Redwood and Wildfire

by Andrea Hairston

  “You run out of that powder a long time ago.” She jabbed his ribs, smiling.

  “Don’t know if the powder was the cure, so I don’t dare throw this ole thing away. It’s my good luck.” He touched the tin against his lips and the music called them on.

  Saeed lead their dance through the aisles. He leapt from the back of a chair onto a table without stepping in food or knocking over any drinks. The Clubwomen at his feet squealed with delight. Mambo Dupree waved her knife, warning him not to stomp her pork ribs. He danced from table to table, while Aidan and Redwood ran onto the rickety stage. Redwood dropped her coat to reveal flowing pants and a loose blouse. She swirled like a storm rising. Saeed sprang from a front row table right at Aidan, landed on his shoulders, and pushed up into a handstand. Aidan sank down a bit at the impact, but held Saeed easily. The audience hooted and applauded.

  Redwood circled the men singing I’ve been climbing, climbing Sorrow Mountain in Farsi. Shimmy-shaking, she lifted Saeed’s left hand and he balanced just on the right. As he pushed off toward the ground, she danced up Aidan’s left thigh to his right shoulder, stepping on Saeed’s shoulder when he hit the floor. The piano player slapped a sultry rhythm on an hourglass drum. The guitarman blew a Persian flute. The fiddler bowed a few high notes, wavering ’round the melody like a hummingbird’s wing.

  Facing away from the hushed crowd, feeling a thousand eyes on her back, Redwood dipped down and then vaulted up off the men’s sturdy bones. She soared through the air, the fabric of her costume billowing like glorious wings. Aidan and Saeed glanced up at her, stunned. The drummer and the fiddler halted. After a few shrill arpeggios, the flute player lost his breath. Redwood floated above their heads, no wires holding her up. She soared a good while for Bessie, for Aidan and Iris, for everybody. Istî siminolî, free as a Seminole, she twisted herself ’round to face the audience and landed back on Aidan and Saeed’s shoulders. Each man grabbed a hand, and she cascaded down to the floor. The piano man handed Aidan his banjo. He and Redwood left dancing to Saeed, while they sang in close harmony:

  I’ve been climbing, climbing Sorrow Mountain

  I’ve been climbing, climbing desperate days

  Have you seen that dried-up fountain?

  And all those folks lost in a maze?

  I’ve been climbing, climbing Sorrow Mountain

  This time around, I’m coming down

  This time around, I’m coming down

  At a front row table, Iris, Clarissa, and Abbaseh applauded. Walter Jumping Bear and his lady were on their feet, shouting. Prince Anoushiravan, Farah, and Akhtar smiled politely. Mambo Dupree waved her knife, and a white woman in a gray suit was so excited, she knocked over a cold drink. It was the lady from the El! Nicolai and crew captured quite a show in their cameras. Milton threw roses at the stage. Eddie was slapping his hands together and so busy talking to George, he was still clapping when everyone else had stopped.

  After five songs, three dances, and two encores, after cheers and toasts, and Bessie and a few Club ladies pressing money in Redwood’s hand for the picture, after Mambo Dupree saying, “Blessings on you from Erzulie Dantor, no sweetie goddess she, a dragon of love, burning you free,” Redwood and Aidan slipped out the back to an alleyway.

  “Next time you get it in your head to fly…” He wanted to be mad, but she caught a grin.

  “I’m a magic gal, ain’t I? Got the devil in me too.” She switched her hips at him. “You didn’t think I’d fall, did you?”

  “No, but that ain’t the point, is it?”

  “I talked myself into flying last night. Promised to do magic if you showed up.” She stepped close. “Had the feeling for a snowy egret.” She wanted to kiss him, wanted the taste of him in her mouth, but ’stead of being bold and courageous, she folded her arms over her bosom. “So what couldn’t wait ’til we got home?”

  “There’d be too many folks nosing ’round and walls closing us in,” Aidan said. “I just wanted dark and shadow and the stars.”

  “Moon’s hiding behind the clouds.” She squinted. “Is that dark enough for you?”

  “I suspect.”

  “Akhtar’s mad at you. She cooked a big meal, but wouldn’t serve anything since you wasn’t there.”

  “Oh. That is too bad.” He scratched his jaw. “I’ll make it up to her.”

  “She promised to do it again tomorrow. So you better be there. And Iris has been writing up a storm. She want to put a Seminole farmer in our moving picture. I said fine, but she had to talk to you.” Redwood was fixing to chatter on, but he looked ready to crumble into ash and blow away. “You all right?”

  “Reginald Jones’s grocery burning down, I heard them folks on fire, dying.”

  “I felt it. Just didn’t know what was wrong.”

  He cleared his throat and spit out soot and smoke. “I got a look at the ones who set it. White fellows, roughnecks.”

  She pressed against his chest. He flinched. She didn’t pull away. “Don’t let them bad men haunt you.”

  “I dug through the rubble for the dead and then I don’t know. Boneyard baron chased me ’round all night. Thought I’d freeze to death in the snow, ’til —” He hauled a bottle out of his shoulder bag, whiskey most like.

  “What you doing with that?” She ran a finger down the glass.

  He held up a second bottle. “My mama used to say, if it’s drowning you’re after, don’t torment yourself with shallow water.”

  “You still have all those voices in you.” She closed her eyes and let the sound of him touch her. “Tickles me all over.”

  “Ain’t you goin’ yell at me?”

  “You tole me fussing and cussing don’t do no good.”

  “I said fighting, but you right.”

  “I’m so glad to see you. Couldn’t cuss you, even if you deserved it. I thought you wasn’t coming. I thought maybe you was gone for good.”

  “Without a word? Without a fight?” He looked ready to fall over. “You don’t know me better than that?”

  She clutched him. “I didn’t say it made sense.”

  “I ain’t in no hurry to leave you.”

  “But if I let you go?”

  He threw the bottles against a wall. Shattered glass came back at them. They danced away, not quickly enough. A splinter lodged in Aidan’s thumb. “Damn it. Goddamn it.” It wasn’t like him to cuss in front of her. She pulled the glass, pulled the pain, and then held his hand in hers. “I love you, I do, Miz Redwood,” he whispered.

  “And I love you too.” She kissed his hand. It was rough and blistered. She drew her tongue ’cross his palm and each finger, tasting salt, sweat, smoke, and blood. “I don’t tell you, but I feel it all the time.” She put his cold hand on her warm bosom.

  “What good is keeping that all to yourself?” He held out a box cut in the shape of a comet. The tail was silver threads and blue-violet feathers from a swamp hen.

  She brushed it with her fingers. “You made this?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” He set it in her hands. “I know how you like shooting stars.”

  “When you have time to do that?”

  “Better than drinking the night away.”

  “I hope you didn’t kill no bird for those feathers.”

  “No. That bird had just come to the end of her days.”

  Redwood shook it. “What’s inside?”

  “You got to open and see.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I can.”

  “What you ’fraid of?”

  “Breaking your heart.”

  Loud voices filled the dark. Aidan cussed soft this time so she couldn’t hear.

  “This ain’t exactly the most romantic spot,” she said.

  Eddie and George tromped down the alley, arguing. Seeing Redwood and Aidan, they got quiet. George’s hand was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief. Blood from a cut under his eye drizzled down his cheek.

  “I thought you left fighting back in Georgia,” Redwood said.
<
br />   “They don’t let you be a man nowhere,” George said. “I have to fight.”

  “You like fighting, George,” Aidan said. “You like smashing in a face, bringing a cracker down to the dirt. Am I lying?”

  “You got it exactly.” George smirked.

  “That won’t make you a man,” Aidan said softly.

  “And you goin’ tell me what will?”

  Redwood stepped between them. “I know how hard it is for you, Brother.”

  “Do you?” George looked over to Eddie’s sneering face. “Even colored don’t want you to stand up. I gotta fight for every inch.”

  “We can still make our own place in the world, be who we want.” Redwood touched the wound on his face.

  “Leave it.” George grabbed her hand. “Let it heal on its own.”

  She struggled free. “What you want with scars? Ain’t you mad enough already, you got to look at your ugly pain every day?”

  “Just ’cause you done slipped the noose, you act like this world ain’t trying to hang us all.” George bellowed.

  “How you know what noose I slipped or ain’t slipped?” Redwood said. “You don’t know nothing ’bout me. Too wound into yourself.”

  “You laying up in my house with this cracker saying that? I don’t care how much wild Injun running through him.”

  “Let’s go.” Aidan pulled Redwood away from George.

  “Wait.” She halted. Aidan was wheezing like an automobile. George had fire on his breath too. “Nicolai offered to shoot any moving picture we dream up. No charge. I got more than half the money for my picture.”

  “So?” Eddie laughed. “You ain’t goin’ make no money after it’s done.”

  “You got as much power as Mama ever had, more really,” George said. “But you can’t make the world turn your way. Only a crazy man would believe in that.”

  George banged into Aidan as he and Eddie walked away. Aidan grabbed George’s arm. They faced off, nostrils flaring, teeth gritted. “Them crackers you hate so much ain’t the only ones telling the story,” Aidan said and let George go.

  Back at the house, ’stead of romancing Aidan like she planned, ’stead of opening her shooting star and getting more of the taste of him in her mouth, Redwood fretted over George, over herself too. Was she still a naïve fool trying to make the world turn her way when danger was coming that could burn them all?

  “You think he worries over you like this?” Aidan paced their back parlor room, a lion, roaring to tear the place apart.

  “He’s my brother and somebody walked ’cross his grave. Iris saw the baron.”

  “Whatever he’s up to, it’s a deadly game.” Aidan shook his head. “But he ain’t looking out for you. He ditched you in a swamp to go make a fortune killing birds.”

  “He come back to look for me that time!” She sank down on the bed, holding Aidan’s box against her bosom, the swamp hen feathers trailing into her lap. George made her spitting mad, but she couldn’t give up on him, not yet. “I won’t be selfish to suit him. Mama said to watch over each other.”

  “And you and me?” Aidan shouted.

  “Shush! You ’llowed to wake the dead,” she hissed. “George is easier to sort out.” She gripped Aidan’s hand as he stumbled by. “Up all night, you ready to fall on your face.”

  “I can’t stay in this house.”

  “I know. I know.”

  “George is…who he is. I ain’t talking against him. He got a heavy load. He just ain’t the only one. I can’t stay under his roof.” He was ready to pack his things and leave.

  “Just ’til the moving picture’s done.”

  He shook free of her. “Who knows how long that will be?”

  “Not long.” She reached for him again. “Don’t you want to do our own story too?”

  “Of course.” He dodged her fingers. “Then we take Iris and we go. They got land out west and moving pictures. The Prince say it’s beautiful country.”

  “Out west? I don’t know.”

  “They got hills and valleys and good farmland. They got a sky so big, it make your head reel trying to see to the end. I know how to make things grow and I…could make you happy out there. I know I could.”

  She jumped up. “You make me happy, Aidan, right here, right now. Happier than anyone deserve. It’s my fault we got troubles.”

  “No. It ain’t just you.” His hands shook. “Things getting too hard to take sober. I can’t stay in this house, playing the wild Injun savage or the drunk Irishman.” He dropped on the cushions in the window seat.

  “Who’s asking you to do that?” She sat beside him.

  He was shaking and cold as ice. “You didn’t hear those screams.”

  “No.” She leaned her forehead against his. He went dead still. “So tell me. Everything. How we used to be.”

  She wrapped warm arms ’round him and pulled a blanket over them both. Squirming, he fought tears and ended in a coughing fit. When that passed, she laid his head in her lap and stroked the tight strings of muscles running down his neck.

  “Ten, fifteen people,” he said, tears flowing now. “Dying in fire.”

  “That many?”

  “Maybe more. Can’t say who all was shopping. Shelves fell and blocked the front door. Stairs collapsed on people coming from the second floor and blocked the back. They couldn’t get out. They just couldn’t get out. Nothing left but to burn up or suffocate. Somebody had a gun, so I guess, well, there were shots, but they didn’t all get to go quick. And me just standing there, wringing my hands. All I ever do.”

  “Hush. You a good man. The best I know. The evil you seen ain’t your fault.”

  That made him cry more. “After the fire, I thought I wanted a woman so bad anybody would do. I need a drink to get that started. Truth be told, I was on the run, heading for a jug. But that was no good either.”

  “You just tired and lonely. I’ll sleep here. Keep you company in your dreams.”

  “Ain’t enough room on this window seat,” he said.

  She curled ’round him, hot for once against his frosty back. “Grown man need tender too.” She pressed her storm hand to his cheek.

  “Seem like I usually make your skin crawl.”

  “That ain’t you,” she whispered. “You know that.”

  “It’s real hard being with you and not being with you.”

  “I promised myself, if you showed up at Spades tonight, I’d fly, in the show. But when it come time, when I felt the cue, I wasn’t sure. I thought I might fall. But you a conjure man, always get me to trust my magic, get me to soar.”

  Redwood rubbed Aidan’s back ’til he was warm, breathing deep, ’til he didn’t fight sleep no more. She let the rumble of his chest and the rhythm of his heart fill her. And then she joined him in dreams like she promised.

  Twenty-two

  George and Clarissa’s House, Chicago, 1912

  After falling down a studio canyon all day, Aidan’s muscles throbbed and his stomach hollered to beat the band. He stumbled over George’s mail and Dry Cleaning receipts stacked in the vestibule. The Prince gripped his arm and broke the fall. Iris got the papers in order while Akhtar ushered everyone to the mysterious meal she’d been making for hours, days actually. The delicious aroma of spices and herbs was familiar, but Aidan only recognized one dish he’d eaten on the Prince’s train car. The table looked like a tapestry that should hang in a museum.

  “In my country we do not have the same custom of surnames as you do here,” the Prince explained to Clarissa.

  “Oh dear. I am ignorant of your ways.” She flushed. “I don’t want to be rude, sir.”

  “Mokhalafat.” Akhtar pointed to plates of fresh herbs, flat breads, and white cheese and yogurt. “Khoresht sabsi.” She had thrown kidney beans, green onions, dried limes and lamb into a pot with all sorts of herbs, spinach, and parsley, and then served it on top of rice. “Tah-digh…Iris.”

  “The sweet bottom of the rice pot is for Iris,” the Princ
e translated.

  Akhtar brought out skewers of meat for each plate. “Kabab koobideh.”

  “That is good.” Aidan had taken a bite in the kitchen — beef ground up with onion and fragrant herbs.

  “Everybody help yourself. That’s how they do in Persia.” George filled his plate.

  The dinner party was in the dining room, despite the early winter chill. George was burning a fortune, heating every room in the house to impress his guests, business associates Dr. Harris, Mr. Powell, and their wives, women from Clarissa’s club, one a doctor her ownself. They were very fair-skinned colored people who exchanged nervous looks over the food. George presided at the head of the table near his colleagues. Clarissa sat at the opposite end. Saeed, the Prince, Farah, Akhtar, and Abbaseh sat close to her. Redwood and Aidan were in the middle.

  Akhtar poured Aidan pomegranate juice, and George lifted a glass of Persian wine. “To Miz Akhtar’s fine food.” Everyone drank to the cook, who blushed. George raised his glass to the women. “You ladies look good enough to eat too.”

  Iris was the only one to giggle at this. She also wore a fancy dress and lurked in the hallway, listening in on the grown-ups, too old to be in bed and yet too young to be at this table, according to Clarissa. Aidan would’ve had her sit next to him.

  “You’ve traveled all over, sir,” Clarissa said when the meal was pleasantly underway. “I’m glad you and your family stopped in Chicago before going home.”

  “Abbaseh’s English is very good now. She can converse with you.” He turned to his third wife, the musician, poetess, and his boldest companion. “Speak.”

  Everyone stopped eating to look at her. Embarrassed, she picked at her vegetables.

  “Won’t you say something?” Clarissa said sweetly.

  After a moment Abbaseh spoke with only the faintest Farsi accent. “Did you know my name means lioness?”

  “It suits you,” Aidan said as Redwood smiled.

  “Tell us about your moving picture project.” Abbaseh turned to Redwood.

  “Iris is helping us write a scenario,” Redwood replied.

  “Don’t get her started on that.” George stuffed lamb and kidney beans in his mouth.