Tennessee and Georgia, 1905–1906
In Chattanooga, just after January New Year, 1905, Redwood took Milton to a conjure woman, Mirabella Fontaine, who had befriended Miz Subie in her wild youth, back in slavery days. A Sea Island woman, landlocked far from the ocean she loved, Mirabella wore seashells ’round her neck and in her white hair. “You all from Peach Grove, nuh?” She ushered them in. A giant conch seashell presided over her front hall. Fans of dried seaweed hung over the doorways, and fishing nets covered the windows. “Subie send a letter now and again, but I got to pay some young fool to read it. I t’ink I save my money.” Her dress and shawl were slippery green and billowy as sea grass. “I got a spell to keep fools from knocking. How’d you find me?”
“I wrote your address for Miz Subie when her eye was too tired,” Redwood said.
Miz Mirabella hugged Redwood against bony ribs. She was so happy to have a report of her dear friend from somebody’s mouth that she made a big meal and insisted the weary travelers stay the night. Milton wanted to argue.
“Sheets and springs beat a dirt bed any day,” Eddie said.
Milton crumpled on the parlor floor. Mirabella examined his puffy ankle and discolored foot. “Maybe you ain’t got dancing feet no more.” She wrapped a poultice ’round the swelling and gave him sweet tea. “Count your blessings, singerman. You lucky to be alive.”
Eddie pulled a face at this, but Milton took the medicine and the news well. After supper, he snored away in a big white bed like a baby. The mist of hair on his dark brown head and face was scattered with gray all of a sudden. Age had come on him hard in the last few weeks. The ragged scar on his jaw had faded to a wrinkle.
Mirabella pulled Redwood from his door, back to the parlor. “Tell me ’bout Subie.”
Eddie paced ’round them, picking dinner from his teeth and sipping peach brandy. Redwood didn’t dare say much with him listening. Her eyes kept straying toward the sleeping chamber.
“I t’ink Mr. Milton be all right,” Miz Mirabella said. “Subie taught you good t’ing.” She glanced at Eddie. “Take yourself out to the night air, cool your hot head. Leave us women be.” Eddie couldn’t stand anybody telling him what to do, but bossy women really rankled. “I got to tell you twice? Get on now!”
“I was thinking of a smoke anyhow.” Eddie took his time leaving.
Miz Mirabella brought out a cigar box. “See what I got here?”
By the hot glow of an electric lamp, Redwood read Subie’s letters out loud, a few short paragraphs in tight handwriting, one a year for over thirty years. She even spoke the ones Mirabella done heard before, reciting till her voice was hoarse and it was late in the night.
“You sound like Subie, make me t’ink her in the room.” The old conjure woman’s sharp jaw and creased forehead relaxed. “Subie always say reading and writing be a powerful trick in your bag. She learn when them whip you to death for less. You young folk don’t want to hear all that—tired of our stories ’fore they even got told.”
“Sometime, slavery stories be too painful to hear,” Redwood said. “We want to forget those bad times and think on what we doing right now.”
“When you want to hear, we’ll be long gone.” Mirabella chortled at this ancient joke on humanity.
Redwood almost cried, reading Subie’s last letter:
We have lived some wild times and I’m feeling every minute in these old joints. But my young ones are coming due, so I ain’t worrying over old bones.
George got an iron spirit. He’ll bend anybody to his will.
Sweet Iris belong to another world altogether and won’t nobody beat that out of her.
Aidan got an open heart, so he ain’t scared of the truth. He ain’t scared of change.
Redwood is my hope, my future, just as sure as if I birthed her. A conjurer like I never seen.
Dreamers all, and ain’t this the time we need the magic and the might of our dreams?
“What ’bout you, chile?” Mirabella leaned close and touched Redwood’s belly.
“I ain’t a dreamer no more.” Redwood told as much of her tale as she could stand in her mouth and pleaded for herbs to make one of her mama’s nasty brews.
Mirabella sucked her teeth. “Blood’s not that late. Too soon to be sure. I knew a woman—men took her against her will. She didn’t bleed for a year. Put a trick on her own body.”
“I won’t … I can’t have his baby.”
“You do dangerous t’ing, maybe you won’t have nobody’s baby, nevermore.”
“Can’t have no part of him growing inside me.” Redwood balled her fist and pressed it against her lips.
Mirabella nodded. “We ole folks ain’t the only ones got a hard story to tell.” She stroked Redwood’s hands. “Find you a good man soon. You a grown woman who need good loving. Your time goin’ fly. Rub this bad man out your body as soon as you can. Snatch you some good moments. Hear what I say? Promise me.”
Redwood hesitated. She didn’t say what she didn’t mean.
“For pain and sorrow, ain’t no root, ain’t no spell like good loving,” Mirabella said.
If a good man was a healing spell, Redwood guessed she could do it. “I promise.”
Aidan lurched down Main Street between Doc and Hiram Johnson. They looked dapper and smart as usual. A warm spring breeze made Aidan sweat through winter britches and a heavy coat. It was March or maybe April, 1906. He’d lived a quarter of a century! Time always got ahead of him. He tugged at an itchy sleeve and the threadbare fabric ripped. He tore it the rest of the way off and stuffed it in a pocket with The Jungle by Upton Sinclair that Doc had just loaned him.
Clarence Edwards, Doc’s colored driver, an Atlanta man with a graying mustache and bulging muscles, followed a few steps behind them with his eyes on the ground and his ears perked, a damn hound dog waiting for a bone. Aidan was several drinks beyond drunk, but he knew Clarence was sneering at him. What was Aidan to him but another cracker, poor white trash, a drunken fool?
Doc mocked him too. “How could you let Jerome steal her away from you and the rest of us too?”
“Jerome didn’t steal Redwood from me. She always had her heart set on him.” Aidan gritted his teeth. Clarence stared him in the eye, two or three seconds.
“She was very good at hiding that,” Doc said. Clarence looked down.
“She had to be,” Aidan said. “Jerome didn’t want that mama of his to know.”
“I’m sure that’s a burr in Caroline Williams’s britches.” Hiram laughed. “What I don’t understand is Jerome.”
“Taking to the swamp like a runaway slave or an Injun.” Doc shook his head. “Why not a buggy?”
“I tole you, Jerome and Redwood call themselves sneaking off north to get married,” Aidan said. “She wanted a big wedding in a church and dancing in the street after.” The only story he ever got good at telling out loud was a barefaced lie.
Clarence coughed up a good wad and spit.
“Where are your manners, Clarence?” Doc said.
Aidan continued. “They were getting lost in the swamp. Love had ’em all turned ’round. I tried to talk sense to ’em, but they were too hardheaded. Istî siminolî. They planned to get on the railroad in Atlanta. At least I pointed ’em in the right direction.”
“I do recall Jerome saying, tonight’s the night for me and Redwood,” Hiram said.
“You thought it meant bumping and grinding, not riding on the railroad to New York City.” Doc laughed.
“I thought he’d tell me the truth,” Hiram said. “He’d been talking about me and him taking a wild trip up north, just getting on the train one afternoon, not telling anybody. Finding us a few obliging lady friends.”
Aidan almost fell over his own feet. Clarence caught him. “Watch where you going, Clarence.” Aidan shoved him away, panicked. These Johnson boys could make a mess of his lying. “Jerome planned a trip with you?”
“Naw, Jerome talked a lot of stuff he didn’t mean,” Doc said. “He paid off his debts, cleaned out his account. You should’ve smelled something else coming, Hiram.”
“Cherokee Will said he arranged a rendezvous for Jerome and that gal in the peach orchard,” Hiram said. “I don’t understand, with all these fine white women to choose from. Why run off with her?”
“Love’s a mystery. Can’t say today what it’ll make you do tomorrow,” Aidan said. Clarence exchanged quick glances with Doc, then glared at the ground.
Doc scratched his chin. “Hard to believe Jerome loved anybody.”
“And a nigger gal at that,” Hiram said.
“Maybe she hoodooed him.” Aidan swayed at a street corner, overwhelmed by the directions he could take. Bad idea, lying at the crossroads. He leaned against a post.
“That must be it!” Doc said. “A conjurer, like her mama.”
Hiram quaked at talk of Garnett. “They got a moving picture over to the fair.” He pointed to distant tents.
“We got a nickelodeon coming to Atlanta,” Doc said. He was spending more and more time up in the city.
“It’s all better in Atlanta. What you doing in Peach Grove?” Hiram walked ahead.
“Clarence pesters me to come see his Aunt Subie, before the old gal goes blind in both eyes.”
“Naw, sir. You wanted to see your brother and go hunting with Mr. Cooper.” Clarence looked at Aidan with undisguised hope.
“What do you say, Coop?” Doc had his arms ’round Aidan’s shoulders.
“Maybe.” Aidan felt sick all of a sudden. Clarence grinned at him. What did this colored fool want from him? What did he know?
“You look green, man,” Doc said. “Don’t worry. There’s a fat bonus.”
“I don’t need your money”—Aidan pulled away and wiped at his sweaty neck—“to be your friend.” Doc nodded and hushed Hiram before he said something smart. Aidan glanced over to Clarence who was contemplating his feet again. Aidan sucked a breath and rubbed bleary eyes. “Maybe on the weekend. Good day to you.”
“So take me to this foolish tent show,” Doc said as Aidan stumbled away. “Pictures were meant to stay still, you know.”
On a sticky Saturday, Redwood turned nineteen years old, a woman of the world. Wearing Aidan’s clothes, she hid behind funky curtains in a sweaty third-floor room of the Cherokee Lake Bordello in backcountry Tennessee. She’d been working here a year, singing with The Act. A bad man, a dangerous man, paid top dollar for Elaine, a buxom, high yellow lady whose kinky hair was the only giveaway she wasn’t white. Elaine took the bad man’s crisp bills and pleaded with Redwood to hide in her room and keep a lookout.
“You a hoodoo, ain’t you, Sequoia?” she whispered as he drank a whiskey. “He’ll feel that and act right! I don’t want to have to shoot nobody tonight.”
Redwood tingled with pride. Elaine cussed everybody out all the time and had a gun under her pillow, but believed in Redwood to keep her safe. The fellow was middling-sized, didn’t look evil, and he talked sweet to Elaine. Last week Joe Graham looked like a gentleman in fancy clothes, sounded like one too, but slit a woman’s belly, laughing and talking love to her. Stinky Wilson favored sick gals, doing ’em till they puked, and Ole Phil liked to leave a souvenir scar, a love nick. Big Jarius was supposed to keep the peace. Three floors of nonsense kept him running, and he didn’t always make it in time. Redwood wouldn’t have believed none of this before, but no matter what Rev. Washington and them say, these were brave, hardworking women at Cherokee Lake who never knew what might come at them.
Hearing a gasp, Redwood peeped through a hole in the curtain. What would she do if things turned nasty? Hairy legs and pale brown buttocks untouched by sun wagged in her face. Elaine plied her trade, teasing and kissing, breathing hard and sucking, finally splaying herself wide open for this man. Redwood’s stomach threatened to come up. Elaine winked at her and then, acting overcome with passion, squealed, “Mr. Evans, you sure know how to make a gal holler!” Elaine’s tongue was everywhere.
Mr. Evans pawed and thrust harder. Redwood couldn’t hear what he was saying. Her own breath was ragged, her fists clenched, her flesh itched and burned. She shouldn’t have let herself get roped into this. Hoodoo wasn’t a weapon or a shield. A real hoodoo woman was beloved by the spirit in everything and had the power to make dreams real, had the power to conjure a bright destiny, a bold future. Mr. Evans reached a peak of pleasure, and Redwood covered her mouth as she gagged.
“I was having hard times before,” Mr. Evans said. “I’m better now, see. I just wanted to show you.” He kissed Elaine’s private, secret places. Elaine squealed again.
Redwood wanted to escape onto the roof, but made herself watch this too.
When Mr. Evans finally left, Elaine pulled a robe ’round irritated, itchy-looking skin. “The smell of fear will egg ’em on to evil doings. The scent of hoodoo power keeps ’em straight. Thanks.” She squeezed Redwood’s arm. “My goodness. You look shocked by the show.” Elaine waved at the bed. “I can do all that, but they don’t ever touch me. Trick is, not to be here with ’em. I’m always off somewhere else. Don’t feel a thing.”
Without realizing what was happening, Redwood had seen when Elaine left herself. “Yeah.” An actress was always learning new parts. Eddie told her to be a student of life. “Well, you’re safe now, and I got a show.” Redwood headed out the door.
“Take your time getting onstage.” Elaine winked. “I’m coming down to hear you. I just need a minute. Is that your new costume?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Guess I’ll have to watch out for you tonight then.” Elaine’s eyes sparkled.
Going downstairs, Redwood ran her fingers over Aidan’s shirt and tucked it into his pants. After a few washings his smell was gone, but she could still feel him with her as she cinched the waist tight. The Sea Island conjure woman had given her seashell earrings that tinkled ocean music close to her ears and a river scarf for her waist, blue-green fabric like flowing water. She pulled Aidan’s cap over her eyes and strode through the sporting house. Most of the men ignored her. They had too many good-looking women in various stages of undress to appreciate.
The Cherokee Lake Bordello was the one regular job Milton could get them. Faded, raggedy curtains decorated drafty windows. Nasty perfume covered the smell of rancid oil and rotgut liquor. Redwood shouldn’t complain—they’d played worse joints and slept in funky barns, horse manure and whatnot going up their noses all night. At least Eddie got to hit an upright piano five hours a day. Redwood didn’t look down her nose at working ladies no more. She was just restless, aching to move on.
Two well-dressed men cornered Milton at the door to the common room, gamblers with pearly canes and silk top hats. Milton handed them what looked to be a week’s worth of their earnings. “Mr. Starks owes us more than this,” the stocky one said. He wore black leather riding gloves and poked at Milton with stiff fingers.
“Eddie’s a gambling fool,” Milton replied. “I can get you more, but we got to play music just now or I won’t be able to get anything.”
“We ain’t folks to be trifled with,” the stocky one said. His partner nodded as Milton pushed through them into the common room.
“You work here, boy?” A fellow with a crisscross of scars on his lips stopped Redwood from running behind Milton, and held up a fat purse. “I heard I might find—”
“In the other room.” She indicated a door to the side.
He glanced at her tiddies. “Sorry, ma’am, I … You’re tall for a fellow even.”
“Don’t go in there looking for love.” She warned his earnest eyes and clapped his back like the young fellow he’d thought she was.
Milton was playing a jug. Seeing Redwood approach, he shifted to guitar. Eddie caressed the piano keys, making love to the notes. The raucous crowd wasn’t listening. As Redwood stepped up onto the rickety little stage, Eddie gaped at her clothes. Milton grinned. Last month as part of her theatrical education, he took her to the vaudeville, where a colored lady was performing His Honor: The Barber in men’s clothes and Ma Rainey was singing the blues. Ma had a big voice, deep and harsh, like she was torn up inside but singing anyway, through fire and storm, through all the good love lost or gone bad, through all the evil people do and get away with. Ma Rainey didn’t make her hurting pretty, didn’t hold nothing back, didn’t ask nobody permission for her style. That’s how Redwood intended to sing from now on. She belted a single line:
My love is like a falling star
Half-naked, bored women stopped teasing men who were busting out their pants with desire but acting stingy with their cash. Umpteen transactions got interrupted by Redwood’s raggedy assault on a country melody and simple lyrics. She paused, uncertain for a second. Elaine shouted, “That’s what I call singing, Sequoia!”
Redwood nodded at her and continued:
I said, my love is like a falling star
A passing phantom high overhead
The whole crowd in the Cherokee Lake Bordello stood still a moment, hanging on her every note. Redwood wondered what Aidan would think of how she sang his song:
You do not see her fall, not far
For oh my lord, she’s dark as the dead
A dark, handsome fellow at a table in front of Redwood lifted a drink to her and grinned as she sang a second verse right to him.
“There he is again! Big Red done smote the man in his heart. Have mercy!” Milton said as the vocal ended and Eddie went wild on the piano.
The audience cheered. Two haggard men with fistfuls of cash started fighting over Elaine, grabbing at her yellow hair and big tiddies. Blood spurted at the stage as one man fell onto a table and the other smacked Elaine upside her head. Drunken hollers pierced Eddie’s solo as Big Jarius come running. The good times fizzled.
In the third-floor room, Redwood stitched up a gash in Elaine’s head. She barely flinched, just stared out a dirty little window as Redwood worked. “I thought Mr. Evans was the trouble coming at me tonight.” Elaine sighed. “Is there goin’ be a scar?”
“You can cover it with your hair.”
“You got a lucky charm? So I could do something else, sing, be a free woman same as you?”
“I ain’t free yet; heading there, I hope.” Redwood put a tiny pouch in her bruised hand. Elaine in turn tried to press cash in her palm. “I ain’t taking money from you. You’ve been kindly to me since I got here.” Redwood grinned. “If ever I get me a man, I’ll know just what to do.”
Elaine sighed. “I’m usually a mean bitch. That’s what everybody say.”
“I don’t know ’bout that.”
Redwood poured Elaine a soothing tea and waited till she was settled and sleeping before slipping out the door. On the stairs down to the common room, the handsome man from the front row table blocked the way. He pulled off his hat and took her hand. His palm was wide and rough. She didn’t flinch at his touch.
“I know you don’t take money, Miz Sequoia.” He said her stage name as if she was something sweet to eat. “You being a proper lady and all.”
Redwood quoted Mirabella. “‘Ain’t no root, ain’t no spell like good loving.’”
He leaned in to kiss her cheek. It didn’t feel half bad.
“I like your moves, big man.” She tickled his ear with her tongue and let her breath follow the shiver down his back. Not just Elaine, all the hardworking ladies of the Cherokee Lake Bordello had given her love tricks when she stitched wounds or helped them out of trouble. “You got magic on you,” she said in a husky alto.
“How far you want to go?” His hand was on her waist—still good so far.
“It ain’t the destination, it’s the ride,” she replied.
This tickled him but good, and he had a deep laugh that touched her bones. He’d been coming for weeks, staying to the last song and tipping his hat at her, leaving a flower, a few extra coins, a dozen fresh eggs. Redwood admired his persistence, his open face and clear eyes. She was flattered that someone handsome and good wanted her that much, even after seeing what she did onstage, after getting a taste of how wild she was. She wrapped her long legs ’round his thigh. Singing the blues the way she had tonight, seemed as if she’d come to the other side of something.
“You look good enough to make somebody holler,” she said, trying to mean it.
“That’s a line from a song.”
“I’m a singer, ain’t I?”
Upstairs in a moonlit room, the handsome farmer lay on top of Redwood. He smelled of chicken and pigs, of rich soil, of fresh hay and new life dropping into the stalls or pressing up out the ground. His smooth skin was sweaty with pleasure. Hers was dry and shiny. She felt far away from his groin pressing against hers, from his chapped lips and callused hands, from his heart banging so fast. He groaned in her ear and squeezed her tight, sucking at her like she was fresh fruit.
“Be my wife. Have my children. I got my own place. I’m doing good in the world.”
Redwood covered his mouth with trembling fingertips. He pulled her hand away.
“Don’t I make you feel good?” he said.
Her stomach wasn’t fixing to come up, but—“I don’t feel what you do.”
“A woman can grow into that.” He looked so hopeful, it hurt.
“The truth has always been a good friend of mine,” she said.
“Uh-huh.” He nodded.
“So when I tell you I don’t feel anything, it mean—”
Her skin didn’t crawl, her mouth wasn’t bitter ashes, her heart wasn’t pounding murder, like with other men she’d tried. Good-loving wasn’t a spell that worked for her. There wasn’t the E-LEC-TRI-CI-TY she remembered just thinking on Aidan—they’d never got to touching. Elaine had showed Redwood how to pleasure her ownself. Every once in a long while, touching the right spot and thinking on good times, before, she broke through a blank dark ache and felt so good she cried. Actually she’d only felt her back arching up and secret places throbbing between her thighs twice. A trick was on her body that took the pleasure out of lovemaking.
“It mean I don’t feel not a thing, not with you, not with anybody.”
The farmer’s face crumbled. “You sure?” He rolled away from her, tracing his finger ’cross her belly, playing through a soft swirl of hair. Now she almost couldn’t stand his touch. “Root doctor can help with that,” he said.
Redwood eased her body away from his gentle fingers and pulled on Aidan’s shirt and pants. “What’s a root doctor know that I don’t?”
“You love somebody else?”
“You don’t have to be jealous.” She closed her eyes. “He ain’t real. Met him in the eye of a storm, he held on to me, and then he was gone.”
Outside Redwood pushed through the good-time crowd milling on the porch to reach Milton and Eddie, tears standing in her eyes.
“We gotta get moving,” she said. “Can’t stay in this town forever.”
Eddie smirked. “You hoodooed some poor fellow. Now he don’t know what to do.”
“I ain’t conjuring,” she shouted. “Just roots and herbs for healing.”
“We’ll be in Chicago soon enough,” Milton said.
“You been saying that over a year, and we’re still in Tennessee,” Redwood said. “I mean to get to Chicago with or without you.” She tromped toward their horses.
Eddie chased after her. “What about The Act?”
Milton brought up the rear, favoring his left leg. “We’re making good money, steady. What’s wrong with that?”
“No. She’s right. Can’t make no kinda money entertaining niggers and whores.” Eddie didn’t have a good word for nobody but hisself.
“We could do a real show in Chicago,” Redwood said. “I got a brother there.”
“A real show? Where you get that idea from? This fool?” Milton said.
“It’s the truth.” Eddie slapped his thigh.
“You’ve changed your tune about Chicago, Eddie,” Milton said. “Too many gambling debts and jealous husbands after you?”
Eddie hopped on his mare.
“I gave those sporting gents everything, but they’ll come gunning for more,” Milton said. “I won’t save your behind this time.”
“So we better leave while we still can,” Eddie said.
Milton threw up his hands. “Okay, we play a few more spots I know north of here, then see if we get ourselves into a traveling troupe, take us right to Chicago town. White folk there pay good money to see niggers jig and cut the fool.” Milton heaved his butt into the saddle. Redwood jumped on her horse, leaned over to Milton, and pecked his stubbly cheek.
“Why don’t I get none of that when I take your side?” Eddie said. “When I say what you want to hear?”
“’Cause you never mean what you say, you just trying to get something out of me.” Redwood spurred her horse. Even if the road turned west out of town ’stead of north, finally Chicago was in her sights.
Aidan’s ripped laundry, stained with splashes of mud from last night’s rain, fluttered in the breeze. Princess wandered through piles of debris in the yard and strolled to the back of the house. Ladd banged against the door. Elisa clutched a basket of food.
“Mr. Cooper, are you in there?” Elisa said.
“Crazy fool is off somewhere in the swamp, sitting up a tree,” Ladd said.
As Elisa pushed the door open, it fell off its hinges. Ladd cussed and grabbed it. She stepped ’round him and into the house. Ladd sighed, set the door against the wall, and followed her. She bumped into a cracked jug that rolled ’cross the floor till it hit a smashed-up chair.
“I tole you he wasn’t home,” Ladd said.
Behind the house, huddled in the shadows, Aidan watched them through a broken window. The last bit of food he’d tried to eat a few days ago had come right back up and still covered his shirt and pants. He couldn’t get his hand through the knotted hair hanging in his face. It took the whole wall to keep him from falling flat.
Elisa shouted, “Ain’t nobody but him put that deer in our smokehouse.”
“If he wanted a thank-you, he’d’ve stuck ’round to get it.” Ladd shuddered at something on the floor.
Elisa set the food basket on the table. “Where’s he going without this?” She picked up the banjo.
“Iona say he ain’t been playing, say he lost his touch,” Ladd said.
“He ain’t been right since Redwood took off.”
“I don’t think we should be poking through—”
Elisa held up her hand and listened intently. Ladd looked ’round and shrugged his shoulders in a question mark. Aidan buried his face in filthy hands.
“I expect Mr. Cooper to bring me this basket back and say thank you to my face.”
“Of course he will,” Ladd said.
Elisa strummed the banjo—it was still in tune. “My mama brought this sweetgrass basket over from Sapelo Island. Damp don’t matter none to this old swamp grass.”
“Why you bring your mama’s basket to leave?”
“Iris lost her sister and Mr. Cooper too.” She strummed a few melancholy notes.
“Leave off the banjo.”
Elisa set the banjo down. Ladd walked her out the kitchen.
“It’s still in tune. How far could he be?” she said, going out the front door.
Aidan prayed that they wouldn’t come ’round back looking for him. He quivered as footsteps headed away from his house. Princess nudged an aching shoulder till Aidan searched in his pocket and pulled out some smashed fruit. Princess eagerly bit into sweet mush and also chomped Aidan’s hand. He jumped up, shaking his fingers, cursing the pain silently.
“Nobody need to be living this way.” Elisa’s voice carried on the wind.
“It’s a wonder the Williams clan ain’t stole this place out from under him,” Ladd said.
“He got a ancestor spirit watching over him.”
“Or haunting him.”
Aidan peered ’round the side of the house. Ladd and Elisa were hurrying down the road.
“Mr. Cooper act like it’s his fault Redwood run off north with Jerome Williams,” Elisa said.
“Ha! Ain’t no taming that gal.” Ladd chortled. “Mr. Williams bite off more than he can chew.”
“Serve him right, for stealing her away.” Elisa got choked up, and Ladd put his arm on her shoulder.
Aidan watched them disappear into afternoon haze. Princess nibbled his wounded fingers, and jerking away, he fell into the dust.
“Do right!” Garnett’s voice, a dead voice called to him.
As if missing Redwood wasn’t enough torment, he had to have her mama on him too. Leaning against the house to stand up, he blubbered all over hisself.
“You know how they sit a horse.” Garnett’s sssss went on like a snake hiss. Princess’s ears perked up too. “Have mercy!”
“Who goin’ have mercy on me?” Aidan stumbled to his last jug and lifted it to his lips, spilling some liquor as he guzzled till it was empty. He dropped the jug and almost blacked out, but he still wasn’t drunk enough to blot out the dead voice.
“How they sound all liquored up! Do right!” Garnett was louder than ever in fact.
All his jugs were empty. Giving his money to Ladd and Elisa to hold was sensible, but why’d he go and tell Leroy to refuse him a jug or two on credit?
“Evil don’t take a rest,” Garnett hollered.
Aidan covered his ears and crept in the back door. A cross breeze set the bottle tree to tinkling up front. He stumbled over a kettle into the kitchen table and almost knocked his banjo onto the floor. He swung it above his head, batting the air.
“Hell fever and damnation had to be the Baptist preacher.” A haint quoting what he wrote in his journal—if that didn’t beat all, she seemed to be carrying on right outside his front door. The spirit-catching bottles tinkled with her breath.
Aidan tottered onto the porch. “Preacher fell down his own well.” He banged his banjo into the colored glass. He was ’bout to smash it against a post, but Princess was braying like a banshee. Him acting a fool never spooked the mule like that before.
“Twisted-hand Sheriff Harry was carrying a torch,” Garnett said. She couldn’t have been more than a few feet behind him.
Aidan’s heart pounded, and blood banged at his temples. He swirled at the creaky sound of rotten floorboards fixing to give way. In broad daylight, Garnett Phipps was sitting in the busted rocker on his porch, swaying back and forth in a broken rhythm. She was shades of black, white, and gray, like a photograph ’cept for a purple orchid in her swamp-grass hair and sparkly red flecks in dark eyes. Her skin was little more than mist. The dress she wore was a muddy river, flowing from her neck to her bare feet and back up again. A mojo bag dangled at her waist, burning fiery red, same as her eyes. She showed him a mouth of pearly teeth and held a misty hand toward him. Aidan lowered the banjo. He wanted to hug her. He wanted to hightail it out of there.
“You didn’t need to see their faces, Aidan. You know who they are.” She gestured for him to come closer.
He couldn’t move. “Peanut farmer shot hisself in the head.”
“Bringing up the rear and ready to skedaddle out of there was a tall, broad figure—Hiram Johnson or Jerome Williams.” Her voice got softer. She broke off rocking. “Am I lying?” She sounded a moment like Redwood.
Riders in dark robes tore through flames, racing by Garnett and off into the fields. A black stallion reared, almost throwing its pale-faced rider, who turned toward Garnett. The orchid in her swamp-grass hair caught fire.
“Hiram’s just a stand-around-and-do-nothing coward, like me.” Aidan took a step closer. “Must’ve been Jerome, hanging in the back.”
“They all swore an oath.” Garnett stood up. Her breath was swamp stink, greenbrier, dead breath. “You heard it too, didn’t you, up in your hunting perch? They swore to leave the colored in peace, leave my family in peace. Else the boneyard baron would claim each one of their sorry souls long ’fore their time. Look at Jerome.”
“What you want? Me to be a murderer too?” Aidan shouted.
Garnett drew her mouth to a thin bloody line.
Aidan looked down. “I came too late to stop Jerome, to save your gal, or save myself.”
“The dead be counting on the living. You’re all we got left.”
The rocker moved back and forth. Garnett had vanished, but a purple orchid was on the seat. The fire hadn’t made it no nevermind. Aidan gingerly picked the flower up, sat in the rocker, and hugged his banjo.