Redwood and Wildfire

by Andrea Hairston

  Frederick Douglass

  Nineteen

  Chicago, 1910

  Aidan sat up in George Phipps’ fancy house, hat in hand, sweating in the stove heat. Iris clung to his knees and twittered. George hadn’t looked happy when he set eyes on his baby sister with Aidan standing next to her. Redwood dragged her brother out the kitchen to a front parlor. Aidan patted Iris’s back. He hadn’t managed a moment alone with Redwood to see how she was, to see who she’d become, to see if he really had a chance. He’d go on back to Georgia if he wasn’t wanted, and take Iris with him.

  George and Redwood commenced to arguing before the door was shut.

  “I don’t need no lazy crackers or overgrown country heifers to feed,” George said.

  “Heifer? Iris is our sister, not a stranger! Mama said to watch over each other,” Redwood said. “Aidan come all this way, carrying her to us, I don’t care what he is.”

  “So we can help him back home. We can —”

  “This old house is so drafty.” Clarissa, George’s elegant wife, closed the parlor door on more ugly words. “And this cold snap is a surprise.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Aidan thought it was sweltering hot inside the house. He wiped his damp forehead.

  “In Chicago, if you don’t like the weather, just wait.” Clarissa said. She knit her brow at Iris shuffling her feet and scratching up a nice wooden chair.

  “Iris, honey, quit horsing ’round.” Aidan wiped dust off her cheek.

  He could make a better chair than this in a day. He’d make Miz Clarissa a new one as soon as someone showed him the tools. He knew just the wood to use and a good stain. Iris fidgeted against his shins. Clarissa shook disapproval from her head.

  “We’re used to a spring chill. I guess you Georgia folks aren’t.”

  “No Ma’am.” Iris hunched her bony shoulders.

  Her coat was covered in dust and soot. The grime must have been an inch thick on Aidan’s rough coat too, but he couldn’t brush it off, not against these spanking clean floors. He scratched the patchy beard itching up his neck. Riding all day in the motorcar looking for Redwood, they never had time to clean up and look decent for these swank city folks. He wouldn’t look or smell so bad after a spell in a tub.

  Clarissa turned on the electric lights. “What’re you sitting in the dark for?”

  Aidan shrugged. Wasn’t nothing to say. It didn’t seem that dark to him, so why waste electricity? He couldn’t contradict her, couldn’t look at her.

  “Or don’t you know how to do it?” She had a laugh like bottles tinkling in the breeze and a sultry sway to her hips, enough to break the hardest heart. Her slender waist and curving neck made him nervous. She smelled like apple butter, and he knew from the handshake she was soft and springy like wet moss. Her skin was olive brown and so smooth. Who wouldn’t want to run his hand up and down her back, touch the sweet skin inside those thighs? It was too long since he felt love in the palm of his hand, tingling on his fingertips. Just a thought though and not really ’bout Miz Clarissa but ’bout Redwood. Hers were the thighs he wanted to kiss; hers was the heart he wanted to hold. Falling in love with a memory, with a hoodoo gal who shouldn’t forgive him for what he didn’t do, that was enough to send the soberest man to hard drinking. He fumbled open Miz Subie’s nasty medicine and swallowed a good mouthful. The tin was half-empty.

  Clarissa watched him like a curio at an exhibition and reminded him of Doc. “Redwood speaks so fondly of you both. You’re not exactly who I imagined though.” Aidan and Iris exchanged furtive looks. “I’m sorry. That sounds worse than I meant.”

  Iris stood tall. “The Persian Prince and his wives got magic lanterns and carpets that you might talk into flying. His brother’s an acrobat and can jump and fly on his own. They say we be welcome anytime.”

  “You can write them nice folks a thank you.” Aidan pulled out his journal and hunted up a loose piece of paper.

  “I don’t know what’s taking them so long.” Clarissa smiled at Iris. “Would you like some lemonade, some biscuits?”

  Iris looked at Aidan, and he nodded approval. Clarissa retrieved a pitcher from an icebox. She poured the drink, dropped in a lemon wedge and three spoons of sugar. The glass fogged up. Northerners were strange. Drinking an ice drink on a chilly day. “Lemons all the way from Florida, and a pink glass with flowers on it for you.”

  Iris took the glass and said, “Thank you, Ma’am.”

  “You’re welcome. Nice to have a grown-up little lady in the house with such good manners.”

  Four children dressed in their Sunday best peered at them from the kitchen stairwell like little buzzards waiting for somebody to drop dead.

  “The big one is Frank from my first marriage,” Clarissa said, “and then George Jr. The twins are Ellie and Belle. Belle means pretty in French.” Iris waved and the children ran back upstairs. “I bet you like it sweet, Mr. Cooper?” Clarissa scooped sugar.

  “It’s Wildfire, not Cooper, Ma’am.”

  Why he offered his Indian name to a complete stranger, he couldn’t say. Iris stared as if seeing him for the first time. Clarissa poured his lemonade, pretending not to notice. “Mr. Wildfire then.” She looked sweet as her lemonade. She went through the parlor door before he had to take a sip.

  “I won’t have both of you ganging up on me,” George roared. Clarissa’s reply was too soft to catch the words, and then the door swung shut.

  Aidan wiped another smudge from Iris’ chin. “Your brother’s just surprised to see you with me.”

  “Uh huh.” Iris downed her drink in two gulps. “You not goin’ drink yours?”

  “An ice drink on a chilly day? You go ahead, honey. I’m not thirsty.”

  “It’s too hot in here.” She downed the second glass. “Wildfire?”

  “We be stepping out in a brand new world.”

  Iris puffed her cheeks and blew out cold fog. “Uh huh.”

  “A good name is powerful juju.”

  “I know.”

  Iris was asleep before her head hit the pillow. Too nervous to linger inside, Redwood pulled Aidan down the creaky steps from the attic, through the kitchen, and into the garden.

  “Miz Subie’s map took you and Iris right to Saeed’s brother!” Redwood smiled. “Goober dust exploding at the crossroads. A real conjure woman, Subie be calling us to the thunder, to the whirlwind, ’cause ain’t no gentle breeze goin’ change this world.”

  She stormed past a row of purple irises in the backyard. Aidan crouched in the dust she raised, watching her, his eyes shining. George had vegetables growing every which way between her flowers and herbs. He leaned out the kitchen door and yelled. “Don’t trample the harvest. I got a fortune planted out there.”

  Redwood wasn’t studying him. “Fire me for dancing with a she-lion? And Saeed too? That ain’t right.” She stopped in front of Aidan. His hair hung loose on his shoulders. His face, clean-shaven now, was handsome as all get out. Only his clothes were grubby. “What you thinking, grinning like a monkey?”

  “If he own the motion picture plant, I suspect the man can do what he want.”

  “I’m goin’ show up in Mr. Payne’s office, and he have to tell me that nonsense to my face. Don’t send no flunky with a bonus to throw me away.”

  “You looked so pretty on that screen. He’ll come to his senses.”

  “Man ain’t got no sense to come to.” Redwood couldn’t shake her anger.

  A few stars twinkled in navy blue twilight. A red-orange comet rode the horizon.

  “You got him spooked.” Aidan seemed pleased as Punch at this. “Payne be too scared to come hisself.”

  “Coughing his chest away, Payne is half dead and whole scared. What ’bout you?” Feeling bold as a shooting star, she drew Aidan up next to her. “You ’fraid of me?”

  He took her storm hand and pressed it to his heart. “I’ve lived through mad mama bears, night riders, rattlesnakes, yellow fever, demon posses. Hoodoo women don’t scare me.�
��

  “Since I was little, folks have been ’fraid to get next to me, but maybe not you.”

  He grimaced. “No Ma’am.”

  “Big men wanna wrassle me to the ground, steal my fire, stomp my heart spirit.” She ran storm fingers over his face. Touching his frown turned it to a smile. “But you said make your life up as you go.”

  “You did that all right.”

  “Clarissa say I’m a spectacle and a scandal, dressing like a man, singing the Blues in honky-tonks, running the streets with wild Indians, walking the treacherous path.”

  “Miz Clarissa is a real upstanding lady. That’s all that is. She —”

  “She want me to burn my backcountry clothes, but shoot —” Redwood ran a finger down a threadbare seam — “I put on a bit of you and I can walk through anything.” Aidan winced. His big eyes looked ready to spill over — some secret pain still hounded him. “Iris say you be family now.” She touched his shoulder. “Can’t tell you how I been missing home.”

  “Peach Grove…ain’t a place to call home no more. How people act make home.”

  “Yes, gotta forgive yourself to go home.”

  Watching her eyes, he kissed her fingers. She trembled a bit at the touch of his lips. A sweet ache caught her by surprise. Behind Aidan’s back, George glared, a dark storm cloud in the kitchen window. Clarissa pulled him away.

  “Don’t know where to begin with all the sinning I done,” Aidan said. “God’s showering down the miracles, and I don’t feel no ways worthy.”

  “Get out.” She slipped away from him through tomatoes and kale, dancing good feelings before they turned sour or vanished. “What you think of all-colored motion pictures? Not just cutting the fool, but adventure and romance.”

  “Folks be lining up, pay a nickel, see you over and over.” He pulled her close again. “They won’t be able to get enough of you.”

  She liked the feel of his hand on her hip. “Clarissa is a Club woman. She think I oughta act the proper lady, be an example for backward colored women coming up, and show white folk too. How refined and civilized we are.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Nobody goin’ pay me to act the lady. And George already be counting the money I’m s’posed to make.” She tapped his chest. “And more family showing up.”

  “I got a stake, and I can work. Me and Iris won’t be a burden on George.”

  Redwood laughed. “What you know how to do in Chicago?”

  “I can make a house crash on a wicked witch without screeching like a polecat, make a winch just whisper while it work.”

  She laid her head on his chest. “Think you could do theatre magic, huh?”

  “I can try.” He kissed her neck and made her tremble again. He put his arms ’round her. “I’m ready to try all kind of magic.”

  “I bet you are.” Redwood kept waiting for calamity to hit, for her skin to crawl away from him, for her mouth to turn bitter. But this was Aidan doing what she’d imagined a long, long time ago.

  “I’m goin’ make Miz Clarissa a fine chair.” He stroked her back, rough banjo fingers making her want to sing.

  “Clarissa is on your side, after you bring Iris all this way.”

  “I’ll get a house of my own, as soon as…”

  “Ain’t a lot of places for colored folk to live in Chicago. They’re squeezing us in to nowhere. But I guess you can live where you want.”

  “You know where that’ll be.”

  “You ain’t Crazy Coop no more. So what, you sober now?”

  “As the stars up in the sky.”

  “What kind of answer is that?” Redwood sniffed him. “What you smell like?”

  “Hard work and a long road. Clothes need a good scrubbing.”

  “Six years. I’m a grown woman now.”

  “I’ve changed too.”

  “From Crazy Coop to Aidan Wildfire? You have to tell me ’bout all that.”

  “Aunt Caitlin didn’t want nobody to know. I think she was ’fraid I’d turn into some kinda savage…” He trailed off, lost in painful thoughts.

  “When you get to it. We got six years of storytelling to do.”

  “Yeah. How’d you get to be such a fancy show lady?”

  “Fancy?” She cringed. ’Cept for an occasional Ace of Spades show, she was cooning — nothing grand or beautiful like she imagined back in Peach Grove, nothing like those ladies on Cairo Street or His Honor the Barber; just smart aleck chickens or mumble mouth savages. “Maybe there’s a carpenter job for you at the motion picture factory, since you looking to stay.”

  “Tell Mr. Payne to shoot that all-colored romance. I’d build what you want for that.”

  “Payne? Do a colored picture? In this lifetime? Ha!” She wanted to holler and cuss and smack the stars out the sky. “I’m saving up money to make my own —” Overwhelmed she dropped down on a bench under a maple tree, breathing hard. She shouldn’t let herself get so crazy angry. Did she want to kill somebody and end up swinging from a tree? Aidan sat beside her, so close she felt heat rising in his body.

  “Doc Johnson explained the sky to us,” he whispered at the comet on the horizon.

  “How long to tell it’s moving?”

  “As long as it takes. Comets are free women roaming the night.”

  She smiled in spite of herself. He was always taking her part. “You don’t say?”

  Aidan traced the comet tail. “Ow!” His fingertips turned red. “What the?”

  “Reaching up, touching the sky, s’posed to hurt I guess.”

  “Doc ain’t say nothing ’bout that.”

  “He don’t know everything.” She kissed his fingers, then drew away.

  “What?”

  “I hope you ain’t a story I made up in my head, is all.”

  “Iris said the same thing.”

  “Baby Sister is sweet on you.” Redwood jabbed his ribs, and they laughed. “Sober as the stars.” She turned his face to hers. “I never knew why you was drinking yourself away. Uncle Ladd said I was right ’bout you putting a spell on them deer. With all that liquor in you, couldn’t keep the side of a barn still long enough to hit it close range.”

  “Hard drinking burn a hole in your memory. Let you forget anything.”

  “What you want to forget so bad?”

  Aidan grimaced.

  “After Mama died whenever I dragged by your place, you was singing. You’d take the crook out my back, soothe the ache in my heart. One of your songs, and I knew I could make it to the other side.”

  “Really?” Aidan scratched his jaw. “I thought you come ’round to cheer me up.”

  “You laid Mama in the church with baby Jesus on Christmas morning, didn’t you?”

  “Naw, I was out hunting when —”

  “Folk said it was hoodoo or an angel.”

  “A coward more like.”

  Redwood put her finger on his lips. “I didn’t know how she died, but I knew you had a hand in bringing her in ’cause of the flowers, even ’fore George tole me everything.” She leaned into him. “You was always bringing Mama purple orchids. Nobody but you could find the ones she liked.”

  Terrible emotions crawled ’cross his face. “I wish I could have done more.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  “I’d give anything to see Miz Garnett rocking on a porch in Chicago town. Anything…”

  They sat a moment in silence. And then Aidan sang.

  On the other side of the sky, riding through the dark

  my true love’s a smoky light, a million miles away.

  If you ask, I can’t say why, but in my heart

  she still be bright, bright as a brand new day.

  “You just make that up?” Redwood meant to tell him he could turn the worst thing into a pretty love song, but started crying instead.

  “Don’t you weep.” He squeezed her close. “I’ll get the rhyme right tomorrow.”

  “Sound just fine to me.”

  ”Thank you, Ma�
��am.”

  “Why’d they do her that way?” A storm of tears came.

  “Fear drive a man insane.”

  Redwood hadn’t really cried since she left Peach Grove. She had six seasons of tears dammed up. Aidan stroked her back and hummed his song ’til she ran dry. He was still her special friend. A magic man full of good voices, good stories, he made her heart race. He wasn’t ’fraid of her or things he didn’t understand. And she loved him for all that. A chill breeze off Lake Michigan cut through the dark and goosed the flesh on her arm.

  “You ain’t got used to winter in May yet?” Aidan teased.

  She shook her head. An icy wind from inside set her to shivering. What if it was too late for a good-loving spell? Redwood wanted to get up and run, but the comet looked to have moved. She gasped at this, and then truth dropped from her lips like a falling star.

  “I’m damaged goods.”

  “Ain’t we all.”

  ’Stead of heading to the guest room Clarissa made up for him behind the kitchen, Aidan followed Redwood into a back parlor that had been transformed into her bedchamber. Posters of fancy theatre artists grinned at him from the walls. Somebody’s gods, fairies, or Yunwi Tsunsdi — tiny people — flew ’cross the ceiling, waving from fanciful drawings. A bay window with a generous seat brought the garden right into the room. Cherry blossoms scented the air. The bed had a breezy canopy hanging over it and looked like a ship fixing to set sail. Must have been a hundred books scattered over everything. He tripped on a copy of Leaves of Grass.

  “You still be loving books, I see.” He set the volume onto her crowded desk.

  “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,” Redwood quoted Mr. Whitman and blew out the candle. She rustled somewhere behind him, slipping off clothes by the sound of it. His eyes took their time adjusting to the darkness.

  “Where are you?” he whispered.

  “Find me.” Her voice echoed off the ceiling. She seemed to be everywhere.

  Neither time nor distance had dulled their connection. She was still the beautiful, headstrong, wonderful, aggravating, enchanting Redwood he’d known in Peach Grove. And this was Chicago, a city of tomorrow where they could be who they wanted.