. Aidan tied a handkerchief over his nose and mouth as his eyes adjusted to dim light. The rotting death smell didn’t seem to bother Doc and Hiram who just went on ’bout their grim business. Blinking the room clear, all Aidan could make out was chaos: overturned furniture, broken dishes, flies, and a fat rat scampering into the corner. Doc shook his head over the remains of a woman who must have been dead for several days. Hiram hauled an old man with sallow eyes and skin in from another room. The man vomited rust-brown blood.

  Aidan followed the sound of whimpering to the kitchen. A tow-headed little gal was huddled under the table in her own filth. Aidan scanned the shadowy room. These were rich folk, and the kitchen was equipped with running water and modern plumbing. He picked the gal up and she moaned and trembled, from fear or pain or both. Setting her in his lap, he pumped water onto a clean cloth and dripped a few drops into her mouth. She sucked it down greedily.

  “Whoa, whoa, go slowly now,” he said. He pumped more water, peeled off her clothes, and washed her clean in between getting her to drink.

  Doc stood in the kitchen door, watching him. “You’re a good man, Coop.”

  “You hardly know me,” Aidan replied. “Nobody know who I am.” He wrapped the gal in a clean towel since he wasn’t goin’ go hunting up a dress for her. She clutched him and muttered against his chest. A miracle she was still breathing.

  “Looks to be more than just yellow fever,” Doc said.

  “Don’t care what you call it, long as it ain’t Garnett’s curse.” Hiram spit in the hallway. “Peach Grove citizens are dropping like leaves. Even the lice must be hungry, no good blood to suck.”

  “You always talk down everybody in town. What do you care?” Doc glared at his brother, but it was Aidan who’d wished these folks dead in Hell for what they stood around and let happen, not Hiram. Aidan scooped the child up.

  “She might make it, with a little help.” He carried her into the parlor.

  Doc covered her kin with a dirty blanket. She was an orphan now, ’cept maybe for the old man who didn’t look related to her.

  “Fever might not kill her, but dehydration and neglect will,” Doc said.

  The girl trembled in Aidan’s arms. “What are we goin’ do with them?”

  The old man leaned into Hiram muttering gibberish.

  “We can take ’em up the hill,” Hiram said. “Miz Caroline Williams opened her house for the live ones.”

  “Did she now?” Aidan said.

  The Williams place sat at the top of the only hill in Peach Grove — a gentle rise more than a hill — covered in grass and flower plantings, always something blooming, even in January. The mansion had been built before the war, when the Williams clan owned everything and everybody for miles. Patrick Williams had been determined to take back the birthright that got stolen from his family in the hard years after the war. His wife, Caroline, had continued this project after his death from apoplexy. The old house was a big white rambling thing with Greek columns, a red tile roof, elaborate porches, and second story balconies. Six chimneys puffed smoke into the blue.

  Aidan swallowed down the shakes. Scared he was ’bout to be completely sober and delirious, he hurried the sick gal through the Williams’ fancy gate, a curlicue forest wrought in iron by slave craftsmen long dead and almost forgotten. The gate swinging shut clanged loudly behind him. The latch raked ’cross his back and drew blood. Those old black artisans were reaching through the years to challenge him. Aidan answered them with a groan.

  Colored servants were tending sick white people on the porches and too busy to take note of Aidan standing with the gal on the bright green lawn. A fierce, gray-haired, gray-eyed woman tugged his weary arm. Miz Caroline Williams took the gal from him without a how-you-do or nothing. She was flat and square for a woman, so bony and sharp, not a sweet ounce of fat on her. Her fine dress was filthy. Sweat dripped down her nose. The gal clutched her. Miz Williams left Aidan stammering thanks in the mud.

  Hiram drove the wagon to the undertaker. Doc and Aidan walked beside it. Raccoons scampered through rubble in the stores on Main Street. The curse meant a string of feast days for them.

  “I’m surprised she’s taking folks in,” Hiram said. “She tell you why?”

  “That woman doesn’t talk much anymore,” Doc said.

  Aidan shrugged. He didn’t have much to say either since Redwood left. His hands shook. He’d kill for a drink.

  “Caroline Williams ain’t been worth much since Jerome run north with that nigger gal.” Hiram was still mad over that.

  “Mothers cleave to their eldest sons.” Doc rubbed his eyes.

  “What was that gal’s name? A tree or some wild thing. They say she hoodooed Jerome.” Hiram scowled at Aidan.

  “Pretty as she was, didn’t need magic.” Doc grinned, appreciating his Redwood memory.

  “She’d need mighty mojo to make Jerome take her black ass all the way to New York. Love only go so far.” Hiram spit in the dirt.

  “Maybe they stopped in Baltimore. Love might take you that far,” Aidan said.

  Doc and Hiram laughed grimly. “You miss her more than all of us, I bet,” Doc said.

  Aidan trembled, naked for a second. They had reached the undertakers. “What’s he goin’ do with all these bodies?” Aidan stared at the caskets piled in the front yard.

  “Why these good people? Why smite down Peach Grove?” Hiram said.

  “Life’s a crap shoot.” Doc went in to find the undertaker.

  “We’re right neighborly for rich boys, isn’t that what you’re thinking?” Hiram poked Aidan’s ribs. Aidan shook his head. He was thinking on a drink. “Well isn’t it?”

  “My head’s full of moss.” Aidan clutched his sides to hold down the shakes. “And I done lost my daddy’s knife.” He fingered the empty sheath, trying to remember where it could be. Ladd and Elisa’s? “That’s a Maskókî hunting knife, a hundred years old at least. A Creek warrior gave it to my grandfather. A shame to lose that.”

  Hiram wasn’t listening to him. “I wouldn’t be out here. But you know how my brother is.”

  “Ain’t you twins?”

  “Not identical, as he is fond of telling me.” Hiram punched Aidan’s chest. “You look thirsty. Oh! Postcard from Chicago came for you, a month, five weeks ago now.”

  Aidan jumped at this. “And you ain’t give it to me yet?”

  “You keep going off on your hunting trips. Fancy minstrel show on the card. Who do you know in Chicago working for Mr. Selig?”

  “Nobody.”

  “I saw Selig’s traveling show once with Bert Williams. Funniest nigger I’ve ever seen.” Hiram chattered on ’bout this Williams fellow but Aidan wasn’t listening.

  Maybe Redwood made it to Chicago, and she was up there doing the show she always wanted. That thought tasted good as a drink for a moment.

  Several acts from the headliners at Chicago’s Magic Theatre, a blackfaced Redwood was costumed as a yellow and white chicken. She pecked and strutted across the stage farmyard, shaking her tail feathers, spreading her wings. Saeed also in blackface was a backcountry sharecropper. He had a red patch on his pants as if a giant with rouged lips kissed his bum. Looking over his shoulder,
he crept through a hole in the fence, jumping and falling at every little noise, a clown, while Redwood was an elegant bird, preening and singing sweet nonsense to herself.

  Saeed drooled at chicken Redwood. Seeing him pull out a giant knife and fork, she screeched and ran. They danced a chase scene ’round the barnyard: over buckets, rakes, fences, feed boxes, and blackfaced little children playing chicks. This offered Saeed a splendid opportunity for acrobatic pratfalls, somersaults, back flips, and balletic cartwheels. Throughout, Redwood did a splendid chicken mime. The white audience was unmoved ’til Saeed grabbed Redwood’s white tail feathers and plucked several large ones, exposing frilly red underwear.

  Saeed turned to the audience and shouted in darky dialect. “Lord a mercy. You musta been in dat school for chickens.”

  Redwood also spoke darky dialect. “Yassir, I’se got dat degree in barnyard philosophity.”

  “Better dan dat ole coon academy. Ain’t no diploma for a spook chicken thief.”

  “Gimme my tailfeathers back.” Chicken Redwood roared like a lion, turned, and chased a terrified Saeed who dropped his knife and fork and scrambled through the hole in the fence. The red patch got snagged on a loose wire and pulled off as he shimmied through, exposing his sooty behind. The crowd applauded.

  “You read the card, Hiram, who’s it from?” Aidan kept breathing through panic. Redwood wouldn’t have signed her own name and risked getting caught.

  “I tried to read it.” Hiram grinned sheepishly. “Something ’bout, working here now, you promised me, and then a lot of wiggly lines. A woman’s hand.”

  Doc dragged out of the undertaker’s. He was shaken by whatever he and the undertaker had discussed. Dark circles of sweat and dust discolored his white pinstripe. He wiped his face. A tight squint turned to a devilish wink as he caught Aidan’s eye. “You got a sweetheart in the windy city you been making promises to?”

  Too nervous to trust his mouth, Aidan shook his head, no.

  “Come by the office, I’ll give the card to you,” Hiram said.

  “We got several more houses to check.” Doc stretched aching muscles and tried to shake the gloom creeping over his face. “Good Samaritans, I could use nourishment before carrying on.”

  Hiram spun ’round and looked toward the edge of town. “You got land across the creek, don’t you, Coop?” His jowls drooped like a lost hound dog. Doc stood behind him with an identical hangdog face as if he knew what his twin thought instantly.

  Aidan rubbed his nose. “I been trying to run that farm into the ground.”

  “We don’t know what you be finding over there.” They spoke in unison.

  “What you mean?” Aidan could have peed hisself.

  Doc gripped his shoulder. “Clarence went to see his Aunt Subie, that conjure woman, two days ago. He didn’t come back yet, and well —”

  The horse spooked at nothing Aidan could see. He gripped the bridle.

  “Nobody’s been over to the colored houses or the poor white trash living there.” Hiram stroked the horse’s neck, but she didn’t get calm.

  “Yellow fever mosquitoes would be biting there too,” Doc said.

  “Damn! The hell you say!” Aidan couldn’t help cussing. Why didn’t he think of that? Drinking too much made a man stupid, even when he was almost sober.

  “Oh, so now it’s yellow fever.” Hiram punched Doc. “But when I say it.”

  “Hey!” Aidan interrupted their spat. “You boys can finish up here.”

  Hiram and Doc nodded and spoke in unison. “They’re your neighbors.”

  Doc clapped Aidan’s shoulder. “I’ll meet you over that way later.”

  “You’re going across the creek by yourself,” Hiram said.

  “I promised her.” Aidan careened down the street.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Doc chastised his brother when he thought Aidan couldn’t hear. “You got to call him trash to his face?”

  “He isn’t one of them, not one of nobody,” Hiram replied.

  “If I gotta do a bird, at least it could be something that flew! A snowy egret.”

  Wearing Aidan’s clothes, her hair stuffed under his cap, the brogans tied tight, Redwood pranced with Saeed, dressed in Persian finery, down a drab cobblestone avenue. Hundreds of horse carriages and automobiles jammed narrow lanes on both sides of the central trolley tracks and raised a thick haze of dust, manure, and engine smoke. Tall buildings pressed tightly against one another and stretched for miles in every direction. With endlessly repeating windows, archways, and columns — undecorated, smoke stained, and monotonous — these streets were a stone honeycomb, home for worker bees, not people. Chicago was not the elegant White City Redwood had glimpsed at the World’s Fair.

  “I’ve never been on this street,” she shouted to Saeed over the hubbub. “Too many streets in Chicago to collect them, I guess.”

  Storefronts and stalls spilled onto the cluttered sidewalk, tempting the hordes hurrying every direction to spend a week’s wages on trifles. She drew Saeed out of the flow of foot traffic to a patch of stained pavement between a barrel of pickles and a rack of smoked sausages. Boxes of ready to wear dresses, skirts, and blouses were shoved in a dirty corner. A grisly merchant looked at her expectantly.

  “Where are we going?” She pulled Saeed toward the pickles. “Tell me now.”

  Saeed touched a patch on a frayed elbow of Aidan’s shirt. “Why do you hide in this man’s clothes?”

  Redwood gazed at him, her head shaking, her tongue thick.

  “Do you not say we are friends?” Saeed said. “Tell me.”

  “His clothes make me feel safe.”

  “What scares you?”

  “Myself sometimes.”

  “Really?” He raised an eyebrow, theatrical but sincere. “Who was he?”

  “Nobody.”

  Saeed shook his head. “You leave a trail of broken hearts. What about your own heart?”

  “I miss him. I do. He believed in me.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Never got a chance to —” she winced — “to love anybody.”

  “Time’s not up yet.”

  “Exactly. Ever think of doing some other kind of show? Ain’t you sick of da coon academy?”

  “I know a colored hotel in the Black Belt looking for good acts.”

  The Black Belt was the tight little hole on the South Side where they tried to shove all the Negroes pouring into Chicago, hundreds coming each day. Poor families of five and six were squeezed into two-room apartments and renting out closets to lodgers. No space, so little air, and hardly no prospects turned people into less than themselves. Was this where Mama and Daddy had hoped to find a bright destiny?

  “Nothing’s the way I thought it would be.” She glanced at a red-faced woman skewering fat green pickles. The woman’s sweat dripped in the barrel.

  “We might get a spot after hours,” Saeed turned her face toward him, “doing the kind of show you fancy. It’s a mixed crowd, very mixed. I thought we might audition this afternoon.”

  “I had pictures like this in my head.” Redwood showed him a postcard of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

  “Ahh. I came to the Fair too.” Saeed smiled. “And fell in love with your country. Never went back home. Here I still am in Chicago.”

  She was enchanted. “Did you perform on Cairo Street for your country?”

  “Cairo is in Egypt, not Persia.”

  “I’ve been studying the map,” Redwood said quickly, embarrassed.

  “Someday perhaps, I could take you to Teheran.”

  She remembered Persia crouched between Arabia and India on Aunt Elisa’s map, but couldn’t think of one city. “Is Teheran big as Chicago?”

  “It is the capital, a jewel, nestled in the southern slopes of the Elburz Mountains, not far from the Caspian Sea. A place for one who loves mountains. And the Caspian Sea is five times your Lake Michigan. We could visit the Golestān Palace and see the peacock throne.”


  He ran his fingers over the card. A painter had rendered a colorful view of the Midway Plaisance at night: a city of lights, of iron and steel archways and glittery arcades. It exploded into life for a moment, fountains spraying, fireworks going off, but Redwood caught herself before getting carried away and shoved the postcard in her pocket. Saeed flexed his fingers as if they tingled or ached.

  “When I first arrived, I was young, foolish,” Saeed said. “Chicago almost broke my heart, but are we not in America?” He danced ’round her and the pickle lady. “A land of tomorrow, not yesterday, a land where —” He was twirling and tapping and making a spectacle of hisself. Passers-by smiled, “— a magic lady rehearses into the night so a lost young man from far away Persia is ready for a big chance when it steams to shore.” He took her hand and tugged her into his dance. People gathered to watch.

  “You play the genie not me.” She broke off mid-step. The crowd groaned, disappointed. “If they want entertainment, they have to pay me.”

  “Genie? It was your magic that saved me. Where would I be, what would I do without you?”

  “Milton couldn’t last on that ankle, and Eddie can’t even count on his ownself. I wasn’t planning to leave The Act. Rehearsing with you was an insurance policy.”

  “I was in the Injun chorus, now —”

  “You’re a darky headliner!” She laughed so hard her sides ached. “You can act colored, wild Injun, or the fine white gentleman.”

  Saeed didn’t laugh. “Why does this make you so sad?”

  “I thought Chicago was where I could be who I am inside,” Redwood said softly. “What’d I know?”

  After a moment of silence, Saeed laid his arm on her shoulder. “In my country, you and I, we couldn’t be friends and discuss such weighty matters or even wander the streets of Teheran carefree.” He observed the bustling street, a wistful look crossing his sharp features. “I miss home all the same.”

  “Do you think home misses you?” she said.

  Saeed laughed at her serious face. “Look! That one is ours. Hurry!” They ran through screeching automobiles and rearing horses to a trolley pulling up to the stop.