Redwood and Wildfire

by Andrea Hairston

  He switched on the electric light and caught hisself grinning, hair blowing in the wind. Doc’s drawings hung over Redwood’s writing desk now. She insisted Aidan looked every bit a dashing moving picture star. Indeed, Mr. Payne was so pleased with his work on screen, he’d lined up a string of wild Injun projects. “A handsome savage is better than an ugly one,” Payne declared. “Women are swooning for you. A secret, naughty thrill in a dark theatre.”

  Aidan’s stomach churned. He wished the pay was as good for real life as it was for fantasy. He slumped on the floor by the bed, his head empty and his heart heavy. No denying the money in his pockets, and surely he wouldn’t be doing naughty Injun thrills forever. Doing it at all, though, and living in George’s house were worse than taking nasty medicine ten times a day. George hadn’t said more than three civil words to Aidan since he arrived last year, and that was only due to Clarissa’s prodding. Good thing the man was always out making deals and hardly home, or he and Aidan might have come to blows and killed each other by now.

  “Yes, God is very good, but never dance in a small boat.” Aidan spoke Aislinn’s warning out loud, enjoying his mama’s Irish wit, even as worry hit him. All the mess he and Redwood had to put up with, Iris too, and still he didn’t see how they’d ever make a motion picture play. And how would they break the curses trailing them from Georgia? Batting these doubts away, Aidan banged into Redwood’s newspaper collection stacked by the bed. A New York Times article tumbled into his lap:

  MARTIANS BUILD TWO IMMENSE CANALS

  IN TWO YEARS

  Vast Engineering Works Accomplished

  in an Incredibly Short Time by Our Planetary Neighbors

  Wonders of the September Sky

  Staring at photos of a balding Professor Percival Lowell, his Flagstaff Observatory, and Martian canal drawings, Aidan wondered what Doc would make of Martians and their engineering genius. Aidan’s nerves tingled thinking on some stringy body grown tall in shallow gravity walking on the red soil of the warrior’s planet, looking over to Earth, and maybe wondering ’bout the folks living ’cross the sky. Did Earth look blue like the sky? Or green like the forests? Or maybe you couldn’t see none of that when you were so far away? Maybe it was just a sparkly grey pebble in the sky.

  He leaned into the pillows and caught a whiff of lily of the valley, rosemary oil, and Redwood’s sweet scent. He spied his old pistol next to Garnett’s music box on the nightstand. The gun was clean, but empty. He smiled. Redwood said it brought her good luck, long as there weren’t bullets to tempt her. Aidan picked up the music box. The false bottom came undone and money fell onto the bed. Aidan whistled, fingering tight bundles of bills. All they’d been doing for the past year was chasing a paycheck; he’d hardly found time to think, to keep counsel with hisself. The Martians tickled his fancy. He dug up a fountain pen and his red leather journal to ponder visitors from another world. Flipping to blank pages, he came upon the envelope from Caroline Williams to Jerome and his wife.

  “Oh hell!” Aidan dropped it and bolted up. He’d forgotten this damned letter.

  He peered down the hall. Nobody in sight and the house was still. The nanny had gone home early to call on her ailing grandmama. The children were asleep. Redwood was still singing in the tub with Iris, sounding good too. Satisfied he had a few moments alone, Aidan tore the envelope open. Unfolding the letter, ten one hundred dollar gold certificates drifted to the bed. A fortune!

  “Blood money.” Miz Williams truly trusted Aidan to be a good man, to do right. “That’s harder than you think, Ma’am.” He glanced at her stiff handwriting:

  Dear Jerome,

  I’m sure you must have a family by now and need money but you’re just too proud to say. I don’t want to know where you are, but Mr. Cooper has been good enough to deliver this to you and your wife. Of course I don’t approve of what you’re doing, and frankly I don’t know why any woman in her right mind would have you, even a colored one. But I am your mother. You are my eldest son and I love you

  Aidan crumpled the paper before reading the last lines. Promising to deliver this was a kindness to an old woman grieving her son. But he didn’t need more of the past to come spooking him like an angry haint. He grabbed a match from the mantle and set the letter on fire.

  “What you doing?” Redwood said from the doorway as flames flared up. She cinched one of Clarissa’s elegant robes tight. Curls of hair hanging round her face got tighter in the moist air.

  He tossed the burning paper into the fireplace. “I need to fix the hinge on your mama’s box,” he said. “Thought I’d add some money to what you got saved.”

  “Quite a stake you handing over.” She inspected a gold certificate. “I ain’t for sale, you know.”

  “Why you say something like that to me?”

  “I don’t know. I feel mean.” She dropped the money. “I done lost my magic. I used to be —”

  “You still are. Think on baby Violet.”

  “Don’t tell me who I am.”

  “I can’t say nothing right to you.”

  “Power ain’t magic.” She put the money back in the bottom of the box. “We got to raise five times what’s here, even with your gold.” She sounded weary. “You so cold you need a fire? Close the window. I like the air is all, don’t need it open.”

  “Air is fine by me.”

  “George say I ought to put my money in a bank and get interest.”

  “George always know how to make the most out of whatever you got.”

  “Chicago’s hardly a Midway Fair of dreams.”

  “A dream ain’t a place to go to; it’s what you do.”

  Redwood had lightning in her eyes and tears, yet half a smile curved her lips. “Ain’t that the truth?” Shimmy-shaking, she grabbed Aidan’s hand.

  “What you up to?”

  She danced him ’cross the room, bumping into furniture and books. The silky white robe billowed against her damp thighs like clouds passing in the night. Suddenly the walls fell away and the ceiling was gone. A dark new moon loomed above them, a dusky gray disk in inky black. Beyond that was more stars than Aidan had ever imagined. Not just shiny white specks, but spirals of brilliant color too. He and Redwood spun ’round, and a bright blue ball with swirls of white and splotches of brown filled up the dark. Aidan laughed, but there was no sound, just cold filling his lungs, turning his eyes to ice. Redwood stomped against the floor. Aidan looked down at her feet and then up. A flying serpent dashed through the Milky Way, fluttered its wings, and settled into the painted ceiling over their heads.

  “What you do?” Aidan gasped warm air.

  “Ain’t just me.” Redwood poked him. “It’s what we do together. I don’t even know how.”

  “Better than a hot air balloon.” He gathered his magic, wild woman in his arms.

  She leaned into him, damp and soft and smooth from the bath. Her heart was racing. Her breath was cold. “It’s only a ride though.” She pulled away and sat down, a heavy weight, sinking into the mattress. He sat next to her and stroked her face. She closed her eyes on his hand. “Where we goin’ find five, six thousand dollars, ’less we both keep cooning?”

  He bowed his head, shamed of his own doubt and worry. “It ain’t no easy spell conjuring this moving picture, but you ain’t thinking ’bout giving up, are you?”

  “Now why would I be doing that?” Redwood eased her face from his hand. “Sometimes, I feel far away from myself is all.”

  He clenched his jaw. Jerome’s dead eyes flickered in the fire. Aidan walked to the window seat, closed the shutters, and curled up in the cushions there.

  “Ain’t just what Jerome done to me, you know.” Redwood read his thoughts. “It’s also what I did —”

  “What kind of foolishness is that? I won’t listen to you talk yourself down!” He threw what she used to tell him back at her. “You did what you had to do!”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Naw, I don’t agree with you! That�
��s different.”

  She shook her head and said no more. He was bone tired, too weary to fight with her. The deep breath of sleep claimed him quickly.

  Redwood snuck out the back door; her skin was itchy, her blood heavy, her heart raw and achy. The lioness clawed her side and golden eyes went dark. Redwood groaned and dashed ’cross slippery cobblestones. She passed some fool humming Running won’t set you free. “Well damn it,” she tried cussing like Aidan. “What the hell will?” Foul language just made her feel worse. She ran faster.

  Clarissa would’ve said Redwood was being too dramatic, too histrionic, but this was no vaudeville act. Since the lioness died in her arms, since Aidan, and Iris too, hit Chicago town, she couldn’t pretend she was fine when she wasn’t. Redwood needed to find someone to take the trick off her body. Even a powerful conjure woman couldn’t pull her own pain. But from a little girl, Redwood hated asking anybody for help. When she was beloved by the spirit in everything, help just came to her. Now she’d have to pay for it…

  Redwood hurried through a dark alley in Chicago’s Black Belt. She stopped at the sound of gravel crunching under boot heels and turned. Nobody. Shadows wavered in the wind. Curtains blew through tight little windows. Scraggly trees swept crooked branches against the brick backs of tenement buildings. Whoever was following her could disappear in the middle of an empty street.

  “Show yourself,” she shouted.

  Pigeons cooed in a chorus and swooped to a tangle of wires above her.

  It was late. Aidan was sleeping like the dead, Iris and the other children too. Redwood had left George and Clarissa rocking their springs and groaning ’bout how much they love one another. If it wasn’t any of them on her tail, she didn’t know who it could be. Everybody else usually know better than to chase after her. Even bad men didn’t bother Redwood Phipps, with thunder and storm on her heels.

  “What you after?” she asked the darkness. “Man touch me against my will, end up dead.” Perhaps she heard a startled breath. “I don’t want to go where I’m going. You shouldn’t either.” She pulled her Persian robe tight against her ribs and sped on.

  Winona Dupree claim she was a New Orleans mambo — a Vodou priestess bringing good fortune and health to those who come to her with harsh troubles and a heavy purse. Rich colored women who secretly held to the old ways were happy to buy gris-gris charms from Mambo Dupree. She had fair skin and straight white hair and made sure everyone knew she was a quadroon: colored, Indian, French, and Spanish. Clarissa had bought charms from her to hold George and cross his other women. How could Redwood be running to her?

  The Dupree house was rude looking on the outside — peeling paint, rotten wood, and tipping to the right, but inside the front gate, altars to the Loa, the Vodou spirit-deities, made everybody tremble with fear and respect. Sacred charms were etched on the walls and ground: skulls and bones; fire, water, and lightning shapes; crossroad signs; and serpents circling the tree of life. Miz Subie called these vèvés — spells to call down Vodou spirits.

  Redwood lifted the brass knocker but hesitated. She set it down softly and backed away. Too late to escape. The door screeched as rusty hinges protested a late night visit. Mambo Dupree thrust a candle in her eyes.

  “As I live and breathe, Redwood Phipps at my door.”

  Mambo Dupree wore white robes and carried a bowl of bright colored flowers. Spicy incense and heavy perfume made Redwood woozy. In the hallway behind her, paintings of the Loa, of sweet Haitian saints and dark-tempered tricksters, danced in the flickering candlelight. These figures, with swords through their hearts and skulls on their hats, laughed in Redwood’s startled face. Snakes wiggled at the Loa’s feet and ’round their necks. A crown of fire sat on a woman’s head and did not burn her.

  “What you want of this Vodou Queen?” Mambo Dupree didn’t invite Redwood in. Who could blame her? It was no secret that Redwood spoke against selling charms to cross an enemy or a rival.

  “I gotta talk to somebody.” Redwood wrote Miz Subie ten letters since Aidan and Iris come up, telling all her troubles and woe. She was too ashamed to send even one.

  “Sneaking here late, ain’t even a moon to see you by.”

  “That was the idea.” No use denying truth.

  “A man murdered three women yesterday at the end of this street.” As Mambo Dupree spoke, the spirits settled back into the walls. “You must be desperate to walk danger. Has the baron been chasing you, or just a spirit of the dead?”

  “I got a trick on my body won’t let me find love.”

  Mambo Dupree looked her up and down. “I ain’t surprised at that.”

  “Can you do a body healing? Or are you just a flimflam snake-oil woman?”

  “Rude gal! Why you at my door, if you don’t believe?”

  Redwood had swallowed her pride, not her good sense. “I —”

  “You hate asking for help, don’t you?” Mambo Dupree sniffed her flowers as Redwood squirmed. “You have plenty magic, me only a little bit.”

  “What you mean?”

  “You a busy conjure woman, up on stage every night, telling one lie after the other, and people pay you plenty.” Mambo Dupree waved the candle ’round Redwood’s face. “You mad over the dimes I earn?” Clarissa’s friends complained of the price they had to pay, but they always seemed eager to keep going back.

  “Dimes? Not what I heard.” Redwood had come with a sack of money, stolen from their motion picture stash.

  “Rich ladies like to exaggerate.” Mambo Dupree smiled purple stained teeth. “Make bitter medicine taste better.”

  “What proof that you won’t take my money and give me foolishness, but no cure?”

  “All right, for proof, I’ll give you the cure for free.”

  “Free?” Redwood grunted. “Okay.”

  Mambo Dupree roared a good laugh. “What you can’t respect ain’t goin’ help you, gal. Don’t let your life be ruled by what you fear.” She slammed the door in Redwood’s face. On the ground was a doll with pins stuck in its wooly head. Redwood snatched it up. Mambo Dupree sold these to fools who wanted to hurt their enemies.

  “Give ’em dolls to prick,” Miz Subie said once ’bout Vodou gris-gris, “better than sticking knives in somebody’s gut.”

  As Redwood put the doll in her bag, a shadow slipped into a doorway beside the Dupree house. Bright eyes flashed. “Who is that? Iris?” No answer came but Redwood could feel Baby Sister. She was spooky like Mama, there and not there at the same time. “Searching for a cure like a thief in the night, what do I expect?” She shoved a few bills under Mambo Dupree’s door and headed home.

  Redwood tiptoed into the back parlor. Aidan was still on the window seat, snoring. She was cold and damp and felt ridiculous holding the bedraggled Vodou doll. Its hair was falling out and a button eye was missing. Vodou was close kin to hoodoo, but it was a religion she didn’t practice. So, what did she believe?

  Aidan shivered and fussed as if a chill had entered his dream. Redwood threw a blanket over him. Startled, he opened his eyes. “What?” he said sleepily.

  “Maybe we could work up a show for the Ace of Spades Hotel,” she said. “Find routines for your new songs.”

  “Sure.” He yawned and rubbed his eyes. “When I ain’t dead tired and half asleep.”

  “And I can show you and Iris the Chicago sights, like I promised.”

  “I know you been busy…” He was snoring again.

  Redwood sat over him through the night.

  It was weeks before Aidan would agree to play music at Saeed’s. Then the trolley was on the blink and that was just the excuse he needed to back out. Iris raced into the front hall as he was hemming and hawing with Redwood.

  “I don’t want to go!” She gripped Aidan’s arm, hanging on to him like a child.

  “We’re not having this argument,” Redwood said.

  Iris whispered in Aidan’s ear. “I’ve read more than any of them teachers, but since I don’t agree with ’em, they sa
y I’m stupid.”

  “They’re jealous,” Aidan muttered. “You just gotta go and stick up for yourself.”

  “Georgia’s in my mouth. Nothing else matters.” Her dress had a rip at the hem.

  “You been fighting too?” he said.

  “The other kids start it.” Iris pouted. “I hate going there.”

  Redwood lifted an eyebrow at Aidan like this was all his fault. “What you got to say?”

  “You don’t have to like everything that’s good for you,” he said. “And you don’t have to fit in with fools. Just learn what you can.”

  Iris thrust his banjo at him “You play better than anybody in Chicago. I’ll go if you go.” No arguing with that. Iris grinned at Redwood.

  The elevated train was ripping and roaring right through Chicago town, going twenty miles an hour at least, streaking between brick and stone and sounding like the end of the world.

  Redwood pressed her lips to Aidan’s ear. “Is this really your first time?”

  “Yes, indeed.” Aidan held on to his hat even though inside the train, the air was still and heavy. Outside, giant skyscrapers loomed above storefronts and apartment dwellings, blotted the sun for a moment, and then faded quickly from view. Chicago’s two million plus inhabitants bustled through morning streets in a colorful, blurry knot.

  Maybe the train was doing thirty miles an hour.

  “Whizzing along up high, we’re flying, getting the bird’s view.” Aidan had to shout at Redwood to be heard. “Ain’t the same as tracks on the ground.”

  Redwood smoothed her silky pants and shouted too. “I’m glad the trolley cables were all knotted up today. The El is quite a ride. We’re not goin’ be late after all.”

  Passengers gawked at her long legs and masculine attire, at the Persian turban on her head, the mojo bag at her waist, and the African fabric ’round her neck. Aidan was used to her style. He wouldn’t have her any other way, but he couldn’t stand the evil looks or the hungry eyes crawling over her bosom and behind.