“I’ll say, you my gal, and Jerome Williams, he try to take you away from me. I’ll say, I saw him on you and I went wild and then I snapped his neck. I’m Crazy Coop, ain’t I? I’ll say what I should’ve done.”
Redwood’s lip trembled, but she couldn’t speak.
Aidan’s kitchen was as chaotic as the yard. Broken dishes and furniture, half-eaten meals, liquor jugs, smashed boxes, and dirty clothes were scattered everywhere. Redwood perched on a chair. Somehow, she’d gotten out of her torn things and was now wearing Aidan’s shirt and pants. Her red mojo bag hung from a rope cinching the loose waist. Laying her head on the table between Of One Blood or The Hidden Self and a pile of money, she bumped into the banjo. It twanged out of tune. Aidan stuffed her feet into his dew-soggy brogans.
“They’re cold, wet,” she said.
“They’re clean. The clothes too…You need things that ain’t ripped.” He tied the straps tight ’round the ankles. “Good thing you got big feet…”
An old joke between them. Redwood shook her head. “All your money and your best working boots.”
“When’s your aunt expecting you?”
“She too busy to be checking my time. She just leave my food and fall down sleep.”
“Every shut-eye ain’t sleep. She could worry ’bout you in her dreams, wake up, and then come looking.” Aidan rifled through a cupboard ’til he found a music box. “Can’t nobody find your trail, you hear me?”
“Can’t say goodbye, not even to Miz Subie?”
He opened the false bottom of the music box and stuffed the bills and coins inside. “I’ll say you run off to Florida, so don’t go that a way. Your uncle could track a flea.”
“This shirt smell like you, musty and wild. And the pants are too short.”
He ran his finger along the box. “Your mama give me this.”
She didn’t want to think on Garnett. “They might hang you over a dead rich man or put you away from the sun, the oak trees, from your swamp stink and cricket racket. Why risk freedom for me?”
“This is freedom.” He twisted the screw and sang the old Stephen Foster song:
Way down upon the Suwannee River
far, far away,
All up and down the whole creation
Sadly I roam
Redwood sat up out of her slump. “You a conjure man when you sing.”
“Garnett Phipps always had a kind word. The two of you, cut from the same cloth.” He put the music box in a burlap sack with biscuits, peach pie, slices of cured ham, and a bottle of Miz Subie’s cure-all. He thrust a pistol at her. “I know you can take care of yourself, but this’ll scare off the fools what ain’t got the sense to leave you be…”
Redwood stood up from the table, shaking her head at the gun. He thrust it at her again. Outside, an owl hooted. She jumped and gingerly took the pistol.
“Brother George is up in Chicago,” she said.
“Hush. I can’t tell what I don’t know.”
Redwood hugged him suddenly. He was surprised, but hugged her too. Her tears wet the back of his neck. “How can I thank you?”
“Forgive me.”
Redwood shook her head, but did not speak. He stroked her cheek once with clumsy, rough hands. She closed her eyes.
“I ain’t used to touching soft anymore,” he said.
She wiped at tears. He gently pushed her out the door.
“Forgive yourself and live a long, good life, Miz Redwood. That’s more than enough for me.”
Redwood walked down the steps into the yard. “Come with me,” she whispered, so soft she almost couldn’t hear her ownself.
Aidan was grabbing his shotgun from the porch. He didn’t hear her.
Eight
Georgia Countryside, 1904
Aidan and Redwood ran through shadows and moss. Quiet and lithe, they were at home in the night, in the brush. Aidan swept their footsteps away with a branch broom held behind his back. They ran into a stream. Dark water raced against their feet. They glided over smooth stone, gaining speed on the slick surface. Running faster than she should in the wet, in the dark, felt good. Bathed in sweat, her heart pounding, Redwood let some of Jerome Williams pass from her into the night air and the fast moving stream. After several miles, they bust onto a road. Fog rippled over their wet boots.
“I’ll leave you here,” Aidan said, “my Sikwayi, my Sequoia.”
Redwood reached her storm hand toward him. He backed away, but then held his ground, sucking a foggy breath. She placed her hand over his heart. They stood silently a moment. Yellow eyes watched them from a tree branch. Aidan set his cap on her head and then disappeared into the trees. Redwood watched the dark until his sounds were lost to the night. How could he leave her, with hardly a word or a plan, after all she’d just been through? The moon rose, a bloody orange fiend stalking the road. The fog snaked up to her waist, rising steadily with her fear.
“Aidan! I killed him, Aidan,” she shouted. “Couldn’t think of nothing else. And killing goes both ways. Do you hear me? Come back, don’t leave me all alone.”
Animal sounds answered her. What might have been a bear ran ’cross the foggy road into the woods. Conjure woman had to make her own way, call up a boat to cross any stream. Redwood touched the pistol tucked in her pants, and wary of every shadow, she walked on without Aidan.
Aidan’s heart wrenched at Redwood’s plea. He watched her from a perch in a pine tree. He wanted to follow her, but had to go back if he was goin’ do right. He couldn’t leave Jerome’s half-naked body sprawled in the road for folks to come along and make up their own story. “I’ll turn back,” he whispered a prayer or a promise to the night, “as soon as I’m sure she’s safe.”
When would that be?
A black bear, roused from winter sleep, hid behind a bush and watched Redwood too. She passed the animal, glanced in its direction, and then headed toward the moon. Aidan raised his shotgun. The bear reared up on its hind legs, sniffing the air. Aidan was downwind and went unnoticed. He had a clear shot.
“Just leave her be, bear, that’s all I’m asking.”
The bear scratched at a tree trunk and vanished in the bushes. Aidan lowered the gun. He had no heart for killing this night.
Redwood was a dim figure in the distance, moving fast. Aidan climbed down and followed her, sticking to shadows. Whenever she turned to look behind her, he stood still, another sapling sneaking up among old growth trees. Smelling a cook fire and horses, Aidan circled ahead of her to a clearing in the woods.
Traveling Bluesmen, Milton O’Reilly and Eddie Starks who played Peach Grove from time to time, were camped on soft pine needles. Aidan had played music with them at Iona and Leroy’s the other night. They were harmless fellows who put on a good show. Their swank stage costumes, slick mustaches, and fancy man hair looked out of place on the side of this road. An enormous fire smoked — green wood sizzling and popping — and their bean and bacon dinner stank up the night. Milton crawled under a thin blanket, sweating and trembling. Eddie crouched beside him, a panicked look on his handsome face. Two horses and a mule eyed Aidan without so much as a whinny. He stroked their flanks gratefully. Redwood strode up to the fire and Eddie jumped to his feet.
“What is it, Eddie?” Milton’s voice croaked.
“A woman come walking out the fog.” Eddie didn’t look happy at this.
“What’s the matter with your friend?” Redwood asked. Her hand was on the pistol, a gale wind was at her shoulder.
“Snakebite or I don’t know. Milton’s out his head.”
“Boneyard baron’s breathing down Milton’s neck.” Redwood stood over him.
“So do what you can. I’m not ready to go,” Milton said.
“Show me the bite.” Redwood set down her bag.
Milton trembled as he exposed a swollen, puffy ankle. She examined it carefully with Eddie hovering over her.
“Spider bite. Blood poisoning,” she said.
Pulling a knife from Eddi
e’s belt, she cut into Milton before Eddie could react. Aidan sighed as Eddie eyed her with respect. Milton winced at her sucking out his wound. She spit into the fire. As it hissed, she clutched her mojo bag. Pulling a burning chunk of wood from the flames, she headed into the trees. Aidan didn’t take a breath. She walked right by him — just another shadow in a forest of moon shade.
Eddie sidled up to her burlap bag. He bent over, fixing to poke inside, but Redwood returned from the opposite side of the camp, brandishing a slimy root. Eddie jumped away from her things. The pistol at her waist caught a bit of light as she tossed her torch back in the fire. She crouched down to Milton.
“You could still die, but you might live. This’ll hurt like the devil either way.”
Milton nodded. She gave him a stick to bite on. He turned from her and ground down on that wood as she dug into his flesh again with the knife. His eyes watered. She slapped the slimy root against his ankle and tied it there with a rag. Eddie jerked at Milton’s pain, scowling at Redwood.
“You that hoodoo gal scared the bear away?” Eddie said.
“We played music with her twice, fool,” Milton said. “At Iona and Leroy’s.”
Redwood threw Eddie’s knife right at him. He froze and it landed between his feet. “You go messing through my bag again, your hand ’llowed to fall off. Maybe something else too. I ain’t putting up with no stuff.”
Eddie must’ve heard the squall in her voice. He backed away, raising his hands high. Redwood sat close to Milton, lifting his head into her lap.
“She’s not goin’ be trouble,” Milton said. “Are you?”
Redwood was a hoodoo and they knew it. Aidan could smell a healthy dose of fear on both of them. That suited him just fine.
“I remember what y’all played that first night. Bear didn’t like your Blues.” She got the melody going. “Just can’t find the words no more.”
“Words don’t matter half as much as the tune.” Milton looked like she was pulling his pain.
Redwood sang nonsense syllables — the most powerful Blues Aidan had ever heard her do. Jerome hadn’t broken her voice. That was such a relief, he almost shouted and gave his hiding place away. Redwood squinted in his direction as it was. When she come back to the refrain, Aidan turned from her and ran for the creek without looking back. Otherwise he would’ve never gotten away.
Still a ways from home, Aidan sang a melody that was harmony to Redwood’s tune. It was good music for soothing spooked nerves and calming a skittish temper. Singing and stroking the air, he ambled through magnolia trees toward a dark shadow at the edge of the road. Before Jerome’s black stallion could bolt, he grasped the bridle.
“You’ve been tracking me.” Aidan stroked its sleek neck. Chords of muscle rippled under his touch. “Ain’t you pretty.” This magnificent animal was worth a fortune, but not good for much ’cept show. “Jerome don’t deserve you…I guess it’s didn’t deserve now.” The horse nuzzled him, happy for company. Aidan pulled an apple from his pocket and offered it. “My Princess goin’ be mad at you, eating my pockets clean.”
Aidan jumped on the stallion’s back and they charged down the road.
It was almost dawn when holding the horse’s reins, Aidan stood at the old Jessup orchard contemplating the remains of Jerome Williams. The body was stiff, cold. Something had pecked at the back and butt. A trail of insects was moving into his bloody neck. The stallion shuddered and shied away from his former rider. Aidan surveyed every direction. The road, the fields, the orchards were deserted, peaceful, dusted in the foggy pink of sunrise. Buzzards hadn’t smelled dead flesh yet. He checked the ground. No recent human tracks ’cept his, Redwood’s, and Jerome’s.
No one else knew what had happened last night.
He rifled through Jerome’s pockets and found a wallet stuffed with money — ten times his own savings. The horse nosed the greenbacks, hoping for something sweet, another apple perhaps. Instead, Aidan found two train tickets to New York City and tumbled onto his butt. Was it true then? He, Aidan Wildfire was a drunken coward, ’fraid to do anything, but Jerome Williams wanted to take Redwood up to New York City, where he could marry her if wanted or throw her away when he was done.
Aidan surveyed the empty road again. He stuffed the tickets and money in the alligator pouch on his hip. Spitting the taste in his mouth in the dust, he lifted Jerome, heaved him ’cross the saddle, and secured him with a rope. Unhappy with this operation, the stallion bucked a few times, working up to a kick that almost threw the body off. Aidan held him firmly.
“Whoa, whoa now. We got to find the right spot to lay Mr. Williams to rest.” Aidan sang Redwood’s tune into the stallion’s ears. When its wild eyes grew calm, he leapt up in front of Jerome. The horse reared once, but didn’t buck. “I know a good place.”
Aidan galloped through trees and bushes, pressing the stallion ’til he was covered in white lather and the sun was overhead, hammering them with heat. Jerome stank to high heaven. Taking every back road and secret shortcut, they reached the Okefenokee Swamp without crossing paths with another soul. The stallion stared back at Aidan and the stinking corpse with bulging eyes. A cloud of flies buzzed, and a turkey buzzard eyed them from a mossy snag in a dead cypress tree.
“This is where I mean to be, but I don’t quite know what we’re doing yet.”
The horse trotted into the dark current, splashing water and mud against Aidan’s legs and Jerome’s head and feet. At the sound of an oar, Aidan pulled the horse up sharp and jumped into the mud. Gently rubbing his nose, he led the stallion into a stand of water tupelos. The tree branches swayed in a warm breeze. Burnished red leaves drifted to the water revealing a feast of tupelo blueberries that had escaped hungry birds. Aidan’s stomach gurgled. He could’ve thrown up.
A boat wound through the bulging knees of cypress trees. The hair and bulk on the boatman looked like Obediah Barber, but he lived at the northern rim of the swamp. This fellow, whoever he was, passed without noticing them — not as keen a swamp scout as Obediah.
Aidan stuck to muddy shallows and shadowy backways. Winter days were short and going overland took longer than going by canoe. He didn’t reach his chickee ’til the sun was going down. The banners marking the four directions were tatters now. White bird shit covered the nose of his black bear sculpture. Broken glass littered the ground ’round the bottle tree. Bad spirits had broken free leaving dangerous shards of color.
“Not here,” Aidan murmured.
His leg muscles trembled as he walked the horse a mile or so downstream from his place to a smaller hummock of land. Something wriggled through floating leaves onto sandy ground. A hissing snake puffed up its neck and struck at the stallion’s right foreleg. The horse reared and pawed the sand — but hadn’t been bitten. The harmless hognose snake rolled over and played dead. The spooked stallion violently kicked and unseated Jerome, who landed face first in the sand. More terrified by this than the snake, the stallion kicked Jerome’s back and broke his dead ribs. Aidan threw the hognose snake a piece down the shore, and it slinked into the grass.
“Whoa now, you’re all right.” Aidan took hold of the stallion’s head, clutching its ears, barely escaping a nip from gnashing teeth. He glanced at Jerome’s body crumpled on the shore. “I guess this is the place we been looking for.”
Smoke got tangled in saw grass. Aidan crouched by Jerome’s funeral fire. The moon rose, missing a chunk of its fiendish face. Snowy egrets, returning early for spring nesting, flew above, white feathers flashing pink in the fire light. A five-foot rainbow snake with an iridescent black body and multicolored stripes slithered by. It struck at an eel and disappeared with its catch below the surface — a rare sight indeed, something for Redwood. She loved the swamp as much as Aidan did. But he wouldn’t be sharing more Okefenokee treasures with her. In a fury, Aidan heaved sand on Jerome’s ashes. Tears stung his cheeks and busted lips. Flying grit tore into his throat and nose. He coughed and hollered and sneezed as the fire smold
ered. Before the skittish stallion could bolt, he jumped on its back and headed into fog.
What would Aidan do with hisself now? And Redwood, would she be all right?
The sun rose. Aidan had ridden hard, far out the way of most folks. He handed the stallion’s reins to a Seminole woman in a patchwork coat, a friend of Subie’s living out in nowhere. She patted his cheek and smiled. Too agitated for the meal she offered, he set out in a borrowed canoe for home. Bumping into a sandbar loosed a cloud of blood suckers, but they veered away from his deadly mood.
Paddling furiously, Aidan tried not to think terrible thoughts, strained not to see Jerome busting into Redwood, her face twisted and her tongue bleeding. He should’ve taken his gun and shot Jerome before he hurt her so bad she had to —
Redwood was gone. Aidan never told her how much of his heart she was holding, never found out if there was a chance she might look on him with love. She was gone. He couldn’t go back and change the past, couldn’t get there in time to do right. And folks might go buck wild over Jerome, might hunt her down unless —
“I think I know what to tell ’em,” Aidan said to the dark current pushing against the canoe. “Miz Garnett say, a good story can save you. We’ll see about that.”
B O O K I I I
A people without a history is like the wind over buffalo grass.
Lakota proverb
Nine
From Georgia to Tennessee, 1904
The night after Jerome Williams busted Redwood’s heart and broke up her spirit, no-see’ems dashed through all her keep-away spells, chomping flesh and sucking bruised blood. Her thoughts cut and burned too. None of this mess was her fault, yet George spoke true. Peach Grove was no place to be a woman. Redwood had never wanted to believe him, but now a man was dead by her hands, and Lord only knew what they’d do to Aidan. Just thinking on him hanging from a tree with a torch to his feet made her storm hand burn and her throat swell up. Maybe they wouldn’t do him that way. Maybe the Sheriff would just lock Aidan away. Hard to hope for him living in a cold, dark cell, yet she didn’t know what else to hope for anymore.
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