When Aidan came down the hill, Iris didn’t ask him what took so long. She grabbed his arm and hurried him out of the boneyard. Lugging heavy bags, they were soon sweating in the heat. They passed Leroy Richards and Cherokee Will sitting under an oak and sharing a jug. Iris waved. Aidan paused and licked his lips. The two men lifted the jug toward Aidan.
“How ’bout one for the road?” Leroy shouted.
“This is his special brew, too good to sell.” Will swallowed a good gulp.
For the first time since he watched the stars fall with Subie, Aidan actually wanted a drink. Not on account of a demon posse or some other good reason. He had passed through delirium tremens and cleared his system. Doc Johnson said he’d turned the corner. Yet right now, the thought of bourbon, gin, whiskey, or any ole rotgut made him itch and ache, like an awful hankering for no lady in particular. Enough to drive a man wild, and so soon after pledging his life.
Iris pulled Aidan away. “We’re in a hurry,” she yelled.
“When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced,” Cherokee Will said. “Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.”
“Amen. Blessings on you both,” Leroy said.
“Thank you, sirs,” Iris said. Aidan only nodded.
If Iris noticed Aidan stumbling and weaving, she didn’t let on, just bounced along, keeping him upright and on track. It probably never occurred to the child that he might drag her down too.
“Come on,” she said. “Doc Johnson say it’s better not to ride off in the heat.”
George and Clarissa’s house was a well-appointed mansion with oriental rugs, modern art, fine pottery, and beautiful furniture. Something you could’ve read ’bout in a book. From down the block, Redwood saw an electric light burning on the second floor. As late as it was, Clarissa was looking in on her four sleeping children. By the time Redwood pushed the heavy front door open, as quietly as she could, Clarissa, in a luxurious dressing gown, was sitting at a table in the front parlor, crying. The large clock next to her read ten minutes after four. Above her, portraits of stern, high-yellow Negro patriarchs glared disapprovingly at the heiress to their beleaguered good fortune.
Redwood didn’t want to hear nothing sad tonight. Dressed as a Persian nobleman and tipsy from a glass of champagne, she braced herself for the set-to with Clarissa, who insisted on treating Redwood as if she were one of the children of the house ’stead of a grown woman. Hoping Clarissa hadn’t heard her come through the front door, Redwood tiptoed toward the back parlor — her sleeping chamber now. Clarissa could hear a mouse pissing on cotton, in her sleep. Redwood tripped on the oriental rug and trying to get her balance, made more noise than an elephant running ’round the jungle.
“Oh.” Clarissa dabbed swollen eyes. “I thought you were George. I’ve been worried.”
Redwood halted two steps short of her room. “Ain’t he got a phone at the Dry Cleaning?”
“Yes, but he has to use it, doesn’t he?”
Redwood turned to her. “You look tired.”
“What keeps you out so late?” She pulled a sour face at Redwood’s Persian attire.
“Let’s not fight.”
“You were out with Mr. Saeed, weren’t you? And I’ve introduced you to several eligible colored gentlemen.”
“I don’t want somebody…who is ’fraid of…of who I am.”
“Seems you don’t want anybody decent at all.”
“Some women may be better off alone.”
“There is no such woman.” Clarissa’s face went pasty yellow. Her stomach heaved as she choked down something trying to come up. “Excuse me, I think I’m going to —”
Redwood caught her before she fell and hurried her down the long hallway to the kitchen. Clarissa threw up several times in a large basin. Redwood held onto her until the sickness passed.
“You better now?” Redwood covered the heavings and then wiped Clarissa’s sweaty face with a cold cloth.
“You can tell what’s wrong, can’t you?” Clarissa said. Redwood swallowed and nodded. “This is a terrible thing.” Clarissa pushed back a wave of weeping.
“How can you say that?”
“The twins almost killed me.” Clarissa sat down at the table. “I shouldn’t have another baby. Dr. Harris said I should do what I have to, not to get in a family way.”
“Kick George out your bed? Ha!” Redwood sat down next to her.
“He has another woman as it is.” She looked ready to cry again.
“Some folk ain’t satisfied with just one person to love.”
“Are you taking his side against me?”
“What do you want me to do?”
Clarissa took hold of Redwood’s hands. “I don’t want to know what you can do. Because then I’d lose my soul, asking you to do it.”
Redwood snatched her hands away, and they sat quiet for several minutes. Neither could look at the other.
“You ’bout to fall over,” Redwood said. “Let me…help you upstairs.”
Clarissa leaned into Redwood as they climbed the stairs, weeping a little at any bump in the rug. Redwood helped her out the robe and into the world’s best bed from the Sears Catalogue. The silky sheets were a comfort to her feverish skin.
“I haven’t told him. Do you think I should?” Clarissa’s eyes were foggy gray.
Redwood squeezed her. “Wait ’til you be absolutely sure.”
In the kitchen Redwood stared at a kettle heating up. She drank a cup of tea and twisted the key to Garnett’s music box. The drum had gotten warped but she could still hear the melody. Aidan sang Suwannee River for her the night she had to leave home. His voice was still in her. So was Subie’s, even her mama’s, dead so long ago. Redwood hadn’t come to Chicago empty handed. These highfalutin Negroes didn’t need to be ’shamed of her mojo, her hoodoo, and then ask her to get ’em out of trouble on the sly.
The water boiled and the kettle sang. She let it cool a bit and then brewed one of Mama’s nasty concoctions.
Redwood stood by Clarissa’s bed with a steaming cup. “Thought you might want some of Miz Garnett’s tea. Help you calm down and sleep.”
Clarissa took the drink with shaky hands.
Fifteen
On the Road, 1910
Aidan and Iris left Peach Grove an hour after sunrise on a warm day in May 1910. Doc Johnson was on his way back to Atlanta and gave them a ride in his buggy. Two sturdy horses pounded the dust at a moderate pace. Clarence wore a fancy duster, a stylish hat perched on the side of his head, and fine leather gloves as he gripped the reins. Behind him under a canopy, Doc sat facing Aidan and Iris. The luggage was piled in the space behind them.
Doc was grinning to beat the band. Carrying Aidan and Iris to Atlanta made a grand addition to his collection of intrigue and exotica. Doc wouldn’t take any money, but made them listen to his theories, scientific and otherwise, for miles. He marveled at how well colored folk survived yellow fever epidemics in Peach Grove, Memphis, everywhere. He wondered if it was something in African blood, something that made them fierce and neighborly too.
“Not a complicated people — real close to their emotions.” Doc patted Iris’s head affectionately and winked at Clarence. “That’s what I love.”
Aidan squirmed. Clarence rolled his eyes, tucked irritation under the collar of his fancy livery, and clucked nonsense at the horses. He glanced back at Aidan, who forced a smile at Doc’s foolishness. Iris cocked her head at Aidan, but he was determined to get them all the way to Atlanta in the comfort of the buggy. Clarence spit into the wind.
Doc held forth on a German scientist, Dr. Albert Einstein, and time and space being one. “There’s no absolute time, no big clock running the heavens. We’re all a piece of time, happening over and over for each new set of eyes.” He was full of funny ideas from everywhere.
At sunset, Clarence paused by a crisscross of rail tracks to let Aidan blow goober dust in the four directions. “Miz Subie’s spell will have folks
buying tickets to your music, sir.” Clarence grinned and wasn’t a yellow or broken tooth in his mouth. “Miz Subie and me are kin, on my father’s side. Nobody conjure or work roots way she do.”
“Mr. Cooper already play banjo real good,” Iris said. “Miz Subie’s spell will make him great.”
“Gris-gris at a rail crossroads.” Doc displayed his voodoo savvy. “Goober dust from whose grave?”
“You don’t want to know.” Aidan’s hands trembled as he tied the pouch to his waist.
Clarence hunched his shoulders and lit the lanterns.
“Powerful juju indeed.” Doc squirmed in his plush seat.
Clarence clucked at the horses as if they were the jittery ones, and then they were underway again, the lanterns winking in the dark.
Iris bounced in her seat. “You driving us, Mr. Clarence Edwards, out of all them hundred fifty thousand people in Atlanta, and you being Aunt Subie’s kin too, that’s what you call a coincidence.”
“Not at all, sugar,” Clarence said. “I see Miz Subie’s sign on you, plain as moonrise. This journey be following her map. Neither you nor your spirits can lose the way.”
“Taking this orphan gal to find her sister, that’s more than neighborly. You’re a good man, Coop. Or crazy.” Doc grinned.
“Tell you the truth,” Aidan leaned toward him, “the thought of seeing Redwood again has me pissing blood.”
Doc leaned into him as well. “You don’t say.”
Aidan regretted his confession immediately. “She, she was like a sister to me.”
“I wouldn’t have picked her to fall in love with Jerome Williams. Some things money can’t buy, or should I say, some people?”
“That’s true.” Had Doc seen through his tall-tale lies? Aidan sat back in his seat.
Doc did the same, watching Aidan carefully. “Redwood had quite a job, civilizing Jerome Williams. Even his mama wanted to shoot him, from time to time.”
Clarence chuckled at this, and Doc laughed outright. Iris looked puzzled.
“Jerome and Hiram were friends, but I never liked the man, although I didn’t wish him ill. I just can’t see him with our Redwood.”
“Redwood’s a hoodoo. Jerome have to come to terms with that,” Clarence said. “No man goin’ rule her.”
“Chicago would be where I’d go. Not New York City,” Doc said. “Where all the trains meet.”
Iris and Aidan gaped at each other. If Doc knew all along that Aidan was lying ’bout Jerome and Redwood, why hadn’t he said so before?
“Well, I’m goin’ see Chicago someday too,” Iris said.
“Doggone it. I thought we’d get a piece further.” Clarence scowled at the road. “Your cousin’s place is still two hours, and we got to rest these horses now. All this luggage and books we hauling, Boo’s tuckered out and Buttercup be fretting over Boo.”
“You call ’em Buttercup and Boo? Mr. Cooper ought to write a song on that,” Iris said.
They decided to spend a night sleeping under stars. Nobody wanted to stay in a backcountry inn and put up with Jim Crow foolishness — colored out back in hard dirt maybe and Doc and Aidan laying up in sheets and soft pillows. Aidan certainly didn’t want the temptation of even near beer. Doc was as excited ’bout the camping adventure as Iris. They found a dry spot not too far from the road. Clarence let Aidan collect wood and get a fire going while he fussed over Buttercup and Boo. Iris hauled water from a tiny stream then sat down to warm her naked toes. Doc dropped down beside her and pointed to a smudge just above the horizon.
“Halley’s Comet,” he said. “These shooting stars we been seeing for days are courtesy of this fiery snowball. Tomorrow the Earth will hurtle through its blazing tail.”
“Could a person ride the comet’s tail?” Iris asked.
Doc laughed and then scratched under his chin. “Depends on who and what you are, I suppose. Do you know what a comet is?”
Iris shook her head. Aidan and Clarence were listening now too.
“Comet comes from the Greek komētēs, literally, long-haired. In ancient times, people thought comets were new stars with flowing tresses. Beautiful women roaming the heavens, free spirits — a bad omen.” Iris laughed at this. Doc looked gleeful as he talked on. “Fearing the comet’s curse, Nero assassinated successors to his throne. But Edmund Halley had studied Sir Isaac Newton, and well, when the solar system was born, these comets were flung around the sun in great parabolas…” and then he explained the whole sky. Iris was enchanted, Clarence and Aidan too, even if Aidan fell asleep after the first few billion years. Eventually Iris fell asleep too, curled next to Aidan.
Moans and short breaths drawn through clenched teeth startled Aidan’s eyes open. It took a moment to figure out what he was hearing — sounds of lovemaking, quiet, careful, but unmistakable. ’Cross the fire, closer to the gurgling stream, Doc and Clarence reached a peak of passion. Aidan’s stomach threatened to come up as he listened to them grope and grunt and then growl sweet release. He glanced at Iris. Thankfully, she was deep in dreamland. Once didn’t seem to be enough for these boys. They were at it again. Aidan ground his teeth together. The third time, ’stead of jumping up and screaming at Doc and Clarence, Aidan forced his eyes shut.
Finally, everybody was snoring ’cept for him. He didn’t want to think ’bout what he’d just heard, but it played over and over again in his mind. He knew men went with men sometimes, and women with women. Who was he to judge Doc and Clarence? On the road in a fine buggy, with free people, istî siminolî, who loved each other, the rest of the world be damned; that’s all there was to it. He kept talking to hisself, if I don’t like it, I don’t have to do it, but he didn’t get a wink more of sleep.
Just before dawn, they struck out again through the mist, with Aidan still feeling sick to his stomach. He could barely look at or talk to Clarence or Doc. He didn’t want Iris to talk to them either, but she chattered away, telling them the books she’d read and the wild creatures who were her friends. Aidan sat sullenly in the corner of the buggy, dozing on and off. He just couldn’t get his mind ’round who Doc and Clarence were anymore. They were strangers suddenly.
In the afternoon, Doc sipped from a medicine bottle and offered Aidan a swig. “You’re in an ill humor, Coop. Perhaps this will help.”
Iris pushed the bottle away. “He don’t drink no more, sir.”
“Medicine, little darling.” Doc chuckled.
“We got Miz Subie’s medicine,” Iris said, fresh as sweet cream.
“New York is an unholy city, hard-going for a sober man,” Doc said.
“We’ll survive.” Following Subie’s map, Aidan had tickets for New York to throw off suspicion. In Charleston, they’d turn west to Chicago.
“You never traveled so far, have you?” Doc asked.
“Only in dreams.” Aidan thought on Cairo Street, the Ferris Wheel, and E-LEC-TRI-CITY.
Doc emptied the medicine down his throat. “Freaks of nature do congregate up north, but I tell you, New York City outdoes ’em all. Chinamen, savage Indian chiefs, devil worshippers drinking virgin’s blood. Isn’t that right, Clarence?” Clarence hunched his shoulders noncommittally as Doc rambled on. “We saw an elephant-man — head as big as a wagon wheel, skin like boot leather.” Tangled in a memory, Doc’s face twisted. “Half-naked colored folks ran wild in the streets, hollering to God, calling down angels and demons.”
“Is that a fact, sir?” Iris tried to sound grown-up.
Doc gripped her arm. “A lot of mixing of the blood is not so good. I’m a doctor. I know these things.”
“Don’t be scaring her with tall-tale lies.” Aidan pulled her away.
Doc’s eyes burned. “Wild folks pouring into America from all over. Revolutions in Mexico, Russia. Men like you shooting down men like me. Yet look at us, Coop, we’re friends. Clarence too, since we were boys.” Aidan and Clarence both spit in the dirt. Doc gripped Aidan’s shoulder. “In Atlanta, we know how to live together. All them Yankees know is
riot and chaos.”
“Bloody 1906 race riot in Atlanta must have slipped your mind.” Aidan shook Doc’s hand off him.
A wild cat hollered in the woods. “Whoa now, Buttercup and Boo,” Clarence said.
“That ole cat ain’t studyin’ us.” Iris grabbed a book from Doc’s lap, The Goodness of St. Roque by Alice Dunbar Nelson. “You say a colored lady wrote this book?”
“New York does suck up all your magic,” Doc said. “But love’s always a good thing, however it comes. Remember that when you judge people.”
Iris looked over toward Aidan, who spoke with an Irish lilt. “Love is what you got to do to be free. My mama used to say.” An Irish woman from a house of ill repute on the run, loving a Seminole man — what would Doc think of that?
Clarence smiled. “Love is the best thing.”
“Yes.” Aidan prayed Doc hadn’t bought Clarence the way men bought his mama.
“New York City could turn you away from yourself, Aidan,” Doc said.
“The Coopers are a big Manhattan family.” Aidan commenced to lying. “They’ll take care of me and Iris ’til we find Redwood and Mr. Williams.”
“Such a pretty girl ought to have a pretty life. Miz Subie should have gris-gris for that.” Doc sank back into his seat, face twitching and fingers jerking. After a moment, his eyes slid shut.
“Don’t let ole Doc scare you. New York is more cloud than storm.” Clarence winked at Iris’s big eyes. “We had us some good times too. City try to bite you, but you can bite back.” He clucked at the horses and they picked up speed.
“Love is the best thing,” Iris said, nuzzling close to Aidan.
The sun was warm, the air sweet and thick. Everybody ’cept Clarence, Buttercup, and Boo slept the rest of the road to Atlanta.
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