Hearing a gasp, Redwood peeped through a hole in the curtain. What would she do if things turned nasty? Hairy legs and pale brown buttocks untouched by sun wagged in her face. Elaine plied her trade, teasing and kissing, breathing hard and sucking, finally splaying herself wide open for this man. Redwood’s stomach threatened to come up. Elaine winked at her and then, acting overcome with passion, squealed, “Mr. Evans, you sure know how to make a gal holler!” Elaine’s tongue was everywhere.
Mr. Evans pawed and thrust harder. Redwood couldn’t hear what he was saying. Her own breath was ragged, her fists clenched, her flesh itched and burned. She shouldn’t have let herself get roped into this. Hoodoo wasn’t a weapon or a shield. A real hoodoo woman was beloved by the spirit in everything and had the power to make dreams real, had the power to conjure a bright destiny, a bold future. Mr. Evans reached a peak of pleasure, and Redwood covered her mouth as she gagged.
“I was having hard times before,” Mr. Evans said. “I’m better now, see. I just wanted to show you.” He kissed Elaine’s private, secret places. Elaine squealed again.
Redwood wanted to escape onto the roof, but made herself watch this too.
When Mr. Evans finally left, Elaine pulled a robe ’round irritated, itchy-looking skin. “The smell of fear will egg ’em on to evil doings. The scent of hoodoo power keeps ’em straight. Thanks.” She squeezed Redwood’s arm. “My goodness. You look shocked by the show.” Elaine waved at the bed, “I can do all that, but they don’t ever touch me. Trick is, not to be here with ’em. I’m always off somewhere else. Don’t feel a thing.”
Without realizing what was happening, Redwood had seen when Elaine left herself. “Yeah.” An actress was always learning new parts. Eddie told her to be a student of life. “Well, you’re safe now, and I got a show.” Redwood headed out the door.
“Take your time getting on stage.” Elaine winked. “I’m coming down to hear you. I just need a minute. Is that your new costume?”
“Hmm hmm.”
“Guess I’ll have to watch out for you tonight then.” Elaine’s eyes sparkled.
Going downstairs, Redwood ran her fingers over Aidan’s shirt and tucked it into his pants. After a few washings his smell was gone, but she could still feel him with her as she cinched the waist tight. The Sea Island conjure woman had given her seashell earrings that tinkled ocean music close to her ears and a river scarf for her waist, blue-green fabric like flowing water. She pulled Aidan’s cap over her eyes and strode through the sporting house. Most of the men ignored her. They had too many good-looking women in various stages of undress to appreciate.
The Cherokee Lake Bordello was the one regular job Milton could get them. Faded, raggedy curtains decorated drafty windows. Nasty perfume covered the smell of rancid oil and rotgut liquor. Redwood shouldn’t complain — they’d played worse joints and slept in funky barns, horse manure and whatnot going up their noses all night. At least Eddie got to hit an upright piano five hours a day. Redwood didn’t look down her nose at working ladies no more. She was just restless, aching to move on.
Two well-dressed men cornered Milton at the door to the common room, gamblers with pearly canes and silk top hats. Milton handed them what looked to be a week’s worth of their earnings. “Mr. Starks owes us more than this,” the stocky one said. He wore black leather riding gloves and poked at Milton with stiff fingers.
“Eddie’s a gambling fool,” Milton replied. “I can get you more, but we got to play music just now or I won’t be able to get anything.”
“We ain’t folks to be trifled with,” the stocky one said. His partner nodded as Milton pushed through them into the common room.
“You work here, boy?” A fellow with a crisscross of scars on his lips stopped Redwood from running behind Milton, and held up a fat purse. “I heard I might find —”
“In the other room.” She indicated a door to the side.
He glanced at her tiddies. “Sorry, Ma’am, I…You’re tall for a fellow even.”
“Don’t go in there looking for love.” She warned his earnest eyes and clapped his back like the young fellow he’d thought she was.
Milton was playing a jug. Seeing Redwood approach, he shifted to guitar. Eddie caressed the piano keys, making love to the notes. The raucous crowd wasn’t listening. As Redwood stepped up onto the rickety little stage, Eddie gaped at her clothes. Milton grinned. Last month as part of her theatrical education, he took her to the vaudeville, where a colored lady was performing His Honor the Barber in men’s clothes and Ma Rainey was singing the Blues. Ma had a big voice, deep and harsh, like she was torn up inside but singing anyway, through fire and storm, through all the good love lost or gone bad, through all the evil people do and get away with. Ma Rainey didn’t make her hurting pretty, didn’t hold nothing back, didn’t ask nobody permission for her style. That’s how Redwood intended to sing from now on. She belted a single line:
My love is like a falling star
Half-naked, bored women stopped teasing men who were busting out their pants with desire but acting stingy with their cash. Umpteen transactions got interrupted by Redwood’s raggedy assault on a country melody and simple lyrics. She paused, uncertain for a second. Elaine, shouted, “That’s what I call singing, Sequoia!”
Redwood nodded at her and continued:
I said, my love is like a falling star
A passing phantom high overhead
The whole crowd in the Cherokee Lake Bordello stood still a moment, hanging on her every note. Redwood wondered what Aidan would think of how she sang his song:
You do not see her fall, not far
For oh my lord, she’s dark as the dead
A dark, handsome fellow at a table in front of Redwood lifted a drink to her and grinned as she sang a second verse right to him.
“There he is again! Big Red done smote the man in his heart. Have mercy!” Milton said as the vocal ended and Eddie went wild on the piano.
The audience cheered. Two haggard men with fistfuls of cash started fighting over Elaine, grabbing at her yellow hair and big tiddies. Blood spurted at the stage as one man fell onto a table and the other smacked Elaine upside her head. Drunken hollers pierced Eddie’s solo as Big Jarius come running. The good times fizzled.
In the third-floor room, Redwood stitched up a gash in Elaine’s head. She barely flinched, just stared out a dirty little window as Redwood worked. “I thought Mr. Evans was the trouble coming at me tonight.” Elaine sighed. “Is there goin’ be a scar?”
“You can cover it with your hair.”
“You got a lucky charm? So I could do something else, sing, be a free woman same as you?”
“I ain’t free yet; heading there, I hope.” Redwood put a tiny pouch in her bruised hand. Elaine in turn tried to press cash in her palm. “I ain’t taking money from you. You’ve been kindly to me since I got here.” Redwood grinned. “If ever I get me a man, I’ll know just what to do.”
Elaine sighed. “I’m usually a mean bitch. That’s what everybody say.”
“I don’t know ’bout that.”
Redwood poured Elaine a soothing tea and waited ’til she was settled and sleeping before slipping out the door. On the stairs down to the common room, the handsome man from the front row table blocked the way. He pulled off his hat and took her hand. His palm was wide and rough. She didn’t flinch at his touch.
“I know you don’t take money, Miz Sequoia.” He said her stage name as if she was something sweet to eat. “You being a proper lady and all.”
Redwood quoted Mirabella. “Ain’t no root, ain’t no spell like good loving.”
He leaned in to kiss her cheek. It didn’t feel half bad.
“I like your moves, big man.” She tickled his ear with her tongue and let her breath follow the shiver down his back. Not just Elaine, all the hard working ladies of the Cherokee Lake Bordello had given her love tricks when she stitched wounds or helped them out of trouble. “You got magic on you,” she said in
a husky alto.
“How far you want to go?” His hand was on her waist — still good so far.
“It ain’t the destination, it’s the ride,” she replied.
This tickled him but good, and he had a deep laugh that touched her bones. He’d been coming for weeks, staying to the last song and tipping his hat at her, leaving a flower, a few extra coins, a dozen fresh eggs. Redwood admired his persistence, his open face and clear eyes. She was flattered that someone handsome and good wanted her that much, even after seeing what she did on stage, after getting a taste of how wild she was. She wrapped her long legs ’round his thigh. Singing the Blues the way she had tonight, seemed as if she’d come to the other side of something.
“You look good enough to make somebody holler,” she said, trying to mean it.
“That’s a line from a song.”
“I’m a singer, ain’t I?”
Upstairs in a moonlit room, the handsome farmer lay on top of Redwood. He smelled of chicken and pigs, of rich soil, of fresh hay and new life dropping into the stalls or pressing up out the ground. His smooth skin was sweaty with pleasure. Hers was dry and shiny. She felt far away from his groin pressing against hers, from his chapped lips and calloused hands, from his heart banging so fast. He groaned in her ear and squeezed her tight, sucking at her like she was fresh fruit.
“Be my wife. Have my children. I got my own place. I’m doing good in the world.”
Redwood covered his mouth with trembling fingertips. He pulled her hand away.
“Don’t I make you feel good?” he said.
Her stomach wasn’t fixing to come up, but — “I don’t feel what you do.”
“A woman can grow into that.” He looked so hopeful, it hurt.
“The truth has always been a good friend of mine,” she said.
“Uh huh,” he nodded.
“So when I tell you I don’t feel anything, it mean —”
Her skin didn’t crawl, her mouth wasn’t bitter ashes, her heart wasn’t pounding murder, like with other men she’d tried. Good loving wasn’t a spell that worked for her. There wasn’t the E-LEC-TRI-CITY she remembered just thinking on Aidan — they’d never got to touching. Elaine had showed Redwood how to pleasure her ownself. Every once in a long while, touching the right spot and thinking on good times, before, she broke through a blank dark ache and felt so good she cried. Actually she’d only felt her back arching up and secret places throbbing between her thighs twice. A trick was on her body that took the pleasure out of love making.
“It mean I don’t feel not a thing, not with you, not with anybody.”
The farmer’s face crumbled. “You sure?” He rolled away from her, tracing his finger ’cross her belly, playing through a soft swirl of hair. Now she almost couldn’t stand his touch. “Root doctor can help with that,” he said.
Redwood eased her body away from his gentle fingers and pulled on Aidan’s shirt and pants. “What’s a root doctor know that I don’t?”
“You love somebody else?”
“You don’t have to be jealous.” She closed her eyes. “He ain’t real. Met him in the eye of a storm, he held onto me, and then he was gone.”
Outside Redwood pushed through the good-time crowd milling on the porch to reach Milton and Eddie, tears standing in her eyes.
“We gotta get moving,” she said. “Can’t stay in this town forever.”
Eddie smirked. “You hoodooed some poor fellow. Now he don’t know what to do.”
“I ain’t conjuring,” she shouted. “Just roots and herbs for healing.”
“We’ll be in Chicago soon enough,” Milton said.
“You been saying that over a year, and we’re still in Tennessee,” Redwood said. “I mean to get to Chicago with or without you.” She tromped toward their horses.
Eddie chased after her. “What about The Act?”
Milton brought up the rear, favoring his left leg. “We’re making good money, steady. What’s wrong with that?”
“No. She’s right. Can’t make no kinda money entertaining niggers and whores.” Eddie didn’t have a good word for nobody but hisself.
“We could do a real show in Chicago,” Redwood said. “I got a brother there.”
“A real show? Where you get that idea from? This fool?” Milton said.
“It’s the truth.” Eddie slapped his thigh.
“You’ve changed your tune about Chicago, Eddie,” Milton said. “Too many gambling debts and jealous husbands after you?”
Eddie hopped on his mare.
“I gave those sporting gents everything, but they’ll come gunning for more,” Milton said. “I won’t save your behind this time.”
“So we better leave while we still can,” Eddie said.
Milton threw up his hands. “Okay, we play a few more spots I know north of here, then see if we get ourselves into a traveling troupe, take us right to Chicago town. White folk there pay good money to see niggers jig and cut the fool.” Milton heaved his butt into the saddle. Redwood jumped on her horse, leaned over to Milton, and pecked his stubbly cheek.
“Why don’t I get none of that when I take your side?” Eddie said. “When I say what you want to hear?”
“’Cause you never mean what you say, you just trying to get something out of me.” Redwood spurred her horse. Even if the road turned west out of town ’stead of north, finally Chicago was in her sights.
Aidan’s ripped laundry, stained with splashes of mud from last night’s rain, fluttered in the breeze. Princess wandered through piles of debris in the yard and strolled to the back of the house. Ladd banged against the door. Elisa clutched a basket of food.
“Mr. Cooper, are you in there?” Elisa said.
“Crazy fool is off somewhere in the swamp, sitting up a tree,” Ladd said.
As Elisa pushed the door open, it fell off its hinges. Ladd cussed and grabbed it. She stepped ’round him and into the house. Ladd sighed, set the door against the wall, and followed her. She bumped into a cracked jug that rolled cross the floor ’til it hit a smashed-up chair.
“I tole you he wasn’t home,” Ladd said.
Behind the house, huddled in the shadows, Aidan watched them through a broken window. The last bit of food he’d tried to eat a few days ago had come right back up and still covered his shirt and pants. He couldn’t get his hand through the knotted hair hanging in his face. It took the whole wall to keep him from falling flat.
Elisa shouted. “Ain’t nobody but him put that deer in our smokehouse.”
“If he wanted a thank you, he’d’ve stuck ’round to get it.” Ladd shuddered at something on the floor.
Elisa set the food basket on the table. “Where’s he going without this?” She picked up the banjo.
“Iona say he ain’t been playing, say he lost his touch,” Ladd said.
“He ain’t been right since Redwood took off.”
“I don’t think we should be poking through —”
Elisa held up her hand and listened intently. Ladd looked ’round and shrugged his shoulders in a question mark. Aidan buried his face in filthy hands.
“I expect Mr. Cooper to bring me this basket back and say thank you to my face.”
“Of course he will,” Ladd said.
Elisa strummed the banjo — it was still in tune. “My mama brought this sweetgrass basket over from Sapelo Island. Damp don’t matter none to this old swamp grass.”
“Why you bring your mama’s basket to leave?”
“Iris lost her sister and Mr. Cooper too.” She strummed a few melancholy notes.
“Leave off the banjo.”
Elisa set the banjo down. Ladd walked her out the kitchen.
“It’s still in tune. How far could he be?” she said, going out the front door.
Aidan prayed that they wouldn’t come round back looking for him. He quivered as footsteps headed away from his house. Princess nudged an aching shoulder ’til Aidan searched in his pocket and pulled out some smashed fruit.
Princess eagerly bit into sweet mush and also chomped Aidan’s hand. He jumped up, shaking his fingers, cursing the pain silently.
“Nobody need to be living this way.” Elisa’s voice carried on the wind.
“It’s a wonder the Williams clan ain’t stole this place out from under him,” Ladd said.
“He got a ancestor spirit watching over him.”
“Or haunting him.”
Aidan peered ’round the side of the house. Ladd and Elisa were hurrying down the road.
“Mr. Cooper act like it’s his fault Redwood run off north with Jerome Williams,” Elisa said.
“Ha! Ain’t no taming that gal.” Ladd chortled. “Mr. Williams bite off more than he can chew.”
“Serve him right, for stealing her away.” Elisa got choked up, and Ladd put his arm on her shoulder.
Aidan watched them disappear into afternoon haze. Princess nibbled his wounded fingers, and jerking away, he fell into the dust.
“Do right!” Garnett’s voice, a dead voice called to him.
As if missing Redwood wasn’t enough torment, he had to have her mama on him too. Leaning against the house to stand up, he blubbered all over hisself.
“You know how they sit a horse.” Garnett’s sssss went on like a snake hiss. Princess’s ears perked up too. “Have mercy!”
“Who goin’ have mercy on me?” Aidan stumbled to his last jug and lifted it to his lips, spilling some liquor as he guzzled ’til it was empty. He dropped the jug and almost blacked out, but he still wasn’t drunk enough to blot out the dead voice.
Redwood and Wildfire Page 19