Redwood and Wildfire

by Andrea Hairston

  Redwood slowed to a walk, praying for a good spell to come to her. Two cameramen froze above their lenses. One thin, pale man continued to film, while the African Savages and the White Hunter screeched and knocked each other over, scurrying away. Redwood recognized the curly red beard and scraggly eyebrows — Nicolai Minsky. A determined fellow, he shook off his comrades urging him to run and continued to roll. They gripped their cameras and dashed away.

  The handler, with the lioness clamped to his butt, struggled toward Nicolai, begging for help. Nicolai’s eyes darted up from his lens. Without a whip or a gun, what could he do? Running was his only safe option. Possessed, a demon driven to capture this deadly spectacle, Nicolai shifted his camera’s vantage point and continued rolling.

  Redwood danced in front of the lioness. The wind got caught in her fierce moves. A train of fog snaked through the dust at her feet. Prairie Smoke seeds, a cloud of silvery purple filaments, spun ’round her head. As Redwood swirled like a hurricane brewing, the she-cat let go of butt flesh and raggedy pants and spit her mouth clear. She licked blood from her broken fangs. Stepping over the whimpering handler, the lioness crouched low and moved toward Redwood.

  Staring out a filthy train window, watching the flat Indiana landscape skitter by, Aidan’s eyes ached. Thirty years of living, and he’d never been further north than the Blue Ridge Mountains, never been on a railway, tearing ’cross these United States of America on iron wheels. Engineers say, hardly any friction on this ride. So true, here he was almost a free man, not on the run, not under the shadow of a Peach Grove lynch mob, gliding to his destiny. Chicago was an hour or two away. Thinking ’bout seeing Redwood again, being worthy of her forgiveness, maybe worthy of her love, and he had an inkling of what the Seminole meant when they said, istî siminolî.

  The urge to pour a bottle of hooch down his throat came over Aidan at least five times every day and ten times at night in his sleep. As a free man now, he ignored the drinking itch, but he couldn’t get it to go away. Iris pretended she didn’t notice his infirmity. He was thankful for this and for the good folks who rode the trains and made him and Iris feel like family.

  Colored people from all over the cotton-picking South, tired of breaking their backs to make white landowners rich, were coming north. They hoped to make a better life, a beautiful life. In Pittsburgh, in Cleveland, Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York, colored men had a vote, and women were agitating to get their say too. Cities sprang up overnight. In Indiana, halfway between beds of iron ore and rich coal mines, US Steel wrangled a river ’round and built a spanking new town with all the modern amenities: waterworks, fancy plumbing, electricity, and indoor toilets for the workingman. They called it Gary after a US Steel bigwig. The first furnace blasted out steel two years ago, in ’08. There were decent jobs to be had, rows of fine little houses to raise a family, and education for gals like Iris who wanted to teach school and write books. All along Lake Michigan, colored folk could dare to dream.

  Stories of the high life in the bright north sounded like sure enough tall tales to Aidan. But when Iris read reports from the Chicago Defender, a colored newspaper, Aidan hoped some of the tales were halfway true. Miz Ida Bell Wells-Barnett had just started a Negro Fellowship League to help people coming up from the South. There was a colored hospital, the Provident, with colored doctors, and colored theatres, like the Pekin. A vote, a say, and a job — every morning would look bright, and after work there’d be a night on the town. No wonder colored were flying west, flying north.

  Aidan was more than happy to leave King Cotton, Lord Tobacco, and the lynchmen behind. If Chicago would open its arms to the children and grandchildren of former slaves, maybe there was a place for an Irish-Seminole swamp man. Maybe he could open his heart and forgive his ownself.

  Following Subie’s map, Aidan dropped the goober dust seven times, twice in Georgia, and then in South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. On hot afternoons, he played banjo halfway decent — railroad songs for a new century. Like Miz Subie promised, his music got better. New songs came to him. Fellow travelers pestered him to start a session up or join in. He played anything: Irish ballads, Buddy Bolden’s jazz, or Ma Rainey’s blues. Not as grand as his playing used to be, but good enough. He led an impromptu jug band, and ladies flirted with him shamelessly. He flirted back. Getting close, touching soft flesh, feeling deep sighs was a delicious, almost forgotten luxury. Aidan had been without a woman’s love too long.

  Just outside of Indianapolis, Iris declared her passion.

  “When I’m grown, I wanna marry you,” she said, her cheeks hot, her eyes flashing.

  Aidan wanted to tweak her nose, but nodded his head solemnly instead.

  “Uncle Ladd was sixteen years older than Aunt Elisa,” Iris said. “You ain’t got that much more on me.”

  “I’m waiting on you, sweet pea. So you hurry on up,” he said, but winked at a buxom young lady two rows down, who made him feel good to be a man. Her silky hair, courtesy of Madame C. J. Walker’s straightening pomade and hot iron, was piled in the shape of a whirlwind. Coy ringlets came undone in the afternoon humidity. She pursed full lips and batted long-lashed eyes. Aidan had to take his next breath slow. Iris punched him in the gut. She wasn’t having none of that.

  “It ain’t a good idea to doubt true love,” she said.

  “You can do better than me is all.”

  “I don’t want to trick you with a root or spell like in Miz Dunbar Nelson’s stories.”

  “I appreciate that.” What kinda book had Doc given her to read?

  “But if I have to, I will.” She waved The Goodness of St. Rocque at him.

  “You don’t even know half of who I am, honey bun.” Aidan turned deadly serious. “Best to know what you’re getting involved in.”

  “So tell me.” Iris folded her arms over button breasts. “I want to love you, not somebody I made up, like a story.”

  “Is that so?” Aidan smiled at her, charmed.

  “And I’ll tell you what you don’t know ’bout me, and we’ll be even.”

  Aidan studied Iris’s wise eyes, so like her sister’s, yet somehow hers alone. What dark secrets could she have after her short sweet life? Nothing like the lies he lived, passing for whatever was convenient, hiding from what was difficult, inconvenient. Since Atlanta, most everybody thought he was a light-skinned colored man. A nosy young wrangler from Texas had asked if he was Mexican, running from the revolution. Aidan said he was Georgia born and bred, but didn’t mention Big Thunder or Miss O’Casey.

  “A white man passing as colored and stealing that child?” A mountainous man with pink scars on his dark face hunched over smelly beans with his bear-sized mama. They whispered ’bout Aidan and Iris behind their hands. Everybody heard anyhow.

  “He has to be crazy, an outlaw, or just up to no good,” bear mama said.

  Aidan took out his banjo and made a song on the spot. Didn’t rhyme quite right yet, but it would tomorrow.

  Some folk look at the world through their behinds

  Get it all backwards and turned ’round in their minds

  Give ’em salt and they’ll think it sweet

  Give ’em honey, they’ll complain ’bout the meat

  “We can’t talk secrets on a train full of people,” he whispered in Iris’s ear as people laughed and clapped. “I’m only telling you my true story, not the whole world.”

  Iris stuck out her chest mimicking the buxom woman who’d caught Aidan’s eye. She threw her arms ’round his neck and pulled him close. Her little girl smell was sweet peaches and magnolia. “Only me.”

  Aidan doted on Iris, and she loved him more than he deserved, and that was that.

  A stiff wind chased clouds ’cross the sky. Nicolai praised the returning sunlight as he cranked on his camera like a demon. Redwood sprang high in the air, cloaked in a cyclone of fog and Prairie Smoke. In the middle of a spin, she fixed her eye on the lioness. She felt a great thundering heart, wheezi
ng lungs, and aching joints. Front paws that had bounded through fire were tender. A bruised shoulder ached where the handler had poked too hard. Cheeks and eyes stung from the whiplash. Yet, more than all this, Redwood tasted rage, killing rage, swallowed down too long and coming up strong now — breath become rage, flesh become rage, and fangs and claws the sharp edge of rage. Redwood landed at the lioness’s nose. Prairie Smoke seeds settled on her grass skirt, and fog evaporated in a whistling hiss over her head. The lioness came to a halt also, fangs bared.

  For a good while, there was nothing but the two of them.

  Redwood hadn’t done any wild conjuring since 1903, when she and Aidan had gone off to the Chicago Fair. That trip seemed like a dream, a story she told on her young self. Who could say if it was true or not? She had known killing rage since then, and it had made her a stranger to herself. She remembered that wild young gal, beloved by the spirit in everything, not ’fraid of bears, gators, hurricanes, or crazy men wandering the night. She just couldn’t find her. The lioness snarled. A tall figure in a black hat watched from the shadow of an old oak. If Redwood had lost her hoodoo power too, if this conjure trick called the boneyard baron to her and she died this day, at least Nicolai would get a record of her true spirit on film, and who would be able to deny that?

  The lioness circled Redwood, crouching ’til her belly brushed the ground. She drew her lips back over jagged fangs. The crowd roared and startled them both. Behind the lioness a brave African Savage dragged the blubbering handler toward a distant circle of folks who looked ready to run but eager to see the show come to any gruesome end.

  The lioness’s chest rumbled.

  “She’s purring.” Nicolai reeled in the images, his eyes ablaze, his thin frame shaking. Saeed stood next to him, waving and speaking beautiful words, yet their meaning escaped Redwood. Perhaps Saeed was so desperate, he spoke Farsi.

  Behind Saeed, one of the animal wranglers waved a rifle. Where’d he been all this time? “That’s a growl, fool,” the wrangler said.

  The boneyard baron tipped his hat.

  “She’s all yours.” Nicolai urged Redwood on. Saeed gaped at him.

  “Move out the way, gal,” the wrangler-gunman yelled.

  Redwood ignored him and tangoed with the snarling or purring lioness toward the cage.

  Chicago had more stink than Atlanta. Aidan smelled it miles before they reached the station. The air was swamp thick and sluggish. Lights jumped and gyrated in the distance; buildings squeezed closer and closer together. The clamor and clang hammered his ears as they joined a rush of trains wheeling into a Chicago railroad depot. Iris couldn’t sit still, pointing out the window to hazy wonders yet to behold.

  “We’re here! Can you believe we’re here?” She was jumping up and down.

  The heavy brick buildings closed in on Aidan, a mob of giants gathering in the twilight gloom, squatting on his new life. The train finally came to a halt, but so much hullabaloo and racket made his country head spin.

  “Chicago is Atlanta times a thousand!” Iris leapt off the train and pulled Aidan behind her. The shotgun wrapped in a Seminole blanket banged into the banjo slung ’cross his back. The strings protested. The coppery smell of fresh blood filled his nostrils. Men, their aprons slick from critter guts, stepped out of a chilly refrigeration car. Farmers with dung and dirt clinging to their breeches jostled the butcher men.

  “I never support Zapata, just I, I act like I do,” said a young man with a heavy Mexican accent as he banged into Aidan’s bags. He clutched a once-colorful sombrero to his dusty poncho. An older man in bloodstained pants and shirt, a butcher or meat packer who looked to have just stepped off the killing floor, backhanded him. Iris flinched. “I swear. I am for your side.” The young Mexican wiped blood from his nose. A splotch dripped on Aidan’s boots as he pulled Iris away from them.

  An older Indian man with feathers in a black felt hat spoke to Aidan in words he did `not understand. “Sorry, mister,” Aidan said. “I don’t talk your talk.”

  “It is Lakota,” a younger Indian man said. No feathers in his hat, and his thick hair was long, like Aidan’s, his face broad and calm. His manner commanded attention. “My father says, his nephew’s in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show. Has that train come?”

  “I really couldn’t tell you.” Aidan remembered Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Pavilion at the Chicago Fair. “That show is still going after all these years?”

  Both men nodded and headed on. Behind them, white women in starched white dresses and fancy white boots paraded through the terminal. They carried banners demanding the right to vote. Marching in sync and looking straight ahead, these ladies walked by Aidan and Iris and surrounded a big-shot politician disembarking from a luxury coach. A clump of colored country folk, smelling of sea breezes, tobacco, and dirt, glanced sideways at the suffragettes. They didn’t know what to make of these agitating white ladies neither.

  “Danger’s dropping from the sky tonight.” A seedy looking huckster shoved a foul smelling tincture under Aidan’s nose. “Two bits buys the protection you need.”

  A woman hustled children past the snake oil man. ’Round her neck was a fox biting its own tail. The talk she made was kin to the buzz of an old banjo string. She gave Aidan a warning look.

  “What do you say, sir?” The greasy blond huckster leaned in too close.

  Aidan caught the fingersmith’s hands before he got near the alligator pouch and almost snapped the man’s bones. “I say, I don’t part with my money for any ole fast talk.”

  “I ain’t a quack.” He bounced his voice off the high ceiling. “A bona fide chemist. My emulsion of amyl nitrite, sodium nitrite, and sodium thiosulfate will protect you from cyanogen poisoning as the comet tail engulfs our planet.” His coat was lined with brown bottles of brackish fluid. “Guaranteed to halt the dizziness, nausea, muscle spasms, and loss of consciousness. Yes, Ma’am, cheat death!”

  “We ain’t ’fraid of comets, sir. Just a bit of heaven flying by.” Iris pulled Aidan away, before any damage was done. “The ceiling in this train station’s as high as the sky.” She strained her neck. “You see Sis anywhere?”

  In Ohio, Aidan telegrammed Redwood at The Magic Lantern Theatre to say they were coming. Who’s to say she got word? He stepped up on a bench, looked every direction, certain he couldn’t miss her. A grown woman, changed and all, she’d still be a bright star in any constellation. He scanned a mob of faces from the world over. More different kinds of folks than he ever imagined looked right through him.

  “I don’t see her, sugar.”

  His vision blurred for a second. Actually it was the air wavering as from high heat. He gasped. The fire-haint had taken the train north too and now crossed the tangle of tracks. Slipping between sweaty black engines, it blazed through the cavernous hall, right toward Aidan and Iris. The haint’s feet were flames scorching the pavement; its head strands of smoke like a comet’s tail; its heart silver sparks; and its unblinking, merciless eyes were rubies or garnets, peering through lies to truth. Aidan stumbled down from the bench. Iris clutched his hand. Seeing sparks in her eyes, he didn’t need to ask if she saw the haint too. He hadn’t left misery back home. It was tracking him.

  As the haint swooped close, a few men in the politician’s party broke into sweat and fanned the air. The bigwig withered in a blast of heat. Drenched suddenly in sweat, he turned pink and tore at his collar and the buttons of his shirt. The huckster fell down coughing and heaving. The cure-bottles that lined his raggedy coat shattered. Volatile vapors soaked him and filled the air. In the wake of the haint, sparks flew like troubling afterthoughts, and the huckster’s alcohol-sodden coat caught fire. In a second he was a roar of flames. As the politicians backed away, the huckster wriggled his arms free of burning sleeves and rolled away, dampening the blaze on his shirt and pants. Rivulets of alcohol carried the fire in every direction. Aidan unwrapped his banjo and threw the heavy blanket on the still blazing coat. Iris and the suffragettes
ran ’round stamping out the flames before they spread. Their hems were singed yellow and white boots turned sooty brown.

  “What the hell was that?” the huckster clutched Aidan’s blanket to him.

  “You’re a fire hazard, man, that’s what!” the bigwig politician shouted.

  Aidan had to yank the blanket from him. “Sorry, sir, but I’ll be needing this.”

  “You’re the one smoking a cigar,” a suffragette said to the politician.

  Distant doors flew open. Hot ashes floated up to the ceiling as the haint vanished in the Chicago twilight.

  “What a welcome to Chicago!” Iris looked pleased as Punch.

  Aidan tipped his hat to the suffragettes and pulled her away. “I don’t see hide nor hair of Redwood.” He scanned the hall, unsure of which direction to go or what to do. Getting here was one thing. Finding Redwood was —

  “Don’t give up yet,” Iris said and then whispered. “The haint, she’s a good spirit. You said so, remember?”

  “Yes.” That was the tale Aidan told. The haint’s own story was another matter.

  Like a sudden waterfall after a storm, three women in silvery dresses, with veils covering their hair and faces, flowed out of a private railcar. A man, taller and wider than Aidan, wearing red silk pants and a long robe, came down after the women and paused in front of Aidan and Iris. Their robes snapped and swirled as a train, trailing a rush of air, charged out of the station.

  “I see you are a musician, sir.” The robed man had a singer’s voice and a foreigner’s tongue.

  Iris pulled Aidan’s ear to her lips. “Are these the wild people Doc Johnson was talking ’bout?”