Peach Grove, 1903
“What I tell you?” Redwood poked surly Brother George in the ribs. “We goin’ reach the swamp a good while ’fore dusk now.”
He batted her hand away. “Just ’cause you finally be sixteen, you know it all, huh?”
They stood at a crossroads on a gentle rise of land only an hour or two east of the Okefenokee Swamp. Doc Johnson had carried them in his buggy from Peach Grove to Silver Bluff. Redwood had promised him healing roots from the swamp and jumped onto the comfortable leather seat before George could refuse the ride.
“Much better than walking all that way in this heat,” Redwood said.
“So,” George muttered. “I still don’t have to like it.”
She smiled. “You just ornery.”
Silvery moss shimmered. Dust from the retreating carriage glinted like gold. Despite the afternoon’s enchanted edge, the air was sweaty and the sun mean.
“And you grinning in that cracker’s face the whole ride,” George muttered.
“Doc’s a nice man.” Redwood squeezed Leaves of Grass and The Awakening to her chest. Doc loaned her two books this time. Good thing—she’d run through Miz Subie’s stash.
“Nice? Ha! You think everybody’s nice. No matter what.”
“Naw. You got people fooled, Brother, but I know you ain’t nice.”
“If they pat your head and give you nonsense to read, you’ll—”
“You read every page I do.”
George knocked the books into the dust and stormed away. He’d been working too many hours in somebody else’s field. Redwood scooped the books up, carefully brushed the covers clean, and stowed them in her pack. George veered from the road and charged down a path into snarled vegetation. His legs weren’t so long as hers, but when he was in a salty mood, he could march faster through crawling underbrush and domed cypress roots than anybody she knew. Couldn’t nobody keep up with George.
“Road’s not good enough for you?” Redwood stumbled after him. Thick curtains of Spanish moss tried to swallow her. Hefty oak boughs reached out and almost knocked her down. “Wait,” she yelled. Sweat streamed down her belly and under the pack that dug into her shoulder and banged on her hip. Wet tiddies chafed against a rough cotton blouse that seemed to fit fine yesterday, but cut off her breath now. A heat rash bloomed ’cross her chest down to her thighs.
“Since I ain’t nice, you better hurry on up.” George glared at her, meaner than the afternoon sun. Flinty eyes darted ’round his face. His furry new mustache wiggled like a poor creature caught on his lip, trembling before an impending blast of fire breath. Redwood sniggered at the thought of her handsome brother snorting flames and sprouting scaly wings too. He had all the gals in the county whispering and swooning ’cause they didn’t know how he really look.
“Ain’t nothing funny.” George smacked waxy magnolia leaves and charged on.
Big white flowers dipped down and smeared Redwood with pollen and scent. Satiny petals clung to her hair. She paused in the heavy fragrance. Going too fast to keep up with hisself, George stumbled and then pretended to shift his rucksack.
“I ain’t waiting for you,” he said.
“Go on then. I didn’t want to take this way no how. Road’s easier going.” She fanned herself in the shade. “I’ll do fine in the swamp on my own. I ain’t no little child begging you to take me along.” At sixteen, a lot of gals were married, bringing babies into the world, and keeping house. Redwood was a grown woman and didn’t need a testy big brother to chaperone her. “I don’t see why you so mad.”
“What?” George halted and turned. “We lost our land. That make me more than mad.” He stomped toward her, ready to smack her fresh behind for talking foolish. “In the courthouse, white folk say the deed don’t count. They say Daddy and Mama didn’t own nothing. Jerome and Caroline Williams can steal our inheritance away. And colored Peach Grove just laughing at us poor chillun of uppity Raymond and Garnett Phipps.”
“Uncle Ladd treat you better than some men treat they sons. Don’t work you to death, and give you earnings.”
“Twenty-five cents every now and then ain’t goin’ buy us a future.”
“How much do the future cost?”
“You, me, and Iris got to make our own way.” He grabbed her. “How can I do that on nothing? I ain’t no sharecropper.” He squeezed her shoulders together. She didn’t let on how much it hurt. “Raymond Jessup gotta be paying white folk now so he can work his own damn land. I ain’t hiring out to make some cracker rich. I ain’t landing on a chain gang worth nothing to myself even.” He spit words in her face and glowered worse than any fire-breathing dragon she could imagine.
“Who’s telling you to do all that?” Redwood asked. “Mama and Daddy wanted to sell the land and go on up to Chicago town anyway. When they come back from the World’s Fair, they—”
George released her and hit his forehead with the heel of his hand as if she was the dumbest thing living.
“Talk to me if you think I don’t know something.” She rubbed bruised shoulders.
“What you doing, going to the Okefenokee Swamp to hunt roots for? Why don’t you go teach school like Aunt Elisa? They ready to pay you a dollar, dollar fifty a week. You done read every book you can find. You can talk proper when you got a mind to.”
“Aunt Elisa say I can’t do hoodoo conjuring and teach school. It’s a Christian school and they don’t want no truck with the devil.”
“What kind of reason is that?”
“I want to be like Mama was.”
“Tell them fools what they want to hear and do how you want behind they backs.”
Redwood shook her head. “I hate when you talk this way.” Tears filled up the back of her throat. “You scaring me.”
“Don’t you care ’bout something ’sides yourself? Don’t you care ’bout educating colored folk, ’bout Iris, ’bout—” George whirled on his heels and charged away.
Redwood scrambled after him, anger and hurt lending her speed. “I want to go on the stage. Singing and conjuring; that’s a good life.”
“All your talk of being a grown woman and you still don’t know nothing.”
“I can help you and Iris doing that.”
“You living in a dream, gal.”
“Better than living a nightmare. That’s what Miz Subie say.”
“Why Subie got to humor you? Why everybody always humoring you?”
She grabbed his left hand. The knuckles were bruised and caked with blood. “You been in a fight?” His ring finger was twisted and swollen. She caught his darting eye.
He grunted. “Bubba Jackson call Mama out her name, so I—”
“When Bubba goin’ learn better?” She straightened the bent joint. He yelped and tried to pull away. “Stop!” she hissed. Without letting him go, she got Miz Subie’s cure-all from her pack and smeared it over his gashes and bruises. She snapped off a smooth twig and wrapped it against the broken finger. He cussed through gritted teeth. She bandaged the bruised knuckles and pulled as much pain from him as she could. Pulling pain was the first spell Mama taught her. Use your good heart like a lodestone. Feel the whole Earth pulling on a stormy sky, pulling till lightning strike the hilltop. “Sorry if it still hurt. I got to practice. Miz Subie say I’ll be good as Mama someday.” She threw his hurting to the wind.
George stared at the battered fingers like they belonged to somebody else’s hand. “We ain’t even got a horse or mule to our name.” Choking back a sob, he hugged Redwood. “The world ain’t full of good folk who want to lend a helping hand. Doc give you a ride, a book, but he don’t change anything. He just be feeling good ’bout his cracker self.” He sighed, kissed the top of her head, and soldiered on. “We need to get out of this backwater nowhere and go where a man can be a man.”
“Where’s that?”
George dodged a low hanging branch, but didn’t reply.
“Soon, I’ll get paid to take away pain.” She scrambled after him. “You watch.”
Miz Subie trusted Redwood enough to send her off hunting: Culver’s root, orangeroot, rattlesnake’s master, devil’s shoestring, man-root, swamp orchids, floating hearts. A dozen more blurred together in her mind ’cause they was skittish, growing magic that wanted to hide from her and not get plucked, even if she vowed to take only what she needed. Days of hot itchy work, and she might have to come back and do it again, if she got tricked into picking the wrong things or delicate roots gave out and lost the spirit before Miz Subie could get at them. Getting ’round the swamp without a boat would be a trick. Miz Subie say a conjure woman had to make her own way through life. Doc and his buggy was easy, but how was Redwood supposed to conjure a boat? She’d have to know a whole lot more spells to do that.
“… and you could spend your whole life hunting down nothing.” George had been going on a while, and she’d missed most of what he was saying.
“I’m goin’ do fine.”
“Is that a fact or a wish?” He knew her like the back of his breath.
“Hope’s better than a mule, a horse, or a canoe even.”
“Do tell.” He was picking up speed again.
“I’ll make good, and then you won’t need to go and—”
“What, you’ll take care of me?” He spit at a tree trunk and missed.
“You’ll see. Like Mama said. Watching out for each other.”
George tried to ball his hands into fists, but the splint and bandages wouldn’t let him. A startled bird flew past his face, a screeching blur of red and green feathers. A nest toppled onto hard ground. Speckled eggs cracked and oozed cloudy white fluid flecked with yellow and red. A sign, but George fixed his eyes on the dwindling path in the distance.
“Killing them birds just goin’ put you in a worse humor.” Redwood toed the shell.
“Hardly none left to kill. Maybe I done already missed my chance.”
George come out to hunt snowy egrets and purple swamp hens. A company in England was paying thirty-two dollars an ounce and didn’t care ’bout the color of the man doing the selling, long as they got purple jewel feathers and snowy white plumes for high-fashion hats. All over Europe, fancy rich ladies were styling Georgia birds. George didn’t want to waste time taking his sister nowhere. He was determined to get rich. Now.
“You got me started in hunting feathers.” He wagged a bruised finger at her.
“Birds I found were already dead.”
“Folk gotta eat. Folk gotta survive. I don’t see you crusading for chickens. Ain’t nothing wrong with wringing a bird’s neck. I’d rather do that than starve.”
“If you was eating the birds you catch, I don’t think I’d mind.”
“Whether I eat ’em or not, ain’t no difference in how dead the birds be, but a big difference for our lives. On what I earn, I could get a piece of land, a wife—”
“Just ’cause what you say sound good don’t make it right.”
“You trying to tell me these birds be more important than your family?” He burped sour breath in her face.
“See, your stomach’s turning. Miz Subie say it’s bad for your insides to go killing what you don’t need.”
“That’s just her meat pie not sitting right in my belly. Ain’t no sign of nothing.”
“You a bona fide citizen of the future.” Redwood mimicked the principal at the school where Aunt Elisa taught. “Too rational and forward thinking to heed the words of a superstitious ole conjure woman like Subie Edwards, like Mama, huh?”
George swallowed a mouthful of fire breath for sure. She felt it burning in his belly. His deep voice crackled when he spoke. “You won’t have to watch me killing nothing, Miz Know-It-Better.”
Redwood clamped down on more fighting words. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pick at you.” Fussing wasn’t no better than dirt in a wound. George did have a bunch of years on her. What if he actually knew something important that she didn’t? She stretched a hand toward him. He stayed just beyond her reach.
“I’ll take you far as the swamp. Then you be on your own, just how you want.”
That wasn’t what Uncle Ladd told him, but Redwood didn’t argue.
“Sure I’ll marry you.” Aidan blew out the lamp.
Darkness cloaked his shabby house in sultry shadows. It was the middle of a hot night. He was half-naked and pleasantly drunk, and trying to get inside Josie Fields for the third time in a month. Josie had thrown down almost as much moonshine as Aidan. He buried his face in Josie’s sweet-smelling bosom and held on to her firm buttocks for dear life. He might have promised her anything.
“All right.” Josie rode him till the ole bedsprings screeched and quivered. Just when the going was too good to be true, she whispered, “I’m two months pregnant, you see.”
“Whoa, no!” Her confession didn’t stop the climax, but took Aidan’s breath away when he could’ve used a good mouthful or two. The way he counted, it wasn’t his child. Gasping and grunting he managed to add, “That’s a good time to be married.”
“I thought you’d understand.” Josie didn’t claim it was his child. Her fields got plowed regularly, two–three times a day. That was the joke ’round Peach Grove. Aidan didn’t hold good loving against her—his mother would have been proud—but he felt queasy. They were at it again before he could think straight. He curled his tongue ’round a hard nipple and held off busting loose till she was sucking sharp breaths, till she couldn’t stand another second and neither could he. He let hisself go, a torrent of storm water through a gorge. Josie hollered in his ear.
Aidan passed out.
It was hardly morning. Dawn was just a pink slit in velvet dark, and Princess was already fussing in the shed. She was lonely since May Ellen left with Duchess. Aidan was too. His head throbbed so, Princess’s hooves could have been pounding his skull. Sunrise hurt, even with a sheet over his eyes. Aidan’s legs were wrapped ’round Josie’s thighs. His left foot was all pins and needles as he shifted her weight and got his blood flowing. Josie snored and chewed in a dream. He pulled his arm from under her head. Squinting at his dreary room, he blinked sleep out his eyes.
Splotches of sunlight shone through a curtain full of holes as it flapped in a warm breeze. Moths had dined on the thin yellow cotton all winter; spring wind and rain would finish off the remaining tatters. A pink mold was growing on the mirror and dribbled down through decayed okra to the floor. Three books were stacked on Aunt Caitlin’s trunk, looking almost smart as new. He’d fastened Leaves of Grass together again, carving a red leather spine with swamp birds, bears, and Princess grinning—something Doc Johnson would surely appreciate.
Josie farted. It was air mostly and who knew how bad he smelled, but Aidan just wanted her to go. He wished for a hoodoo spell to make her disappear. Course, Redwood was too good-hearted to do him a hot-foot or drive-away spell. Josie’s eyes popped open as if she could hear his uncharitable thoughts.
“I was dreaming ’bout our wedding.” Josie stretched and purred at him. “I bet you could get that colored hoodoo gal to sing something and do us a good-luck spell.”
“Who, Redwood?” Aidan never expected Josie to hold him to a promise he’d made under duress.
“A wedding is the respectable thing to do. Not just the courthouse.” She scowled dark clouds ’cross her rosy complexion.
Aidan scowled back. “I don’t deny that, but…”
Josie never looked too happy with Aidan in the sober light of day. He didn’t much care for her either. She was a handsome woman a lot closer to thirty than he was, with curly hair and curves everywhere else too. A real hard worker, she scratched something from almost nothing without drying up. A plump pink breast flopped in his face, the nipple grazing his nose. Plenty of Josie Fields to make a man feel like a man, even if the man wasn’t sure anymore. But marry? Josie was somewhere to hide from haints and ghosts asking him to have mercy, somewhere to feel good for a moment. Marriage and love and till death do you part, that was something else. Didn’t he regret every time he’d been with her? How would he stand her their whole lives?
Truth be told, May Ellen still had her hands all over his heart.
“You promised.” Josie pulled away. Their sweaty skin stuck together. She had to peel herself off him.
“You really want to go through with that?” Aidan scratched his chin at Josie’s nodding head and pinched lips. What woman in her right mind would say yes to marrying Crazy Coop? “I’m good for a song and a roll in the hay, but everybody know only my mule, my Princess, can stand me over the long haul.” He laughed. Josie didn’t. She must be in a real fix, if he was the only one who could get her out. “May Ellen divorced me for extreme cruelty and drunkenness. The judge declared her a saint for putting up with me as long as she did.”
“I’ve seen how you are drunk.”
“No, you haven’t,” Aidan snarled. Josie flinched and he gulped down rage. “Judge say, praise the Lord there ain’t no children.”
Her cow eyes bulged, like she’d seen a haint. “You trying to wheedle out of marrying me?” She looked ready to cry. Splotches of red spread ’cross her face, belly, and thighs. Hot shame flowed over him. Josie dragged strands of her hair into a knot at her neck. “Everybody say you ain’t worth a damn to yourself or nobody else.”
Aidan couldn’t deny this. He just shook his head at her.
“Why you like this?” Josie grabbed at her clothes.
Before he could say I ain’t never marrying again he remembered the child coming. “You don’t know who the daddy is, do you?” He stuck his legs into dirty pants and ripped the seam at the crotch.
Josie held her head high. “Something spooked you last night. I didn’t see nothing, but you did. That’s when you broke out the jug, so you wouldn’t see nothing else.” She pulled on her drawers under a stained and tattered skirt.
“They lynched a colored fellow over in Greenville,” Aidan said.
“Did you go watch?” She tottered out the bedroom.
“No.” Aidan jumped up and followed her. “Harry Evans did. He had a burnt piece of that poor fellow and was showing it ’round.”
“Maybe that ole sly darky got what he deserve,” Josie said. “You don’t know.”
“Who deserve that? Huh? HUH?”
She waved her hands for him to stop.
His mouth went dry but he couldn’t stop. “You know Harry. Harry usually like him a good lynching. He was in that posse what strung up Garnett Phipps.”
“How you know that?” Josie eyed him, her brows wrinkled, her lips trembling. “Nobody know who did that.”
He grimaced. “After strutting ’round last evening with his souvenir, Harry, he—he wasn’t right. Spooked his horse and had to walk five miles home and he come hollering in the door and then he took a knife to his mother-loving eye. He say haints were crawling in his skull and he aimed to dig ’em out. Threatened to stab anybody who come near him. Doc Johnson had to watch him bleed.”
“Hush!” Josie shouted and startled Aidan quiet. “Who want to hear all that? You gonna spook yourself. I’m sorry I said anything. I just want to know if you a man of your word, if you a decent man.”
Aidan’s legs were just as sturdy as butter. Anybody, please. Somebody do right. He held on to the stove. Have mercy. “So when you want to tie this knot?”
Josie trembled. Tears shimmered at the corner of her eyes as she pulled on her boots. “What you think of a week from tomorrow?”
“So quick?”
“Ma wants me out the house as soon as—”
“What the hell? I can do a week.”
“I want to hurry the wedding up so the baby won’t be born with a cloud of sin over his innocent head.”
“The cloud of sin is over us.”
“I don’t want to be living up under my mama another minute.” She trotted ’round his kitchen, poking and prying like it was hers already. “Is this beat-up ole box what you call a coffee grinder?” Josie filled it with beans. “Won’t take long to get the wedding arranged.”
Aidan nodded. “Well…” Something fluttered from her skirt pocket to the ground. He scooped it up before she could. “What’s this?” AIDAN had been scrawled in what might have been blood on a scrap of cotton.
“Give it to me.” Josie glared at him, eagle eyes now.
“This ain’t blood from a wound, is it?” Aidan shuddered. The cloth felt hot. He almost dropped it.
She held out her hand. “I tole you, I ain’t seen blood for two months.”
He placed the frayed cotton on her palm. “You trying to hoodoo me?”
She stuffed it in her pocket. “If I am”—she moved close, lifted her face, exposing a blotchy throat—“it ain’t working. Spell s’posed to drive a man crazy with love.”
“Love from a spell ain’t love from the heart.”
“Uh-huh.” Josie quivered but didn’t crack.
“Truth sound mean, but…” Aidan sighed. It was too late to take anything back. “Well, I can’t do much to make ready for a wedding. I gotta be gone for a few days.”
Josie hunched her shoulders and turned away. “Fine. I’ll take care of the fixings.” Grinding the coffee, she threw her whole body into each turn, her head bobbing like a purple swamp hen skipping ’cross lily pads.
“You a strong woman,” he muttered.
She grunted at this.
He really did admire her spirit. Maybe he could find love somewhere between them. “You ever seen those swamp birds, underneath all this blue and purple glory, they got big yellow clown feet, so they don’t sink when they run on water?”
“What you talking?” The crank moved along smooth. She grabbed a bucket from by the washbasin. “I’ll bring in some fresh water.” She sauntered past him without meeting his eyes, acting like she didn’t want him ’round his own house. “Go where you gotta go, just get on back here on time.”
“I will do.”
Two hours later, with a banjo slung over his back and a shoulder bag of books banging his side, Aidan set out on Princess for the Okefenokee Swamp.
Even with the sun heading down, it was too hot to see straight. George was still going too fast for Redwood to keep track of skittish moss and roots or even how to find her way home. After three hours of them wandering and backtracking she was lost. The smoke from a pork barbecue filled her mouth with a good taste. She wondered if the people doing the roasting were hospitable souls who might set a plate for two strangers. She swallowed a touch of sadness. This was Saturday evening, and most young folk were sneaking out for music and dancing and maybe loving or whatever you wanted to call that burning itch that didn’t make you want to scratch but—
“Where are them no-good sons of guns? You see how late it’s getting?” Up ahead in a clearing, Iona Richards was stowing jugs of moonshine under a bench and cussing and spitting. She was a big-boned, big-bellied woman in her forties. Everybody said she wore brogans from the Civil War and a rag on her head from Africa. Iona had married Uncle Ladd’s second cousin Leroy who hid a still somewhere. Aidan bought jugs from him. Sheriff had run Iona and Leroy from ’round Peach Grove way. Redwood heard tell they were hiding in the swamp. So this was where George was marching down secret paths to—a good-time gathering before he took off bird hunting.
“Damn guitar-playing con men! I hope they hit Hell hard!” Iona cussed more than anybody Redwood knew, ’cept maybe Aidan.
Lanterns hanging from the pine trees weren’t burning yet, just waiting on the dark to do their magic. The ground was mostly needles and very springy. A barbecued hog steamed and smoked from a shallow pit. Iona’s twin boys sat at a table eating the first corn on the cob. Sweet potatoes, greens, boiled onions, corn bread, and hoppin’ John made Redwood’s mouth water. George paused and grinned.
“S’posed to be here an hour ago. When I see those no-good sweet-talking singers”—Iona held up a big knife—“I’m goin’ skin ’em, starting in the middle.” She went at the hog, slicing off slabs, cutting expertly to the bone. George stood behind her, laughing. Iona slugged him in the chest. “I got a tent if it rains, the best moonshine for miles. Who’s goin’ resist my chicken, my gravy and biscuits, my black-eyed peas and rice?”
“Nobody.” George smirked at Redwood and licked his lips. Hoppin’ John was his favorite. A skillet at the edge of the cook fire spit chicken fat at them. “I heard my sister’s stomach growling half an hour ago.”
“Yeah,” Redwood said.
“Them guitar-playing fools best not cross me,” Iona said.
“You paid those rascals a little something in advance.” George chuckled.
“Not much. Just to sweeten the deal.” Iona shook her head. “If I don’t have bluesmen to get the fever up…”
“You get my fever up every time I’m—”
“Shush. What if Leroy heard you talking nonsense?”
Redwood turned from their teasing. The sun was an ember on the horizon. But dark night doused that so quickly, Redwood gasped. A silver mist hugged the ground. She shrugged off her pack and dropped onto a bench. Sitting, her swollen feet throbbed. The rash on her tiddies flared up, but she didn’t want to scratch now. She’d make a poultice if Iona would let her at a cook fire. Hunger churned up her belly and she didn’t have a nickel. She munched a dry biscuit from her pack. A crowd of young folk and a few gray hairs strolled in on the fog, smiling, slapping bugs. None of them touched the food, despite their hungry hound-dog looks. Fog curled ’round itchy feet. Redwood smiled as they danced a moment with the rising dew.
Iona shook her head and whispered to George. “Why pay hard-earned money to be eating and drinking if there’s no good music to make it go down?”
“You always worry, but they’ll get here,” George said. “These fancy men got to stroll in late. It makes ’em sound better if everybody’s been waiting and waiting.”
A chill breeze from the east had Redwood shivering. She drew the air slowly over her tongue and then spit it out quickly. “Something bad happened near here.”
“Oh yeah. Ha ha ha!” Iona had a gunfire laugh, shoot you right down if you weren’t steady. “You ain’t heard?”
“No, ma’am. We been on the road all day, missed the news,” Redwood said.
“That’s right.” George didn’t look eager to hear.
“Sheriff took a knife and stab his eye, screaming ’bout spooks and haints chasing after him. Bled to death on the kitchen table in his nightshirt.” Iona doubled up in another guffaw. “If ain’t no music, I guess we can dance to that.” She made a ghoul face and flapped broad arms, doing her best spook imitation. She stomped and cavorted through her reluctant customers and ’round the barbecue pit, laughing herself to tears.
Nobody joined in. Sheriff Harry had never been a friend to colored folk, and him going by his own hand was something to celebrate, but dangerous spirits on the prowl was bad news. Haints didn’t mind what color folks’ skin was before raising havoc with their lives.
“Haints won’t chase you if you stop believing in ’em,” Redwood said. Twenty heads turned to gawk at her. George groaned.
Iona quit laughing. “What you know ’bout haints, gal?” Everybody stared now.
“Devil at the crossroads teach you what you want to know: dancing, storying. Mama told me—”
“That’s my little sister.” George sounded proud, but cut her off all the same. “She know something ’bout everything.”
“Is that right?” Beatrice, her skirt riding up her hip, made eyes at George and sashayed over to Redwood. When did she show up? “It’s what you don’t know that’ll get you, gal.” She talked like she knew the secrets of life or at least something juicy Redwood ought to know.
“So tell me what’s what. ’Cause I’d tell you,” Redwood said.
Beatrice puffed out her lips, shook her head, and sauntered away. The dust she raised stung Redwood’s nostrils.
“Where you get off, bumble Bea?” Iona winked at George. “Switching your behind in front of us that way?”
“How do, Miz Iona. How do, George.” Beatrice flounced over to her best friend, Fanny, who was leaning against a dead pine tree, pouting. Fanny was sweet on Bubba Jackson, but he wouldn’t look at her no more. He had his cap set for Beatrice. Of course Beatrice was chasing after George. And George didn’t really want any gal from ’round Peach Grove. He wasn’t in love with nobody but hisself.
Aidan Cooper was Redwood’s secret friend. She could slip off to see him anytime, and they could talk everything to each other and not worry. That counted for a lot, but she didn’t have somebody special, somebody to make her heart dance. She sighed. Didn’t Aidan believe in her though, like a shooting star streaking through the night believed in light? Redwood caught a melody from the wind. She couldn’t have told you where the words come from:
I got a man say he love me true
He is watery deep like the sea and blue
I got a man sail in with the tide
Ain’t looking for a knot let alone a bride
A fellow she’d never seen before, wispy as a dragonfly and midnight dark, joined her, playing spoons. Another fellow strode up close with hazel eyes, a washbasin chest, and fat melon cheeks as he blew a jug. She remembered him from a year ago, a northerner, name of Eddie who sneered at her little tiddies. A third man with a ragged scar on his jaw and burn marks on his hands pulled a guitar from under his arm and found Redwood’s key: Milton, who’d played with Bert Williams and was marked up a bit since last she saw him. Iona’s husband, Leroy, stood behind them with a shotgun. His face was twisting and twitching like always, but he nodded at Redwood’s singing. Couples were dancing the needles and dirt to a dusty haze. George clapped his hands and winced in pain. He tapped his feet and chortled at Redwood who found another verse. She remembered now. Aidan wrote this song for a gal to sing, but Redwood wouldn’t do it with him when he asked her. She’d learned it on the sly though.
I got a man say he ride the sky
He do what he do and won’t tell you a lie
I got a man say he home on time
He just ain’t gonna say if his home be mine
Singing as if possessed by the Holy Ghost, Redwood squinted through heavy-lidded eyes. Couples doing bird dances floated by her. Feathers sprouted on their necks and down their spines, ending in a flourish of flashy tail plumes. Bubba Jackson was a colossal dragonfly with bulging apple eyes and gauzy wings. He buzzed toward hummingbird Beatrice, but butterfly Fanny snatched him. They flitted off between jackrabbits, waddling pigs, and monster grasshoppers springing up to the treetops. Guitar-playing Milton was a great blackbird warbling sweet nonsense as he plucked a giant harp with crystal strings. Redwood was a flash of lightning, sizzling through the mist. She hadn’t done heavy conjuring since before Mama went to Glory—or no, since she caught that storm with Aidan.
“Cut it out.” Dragon George was breathing fire and singed Redwood’s eyelashes. He grabbed her with scaly claws and shook her till her bones rattled. “What’s a matter with you? Mama said don’t play with lightning. You ’llowed to burn yourself up.” Now he was talking ’bout what Mama used to say. “You could do something you can’t undo!”
That scared Redwood for sure. She opened her eyes wide and the bird, bug, and animal shapes faded into regular people who were so drunk on the music, they didn’t even notice the difference. After a last snort of smoke, George let her go, and Redwood made up a new verse for Aidan’s song:
I got a man say he b’lieve in me
Gonna find a way for us both to be free
Hope’s a canoe, take us far from here
Where a man can be a man without no fear
George looked at Redwood like his heart would bust, like for once she knew something good. Iona crossed her arms over her chest and glowered at Redwood and the tardy bluesmen as the song ended and the crowd cheered. “You know, I don’t pay you for carrying on with tone-deaf drifters who can’t tell time, Red. But you and your brother can eat all you want and spend the night in a bed.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Redwood said, thrilled not to be sleeping on hard ground. She looked triumphantly to George, but he wasn’t paying her no mind.
“You’re the gal what hoodooed that bear.” Guitar-playing Milton grinned, stomped his foot, and picked out a new melody. “What can you sing to this?”
“Sorry, Miz Iona. You know I don’t carry a piece of time ’round with me,” said Eddie before whistling in his jug. “Carrying too many tunes.” He shot a furtive look at Leroy, who still cradled the shotgun in his arm.
“How you miss the sun going down? Strut in any later, I wouldn’t be paying you at all.” Iona was smiling though. People flooded in from every direction plunking down dimes, eating and dancing. A nickel only get you one swallow of hooch—Iona’s twin boys were so stingy when they poured, you had to spend a dollar to feel good. A man could spend a month’s wages and go broke in a heartbeat.
Iona squeezed Redwood’s arm. “You sound grand. A voice for Saturday night and to praise the Lord on Sunday.”
Everybody nodded at this, including George. The dragon fire was gone from his breath. Beatrice threaded her fingers through George’s, and Redwood winced. There was never anybody special for her to dance with. Boys didn’t talk to Redwood or even let her catch their eyes—probably ’fraid she’d hoodoo ’em. Nobody at Iona’s dared to look Redwood in the face, ’cept one gal who wasn’t right in the head. Rebecca was tall, had big feet like Redwood, and stood alone shivering under a tree. Not much of a dancer, she come to hear the blues. Rebecca grinned a mouth full of crooked, chipped teeth. Her clapping was off the beat. Redwood felt bad for them both and sang on the new melody:
How do you miss the ole sun going down
Any later, don’t bother coming ’round
As the music picked up, Beatrice and George were dancing just for each other.