Chicago, 1910
Aidan sat up in George Phipps’s 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 of 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’s 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, nightriders, 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 clubwoman. 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 into 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 till 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.
“A hoodoo gal what can conjure herself here and there got an unfair edge,” he said.
“You a conjure man, ain’t you? Tracking haints, catching demons in bottles, talking to the ancestors, and I done heard you sing, so you can’t lie.”
In his wild youth, Aidan had pleasured many a woman, even loved a few. He usually got as good as he gave. He’d only really been ’fraid the first time. Even then he forgot fear quickly, or perhaps named fear passion. This night in a bedroom fit for a king, in a noisy, smelly city on the other side of the world from his home, with a woman that was swamp fire, a queen of Dahomey, a hoodoo wonder dancing with lions and bears, all his backcountry passion terrified him. He had never loved anyone this much.
“I ain’t goin’ stand still and make it easy for you,” she said.
“So get going.” On the move she’d be easier to find, but he wasn’t telling her that.
Tracking her breath, her warmth, her sweet scent, he headed toward the sound of bare feet on the carpet. He slipped his hands around her belly. She was tense as a banjo string. Her heart pounded as if she’d been running.
“You smell of railroads and motorcars.” She shied away from him, but not too far. “Making me itch.”
He wiggled out of his scratchy shirt and pants, and she came close again. The cool touch of her skin made him ache and burn, as did the softness of her tiddies, pressing against his chest with each breath. His leg slipped between her thighs. Her hair was soft as peach fuzz, the skin buttery, and as she moved/danced slowly against him, his manhood swelled against her hips. She was suddenly still, breathless.
“Are we going too fast?” he said. “Six years between us, and—”
“I don’t know how long I been wanting you and so ’fraid you didn’t want me.”
“I been loving you since probably before I should have.”
She grunted at this confession. “Given the male appetite,” she sounded like Clarissa, “you’ve shown great restraint.” She flinched. Her words hung in the air.
He touched a soft cloth on her shoulder and another at her waist. “What’s this?”
“Bandages. That she-lion got a tongue like sandpaper. She licked a bit of my shoulder off and clawed my ribs.” Her voice cracked. “She-cat didn’t mean no harm, dying and couldn’t help herself.”
“You must have been a great comfort to her in the end.”
She took a step back.
“Where you going? Don’t…”
His daddy told him, a woman who wants you isn’t waiting for you to fall down and fail. She wants to make the world new again, with you. It’s nothing you can know till you do it together. Standing in the dark, the house shifting and sighing ’round them, he didn’t know what Redwood wanted.
A wild-eyed black stallion galloped down the empty night street, pausing at Redwood’s window to rear and neigh. Aidan worried it was a haint ’bout to bust in the room, till a man grabbed the loose reins. Redwood took a ragged breath. She was lost somewhere and standing right next to him.
“What’s wrong?” He stepped close.
She grunted at his foolish question. He didn’t need an answer. Jerome was riding her in the dirt, breaking a hole in her heart. She wanted to conjure herself far from that.
“Don’t go,” he whispered, “don’t go where I can’t follow.” He kissed her neck, and she trembled like before.
“You remember the World’s Fair?” she said.
“How could I forget? They tamed lightning into E-LEC-TRI-CI-TY. We danced to the music of Cairo Street—or you did, shimmy-shaking like a snake charmer, then we looked out on the whole world from atop the Ferris Wheel.”
“We had us a time, didn’t we? From the swamp to the White City.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “Bugs tried to eat you alive.”
“Wasn’t so bad. You read me the story of Okefenokee.”
“Walking down the Midway Plaisance, you was as pretty as them royal ladies from Abyssinia.”
“Dahomey. You said they were regular folks, like us.” Redwood’s storm hand was against his chest. “Sometimes, I don’t believe we were really at the Fair.”
“I got proof.” He kissed the cleft of her collarbone. “We can do that together again.”
“What?” She lifted his face to hers.
“Dream up what we want to do with ourselves and believe in it.”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was a trickle of water in a streambed going dry. “I just don’t know anymore.”
“We can make that all-colored romance, with you the leading lady,” he said. “Sounds grand.”
“Ain’t it close to first fruits? Who we got to forgive? When can we light the sacred fire anew?”
“Don’t.” His voice shook. “Don’t make fun.”
“I’m not.” Her fingertips traced the blood flowing from his heart, down ’cross his stomach, to his groin. She wiggled her fingers through curly hair and soft skin, holding the weighty stones of his manhood, and then she kissed him. He was startled by her boldness and fell back on to the bed with her landing on top of him. The bed rocked and swayed with the weight of them.
“I know a thing or two,” she said. “Sang in a bordello and learned all sorts of tunes.”
“I guess you did.”
He reached down and kissed her mouth, his tongue tangling up her next words, his hands searching ’cross her skin, following blood and shivers to the source of pleasure, but when he found his way inside her, she was vanishing again.
How did they hold onto each other and trust when the going got rough?
He stopped abruptly. “You still with me?”
“I wish.” She mumbled something he couldn’t hear, close as he was.
He wanted light. He wanted to see her face. “Is it me? Something I’m doing?”
“No. I thought, I hoped for…”
“What?” He slid out of her.
“You goin’ run away from me now?”
He smacked the wall with the palm of his hand. “What you say?”
She flinched away from him. He pressed his forehead into the headboard ’stead of cussing out loud. It took a whole lot of breathing to pull the desire back. Hot and feverish, he bumped into her ice-cold foot. She was trembling.
“The bed ain’t big enough for us to be so far apart,” he said. “I’m your friend, remember, since that day you caught the storm.”
Hearing that didn’t seem to help. She curled up in the pillows and moaned. Aidan sucked air in and out till he had enough to hum the melody he sang earlier. Calmer, he kissed her shoulder, then gathered her in his arms and rocked her.
“I’m no baby like Iris.”
“I know. A grown woman need tender too.”
He sang to her, wondering if she might cry again or what, but she didn’t do anything. She was so quiet and still, he just ’bout couldn’t stand it. Then, when his throat went dry and his voice was ready to give out, she added a harmony. Singing, they drifted into sleep.
Banging on the door startled Aidan awake. He looked into Redwood’s sleepy eyes as in strode Clarissa without a by-your-leave. She wore a knee-length skirt over loose pantaloons and no corset under a colorful jacket—bicycle clothes.
“Mr. Wildfire … I … uh … Well now.” Clarissa swallowed shock as Aidan clutched the blanket to his neck. She’d only expected to find Redwood.
“A woman needs your help, baby won’t come,” Clarissa said. “I’ve arranged an automobile from Mr. Wildfire’s Persian friends.”
On a raggedy bed in a tenement in Chicago’s Black Belt, George’s other woman, June, sweated and groaned, her stringy yellow hair a knotted mess. She clutched a mojo pouch of good-luck charms that Redwood had given her: nine strands of devil’s shoestring and a lodestone from a lightning strike. Clarissa and Abbaseh, the Persian woman Aidan said was a musician, stood at the head of the bed, holding June’s arms, breathing with her. Redwood was crouched between her legs. The room was smaller than it looked from on the railing. The ceiling was low; the dirty walls leaned in too close. June’s three children, two boys and a gal, watched anxiously but quietly from a doorway. Iris hovered over them, stroking the youngest gal who was ’bout to break out in tears. She looked at Redwood with naked hope.
Redwood hung her head. June’s baby didn’t want to come. Redwood couldn’t argue with that tonight. Why be born to lies and misery? You could be beloved by the spirit in everything; you could pull pain, snatch lightning out the sky, ride comets through the night, even hear the ancestors telling their stories to the wind, and still, it wouldn’t be enough to save you. With all her hoodoo power, could Garnett Phipps really change anything, make anything better? Acting, singing her heart out, healing folks, Redwood had been running. Running won’t set you free. What about her soul?
Aidan Cooper had walked back into her life with Baby Sister, both of them grinning at who she used to be. Lying in bed, Aidan hugged and squeezed a memory; he kissed the gal who rode the Ferris Wheel, had fireworks in her eyes, and conjured a bright destiny. Redwood wasn’t that gal anymore. She’d snapped a man’s neck and turned into a haint. She didn’t dare feel herself, didn’t dare feel Aidan. Running won’t set you free.On the loose and-a acting brave, in shackles you just don’t see.
“Don’t worry,” Clarissa said to June. “Redwood Phipps is a powerful midwife. She knows just what to do.”
“Well…” Redwood had too much on her mind to be bringing a new life into the world. And this baby was turned the wrong direction, kicking with fat feet against being born to misery. Redwood wiped at sweat dripping into her eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe you should get a doctor. Dr. Harris—”
“Naw,” June said. “Doctor kill my last baby. I ain’t having him kill another one.”
“Dr. Harris is not a murderer. Don’t talk like that,” Clarissa said.
“Ain’t his fault. Somebody jinx me.”
Redwood glanced at Clarissa and then back to June’s frightened eyes.
“I found cross marks, wavy snake lines of salt and red pepper, hemp rope, and sulfur, buried at the bottom of my steps. I don’t know how long me and everybody who come here been walking over that mess.”
The struggling baby kicked Redwood’s searching fingers, and June groaned at a painful contraction. By the time Dr. Harris got here, this child would be dead, maybe June too. Redwood had to clear her mind and focus, like for a show with a difficult audience, or else … “From what I feel, this baby’s coming in by the foot. That ain’t no jinx. It just happens.” She cracked an egg into a glass half-full of water, careful to keep the yolk intact. She dropped a needle in it. “We need you on your hands and knees.”
“You doing a good spell for me?” June said.
“What you holding in your hand?” June waved the mojo charm at her. “See what I’m putting under the bed? If someone want to do you wrong, this’ll take away their anger.” Redwood set the glass along with Aidan’s Maskókî hunting knife under June’s belly. “Can’t pull the pain, you got to feel what you’re doing, but cutting through it. Ain’t no evil spirits goin’ touch your child.”
“They say you a witch, but sometimes that’s what a good woman need,” June said.
“I guess so.” While Redwood washed her hands in hot soapy water, Clarissa and Abbaseh wrangled June into the new position.
“What y’all doing? I ain’t a cow dropping my calf in the barn.”
“Ain’t nobody thinking that,” Redwood said. “Better for the baby.”
“Robert if it’s a boy. Violet if it’s a girl,” June said. “Oh sweet Jesus. I gotta push.”
“Then go on. You feel wide open,” Redwood said.
June’s water broke and the baby’s toes appeared. After twenty hours of hard labor, the baby’s legs and buttocks came so easily. “I’m pushing,” June said.
“Yes you are.” Redwood supported the baby’s bottom as she spiraled out of her mama.
“It’s a girl,” Clarissa said. “God has blessed you with a baby girl.”
“That’s my Violet coming,” June shouted.
Redwood let Violet find her way, gently untangling her arms and guiding them out before her head. With a final push from June, Violet’s wrinkled face emerged. June turned over and sank into the bed. Redwood held up the newborn, and June cried a gush of tears and snot. Violet’s sister and brothers cheered and then hugged each other. Iris beamed at them. Clarissa cut the umbilical cord, and with a final contraction the afterbirth came. Redwood tapped the baby’s back. Nothing happened.
Abbaseh spoke in Farsi. “This baby is not breathing.”
Redwood cleared the gal’s mouth, listened to her heart.
“What you saying?” June gripped Abbaseh. “Is my Violet dead?” She grabbed Clarissa. “What she say?”
With a breech birth, a baby could get tangled in the cord and suffocate. A woman labored a child into the world only to bury it. Redwood had seen this happen too many times. She didn’t have the heart to say this to June.
“I don’t want my baby to die,” June shouted. “Don’t let my Violet die. You said no evil spirits could touch her. Didn’t she say that?”
Redwood squirmed. Subie always told her, don’t ever say you can do what you can’t.
“Who want to cross a little baby like that?” June repeated this over and over as Clarissa and Abbaseh held on to her.
Wrinkled little Violet looked so peaceful, so beautiful. Why mess in that? Why—
“Violet ain’t gone yet,” Iris said. “She just not quite here. You gotta call her.”
“Call her?” Redwood sputtered. How was she supposed to do that? “Well, Mama say, blow breath into ’em if they don’t wanna take it themselves.”
“Do it then! Blow! Do something!” Everybody jumped at Clarissa’s harsh tone. “You can’t let bad spirits have this child.”
Abbaseh nodded. The children stood silently in the doorway. Iris had her arms ’round the little one. Through the window Redwood spied the boneyard baron, ambling down the street, tapping a diamond-tipped cane on cobblestone.
“You gotta hurry,” Iris said. She saw the baron too.
June cried and thrashed. “Please.”
You can act, can’t you? Subie’s voice made the baron waver. Act like you believe what you’re doing and you will.
Redwood blew in Violet’s mouth several times. “Violet, if you swinging between life and death, trying to make up your mind, this place be ready for you. This place is your home. This place got good people who been waiting on you, who love you, your mama, your sister, your brothers, all of us, and that sure do make life beautiful. Don’t go on your way till you know love.” Redwood’s throat clenched. She’d been talking to herself as much as to Violet. She blew again.
A distraught June slapped Clarissa in the mouth trying to struggle out the bed. Abbaseh managed to hold both of June’s arms while Clarissa stumbled away from her. Redwood was ready to blow one more time, but Violet opened her eyes and gurgled.
“She’s alive,” Clarissa said.
Violet’s powerful voice filled the room.
“What I tell you?” Iris said.
Trembling, Redwood placed Violet on her mama’s belly.
Chattering away, Clarissa, Iris, and Abbaseh raced down the steps into the alley outside June’s place. Redwood was moving slow. She paused in the doorway, feeling heavy, exposed, all inside out. The boneyard baron pushed an empty swing on the porch. It banged her hip and went still. “No one for you to claim this time.”
Clarissa came back for her. “What a pretty speech you used to call Violet. Poetry. What do you mean, you’ve lost your good magic?”
Redwood grabbed Clarissa’s arm. “What you do against June?” Clarissa squirmed but Redwood wouldn’t let her go. “Tell me.”
“I asked you for a charm to hold George. You wouldn’t give me one,” Clarissa said.
“I won’t help you cross nobody.”
“Mambo Dupree said it was just to keep George in my bed instead of June’s.”
“That woman ought to be ashamed of herself. Shame on you too.”
“I know it’s not Christian, and I would never, never buy a charm to hurt that woman or her baby, but I was desperate.”
Redwood sighed. “Violet coming that way wasn’t your fault.”
“Really?” Clarissa sniffled. “It could have been.”
“You have to talk to George. Work this out. You can’t conjure nobody into loving you the way you want.”
“Is that so? Mr. Wildfire was in your bed the first night.”
Redwood’s face stung. Clarissa might as well have slapped her.
“Oh my goodness.” Clarissa covered her mouth. “He didn’t change anything for you, did he? You still can’t—” She waved her hand.
“You should have knocked.” Redwood stormed away.
“I did, but, I’m sorry. I … don’t know how to be anymore.”
They hurried to catch up with Iris and Abbaseh who were already in the motorcar.
“Why you carting colored folk ’round?” Iris said as Mr. McGregor opened the door for Clarissa.
“No one else would hire me. I have a dark past,” he replied.
Iris looked enchanted. “Will you tell me ’bout it sometime?”
“You certainly shall not, Mr. McGregor.” Clarissa put on a face for everybody’s questioning eyes. “You must thank your husband for loaning us his automobile in the middle of the night,” she said to Abbaseh, who smiled in reply.
“Is the wee one all right then?” Mr. McGregor asked.
“Why yes, she is.” Clarissa stepped inside. “My sister-in-law is the best midwife I have ever seen.”
Redwood fell to her knees. She shoved her fingers in the gravel. A sudden wind blew dirt through her hair as she clawed the ground and split her skin on stone. Stunned, Mr. McGregor offered her a hand, but she smacked him away. Iris squealed. Abbaseh jumped up, speaking Farsi too fast for sense. Redwood rubbed dirt against her chest. She couldn’t stop herself—felt like a demon had taken her over.
“What’s wrong?” Mr. McGregor kept his distance.
“She’s always dramatic.” Clarissa stepped with Abbaseh back out of the car.
“That’s how show people are,” Iris said to Mr. McGregor, leaping by him too.
“What are you carrying on for?” Clarissa hissed in Redwood’s ears. “Your power has come back to you.” It took her, Abbaseh, and Iris to get Redwood standing back up. Mumbling something strong, Abbaseh brushed off the dirt and plucked tiny stones out of Redwood’s skin.
“We best be going on.” Mr. McGregor glanced ’round the dark alley. “People here have a hungry eye.”
“I’m fine.” Redwood pulled away from them. “I said I’m all right.”
Abbaseh and Clarissa reluctantly took their seats.
“Come on,” Iris said, slipping her arm through Redwood’s. “I know you can get to the other side of sad.”
“Show people?” Redwood hissed at her. “How could you talk such foolishness?”
Iris whispered too. “I was just trying to help.”
“Well, don’t. Not that way.”
“They don’t know what it mean to have the baron challenge you,” Iris replied, her lips trembling. “Miz Subie say, a conjure woman risk everything doing a death-defying spell.”
“No denying that.” Besting the baron should’ve put Redwood in a better mood. “Sorry, I don’t mean to scold you.” Iris got her onto the leather seat while Mr. McGregor cranked the motor. Without mentioning the blood she was dripping on the fancy interior, he sped away.
After several blocks of silence Clarissa said, “Speak your mind. You’ve given everybody a terrible fright, and they would sorely like to help you.”
“I’m sorry,” Redwood said. “I don’t know what to tell you.” There was a trick on her body, and she didn’t know how to get it off.
“Sister has a dark past, like Mr. McGregor.” Iris kissed Redwood’s bloody palm. “I wish I could do like you, heal with a kiss, but I can’t.”
“What good is power if you can’t save your ownself?” Redwood said.
Chicago swallowed time up. Everything in the city went too fast. A week gone, and what did Aidan have to show for it? A thousand miles from Georgia, and nightriders were still haunting him and Redwood both. Mountainous dark clouds rolled over the sun and turned daylight dull gray. Aidan didn’t usually read fortune from nature, but rumbling thunder and sharp wind set him on edge as he and Redwood marched through the gate of the motion picture factory.
“Hold up.” He set down a raw wood rocking chair and a painted altar and worked the circulation back into his hand. He had a bad feeling ’bout coming to see Mr. Payne. Rich white folks always thought he was trash—so what good would it do Redwood to have him along?
A tent blew over, and soldier-actors ran from their open-air battle scene to take cover. Enemies no more, they huddled together against the coming downpour.
“That storm come up out of nowhere,” Aidan said.
People stared at him and Red all ’cross Chicago town, and now they gawked here too. Aidan laughed in the pinched face of a young white actor made up like a wounded Union cavalryman. What could this fellow possibly be imagining that was so awful he had to scowl and mutter at them? Aidan had expected more from northerners.
Redwood didn’t pay the cavalryman—or any of them—no mind. She marched on like a queen of Dahomey. She had on blue satin and silks that surged ’round her hips. A blue lace blouse rustled with each breath. Her hair was done up like a bouquet of flowers; her face was painted with the hues of sunset. Aidan wore a suit Clarissa had borrowed from George. It was the latest fashion for rich gents, fine cloth and a clean line. George had more bulk than Aidan, but Clarissa tailored it to fit him with a few stitches here and there. Fancy new shoes were light on his feet, giving a real bounce to his step.
“I guess we are a spectacle,” Aidan said.
Redwood stopped midstride and turned to him. He almost ran her over. “You sure you not mad at me?” She sounded mad herself.
“Your third time asking,” Aidan replied. “You want me to be mad? Would it help?”
“No. No. I just—”
“I’m a mean drunk with an awful temper. I can get so mad I don’t remember what I’ve done.” He pulled out Subie’s medicine tin and put a pinch of powder in his mouth. “You just ain’t seen it.”
“You don’t scare me.”
“Good. It’s mutual.”
“Besides, all that Crazy Coop nonsense is behind you, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He grimaced. The nasty medicine took the taste out his tongue.
“Really?” She grabbed the hand holding the tin. “I bet you want a drink right now.”
“Big difference between wanting something real bad and doing it.”
She let go of his hand. “Yes. Yes, there is.”
“I ain’t goin’ fight with you, Miz Redwood. Fighting won’t do us no good. Believe me, ’cause I done plenty of fighting.”
Drops of rain splashed her eyes. “I couldn’t bear his child growing in me.” She spoke in his ear. “Now maybe I can’t have nobody’s baby. Is that the woman you want?”
“No children?” Aidan shuddered in spite of hisself. “You certain?”
“No, but only thing certain in this world is death.”
“I only been here a week and you trying to drive me away?”
“I ain’t trying to drive you nowhere.”
“Yes, you are. Why?”
Her breath sparked. She looked angry enough to catch fire.
“It’s that business with Jerome. ’Cause I didn’t get there in time, ’cause I didn’t—”
“Shame on you. How could you think I blame you for what he did? Or for what they did to Mama?”
Despite feeling shamed of this very thought, Aidan kept staring her in the eye.
“Don’t be using me to feel bad ’bout what you ain’t done in this world.”
“I tole everybody you run north with Jerome to get married in New York City.”
“I know you a conjure man to get ’em to believe that lie.”
“It was easier than you think.”
A tiny white ball whizzed over their heads and startled them apart. Behind Redwood, two Sioux men in war bonnets and battle regalia used round wooden paddles to bat a ball back and forth on a tabletop. Unconcerned with the weather, several other Sioux warriors watched the game with cavalrymen and two Russian Cossacks in dress uniform. An older Indian man in street clothes nodded at Aidan. It was the fellow he’d met at the train station coming into Chicago. Aidan nodded back.
“Walter Jumping Bear and them are shooting a stagecoach raid and a massacre,” Redwood said. “They gotta wait till the sun come back.”
“Who wanna see all that?” Aidan muttered.
Redwood balled up her storm hand. “What if I’m bad for you, Aidan?”
“Let’s go on in.” He couldn’t hear such talk. He’d rather fight with her. “Payne’s waiting for us.”
Inside a crammed office, reels of film, jars of chemicals, and broken cameras looked ready to fall on Mr. Payne, a tall, gangly white man with fierce Abraham Lincoln features. “An all-colored romance? Well, a pirate picture could be good.” Payne dodged Redwood to reach Aidan, who stood between the raw wood rocking chair and painted altar. Payne inspected his handiwork. “You’re a fine carpenter and fast, Mr.…?”
“Cooper,” Redwood said. “Mr. Aidan Cooper.”
Aidan eyed Redwood. “Pirate loves the schoolteacher. It’s a grand idea.”
“Irish? Irish do good stage work.” Payne talked on top of Aidan. “The wood was knotty and warped, but you got around that.”
“Colored pay their nickel same as everyone else,” Aidan said.
“Don’t you think colored people are funny, Mr. Cooper?” Payne laughed till a cough racked him. “You have to admit though, it is hard to take ’em in a serious story.”
“Well, sir, I think that’s just what you’re used to. I read a lot of serious colored stories, and—”
“You’re a sharp fellow. I didn’t think you’d get it done on time.” Payne ran his finger along the altar. “What part of Georgia are you from?”
“I come up from Peach Grove. It’s kinda out of the way.”
“I’ll bet.” Payne chuckled. “Up here in Chicago and back East, folks got a taste for chicken coop comedies, for cowboys and Injuns, just like in Georgia.”
“Folks got a taste for a lot of things,” Redwood said, as if spitting out poison.
Payne sat heavily in the rocker. “What the hell can I do about that?”
“William Foster is going after all the colored vaudevillians. They’re happy to work with a colored director, but his picture ain’t ’bout adventure or romance or something grand.”
Payne snapped at her. “If that Negro Foster doesn’t want you, I hear Selig’s moving his operation to California, chasing sunny days where he can shoot all year long. He might have you.”
“Why fire me and Saeed? I had that she-lion in her cage, no call to shoot her dead.”
“Who said anything about that darned lion?”
Payne and Redwood glared at one another. Her silk and satin skirt turned to a torrent of blue-green water, streaming from her waist to the floor. Stunned, Payne reached for the flowing fabric. Aidan strode between them.
“Miz Redwood couldn’t just stand there and let that she-cat run rampage.”
“Exactly!” Payne said. “The lioness was a rogue even back in the cage. A rogue is no use to us. Better off dead.” With no warning, he hurled the rocker out the window. It landed one story below in front of two cowboys, unbroken.
“Damn,” Aidan said. Redwood claimed Payne didn’t have no sense, but—
“Damn indeed!” Payne hoisted the altar over his head.
The cowboys below shouted and cussed, then hushed when they saw Payne fuming in the window. They dodged the furiously rocking chair like it might bite ’em. Even after such harsh treatment, not a screw was loose. Take more than a short fall to bust something Aidan made.
“See. I can do pretty and sturdy.” Aidan gritted his teeth.
“We don’t need sturdy, Mr. Cooper.” Payne dumped the altar. It fell on its side intact. “We need things that look good and break easy.”
Redwood rolled her eyes and sucked her teeth, but she did settle down. Her skirt was satin again, yet still cold as storm water when it brushed against Aidan’s fists. She put a cool hand on his clenched shoulders. Aidan wanted to slug Payne, wanted to feel his face break under his knuckles, wanted to slam into his gut and take his last stinking breath. Fighting would sure feel good, even if it wouldn’t do no good.
“Mr. Cooper can build it any way you want.” She slipped her arm through Aidan’s, cozier than she’d gotten in days.
“Is that so?” Payne lifted an eyebrow.
“Yes, sir.” Aidan wasn’t flying off the handle like a broken axe head over this fool.
“I’ve hired more woodsmiths than I know what to do with.” Payne had the nerve to sit down behind his desk and grin at them. “I’m jealous, Mr. Cooper.”
Aidan scowled, ready to hurt him for sure if he thought of laying a finger on—
“Sequoia says you’re an actor too.” Payne grinned. “You’ve got a bushel of talent.”
“I’ve—I’ve done some time singing for folks, and I guess I could act if I had to.”
“You’ve got the right look, wild, dark, handsome. You got a lot of spirit too, I can see that. A moment ago you were ready to slit my throat with that knife on your hip. It was all over your face, don’t deny it. I guess I got Sequoia to thank for the blood still in my veins.” He laughed. “That’s a bit of an exaggeration.”
Aidan didn’t deny wanting to murder him. “I heard tell you were coughing yourself to death, till Sikwayi pulled the chill out your lungs.”
Payne sighed. “You have a face for the camera, Mr. Cooper. You could play a half-breed Injun or a robber who ain’t so bad. Robin Hood’s a story I’d like to make. Have you heard of Robin Hood?”
“Stealing from rich lords to give to the poor,” Aidan said.
“I never believed that story,” Redwood muttered.
Payne ignored her. “How are you with a sword, Mr. Cooper?”
“I can handle a shotgun and a knife. I never had cause to pick up a sword.”
“Are you good on a horse?”
“He can ride anything,” Redwood said.
“Real Wild West Injuns can’t do a character. Got to have an actor for that.” Payne chortled. “Give the audience a handsome rogue dashing about.”
“I guess they don’t want a Seminole farmer riding the rail to his ladylove.” Aidan stared at Redwood.
“Is that another harebrained story idea?” Payne looked confused. “I thought you wanted to do pirates.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Redwood said. “You know what folks want to see.”
“I do.” Payne winced. “The way of the world is against us, Sequoia,” he said softly.
“Us?” Redwood let go of Aidan and strode close to Payne. “What us?”
“People are running shy from working here. I’m in a bad fix. I lost two actors last night in a brawl. Both shot and killed, over a … woman.” He escaped Redwood and sidled up to Aidan. “I pay thirty-five dollars a week,” he said and then whispered, “forty if you can get Sequoia to call the hoodoo spell off. That’s generous.”
Aidan turned to Redwood. “I could get us a piece of land and farm. You could heal folks. We don’t need to do this.”
“A man could take care of a family in high style with that money. Tell Mr. Cooper he won’t find a better deal.” Payne laid a week’s salary in a clear space on his desk. “That’s forty-five dollars I’ll give you in advance. Fifty a week if you work out.”
Aidan never had anybody try to bribe him out of his good sense. “I don’t know.”
Redwood circled Payne. “I can’t tell you what to do, Aidan, but, save enough and we can make our own picture. White folk got adventure and romance. Why’re we stuck in the coon academy?”
She turned to Aidan, looking like a young fearless gal on a rainy hilltop, reaching out her hand to grab the lightning. Hadn’t he promised to believe in her? Even with her heart torn up, even hurting bad, wasn’t she holding on to him?
“If it mean that much to you,” Aidan mumbled.
“Don’t you just love her?” Payne shook Aidan’s hand. “I need you to start today.” Sunlight streamed through the window. “Storm’s over. We got several good shooting hours left. I’d appreciate you getting us back on schedule, Mr. Cooper.”
Before Aidan knew what he was doing, before he could register how bad it’d make him feel, he was half-naked, sitting on a horse with a painted face and feather headdress ’bout to ambush a wagon train of white settlers. Behind him was Walter Jumping Bear and a band of similarly ferocious savages. Nicolai nodded from above his camera. Aidan whooped, raised a spear, and charged.