Redwood and Wildfire

by Andrea Hairston

  Sixteen

  Chicago, 1910

  Dressed as an Arabian knight or perhaps a Persian buccaneer, Redwood slinked through shadows following George into the heart of Chicago’s Black Belt. She told herself she was a fool, but kept going. She told herself she was following George for Clarissa’s sake, but that was only half true and certainly didn’t make her feel less a fool. George wasn’t goin’ keep Redwood in the dark, like back in Peach Grove when nobody told her how Mama died or nothing. She had to meet Saeed at 11:00 pm for the show; that was a good hour away. The Ace of Spades Hotel was nearby, and she was already in costume. She gave this mad scheme ten more minutes — no need to push her luck.

  George never looked behind him once. This was too easy or he was too cocky. Nobody with a good conscience looked ’round to see if somebody was tracking ’em, so maybe George didn’t have anything to hide.

  The colored residents sitting on stoops and porches, catching the last bit of air before suffocating the night away in tiny apartments, were in better spirits than she was. Teasing and laughing, they were on the lookout for the comet or anything interesting passing through the night. One young fellow called out to her.

  “Hey! Ain’t you that Arab fellow in the show over to the Ace of Spades?”

  She put a finger to her lips and gestured quiet. He obliged. George didn’t notice. A block away, he was running up the back stairs to June Thomas’s place. She was a brown woman with stringy yellow hair who did laundry for Clarissa and all the high-tone colored ladies, washing and pressing all the linens, starching shirts and tablecloths too — the personal touch, not a factory. Personal touch, indeed. George was through the door quickly. June scanned the street and looked right through Redwood coming her way. Like everybody else, June mistook her for Saeed and closed the door.

  Redwood stood under June’s porch worrying the inside of her cheek. She wanted more proof. She could imagine what June and George were up to, but she hadn’t witnessed it. Lord knew the stories people told on Redwood and Saeed, so she climbed up to the second floor and out on a railing, to peer into the window.

  George was making love to June. They looked to be enjoying each other more than Redwood could ever imagine enjoying anyone again. She felt jealous and foolish and tore her eyes away to another room where three children slept in one bed. She wondered if any of them were George’s.

  What now that she had seen for herself?

  She climbed down the railing, tumbling through a somersault to land upright in front of her admirer from a block down the street.

  “Ain’t the Arab fellow, it’s Sequoia! Running won’t set you free?” He sang out of tune.

  She hurried by him. Did he see what she’d been doing? “We’re playing tonight,” she called back over her shoulder. “Come see us again.”

  Dawn was done. Morning was in full swing. Redwood crouched under a sign proclaiming Phipps Dry Cleaning: Cleaner than New. She was half asleep. Her cummerbund waist was coming undone. Her robe and pants were wrinkled and sweat-soiled. She’d stayed out all night dancing at one of Saeed’s wild parties. Show people, writers, and folks trying to change the world for the working man. Hardly nobody was talking ’bout the working woman. Redwood ought to bring Clarissa next time so she could say her piece. Course this sort of party might be too racy for her sister-in-law, with those two ladies necking in the corner and Saeed hanging on a suave impresario. In fact, it might’ve been too racy for Redwood. She had heartburn and a mighty headache, and she hadn’t drunk anything.

  George opened the window in his office and almost closed it again ’cause the wind threatened the stacks of orders and receipts, five rows deep on his desk. He settled on just cracking it at the bottom. His telephone chimed. All the well-off colored folk, and some Italians and Greeks too, came to Phipps Dry Cleaning ’cause the price was right and the workmanship very good. Business was excellent.

  Redwood wanted to talk over June with him here, not at home, but she didn’t like to interrupt him on the telephone. Actually, she didn’t know what to say. Spying was nasty business. The truth you got felt dirty on your tongue. She ought to be on the lookout for her own good life, ’stead of sneaking ’round somebody else’s.

  “I was here all night keeping the machines running, Clarissa.” George lied and paused while Clarissa said something on the other end. “Of course I’m coming home tonight.” He paused again. “I don’t know what my sister does with herself at night. I’m too busy earning a living. I can’t chase after her.”

  A rock whistled over Redwood’s head and smashed through the window, shattering the glass. She threw up her arms and ducked down as George dropped the phone and raced for the door. Redwood picked her way through the broken window pieces, taking pains not to slice her fancy boots but quickly blending into the curious on-lookers. She dug a splinter of glass from her eyebrow. George bust through the front door of the Dry Cleaning, hollering. He scanned the street for any sign of the culprit. No one.

  “Did anybody see what happened?” George shouted, throwing the rock up in the air and catching it. Everybody hurried away from his question.

  Redwood’s heart was racing. Who would do such a thing?

  The end of the late afternoon shift swelled the crowds in the streets with dirty, tired workers. Redwood had cleaned up and changed into Aidan’s clothes. She even mimicked his loping gait. With the cap pulled down low, she plowed through the jammed avenues and people said, “’Scuse me, Mister,” when she bumped by.

  Stockyard stink clung to everything. Redwood shuddered at gutter streams of horse piss, blazing coal furnaces, and heavy-metal spew. She got blasted several times with greasy automobile exhaust and wanted to take a bath all over again. In these neighborhoods near the stockyard, she heard Polish, Italian, and the Irish lilt that Aidan did sometime, which sent a quiver up her spine. She smiled at an Irish woman talking to her children. A little girl smiled back at Redwood as the mama hurried the family toward a church for evening Mass.

  “None of you can stand to see a colored man doing well with his own business!”

  Redwood flattened herself behind a corner wall. Holding the rock, George argued with a brawny white man in dirty work clothes. This fellow had Aidan’s lilt on his tongue too, but she couldn’t quite make out what he said. I’d have done more than smash a window or some such. George had several colored working men at his back, covered in soot and blood and oil. The brawny Irishman kept eyeing these dark, silent men as he measured out his words.

  George was practically breathing fire. He slammed the rock in the Irishman’s chest and marched away, shouting, “You do that, Seamus.”

  George’s colored gang followed, bumping and jostling brawny Seamus ’til his hat fell off. Humiliated, he snatched it off the filthy street and jammed it on his head. He stood still, huffing and puffing in anger, like a bull ready to charge. George may have won this battle, but the war surely wasn’t over. Redwood’s heart fluttered as she dashed by Seamus. The rock was a gentle warning for what was to come. Seamus stomped down the street, snarling and grinning to hisself.

  George and crew hopped on a trolley. Redwood ran full-out to catch the same one. She hid in the back. George peeled greenbacks from a stack in his billfold and paid each of his fellows as they got off at the next stop. George sat down in the front of the trolley and pressed a balled-up fist into his chin. Unlike Atlanta, Negroes could sit anywhere they wanted on Chicago trams. Since coming north, George always sat up front. He eyed white men defiantly. Bored or lost in their thoughts, they didn’t notice his insolent stance. He nearly missed his stop impressing white folk with his high-toned cooning.

  Redwood barely made it off after him. The trolley charged away before her feet hit the ground good. George hustled the half-mile walk home so fast — she was panting to keep up, so like when they were young, and despite longer legs, she could never go as fast as he did.

  Clarissa brushed soot from George’s coat as Redwood climbed in a kitchen window. />
  “When I open the second cleaners, we’ll buy us an automobile,” George said.

  “The children are already in bed. Supper’s ruined and your sister’s still not back yet,” Clarissa said.

  They didn’t hear Redwood slipping and sliding on the hard floor. They were too busy kissing and stumbling up the stairs.

  “Redwood always do what she want; don’t matter what nobody else say,” George said.

  “You’re the older brother.”

  Redwood crept to the second floor, listening hard.

  George grunted. “Redwood’s a hoodoo, like Mama, working the conqueror root. Only a fool mess in that.”

  “You sound like a Georgia sharecropper.”

  George usually spit fire at somebody calling him a sharecropper, but he talked soft to Clarissa. “That’s what you married, woman. Too late to complain.”

  “No, after a day’s work, you smell clean and fresh, a businessman, not a field hand.”

  “You still smell sweeter than me.” George picked her up and carried her to their bed. Redwood started downstairs but froze as Clarissa spoke.

  “You’re no backward fool running to the conjure woman for hoodoo nonsense — rabbit-foot and cat-piss spells. Colored have moved on, and you’re leading the way.”

  Furious, Redwood huddled under a hall table, thinking of what to say back to Clarissa. She could bust in on their love-making and ask if some irate white carpenter or electrician that George blockbusted out of a house was throwing rocks through the Dry Cleaning window. Or she could ask how many of June’s children were George’s or just wonder out loud what else he did with his gang of colored strongmen. And sister Clarissa wasn’t too good for “hoodoo nonsense” when she was backed in a corner with her belly ’bout to swell up.

  Several high-pitched moans and a few low grunts startled Redwood and made her blush with shame. Here she was listening in on another good time — the sweet sounds just made her want to cry. The bed stopped its rhythmic rocking. Their voices were quiet at first and Redwood couldn’t hear. But then George shouted. “Shaking her fanny on stage. That’s the way of performing folk. Half of ’em hoodoo too.”

  “She’s living under your roof. She’s a scandal,” Clarissa said. “Running the streets with wild Indians.”

  “Saeed’s from Persia, ’cross the ocean, and I don’t think he like womenfolk much. He got hisself a fellow.”

  “That puts your mind at ease?”

  “Redwood can hoodoo an audience and make more money than I do.” George sounded mad at that.

  “I’m not saying she isn’t generous.”

  “She’s helping buy the new shop and a motorcar and ain’t lying on her back to do it.”

  “George, don’t be vulgar.” Clarissa’s voice wavered. Tears were coming.

  “What you think I can do to change her ways?” A loud thump on the mattress punctuated his question. “Huh?”

  “I’d rather light a candle than curse the darkness, husband, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “You be quoting the Bible next. Don’t know if I can take that.”

  “Hoodoo is the devil’s workshop.”

  “I can’t hear you speak ill of Mama.”

  “God rest her soul, but the minister says —”

  “Or of my sister. They do hoodoo to help folk, to take the trick off wayward souls.”

  Sniffling swallowed Clarissa’s next words. Mortified, Redwood started to slip away and banged the table. “What’s that?” Clarissa said.

  Redwood froze and decided then and there against spying ever again.

  “This old house groaning,” George said. “What you got to cry so for?”

  “Who’ll take the trick off Redwood’s soul?”

  “What?” The bed creaked as he stood up.

  “I’ve seen how she’s hurting. You stand next to her, you can feel the pain.”

  George stomped ’cross the room. “No. Big Red is tough.”

  “She needs a husband. I’ve invited Arthur —”

  “Arthur Robinson?” George shoved the door open, and it blocked Redwood’s hiding place. “She’d as soon shoot that crook of a banker as marry him. I don’t blame her. He’s a jackass.” He sauntered out of the bedroom, scratching his balls. Redwood focused her eyes on his bare feet. He stopped at the stairs. “I can’t believe you thought of Arthur Robinson for my sister.”

  “Come back to bed, you’ll wake the children.”

  “They could sleep through Judgment Day.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “What if your sister comes home and you’re walking around in your birthday suit?” Clarissa came out in a gown. She tried to hand George one, but he wouldn’t take it. They headed down the stairs. “I don’t know how to help her.” She had a tearful catch in her voice, “if she doesn’t believe in anything I believe in. Hoodoo and conjure and —”

  “What’s come over you, woman? You don’t even sound like yourself.”

  “Nothing. Nothing. I’m just worried.”

  As they went into the kitchen, Redwood slipped from under the table. She squeezed her mojo bag and headed down the back stairs. Clarissa had some nerve thinking she could cure Redwood with a mean rich man who hated colored folks even more than white folks did. Arthur Robinson got wealthy cheating Negroes and was proud of it. George knew Redwood didn’t want a high-toned scoundrel, but he never noticed she was hurting. Nobody ever cared to find out what she really felt, what she really needed.

  Back in her room, ’stead of crying herself to sleep, she tried to pleasure herself. She used everything she’d learn from Elaine and the gals at the Cherokee Lake Bordello. But the sweet feelings slipped through her fingers.

  Seventeen

  From Atlanta to Chicago, 1910

  Putrid pig and rotten fish, factory spew, and overfull outhouses — the city smell of Atlanta woke Aidan from a sharp nightmare. The stink clung to his tongue as the bad dream dissolved. He cussed, certain there was something he should remember — or somebody — but he couldn’t. The dusty brown road had turned to black asphalt, and the buggy wheels were grateful. Buttercup and Boo neighed, and Clarence clucked at them. The bright afternoon had gone to smoky gray. A light mist chilled the evening air. Iris was nestled in his arm, a warm ember against his chilly chest. Doc studied them both and scribbled on an artist’s pad. Aidan looked beyond Doc’s sandy-haired crooked countenance to the city of Atlanta in twilight.

  Awkward, square-boned buildings hunched together. They cluttered up the skyway, blocking Venus and an early moonrise. Lights glimmered in townhouse windows like ghosts seeking refuge. Motorcars, wagons, and electric trolleys materialized in the twilight and surrounded Doc’s modest buggy. Aidan gasped at the sudden crush of noisy vehicles. A horn blared, and Iris woke with a start. She clutched his arm. The winking kerosene lights played over her frightened face. Doc chuckled at his country companions. Bicyclists and pedestrians filled every available space on the broken pavement. Clarence reined the horses in.

  “The speed limit is supposedly eight miles per hour,” Doc said.

  They were trapped in more traffic than Aidan had seen his whole life and going too fast.

  “Watch yourself, fool,” Clarence shouted.

  The comet caught the last of the sunlight as an automobile heading south lurched into the north lane right toward Doc’s buggy. Hell broke loose. Iris squealed with more excitement than fear as they swerved from one danger into another. Pedestrians scrambled into storefronts. A bicyclist soared through the air and into a shop display, busting a basket of apples and pears. A picture window fractured along a thousand fault lines, but did not shatter. Chickens ran into the street, trying to fly away. These flightless birds got trampled as Boo and Buttercup charged toward a clanging red streetcar. At the last second, Clarence got them to swerve. The door of Doc’s buggy was scraped raw by the trolley. Electric sparks showered down on them. Aidan patted out a fire in Doc’s beard.
Doc took another sip of his medicine and laughed at the curlicues of ash swirling ’round his face.

  Boo and Buttercup reared several times, but finally settled down under Clarence’s firm hand and soothing voice. The air smelled burnt and shitty too, as horses all down the road voided their bowels. The reckless driver who’d started the accident staggered from his vehicle, a bottle still in hand, unscathed. Drunk as a fish, he stumbled through disaster, raving at his stunned victims.

  He grabbed Aidan. “It’s Comet Halley. The end of the world is nigh! Tomorrow never comes. Don’t wait, don’t regret. Do you hear me? Live now!”

  Aidan was dumbstruck. Clarence shoved the man away. Crumpled automobiles spouted hot foam, and a horse limped toward the sidewalk dragging a broken buggy. The passengers had tumbled out somewhere. A sooty woman moaned in the gutter, holding a bloody leg and calling to Lord Jesus.

  “The heavens are angry and cannot hear you, Ma’am,” the reckless driver declared and collapsed on the curb beside her. A busted kerosene lamp blazed at their feet. Aidan wondered if he would’ve driven a mechanical beast, falling down drunk like this fool. It took all his restraint not to leap from the buggy and pummel the man.

  “He could have cost us our lives,” Clarence said.

  “Julius Caesar banned wheeled traffic in Rome. I’m inclined to agree with his wisdom,” Doc said.

  “Miz Subie’s sign brought us luck,” Iris said.

  Somewhere, a wounded animal cried out. “Do you hear that?” Aidan said.

  Clarence lifted his head, listening far into the distance, and shrugged.

  Iris opened her eyes wide. She heard what Aidan heard for sure. “Too far away to do us any harm,” she said.

  Saeed and Redwood, dressed as savage Africans with grass skirts, animal skins, and gator-teeth necklaces, paced the brightly lit studio of Chicago’s newest motion picture factory. Large bones from a nearby slaughterhouse — turkey most likely — were stuck through their hair. They squatted in front of a round hut with a thatched roof. Other natives, similarly dressed, huddled near them at the edge of a jungle, fake palm trees that had been added to local crab apple, dogwood, and sassafras trees. Redwood blew a purple Prairie Smoke blossom that trailed silvery filaments as it went to seed.