Redwood and Wildfire

by Andrea Hairston

  “Thank you, Ma’am,” Redwood said, thrilled not to be sleeping on hard ground. She looked triumphantly to George, but he wasn’t paying her no mind.

  “You’re the gal what hoodooed that bear.” Guitar-playing Milton grinned, stomped his foot, and picked out a new melody. “What can you sing to this?”

  “Sorry, Miz Iona. You know I don’t carry a piece of time ’round with me,” said Eddie before whistling in his jug. “Carrying too many tunes.” He shot a furtive look at Leroy, who still cradled the shotgun in his arm.

  “How you miss the sun going down? Strut in any later, I wouldn’t be paying you at all.” Iona was smiling though. People flooded in from every direction plunking down dimes, eating and dancing. A nickel only get you one swallow of hooch — Iona’s twin boys were so stingy when they poured, you had to spend a dollar to feel good. A man could spend a month’s wages and go broke in a heartbeat.

  Iona squeezed Redwood’s arm. “You sound grand. A voice for Saturday night and to praise the Lord on Sunday.”

  Everybody nodded at this, including George. The dragon fire was gone from his breath. Beatrice threaded her fingers through George’s, and Redwood winced. There was never anybody special for her to dance with. Boys didn’t talk to Redwood or even let her catch their eyes — probably ’fraid she’d hoodoo ’em. Nobody at Iona’s dared to look Redwood in the face, ’cept one gal who wasn’t right in the head. Rebecca was tall, had big feet like Redwood, and stood alone shivering under a tree. Not much of a dancer, she come to hear the Blues. Rebecca grinned a mouth full of crooked, chipped teeth. Her clapping was off the beat. Redwood felt bad for them both and sang on the new melody:

  How do you miss the ole sun going down

  Any later, don’t bother coming ’round

  As the music picked up, Beatrice and George were dancing just for each other.

  Four

  Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia, 1903

  Bumping along on Princess, more sober than he cared to be, Aidan watched a fire-haint dash through swamp grass, cross black water, and charge between the bulging knees of cypress trees. The haint’s feet were flames, burning the ground. Its head was smoke, its heart a red-hot coal, its eyes cold blue light. Gaping at the burning figure, Princess stopped so fast Aidan flew over her ears into decaying water lilies and mushy cypress skeletons. The fall should have broke his neck, but he spit muck from his mouth, wiped slime from his eyes, and stood up slow, not a break or a crack anywhere. His banjo and shoulder bag hung from a tree limb that had reached out to catch his precious possessions. Miracles and demons, everywhere he turned, should’ve scared him — just made him sad, made him thirsty. He’d resolved not to drag a jug on this journey no matter what might come out to torment him. He regretted that now.

  The haint’s trail of smoke and fire vanished in the distance. A breeze sighed through the grass. Aidan squinted; Princess cocked her ears. The haint was gone. All he could see was shadows chasing each other between the trees.

  “I’ll be damned.” He grabbed his things from the obliging limb. “Didn’t want to stick ’round and spook us, huh?” Dizzy, Aidan wobbled back to Princess. Otherwise he was fine. Actually it was the hummock of land quaking beneath his feet that threw his balance off. “Feel the ground shifting under us? A sign.” He rubbed Princess’s neck; she whinnied a heehaw against his shoulder. “Maybe that was a lonely haint having a look-see, a nosy fellow wondering what we’re up to.”

  Aidan didn’t know what else might spook them, but he wasn’t heading back home, back to Josie. Not yet. Troubling visions followed him everywhere. No escape, ’cept if he crawled into a jug of hooch. “I got medicine to ward off evil spirits.” He clutched his alligator pouch and surveyed the scattering of tree islands, joggling in front of him. “And when a place call to you, you just gotta go.”

  Aidan closed his eyes and let the ground rock him. A great, great, great Maskókî Creek ancestor was born on a floating island of peat in the swamp and took the name, Okefenokee or Trembling Earth, at least that’s the tale his daddy told at midsummer harvest, the day of the green corn ceremony. Even far from his first home, way upstate in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Aidan’s daddy made sure people took time to celebrate first fruits, light new fires, and forgive what could be forgiven. Aidan’s mother made Aidan promise to never forget hisself so much that he couldn’t do this too. No surprise wedding, no drunken stupor, no blazing haint would stop him celebrating a new year.

  Princess had her nose in Aidan’s armpit, nudging and nipping him. She whinnied in his ear, fearful still. “That ghost ain’t studying us no more.” Aidan rubbed the white feather on her forehead. “See.” He led her to the footsteps of the fire-haint. Purple flowers sprouted from the ashes of burnt weeds. Princess nosed a few and sneezed. Aidan shook his head. “Am I driving you crazy too?” Princess licked his hand as he pressed one of the purple fire-flowers between the middle pages of his journal.

  The canoe was where Aidan hid it last year and looked in good shape. Cypress wood take a couple lifetimes to rot. Furry critters scurried into the brush when he turned it right side up. A close inspection revealed no damage. He cleaned it out quick and then stripped down to skin. Princess stomped his soggy clothes into the ground.

  “You’re right. We got to clear out the old time. It’s a brand new year.”

  He wiped the swamp from his skin and smeared on a bear grease concoction to protect against chiggers, ticks, and mosquitoes. Donning a clean white shirt and a fine pair of pants, he pulled his hair back and wrapped purple and orange cloth ’round his head to hold it down. Princess grinned at his handsome new get-up and lifted her tail high. In a corral he built a few years ago, she had rain-trough water plus feed and grass for two days, maybe three. If she got desperate, wouldn’t be much trouble to break out and head home. She’d done that before.

  “You’ll be all right and I’ll be back soon anyhow.” He held out a green apple. She shrugged pesky flies off her skin, flicked her velvet ears at him, and snorted. “You know you like apples.” She gobbled the fruit from his hand and licked his fingers. He slid the canoe into thick black water and jumped in. The gentle swell of the swampy current rocked him into a good mood before he’d even left the shore. He tuned up his banjo and played. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that. An hour slipped by with him floating in his music and going nowhere at all. That suited Princess just fine.

  Aidan marveled at the sounds his fingers pulled from the banjo. He didn’t hear melodies in his head like some folks. He felt a song on his tongue or dancing through his hands. Playing a familiar tune was as much a surprise as doing a brand new one. He recalled being frustrated as a boy, ’cause he could never play anything the same way twice. That didn’t bother him anymore. Each moment had its own good music, and when his fingers found the right tune, the right harmony, nothing else mattered — for a while at least. The music coming to him now was whirlwind and storm clouds.

  A voice joined in, bold as a lightning strike. Aidan almost pitched out of the canoe. He damped the banjo strings and tracked laughter coming through the trees to the shore.

  “Mr. Aidan Cooper, you running off to somewhere grand?”

  Redwood Phipps broke through a curtain of Spanish moss. Her braids were coming undone and her cheeks glistened with sweat. She looked to have grown an inch since he saw her two weeks ago. All legs and getting so pretty she was a danger to herself.

  “Dressed up in your Sunday best.” She beamed at him.

  He smiled back at her. “How’d you find me?”

  “Playing that banjo is as good as leaving a trail.”

  “I ain’t played for awhile, worried I forgot how.”

  “No, sir! And who could miss your rainbow turban.”

  “Indeed.” Aidan touched his headdress, embarrassed. How did he look to her?

  “I got a strand of your hair.” Redwood unraveled a long black curl. “I conjured you, a boat, and a song with it.”

  “Did you now
? I got my own magic too, you know.”

  “Yeah?” Redwood looked stunned.

  He flushed with heat. “I got a new year to welcome, my own good story to tell.”

  “I know that,” she said quickly, a child one moment, a grown woman the next. She laid her face against Princess’s neck and stroked the mule’s nose. “To tell you the truth, I’m lost. My brother run off without me, hunting plumes.”

  “Egrets getting scarce.” Aidan held his temper. “Babies got no parents.”

  “I found this hair back a ways. Heard the music, so I hoped it was you.” She hiked up her skirt and strode through the water toward him, but stopped short of the boat, staring at a silver snake swimming by her feet. “Take me with you.”

  “I’ll be gone a couple days.”

  “Suits me fine.”

  Aidan scanned the shore. Redwood was too old to be horsing ’round with a grown man. What if somebody saw them and spilled their secret? George would be thundering mad if he found out — course he did run off and leave her. Miz Elisa would be glad Aidan had an eye out for her niece. Miz Garnett might rest easier too.

  “Please,” Redwood said. “I won’t be no trouble.”

  She was always good company, a candle in the dark, the sweet little sister he never had. This surely was no hardship for Aidan. And didn’t he need family to celebrate first corn? He grabbed a low hanging bough and held the boat steady for her.

  “Well, get on in, gal, if you coming.”

  Aidan’s canoe cut ’cross dark water, overturning shiny green lily pads to reveal purplish-red underbellies. Redwood let her oar hover over a dense mat of swollen bladderworts. Yellow flowers on long stalks grew out from a wheel of feathery inflated leaves. Inside these air bubbles was a trap for bugs who might wander in but would never break out again.

  “Look, over there. Parrot pitcher plants coming out the peat moss.” Aidan pointed to bright red flowers hanging like Japanese lanterns over deadly curling leaves — pitchers filled with sweet-smelling poison and shaped like the beak of a bird.

  “Oh.” Redwood watched a green-eyed fly slide down to its death.

  “Cut open all that pretty and what you goin’ find? Beetle skeletons.”

  “Bug-eating poison plants make powerful hoodoo healing.”

  Aidan had promised to help her get every root and herb Miz Subie could possibly want — in the swamp and all the way back to Peach Grove. Redwood chuckled to herself. George would come charging into their soggy camp with a sack of bloody bird plumes on his shoulder and a smirk all over his face, but Redwood would be long gone. He wouldn’t be able to track her through water. He wouldn’t get to gloat at her returning to Miz Subie’s empty handed. He wouldn’t get to say she was cut out for school teaching, not hunting roots for hoodoo spells. Maybe he’d even worry hisself sick for leaving her with an order not to wander far and a promise to return soon.

  “This ain’t no sight-seeing tour. You gotta earn your passage.” Aidan splashed water on her neck. He eyed the shore, still nervous that someone might catch them. “Paddle, gal.”

  “I am.” She splashed water back at him.

  Two otters playing in the mud at the riverbank stopped to watch the canoe glide by. They nosed the air and barked. Redwood waved, and the sleek creatures dove into the water, chasing after them.

  “They’re sure happy to see us,” she said.

  “We’re churning up dinner for ’em,” Aidan replied.

  “They on the menu too.” She pointed at gator eyes floating along the far shore.

  “Don’t fall out, you look right tasty yourself.”

  “You been saying that to me since forever. I’m a grown woman now. Gator think twice ’fore snapping at me.”

  Aidan swallowed a laugh. “Grown? And you ain’t scared of nothing, huh?”

  “No, sir! Not a bobcat, bear, or gator.”

  “Them bobcats and bears probably listen to reason, but there are other wild critters afoot who ain’t so civilized.” Aidan sounded ominous. “You better turn ’round and watch where you going.”

  Redwood ducked as they passed under a funky vine that climbed up a bush and crossed a narrow stretch of water to the limb of a giant tupelo tree on the other side. Muted bronze flowers smelled like something dead for a long while. Confused flies buzzed over the blossoms, hunting for a corpse.

  “Greenbrier,” Aidan said to her wrinkled-up nose. “I know Miz Subie want that. And some swamp iris root.” He plucked a violet blossom.

  They floated through a corridor of tall iris stalks. Most of the flowers had gone by. Only a few flashy trumpets were left.

  “The roots be poison if you take too much, but just enough, clean you out real good.” He stuck the flower in her hair.

  “That’s Indian medicine.” Redwood turned again and gazed at him. “You certainly look handsome today.”

  “Not my usual raggedy self.”

  “I’m not making fun.”

  Hot blood under his burnished skin made him look even handsomer.

  “I’m glad we’re friends,” she said.

  “Are you?” His moss colored eyes looked more watery than usual, weary and sad.

  She touched his knee. He flinched, and she drew her hand away. “Whatever’s ailing you is getting worse!” She still didn’t know how to take the trick off him or George. Subie say that would require a mighty spell that ’llowed to kill anyone who worked it.

  “I’m getting married again,” he said. “Next week.” The boat wobbled and pitched.

  “Really?” She turned away and paddled furiously. “Nobody tells me nothing.”

  “Just decided. You the first person I tole, besides her of course.” His paddling barely kept them from ramming a row of tree stumps where a gator lay sunning. “I asked you to celebrate first fruits with me. Never did that with nobody else, ’cept my folks. I’ll even tell you the story Daddy used to tell for the new year, when I was a boy, up north in the Blue Ridge Mountains.”

  “Next week? Who is she? You ain’t said a word ’bout somebody special.”

  “Josie Fields.” Aidan stammered something else Redwood couldn’t understand.

  “Josie Fields? That blotchy woman with the orange hair and big tiddies?”

  Aidan almost laughed. “Red hair.”

  Redwood shook her head. “Miz Subie done help that gal out of trouble twice, but say a third time might mess her up inside, so she give her a love potion.”

  Aidan bristled. “You ought not judge Josie for going with different men.”

  “You always sticking up for loose women. Why is that?” she asked. Aidan was quiet for a good stretch. Redwood’s arms were getting tired. “I don’t know where I am any more. How far we got to go?”

  “A ways. Loose women ain’t no worse than me. Loving is a good thing.”

  Redwood thought on this and forgot her aching muscles. She grinned. Crazy Coop wasn’t just known for his wild drinking. “All right, still Josie ain’t got nothing in her head but…she think darkies bring her good luck.” That caught Aidan’s breath. “How she goin’ make you happy?” Redwood fought a stab of jealousy. Everybody had somebody, ’cept her. “I want you to find a good woman, not just any ole body.”

  They passed fields of tall grass speckled with bright splashes of wild flowers. A bear with a star scar on its cheek stood on hind legs scratching its belly and butt. It darted at the water and held up a fish to them. Aidan gurgled at him, doing passable bear talk.

  “Don’t you have a heart’s desire?” she said. “Don’t you just want to do something grand? Go out in the world and make a bright destiny?”

  Aidan laughed, a bitterroot sound, too much like George. “I don’t think that way no more.”

  “Why not? You a white man. Can’t nobody ’round here stop you dreaming, ’cept your own ornery self.” She smacked a vine grabbing for her face. “Well, am I lying?”

  Aidan jammed his paddle at dark water, thrusting it from side to side so fast his hands blu
rred. They raced down the winding stream and careened ’round a curve into a sandbar. The boat rocked and pitched, but didn’t throw them out. Soaked in funky sweat, Aidan wheezed and licked his lips. “You don’t know what you talking ’bout.”

  “I know you buying too many jugs and marrying a fool,” Redwood said.

  “Spitting at a fire won’t put it out.” He shook his body and closed his eyes. “You can’t think I like how…how…”

  “Does Josie know ’bout you?”

  “What you mean?”

  “She ought to know what she’s getting into.” Redwood smacked the sandbar. “You a magic man, and —”

  A cloud of no-see’em blood suckers attacked, buzzing in her nose, ears, and eyes, stinging and chewing at her. She was too mad to ward them off ’cept with flailing arms. The fierce little critters just bit her hands too. If the canoe hadn’t been wedged between some rocks, she would’ve tipped it over fighting and fussing. She glared at Aidan. The no-see’ems weren’t bothering him at all.

  “Come on,” he said calmly to her wild hands and choked screams. “We don’t want to be stuck here. Help me.”

  Aidan back paddled and despite her ears, eyes, and throat trying to swell shut, Redwood pushed against the crumbly sandbar. The canoe slid into the flow of the current again. As they moved downstream, the bugs abandoned her and returned to their sand heap. She snorted and dug a tenacious varmint from her nose. After dabbing Miz Subie’s cure-all on the bites and swelling, she paddled silently with Aidan.

  The sun dipped below the trees. Redwood caught sight of two otters still trailing them, then thought they might have been floating branches or fish feeding at the surface. She touched bleary eyes and lips. The burning and itching had faded, ’cept for the inside of one nostril. The bag of roots Miz Subie gave her to ward off no-see’ems and stinging demons hung ’round her neck where it should have been earlier. She squeezed it.