Redwood and Wildfire

by Andrea Hairston

  “George do know how to work hard.”

  “He gives me a pain right here.” Clarissa touched her chest. “Like a hot poker.”

  “I’d like to help you, but George would require a powerful spell, and…” Redwood tried to sit up. “Like I tole you, I ain’t hardly done no real conjure magic, since I left Peach Grove. I don’t dare.”

  “What about this stunt you pulled with a wild lion?”

  “I didn’t plan that. I don’t know what come over me,” Redwood said. “If I do a powerful trick, I get sick or somebody be hurt, or somebody die even, like today. Make me ’fraid of my ownself.”

  “I’ve never seen you afraid of anything.”

  “Mama used to say, we conjure this world, call it forth out of all the possibilities. But I’ve lost my good magic.”

  “I won’t listen to you saying you’ve lost your goodness.” Clarissa was hoarse now too.

  “They didn’t shoot that she-lion to save me. ’Fraid of us both. Good reason too.”

  Clarissa’s hands shook as she poured a second dose. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

  “I almost stopped that gunman’s heart from beating in his chest.”

  “Of course you didn’t. What nonsense.”

  “You have to hear what I say.”

  Clarissa searched Redwood’s face. “How could anyone believe such tales?”

  “I can pull somebody’s pain,” Redwood declared. “Not my own though. And if I’m wild and crazy and feeding on rage, I think maybe I can pull the life right out too. Or maybe not. Anyhow, I didn’t.” Snapping Jerome’s neck was enough killing for her. She swallowed the blood rising in her throat. “I can see times that are over and done or haven’t even happened yet. I went to the Chicago Fair after it was long gone, back to 1893 before it burned down. Aidan and me worked that spell together.”

  “Who is Aidan?”

  “He’s…He’s a conjure man with his banjo. Aidan was my friend, before, back home.”

  Clarissa tried to smile. “A sweetheart?”

  “My friend. We…Sometimes I open my mind so wide, I can feel myself in everything, dead and alive, yesterday and tomorrow. Aidan can too.” Redwood didn’t have much voice left. She gripped Clarissa. “Do you hear what I say?”

  Breathing hard against corset and collar, Clarissa marched away from Redwood. She opened the window, and a night breeze filled the room. She gulped chill air. Down the street, horses whinnied and a child wailed. Maple trees rustled with the wind, and two squirrels teased each other ’round a nearby branch. Nestled under the eaves on the third floor, the twins snored loudly, safe in their dreams.

  “I don’t tell you a lie,” Redwood said, more frightened than when she danced with the lioness. “You’re my friend, aren’t you? Friends believe in each other.”

  Clarissa whirled to face her. “All right, all right. I believe you. I’ve been believing you for a while — I just didn’t say.”

  “Thank you.” Redwood drained the second dose of medicine and then opened the false bottom of Garnett’s music box. It was stuffed with money. “Don’t fret. I’m goin’ do my own moving picture. They won’t gun me down ’fore I get started good.”

  The next day at breakfast in the luxury railroad car, Aidan and Iris feasted on things Aidan couldn’t recognize by sight, taste, or smell. While they ate, the Persian Prince, whose name was way beyond Aidan’s country mouth, went out and leased a motor hack to hunt his brother acrobat and Redwood. He also hired a chauffeur — a lanky Scotsman with a thick brogue and a sickly freckled face who claimed to know everything ’bout what he called “the movies.”

  “Slang sure can eat up words, or am I just getting too old?” Aidan shook his head.

  “I hope you don’t mind if my wives join us,” the Prince said.

  “It’d be a pleasure.” Aidan tipped his hat to the ladies as they filled the back seats.

  Iris squeezed in next to the women. “This is our first time riding a motor vehicle.”

  As they combed the windy city for colored folk making moving pictures, Iris told the Persian ladies everything they should know ’bout America. She read snatches of Miz Dunbar Nelson’s book, offering hoodoo advice on men and happiness. Aidan only half listened. He scanned the broad streets in the hazy daylight. Chicago was a magic city, crowded with the future, and Aidan was one of them nineteenth-century relics some editor railed against in the morning paper. Modern folk paused in dirty alleyways to stare at the foreign entourage, but it was beauty making them gawk as much as anything. The chauffeur honked and sped up.

  “It’s a wonder Mr. McGregor can see where we’re going.” Aidan shivered in the cool wind off Lake Michigan. “With this dirt storm squatting on us.”

  “Air’s not so bad.” Iris hugged Aidan from behind. “Worrying’s put you in a bad mood.”

  The Prince glanced from Iris to Aidan. “A young wife is good for a man.”

  “If I had me a prince, wouldn’t share him with nobody,” Iris said.

  “I’m enlightened, as you can see. I do not shut my wives away from the world. When their English is better, I will let them speak to whomever they like, even young girls who spout revolution.”

  Aidan snorted. “You talking big now, but wait.”

  “Abbaseh, my third wife, sold her dowry to educate her sister. She agitates for women’s rights, similar to your suffragettes, but in a secret society. They say I was a fool to marry her.”

  “Well, women got as much sense as men do ’bout most things,” Aidan said.

  “More sense,” Iris said.

  “If a woman has wise words, why shouldn’t a man listen?” The Prince plucked The Goodness of St. Roque from Iris’s hand and thrust it at one of his wives. “It was Abbaseh’s idea to enlist your aid.”

  Aidan stared at Abbaseh. It was hard to tell who was who when they were all wrapped up. “She’s a musician.”

  “Yes, and a poet.” The Prince frowned. “How did you know?”

  “We’re here and arrived in one piece.” Mr. McGregor interrupted with a thick Scottish burr. “Let’s be quick, sir.”

  He left the motor roaring in front of a studio on Peck Court in the Levee district. The buildings were run down and overgrown. A man had fallen asleep in stringy weeds, hugging an empty bottle to his lips. To the surprise of the Persian ladies, Iris bolted from the auto and chased down seedy strangers. The wives called after her.

  “These whores dinna care if you be the King of Egypt,” Mr. McGregor said. “If your pockets look rich, they put a hole in your heart and bleed ya.”

  Iris found a friendly woman, makeup smeared ’cross her face, clothes tumbling off a fleshy figure, who directed them to another studio, on the nearby South Side.

  “Redwood’s famous.” Iris plopped her behind on the leather seat.

  The wives spoke harsh words to her, a plain as day scolding.

  “That gal’s hard-headed, won’t listen to nobody,” Aidan said, proud of her.

  Mr. McGregor sped off at fifteen miles per hour, like a thief making a getaway. Aidan sat up out of a slouch as more colored faces stared in the motor hack.

  “What’re y’all s’posed to be?” A dark face sneered at them.

  “This is where most of the colored live,” Mr. McGregor said. “A danger zone.”

  “I shall reward your bravery in driving us here,” the Prince said.

  The streets got narrower and meaner; the buildings crammed into one another; thrown up quick, they were tumbling down quicker. Somber working people dribbled out of factories at the shift change. Tired out and caved in, they resembled sharecroppers back home, the Jessups and the Robesons, who didn’t work a lick for themselves — not the dreamers Aidan rolled into the station with last night. Children playing in the street weren’t plump, but stick and sinew kids with hard eyes and stone tears. Was Aidan writing his fear all over their faces?

  Mr. McGregor drove up to a third motion picture factory. A sign proclaimed:

  COLORE
D PEOPLE ARE FUNNY

  If colored people weren’t funny,

  there would be no plantation melodies, no banjos, no cakewalks,

  no buck and wing dancing, no jazz bands, no minstrel shows

  and no blackface vaudeville!

  And They Are Funny In The Studio.

  Real Colored People Caught In The Act!

  Above the words, a grinning Redwood in a chicken suit chased a blackface sharecropper. Redwood had a pillow on her belly and another on her rear. Her hair was running wild ’cross her head. Aidan touched her face on the crumbling yellow paper.

  “That ain’t how I remember her.” Iris leaned into Aidan.

  He put his arm around her bony shoulders. “You was just a little bit when she left.”

  Aside from the photo, there was no sign of Redwood or the Prince’s acrobat brother.

  “Colonel Selig’s moved to the outskirts of the city, shooting Wild West shows and jungle movies. You should try there,” a colored crewman said. “You folks gonna play in his next motion picture?”

  “My wives in front of a camera?” The Prince pointed to clown Redwood as they drove off for Irving Park Road. “They won’t sell themselves to any man’s greedy eyes.”

  “He didn’t mean no insult, sir,” Iris said. “Back home, working in traveling shows, a colored woman make more money than anything, even —”

  “Hush,” Aidan said.

  The veiled ladies stirred behind the Prince like shadows caught between cracks of daylight.

  “I’m just saying,” Iris said.

  “It’s none of our business, honey bun,” Aidan said.

  “Aunt Subie say a hoodoo should always help folk understand what they can’t see themselves,” Iris whispered.

  “You a hoodoo like Miz Subie now? At twelve?”

  Iris blushed and didn’t say anymore. Mr. McGregor picked up speed.

  “Sequoia’s around here somewhere,” a white production manager at the fifth studio said. “And we got Jap acrobats — they’re playing the Eskimos, but I don’t know about a Persian one. What’s that look like? Another colored fellow?”

  Aidan exchanged glances with the Prince who shrugged. “Yeah, but light-skinned,” Aidan replied.

  The production manager leaned close to Aidan. “One colored fellow look pretty much like another to me: dark hair, dark eyes sitting on top of a grin.” Aidan didn’t know what to say. The manager chuckled and patted his shoulder. “But colored women, now that’s a different story. Go on in and see for yourself.”

  The studio was a big ole barn, the ceiling several stories high. Hanging from the rafters, banks of electric lights loomed out of shadows. A painted drop covered one wall, a nature scene done so real, Aidan might have walked through it if he wasn’t paying attention. A few backless buildings were set off from the painted prairie, and cowboys on horses milled around, waiting on the cameramen.

  “They’re doing a moving picture about the Wild West.” The Prince pointed to half naked actors in dark face paint and buckskins crouching in dirt. “The Indians are waiting to attack.”

  Aidan winced as Iris cornered a colored man with a camera.

  “Sequoia? In there.” He pointed. “Booma went wild, attacking everybody, tore the place apart. Mad Nicolai kept rolling and Sequoia, well, you gotta see her dancing for yourself.” He directed them to a screening room.

  Nobody noticed Aidan, Iris, the Prince, his three wives, or Mr. McGregor push into the back of the crowded room. Spears of dusty sunlight streaked the dark as a breeze lifted black curtains from the windows. Moving pictures flashed against a white sheet hanging on a wall. Aidan saw a lion spring in the air and lose a fake mane. Redwood exploded into view, and she and this lioness danced toward a cage. Even in a silly grass skirt costume, she had him breathing hard.

  “What did I tell them? I had her going back in,” Redwood said. Her voice came from no more than ten feet away.

  The spit in Aidan’s mouth dried up. His heart stopped. Iris clutched his elbow. “She’s somewhere close,” he whispered.

  Aidan scanned the dim room until he spied Redwood standing between a skinny fellow with a curly red beard and a muscular man who must have been the Prince’s brother. As a spark of jealousy was ’bout to bust into a bushfire, he noted that she was wearing his old shirt and pants. His cap was stuck in the back pocket. That had to be a good sign. Of course, she’d changed too. Her brown hair was shiny and sleek, in the Madame Walker style now. Her long neck sloped into graceful shoulders. Her hips were fuller than he remembered, round mounds dropping from a delicate waist. A sparkly blue scarf circled her belly, a cool creek that flowed almost to the ground.

  “You see Sis?” Iris said.

  “Yes, Ma’am. She done come into herself.” Aidan struggled through the crowd.

  He fought tears as on screen the lioness was shot in the chest and belly.

  Turning away from the lioness dying in her arms, Redwood came face to face with Aidan. She gasped and tried to blink her vision clear, expecting him to vanish, like a haint you refused to believe in anymore. But he was flesh and blood torment, not a ghost. Tears stood in his moss- colored eyes, and his chest was heaving. Her chest was fixing to bust too. He was tall and straight and strong, just as she remembered him. Shiny black hair hung free, and a song was on the tip of his tongue, whistling across his lips with each breath.

  On screen the gunman crumpled at Redwood’s feet, not dead dust like Jerome, but close. She was a danger to herself and fools who made her blood boil. Quiet fell in the screening room like a heavy stage curtain. A few folk slipped out the side door. The projector sputtered and smoked. White curlicues spun ’round her and Aidan, gathering into a pale gray twister before surging out the open window. Aidan knew who and what she was, but stepped so close, she could taste the grin on his lips. Nicolai observed this, wishing for a camera no doubt. Redwood didn’t care what he or anybody saw. She reached her storm hand toward Aidan, then balled it to a fist.

  Behind Aidan, a gangly colored gal, with scraggly braids sticking out a rat’s nest tangle of hair jumped from foot to foot — Iris, all grown up but still wild and spooky, light coming from her eyes. She and Aidan wore dusty rough coats, muddy brogans, and lopsided grins, resembling what Clarissa’s set would call backcountry fools. Saeed turned to see what had caught Redwood’s attention. Stunned, he spoke in Farsi and moved to greet a man dressed in Persian finery.

  “You came all this way to find me?” Saeed said or something close. Redwood’s Farsi was spotty.

  “You are my brother, always,” the stranger replied.

  Applause skittered like wildfire through the crowd as on screen Redwood placed the lioness’ head in her lap. The business manager for the whole picture factory lingered at the back door as the black curtains in the windows were opened and light flooded the room.

  “Dancing with lions, I see,” Aidan said, “my brave Sikwayi.”

  Redwood blushed at her Cherokee name and made herself turn from him. “That can’t be my baby sister, grown up now.” She opened her arms. Iris glanced at Aidan.

  “Don’t look at me.” He pushed her toward Redwood.

  Redwood scooped Iris up and swung her as if she were a child again. Iris tried to say something ’bout, “I’m too big,” but squealed instead as her feet lifted high in the air. Redwood set her down by one of the Persian women.

  “This is Abbaseh,” Saeed said. “This is my Redwood.”

  Abbaseh nodded/bowed slightly to her. Redwood matched the gesture, but felt too shy to try any of the Farsi words Saeed had been teaching her.

  “This is my brother, Anoushiravan and his other two wives, Farah and Akhtar.”

  Redwood bowed and gestured at Aidan. “Saeed, this is Mr. Aidan Cooper, a…neighbor from back home, and this is my baby sister, Iris.”

  “Are you the Prince’s rogue of a brother?” Iris said.

  “Prince?” Saeed smiled. “Well, I am indeed the rogue.”

  “I didn’t k
now if I’d ever see you again,” Redwood said to Aidan. “Either one of you. Kept your promise, I see, Mr. Cooper.”

  “My pleasure, Ma’am. But if it wasn’t for Iris, I’d have been lost.”

  “Coughing plague took the whole family ’cept me and Mr. Cooper.” Iris blinked tears. “So we come to find you.”

  “I felt the dying, wasn’t no good for days.” Redwood’s voice cracked. “Miz Subie sent word, but I didn’t want to believe her.” She hugged Iris close.

  “Everybody said you run off to New York City to marry Mr. Williams. I saw that wasn’t true.” Iris’s eyes flickered, like candlelight in a breeze. “Mr. Williams was smoke rising to the stars. You were a tree pulled loose in the storm, walking off, then taking root in hard soil and sprouting a new name too, Sequoia.”

  The business manager applauded Iris’ hoodoo speech. “Family reunions warm the heart.” He sidled up to Saeed without looking Redwood in the eye. He whispered and gestured and passed Saeed an envelope. Dodging Saeed’s brother, his three wives, and a white man in chauffeur livery, the business manager headed for the door. He spoke to Aidan like he must be in charge of them all. “A miracle that she-lion didn’t rip out Sequoia’s throat. Our business is pleasing the crowd, not scaring ’em to death. I’m sure you understand.” He hurried off as the last words settled in.

  “Understand? The mullahs everywhere claim righteous wisdom.” Saeed handed Redwood the envelope. “He gave us a bonus before firing us.”

  “He fired you too?” Redwood didn’t know what to do with all the feelings storming her. She let the crisp paper money spill from the envelope. The bills swirled around her several times and landed crumpled and frayed at her feet.

  Aidan grasped her empty palm in his. “Does my heart good to look on you.”

  B O O K V

  It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.