Peach Grove, 1904
Wade in the water
See those children dressed in black
God’s gonna trouble the water
They come a long way and they ain’t going back
Redwood mouthed the words with the church choir, leaving a hole in the soprano section. Last time she really sang full out was over a year ago at Aidan’s wedding. She sang herself hoarse then. Standing next to his bride, listening to this very hymn, the poor man looked ready to cry, or maybe he was just realizing what doing right by Josie Fields meant. Redwood wasn’t good for nothing for a month afterward.
Wade in the water
Jordan’s water is chilly and cold
God’s gonna trouble the water
It chills the body, but not the soul
A November chill had taken up residence in Redwood’s lungs, and it didn’t matter how many coats or scarves she wrapped up in. Since Halloween, her arms and legs had been tingling something terrible, prickly fireworks going off under her skin. Her mind was feverish too, wandering like a creek through a swamp, not settling anywhere long.
Wade in the water
Some say Peter, some say Paul
God’s gonna trouble the water
Ain’t but one God made us all
The choir director cut them off at the last chorus. The sopranos sank down on their benches, jostling and poking her. Scrubbing his bald head with a red handkerchief, the choir director fretted at the piano over the wrong notes they’d been singing. Redwood sighed. She’d only had one song in her today—“I’ll Overcome Someday.” The sopranos had to fend for themselves for the rest of the service. Rev. Washington cleared his throat, swallowing the taste of bad music, then he railed against moonshine and lazy, good-for-nothing Negroes who thought the world owed ’em a living.
“Only folk I ever met expecting something for nothing was rich folk,” Redwood muttered what George would say. “Poor folk know they got to break their backs taking care of themselves and lazy rich folk too!”
Two altos stared at Redwood who was talking loud to herself. She clamped her lips and clutched a scrap of paper that Miz Subie had passed to her in front of the church.
“I wrote a list, if ain’t enough time for everything, y’all just find me some man root.” Subie had hurried off before Rev. Washington saw her.
Aidan had invited Redwood for a canoe ride to his secret hut, his chickee, to fix new bottles in the demon-catching tree. He always took care with hoodoo rituals and helped Redwood hunt down roots for Miz Subie’s spells that nobody else could find. Josie didn’t know squat ’bout Redwood going in the swamp with her husband. Nobody ’cept Subie did, but that wasn’t sinning if Redwood didn’t lie. That was keeping a secret.
“I ain’t goin’ let nobody turn me around!” Rev. Washington declared.
Redwood had to agree with him on that.
Wandering through the crisp Sunday morning after church, Redwood stumbled into the ruins of the Hiller plantation. Rock walls, brick chimneys, and stone foundations peeked through silvery grass and orange leaves. Trees, vines, and bushes had claimed the place. Droopy evergreens and dried-out moss looked sad. A hardy ice plant in a sunny spot was still in bloom, purple daisy faces smiling at her.
“Why you come down here? I said meet me up on the road.” Aidan offered Redwood a hand up onto his Princess. “Yankee soldiers torched this place. Killed everybody. Slaves were locked up and burned to death too. Haints ’round here still be mad. Don’t nobody walk this way.” Aidan knew the story of every pile of rocks or stand of weeds for miles around.
“You ain’t scared of those haints,” Redwood said. “Me neither.” She leaned against his back as they rode off. They were quiet, content to be in each other’s company, but melancholy. Princess, however, was stepping high all the way to the swamp.
Rusty cypress needles rained down as a strong wind gusted through the trees. Redwood dipped her paddle in the black swamp water, dodging crimson lily pads and wispy orange leaves. Songbirds feasted on purple berries, coppery fruits, and gingery seedpods hanging from vine trellises ’cross the water. Golden grasses whistled in the breezy sunlight. They didn’t see or hear another soul. (Aidan knew how to avoid any nosy body.) A sleepy-looking bear gurgled at them from a tree branch. He was munching something good. Aidan gurgled back.
“Does he have a scar on his cheek look like a star?” Redwood asked.
Aidan shrugged. “He say, we got to sing our way home. Bring some cheer to November.”
“Did he now?” Redwood laughed.
After stringing up bright-colored bottles at his chickee, they paddled the broken glass that had done the job to a watery crossroads. Aidan threw the shards in the fast-moving stream and they paddled away without looking back.
On the return trip, Redwood let Aidan do all the singing, Irish ballads, blues, and songs he conjured up in the moment. His music snatched the chill out of her chest. Coming ’round the bend toward Princess’s corral, Redwood’s arms ached, but her breath was good enough to join in at the refrain. Coughing took over after that.
“You don’t sound good,” Aidan said. “You taking care of yourself?”
“Of course.” Redwood swallowed a cough. “I’m just restless.” The gate to the corral was wide open. Princess had gotten out. “Where your mule gone to?”
“Home I guess.” Aidan looked worried.
Searching for her, they plowed through Spanish moss that had gone to seed. Tiny orange fruits had split open and spit out hairy filaments. Redwood was covered with the scratchy things and wanted to cuss. She had to blame somebody for the long trek back to Peach Grove. “Walking, we won’t get home till after midnight.”
“Heya now!” Cherokee Will held out sweetgrass and oats to Princess. The mule nibbled at his hands, but every time he took hold of her bridle and hoisted hisself toward her back, she kicked her rear legs and pulled away.
“You trying to steal my mule?” Aidan said. “She don’t like nobody, hardly.”
“She was standing out here by herself.” The old man scratched his bowlegs and fanned his white head with a straw hat. “How would I know she belong to you?”
“I see.” Aidan laughed good-naturedly. “You were trying to rescue her?”
Princess nuzzled Redwood, but kept a wary eye on Cherokee Will.
“What do I need to steal your mule for?” Cherokee Will slapped the hat on his head. “Who are you calling a thief? Any direction you look, that was my daddy’s place. And beyond that, all Indian land.”
“We know.” Aidan hushed him up before he started in ’bout slavery times and how much land and people he owned once.
“You be telling everybody all the time,” Redwood said.
“I am a great elder. I am of this land. You have just arrived.”
Irritated, Redwood jumped on Princess. Aidan was ’bout to leap up behind her, but Cherokee Will broke out wailing. Tears poured down his wrinkled cheeks. He tottered, as if at the edge of a cliff.
“Everybody always making fun. You too, just like the rest. Calling me a thief.”
“I’m sorry.” Aidan grabbed Will so he didn’t fall. “What’s weighing on you?”
“Jerome and Caroline Williams stole my orchard.”
“How’d they do that?” Redwood said.
“I ain’t the only one. Look how they done Graham Wright. His ma is Choctaw. He ain’t nobody to these white folks.”
“They said Graham owed taxes,” Aidan said.
“I’m an old fool, but we were a mighty people once! People to be reckoned with, not people you could beat up with a tax.” Will reminded her of George. “It was said, they shall never become blue, yet now look at me.”
“I see a fine man,” Aidan said. “A man full of good life.”
“Do you think we’ll ever be great again?” Cherokee Will gripped him. “Do I live and die to nothing?”
Aidan glanced at Redwood.
“Of course not.” She sucked down a coughing fit and stared a hole in the sky. “There’s a land of the future with wonders yet to be wrought, and we … we just ain’t reached it yet, but it’s coming.”
“Yes,” Aidan said. “When I was a boy, you told me, on the path we don’t see what’s ahead, but every step we take is a prayer.”
“What else to say to a child?” Cherokee Will groaned.
“Every step’s a spell, conjuring what’s to come,” Redwood said. “You’re painting the next horizon for us.”
Cherokee Will let go of Aidan and stumbled a step each direction. “Thank you, Mr. Cooper,” he said as if Redwood hadn’t spoken. “You’re like a bundle carrier from the old days.”
“I don’t know ’bout that.” Aidan leapt up on the mule.
“Wait. Don’t go.” Cherokee Will tromped about, gathering leaves and hairy little roots and then pulled a red moss from a ratty pouch that hung on a string at his waist. Redwood gazed at Aidan, who shrugged. Will pulled crumpled paper from his pocket and scrawled strange figures on it.
“Cherokee writing.” He wrapped the words with the root medicine in a scrap of cloth. “Sikwayi, a great man, he invented our letters, the talking leaves. Sikwayi is Sequoia, your name in Cherokee.” He held it out to Redwood.
“Sikwayi?” She hesitated from taking his offering.
“Good for women problems.” Will stood up tall, a fierce fellow thrusting a medicine bag at her. “Boil and inhale smoke. You looking poorly. Cold stuck ’round your heart.”
Redwood fell back into Aidan’s chest. Princess whinny-heehawed and stepped toward Will. Redwood let him put the medicine in her hand. “Thank you, sir.”
“You take care of yourself too,” Aidan said; then they rode off.
Redwood turned to look at Will standing bent over in the bare cypress trees. “You think he’ll keep our secret?” Aunt and Uncle wouldn’t let her run off to the swamp with a grown man, a married, white man whose wife would pitch a fit if she knew. Who in colored or white Peach Grove would understand what they were to each other?
“Nobody listens to Cherokee Will, right? They don’t think he knows anything.”
Redwood squirmed at the bitter truth in that. “I’ll be listening more from now on.” She leaned against Aidan. “He’s a sad man sometimes and lonely too I guess.”
“Will didn’t walk the deadly trail to Oklahoma. His daddy’s second wife was an Irish lady.”
“Like your mama.”
Aidan’s chest heaved against her back. “Yes.”
“Please, tell me more. If it’s a secret I know I can keep it.”
“Shouldn’t be no secret.” Aidan sounded hurt and mad.
“I’m listening and I won’t make fun.”
On the way home Aidan told her what he knew of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Choctaw, and Seminole, and how white men called them civilized, but stole their land anyway, demolished their towns and farms, and marched them to hell in Oklahoma on a trail of tears. “Sagonege, blue, is Cherokee color for the north, for disappointment and failure. They shall never become blue means good fortune always. My daddy say Georgia had a public lottery to steal Indian territory. One-hundred-sixty-acre land lots and forty-acre gold lots were given away to citizens. An Indian wasn’t a citizen. Still ain’t.”
“Oh.” She never much cared ’bout being a citizen. It didn’t seem to do colored folks much good. “Why’d they—”
“For gold in the mountains, for cotton and corn in the fields. They stole the sunrise and the distant sea breeze. They tore the people from the place of their ancestors, leaving spirits to roam and no one to take heed.”
“Mm-hmm,” Redwood murmured. “I’ve seen them spirits sometime. Didn’t know who they were, so I didn’t know how to act.”
“I used to think, just seeing the old ones was paying respect, but—”
“The Seminole didn’t all get routed,” Redwood said. “They gathered with old enemies to forgive what could be forgiven, and then together they made a long walk into the grassy water. Istî siminolî, they were free. I remember what you said.”
“I guess you do.” Aidan sounded pleased at that. “Still in Florida too.”
After sneaking through plantation ruins and trotting overgrown roads, they were getting close to home. “I’ll walk from here.” Redwood slipped off Princess.
“The people got driven from their land only one lifetime ago, and it’s all but forgotten.” Aidan clutched the reins so tight, she saw ribbons of blood.
She put her hands on his. “We’ll carry the story one more lifetime at least.”
For the next week, using Cherokee Will’s cure, Redwood got a little better. When the medicine was gone, she was coughing up a storm and so hoarse she didn’t talk. Uncle Ladd was so frightened by the sound of her, he made her go see Doc Johnson.
“Ladd’s mama died of consumption. I don’t think you will,” Miz Subie said when Doc threw up his hands and sent Redwood back to her. “Don’t do nothing wild for a while. No stealing heartbeats for a sightseeing trip with Mr. Cooper. You might meet the boneyard baron and never come back. Risk yourself on something that really matters.”
“Like what?”
“You’ll know.” She tied nine devil’s shoestrings ’round Redwood’s aching ankles and gave her some ole nasty tea to drink. After one swallow, Redwood was gagging and feeling worse. “It’s foot-track magic,” Miz Subie said. “I swear you done crossed your ownself. You the one got to break this spell, ’less you want to stay sick.”
“Oh.” No denying it, Redwood hadn’t been right since conjuring herself and Aidan to the Chicago Fair. She come back to Georgia so restless and lonely, so full of daydreams and nightmares, she didn’t know what to do. Out in the fields picking winter greens, eyes open or closed, she’d see herself dancing in bright Chicago lights. Stage houses were filled with fancy audiences from the world over. From Abyssinia and China, folks were jumping to their feet, clapping for her. An hour or two could go by with her wandering the rows of vegetables. She might pluck a few weeds, rout a slug or two, but nothing much else. Uncle Ladd tried to scold her, but Elisa would hush him up and pat Redwood’s back or make her drink some of Subie’s bitter tea.
“How am I ever goin’ find my heart’s desire in Peach Grove, Georgia?”
Auntie would nod, rub Redwood’s belly with a cool cloth, but she didn’t understand. Redwood wanted to do something wonderful. Didn’t she have stories to tell and powerful spells to conjure? Sick folk were probably the same everywhere, but there were so many other tricks Redwood didn’t know yet—like how to call up the world she see or the world she want to see. Didn’t everybody say that life was short? She had to get on the road and make a bright destiny. That’s what nobody could understand ’cept maybe Aidan. Nasty tea, Indian medicine, wool scarves, and devil’s shoestrings wouldn’t help her know how to make herself grand as those folks from Dahomey, them dancers on Cairo Street.
And today, Aunt Elisa be inviting Bubba Jackson over for Sunday supper. He’d had a change of heart ’bout Redwood, but she wasn’t studying that boy. The Jackson’s weren’t rich colored people like the Wilsons or the Garretts, but close enough, so Elisa was wringing the necks of the fattest chickens and plucking white feathers. She had kale simmering, beans soaking, and three pies baking. Smokehouse bacon was sizzling in a pan. Christmas jam and pickles come up from the cellar early. Elisa made the cousins stay in their Sunday best long after church service, with a whipping promised if they cut the fool and got dirty. Redwood wore one of Mama’s old dresses and pouted like she was ten. Her hips and bosom had filled out, and she cut a fine figure. That’s all Bubba was after—a gal with big tiddies who didn’t want him back.
“Once he gets his paws on me, he won’t want me no more,” Redwood said.
For once George agreed with her. “Bubba Jackson is the last person she should marry.”
“Miz Subie never got a husband and she do just fine,” Redwood said, her throat aching something awful.
“Subie a conjure woman. That life ain’t for everybody,” Elisa said.
“I don’t see why I got to marry a fool, ’cause he come sniffing ’round, flashing fast cash and talking big.”
“I don’t know ’bout that.” Elisa waved a bloody knife. “You gotta marry somebody.”
Redwood grabbed a box of tools and headed for Aidan’s place.
“We be eating at four,” Elisa yelled.
“I won’t stay away long.”
Redwood hadn’t seen much of Aidan since the baby started walking. Josie pitched a fit over his trips to the swamp, leaving her alone with a feisty toddler. So Aidan didn’t take off on her too much. Redwood had so many secrets saved up to tell him, she was starting to forget. On a short visit before supper, wouldn’t be enough time for all their stories, even if they talked fast.
Walking at a good pace for an hour and getting close to his place, she was feeling better. Maybe he’d even have a new song to play her. They could stroll down to the creek and get away from everything for a few minutes. Josie claim the banjo plucked at her nerves. Something had to be wrong with that woman she didn’t like Aidan singing to her. Course Redwood had never heard somebody’s good music she couldn’t hear again and again.
Orange-haired Josie busted out Aidan’s front door with a bundle of belongings and a crying baby on her hip. Josie’s cheeks were red and so were her puffy eyes. She headed for a buckboard. The horse turned to watch Josie and the few satchels she’d loaded up. The baby was shrieking. Josie stopped, trying to rock her son quiet.
“You that hoodoo gal, ain’t you?” She looked Redwood up and down, pretending she couldn’t remember her.
“My uncle say thank you to Mr. Cooper.” Redwood held up the box of tools.
“Aidan ain’t here. Mean son of a snake run off somewhere to get drunk.” Josie got in the buggy and laid her son in a basket in the back. He had orange hair and red cheeks, same as his mama, and a tight little angry scream. Didn’t look nothing like Aidan. Josie rocked his basket. “Watch out. Aidan ain’t worth a damn.”
“Why you say that?”
“You know how some white men do, running off to colored gals.”
“Aidan and me, just friends.” Redwood’s breath fluttered into a nasty cough. “Don’t be jealous.”
Josie sniffled, almost satisfied. “You ain’t the only colored gal ’round. Plenty dark meat this side of the creek.”
“He faithful to you if that’s your worry.”
“How you know?”
“I’m a hoodoo, ain’t I?”
“I s’pose he is faithful.” She gave up on quieting the baby. “I could take him laying up with a darky.”
“Uh-huh,” Redwood said even though Josie was lying to herself.
“He’s a man with a biiiggg appetite.” She sat up straight, squeezing herself, like she could feel how good doing it with Aidan was. “I can hold my own against—”
“I tell you, he ain’t going with no other woman. I did a good-luck spell for you two.”
Josie guffawed and scared her son quiet. “Aidan brought in two of the best crops ever. We don’t have no debts, ’cept Leroy Richards.”
“Moonshine?”
Flushing pink at the edges, Josie lifted the reins.
“So you going away ’cause Mr. Cooper be feeling low?”
“I’m leaving him.” Josie wiped at sudden tears spilling down her face. “A haint been after Aidan since before we got married. Spooked him last night. Well, then it’s one jug after another.”
“He did right by you when—”
“I know.” She snapped at Redwood. “Who you telling?” Her lips trembled.
“He hit you?”
“Not yet.” She was hiding something.
“You got a new beau?”
Josie cut her eyes at Redwood. “It just ain’t working out how I thought.”
“That happens.” Redwood set the tools on the porch, huffing coughs.
“You sick, gal? Too busy passing out cures. You ought to take your own medicine.”
“I do.”
“Medicine don’t cure everything.”
Redwood wheezed. Aidan should have gone to Miz Subie for a good-luck spell. She would have done it right. Redwood couldn’t get nothing hard to work out. “I’m sorry.”
All the bluster and fight drained out of Josie. “If a man come after me with his fists, I’d have a mind to get a gun.” She sighed thinking on this. “That ain’t no way to live.” She drove off with her son shrieking again and left Redwood standing on the porch.
A bush by the door hung with colored glass bottles tinkled in the wind.
It was a week since Josie left Aidan for one of her old flames, or was it two weeks? Down to his last jug and he was having a hard time keeping track of time and space. Aidan come into town and couldn’t find nothing where it used to be. Turn his back a minute and Peach Grove done grown into a bustling metropolis. Besides the telegraph and post office there were now two general stores, a hotel, a doctor and a dentist office, a new schoolhouse with a library upside it, a bigger Baptist church, and too many fancy town houses—where did all these rich folk come from they need two feed stores and a dress shop? The new sheriff got hisself spanking new digs too, right ’cross from the bank. No question who he was working for.
“All we need is the railroad and a good cat house to put us on the map. Josie Cooper the one to see for that.” Miles Crawford, a burly white man with reddish-brown hair, was making fun, loud so Aidan and every other body in the post office could hear. Miles was sharecropping for Jerome Williams on good soil he once owned. His wife worked herself to death last summer, and Miles took her dying hard to his heart. Josie run to Miles when she left Aidan. That lasted three days. Josie run from him and his three kids too. She went to South Carolina chasing somebody. So much for Aidan doing right by her. He didn’t miss Josie much, but little Bobby—
“How she get even a bastard son of a whore to marry her?” Miles roared his nasty laugh. With so many joining in, egging Miles on, the business Aidan had come to the post office for flew out his head. He turned to leave, weaving and wobbling, his fists throbbing. Miles blocked his way. Aidan walked ’round him.
“Leave him be,” somebody muttered.
Miles shoved Aidan, twice. “Cheaper to pay by the hour. Hear what I say?”
Laughter died when Aidan slugged Miles in the chin, and he fell clear out the door into the street. Though he’d had a few, Miles was not as drunk as Aidan. He stood up swinging and landed punches on Aidan’s side and shoulder. Aidan fell back. The pain cleared his muffled head just a bit.
Miles kicked dirt in his face. “Irish fool, can’t never hold your liquor.” He took a moment to gloat for his audience. A few in the crowd were chuckling till Aidan slugged Miles four or five times in the head and gut and then kicked his legs out from under him. Miles doubled up, yelping and spitting blood. Aidan slammed a bottle of Miz Subie’s cure-all at a post. It shattered and spit glass back at him, cutting his hand.
“You the bastard son of a whore, not me,” Aidan yelled. Miles crawled ’round to see who might come to his aid. Men shook their heads at Crazy Coop brandishing a broken bottle. Aidan howled and thrust jagged glass in their faces. “A lot of folks who be ready to laugh with you, ain’t willing to spill blood for you.”
Miles tried to feint one direction and get away the other, but limping on a bruised ankle, he had no speed. Aidan stopped him cold. “Damn you,” Miles said.
“Damn you to hell too.” Even if Aidan didn’t love her or miss her, “Josie’s my wife.” He grabbed Miles’s arm, yanking till it come half out the socket. Miles screamed. Aidan twirled him so they were face-to-face. For all his bulk, Miles wasn’t strong. Just the sort of blowhard fool Josie could convince to take her in. Aidan held jagged green glass to his eye. Miles sputtered and banged at Aidan with a useless arm.
“What you got to say now?” Aidan said.
Miles was crying. “Josie just don’t want you no more, you crazy drunk! You goin’ kill me for that, take my eye?” He whined like Aidan started this fight.
“I guess she don’t want you neither,” Aidan said.
Redwood sauntered out the old general store with a bag of flour over one shoulder and a basket of notions in the other hand. “What’s going on?” she said.
Seeing her, Aidan felt dizzy. The liquor sloshing ’round his belly and rising up to his head was fixing to spew out his eyes and ears. He didn’t need to go to jail over Josie. He dropped the shard of glass, backed away from his whimpering victim, and swallowed a string of cuss words. Redwood crossed the muddy street heading right for him.
“That’s Garnett’s gal!” someone whispered.
Miles pulled hisself together, nodded thanks at her, and stumbled away. Nobody helped him—the crowd went on ’bout their business like nothing had happened.
Just before Redwood reached Aidan, Jerome Williams stepped out the bank, smiling at her long legs and ample hips. Jerome was curly gray handsome, a silver fox at twenty-seven, finely dressed, and one of the richest men in the county. He and his mama, Miz Caroline Williams, stole land right out from under poor folk—white, colored, and Indian: the Crawfords’ fields and the Jessup place, Graham Wright’s pastures, Cherokee Will’s orchard, and Raymond and Garnett Phipps’s farm. The Williams clan had their eye on Aidan’s land too. Redwood strode by Jerome without so much as a glance. He stepped directly in front of her and they almost collided.
“Oh. How do, Mr. Williams.” Redwood smiled at Jerome. She could smile at a rattlesnake and mean it.
“How do yourself.” Jerome admired her. Who wouldn’t?
Aidan went from demon drunk to near-sober in an instant.
Jerome was notorious with the ladies, breaking hearts and leaving a trail of bastards all ’cross the county. Aidan didn’t want him nowhere near Redwood, for her own sake and her brother’s too. George would come after the man with a shotgun and end up hanging from a tree. Jerome ate her up with his eyes. Redwood danced past him without noticing.
“How do, Mr. Cooper,” she said.
Aidan rubbed bloody palms against filthy clothes. His hair hung over his eyes in sweaty clumps. Blood trickled down his cheek. Redwood stepped close to him. Jerome took note of her light touch on Aidan’s forearm. Aidan smelled the last several weeks clinging to him like rot. He wanted to bolt, but he wasn’t leaving her alone with Jerome.
“You promised to come by and visit us,” Redwood said, not worrying over the stench, dirt, or the bloody streaks his hands left on his pants; not worrying if Jerome or anybody in Peach Grove saw how close they were. Not seeing nobody really, but him. “Why ain’t you stopped by?” Aidan recognized the lonely ache in her voice. She missed him the way he missed her. “You too busy letting your crops go to seed?” She teased him in broad daylight.
“Well,” he stammered. She waited for more, but he wasn’t sober enough to make sense talking. “I’ll come, as soon as … I will.”
“That’s something to look forward to.” She squeezed his arm, taking some of the hurting off him, and then sauntered away, a queen of Dahomey in Peach Grove. She waved and smiled at folks all down the street.
“Coop, how do you get an invitation?” Jerome said.
“They’re my neighbors.”
“You ever had a colored gal? One who was willing?”
Aidan grunted.
“Did you see her smile? She takes after her mama. A gal fine as that would be wasted on an ignorant nigger, don’t you think?”
If Aidan hadn’t left his gun on the porch, Jerome would’ve been dead meat. The fool was so busy watching Redwood’s behind, he didn’t notice how close he come to death.
“You been sleeping up a tree, Coop?”
“Better than a bed in this god-forsaken town.”
Jerome studied him and then looked back at Redwood. “I never know what you’re going to say.”
“The boy is a genius in the rough,” Doc Johnson said. He slipped up from behind and clapped Aidan on the shoulder.
Aidan jumped. “Don’t come up on me that way.”
“You been roughhousing?” In a flash, Doc had Aidan in a firm grip, observing every detail of his current condition. There was no hope of escape. Doc’s twin brother, Hiram Johnson, was right beside him, shaking his head at Aidan’s filthy getup.
“In between drinking and fighting, the boy read more than I do,” Hiram said.
Doc and Hiram only had ten years on Aidan, but they were well-off, upstanding white citizens—they owned most of Main Street—Peach Grove aristocracy, like Jerome Williams. ’Cept the Johnson twins thought they were better than most rich folk in this backwater county, more intelligent, more civilized. They’d gone off to college; traveled the world. They read the best books money could buy. Doc donated volumes for a public library and stocked the schoolhouse. He gave books to Miz Elisa to teach the colored kids. Rumor had it he paid her wages. But Aidan knew colored folk did the paying themselves.
“What did you do to your hand?” Doc picked glass from Aidan’s wound and poured a clear liquid from a silver flask on the ragged flesh. It stung like hell.
“You’re lucky, Aidan,” Jerome said. “Doc will treat any sick body, whether they can pay or not. He even let colored folk walk in the front door.”
“If somebody minds, they can take their sick selves twenty-five miles to the next doctor,” Doc said.
“I want to see you carry on this way in Atlanta.” Jerome laughed, not hiding his bile.
Doc glowered at Jerome; so did Hiram. The twins were odd-looking, having inherited their father’s bulging blue eyes, craggy cheeks, and dagger-sharp chin. They sported the latest men’s coats from Atlanta and fancy boots from Europe. Aidan always felt ill-spoken and shabby by comparison, a curio. Doc, in particular, liked to collect curios, while Hiram put out a weekly town journal and liked to spread the news.
“Preacher fell down his own well,” Hiram said.
“Indeed. Coop tells me God has forsaken us,” Jerome said.
“Preacher was running from a voice on the wind. In the twentieth century!” Doc said.
“Garnett’s curse.” Hiram shook his head.
Aidan was trembling all over now.
“You think the preacher was in that posse? Nobody knows who rode out after her.” Jerome looked pale.
“I suspect there are some who know.” Doc wrapped Aidan’s hand in a white handkerchief. “People be spooking themselves and call it the voice of a dead colored woman.” Doc was a man of science. He didn’t believe in haints and spooks. “They feel so bad for what they did or didn’t do, they’re haunted. Isn’t that right, Coop?”
“That’s right, Doc. Hoodoo is mostly in your head.” Aidan wasn’t ’bout to argue with him on this or any point. Doc could argue a man to death. “You get spooked by what you already believe. Haint don’t hound you if there’s no reason to.”
“Most people in Peach Grove sleep fine, even in the trees,” Jerome said.
“More restless spirits than you think.” Hiram gazed at the good citizens of Peach Grove, coming and going in a warm winter sun. “Things are never what they seem.”
“Do you think that’s true, Coop? Everyone has a secret up his sleeve?” Jerome sounded like he had something to hide. “You keeping something from us?”
“Coop is up in the tree branches reading the book of life … and half my library.” Doc inspected a cut on Aidan’s cheek.
“You have to watch out for the smart ones.” Jerome studied Aidan again, like a boxer assessing an opponent he’d underestimated. “They’ll turn on their own kind.”
Aidan hated getting caught in the middle of their spat.
“You’ll mend.” Doc released him as a wagon pulled up to the post office. “Is that the Atlanta newspaper coming in?”
“Hiram, Doc, Mr. Williams, be seeing you.” Aidan lurched ’cross the street away from them.
Redwood angrily squeezed cold water from a month of shirts. The wringer was busted. She twisted one thin shirt till it was wet ribbons. A man from a Negro institute in Atlanta come to Ladd and Elisa’s door and asked to photograph the family in front of a “typical colored dwelling.” Elisa broke out laughing and Ladd waved his axe in the man’s face. Redwood would’ve at least talked to the fellow ’bout this colored institute of higher learning, but Ladd chased him away with tales of bears, gators, and clouds of mosquitoes that suck the blood and juice out your brains and make you stupid. Aunt and Uncle didn’t want fancy people sitting somewhere, laughing at their modest four-room cabin, home to nine hardworking people. Ladd made sure the man didn’t take any pictures on the sly and then went back to chopping wood. Elisa went to haul water from the well to the house. Hard to shove Aunt and Uncle off their course.
“I bet company coming for supper.” Elisa squinted at someone raising dust down the road. Redwood coughed and turned her back. Bubba had just as much sense as a falling rock. She’d have to do a hot-foot or drive-away spell to get him to leave her be.
Iris and the five cousins chased the two scrawny chickens they’d be eating for dinner. Bill was ten and Ruby nine, yet six-year-old Iris was almost as tall as them, busting out of her favorite green dress, a rag really. All the children’s clothes were worn thin, but the young ones didn’t notice the chill in the air or how poor and shabby their life would look in a photograph. They were having too much fun. Redwood moved on to hanging sheets.
Iris tumbled over a chair and fell into a battered shovel. The cousins yelped. Iris ran to Redwood through billowing white. Wide-eyed and hopeful, she presented a bloody, sliced knee, but no tears or squeals.
“Shall I make it better?” Redwood said.
Over Iris’s shoulder she spied Aidan, not Bubba, loping into the yard for his third visit in two weeks. His clothes were clean; his hair was slicked back and tucked in his collar. He carried his banjo over one shoulder and a deer over the other. He watched Redwood kiss Iris’s bloody knee. He was quite a handsome man for all his foolishness.
“Crazy Coop! Crazy Coop! Crazy Coop!” Iris jumped up squealing now with joy.
The five cousins joined her and ran toward Aidan. He had only a second to hand Ladd the deer and Elisa the banjo before he was mobbed. Ladd headed to the smokehouse with the deer. The children talked all at once. “What you bring us? What’s in your pockets? Where you been?”
“Out hunting up that deer,” he replied.
“Hush all that noise. Mr. Cooper ’llowed to go deaf,” Elisa said, smiling.
“It’s Aidan, ma’am. I figured I couldn’t eat it all by myself. So if you don’t mind.”
“It’s been a lean month. All the men go out and come back with nothing. You put a spell on them deer?” Elisa said.
“He be singing them right into a trap,” Redwood said.
Aidan gaped at her.
“Well, ain’t you?”
Aidan pulled candy and carved wooden toys from his pockets. He crouched down and hugged each child. “The bear is for little Iris, you hear? Y’all can share the rest.”
Iris held up a carved black bear with a half-eaten apple in its paw. A raccoon peered through the bear’s leg at the fruit. “Cairo and Star.” She hugged them to her chest.
“You named that bear been coming ’round?” Redwood said. “Don’t be feeding him.”
The cousins ran off playing with/fighting over the carved bobcats, gators, and otters. Aidan took his banjo back from Elisa.
“What you got for me?” Redwood asked.
“Something I just wrote.” He played the banjo and sang:
My love is like a falling star
A passing phantom high overhead
You do not see her fall, not far
For oh my lord, she’s dark as the dead
Redwood applauded the melancholy melody. Ladd walked toward them, tapping his feet to the rhythm. Aidan’s voice and playing were beautiful, but Elisa scowled, muttering ’bout the blues.
“You a conjure man with that banjo,” Redwood said quickly.
“I play what I feel. Even Josie said that,” Aidan said.
“Sorry to hear ’bout your wife leaving,” Ladd said.
“Drunk all the time. She couldn’t stand me.”
“Well, uh…” Ladd didn’t want to talk on this. “I got a wife who’ll put up with anything.”
“Almost,” Elisa said.
“Ain’t nobody should put up with me.” Aidan left off strumming and looked down.
“You’re right nice when you’re sober.” Redwood touched his shoulder.
“Woman run off with your little boy … make anyone take a drink or two,” Elisa said.
“Baby wasn’t mine,” Aidan said, so matter-of-fact everyone gulped.
Elisa wiped her hands on her apron and snatched winter herbs from the garden. Ladd lifted his axe and grabbed a hunk of wood to split.
“You staying for supper?” Redwood said. “Ain’t much, but if you can stomach my cooking, you’re welcome.”
Aidan looked at Elisa and Ladd.
“You, cook? Listen to her now.” Elisa grinned and poked Redwood in the ribs.
“Man bring fresh meat; what you talking ’bout, ain’t much?” Ladd almost smiled at him. “Mr. Cooper can help me chop this wood while you women do your magic.”
Flames danced and crackled in the fireplace. Aidan sat in Elisa’s plain, cozy kitchen, so stuffed with good food, taking a breath interfered with his digestion. The ruins of dinner littered the large wooden table in case anybody wanted to try for more. Ladd was telling a story. Elisa rocked her chair like drum accompaniment. The children sat in grown-up laps fighting sleep. Iris was curled up against Aidan’s chest. She tugged his collar and showed him the knee that was bleeding when he arrived. The wound was healed now, just a wiggly purple line. They made funny faces at Redwood who had her eyes closed, hugging Becky and Jessie.
“… weren’t goin’ be slaves no more,” Ladd said.
The door bust open, startling everybody fully awake. George tramped into the kitchen, his face and shirt bathed in sweat. Mud covered his boots and pants up to the knees. He glared at everyone, but didn’t say a word. Redwood opened her eyes and, seeing him, smiled.
“They ran from the Okefenokee Swamp all the way up into the mountains and was free people.” Ladd finished his story. “How do the Seminole call it?”
“Istî siminolî,” Aidan said.
Holding a bloody right hand behind his back, George grabbed food from the table with his left hand and ate hungrily.
Elisa frowned. “You ain’t even give a Christian greeting.”
“Good evening, Aunt. Evening to you all.” George waved a rib bone with scraps of dangling flesh. There wasn’t much meat left. He chewed at the hard gristle. “You bring the deer, Coop? Must be, ’cause ain’t nobody else know where they be hiding.”
Aidan nodded at George.
“I guess it’s ‘thank you’ then.” George smirked. “How’s that for Christian?”
“Yes, istî siminolî. Free people,” Ladd said. “The hounds couldn’t track ’em, and the paddy rollers just give up and went on home. And you see, all sorts of free folks were mixing ’round up there in them mountains.”
“Yes.” Aidan thought back to when he was a boy.
“Colored still ain’t free nowhere else.” George chomped on a hunk of bread.
“Bet you got a story ’bout them mountain folk, Mr. Cooper,” Ladd said.
George grunted. “You must got stories back to when wild Injuns roamed the land.” He didn’t like Indians any better than he liked white people—double the reason to dislike Aidan.
“Did you tell him the Okefenokee story?” Aidan whispered to Redwood.
She sucked her teeth at him, disgusted. “Of course not.”
Half asleep, Iris fussed in Aidan’s lap. He kissed her head and patted her tummy. She settled down.
“What you know good?” Ladd asked him.
“I heard plenty tall tales from the mountain folk, like how Miss O’Casey met the Thunder Man.”
Aidan’s mama told him her story before someone else could. She wasn’t shamed of who she was or where she come from. His daddy neither. Aidan still couldn’t stand up in the world the way they did and be proud of every bit of who he was no matter what anybody thought. But if his journal had been near, he might have read the story out loud and not just to Redwood, but to Ladd, Elisa, Iris, and the cousins, exactly the way his mother told him. He might have wiped the sneer off George’s greasy face.
BIG THUNDER AND MISS O’CASEY
Love is always a good thing.
It was the spring of 1876, darling, and smoke curled from the chimney of a backwoods bordello. No streets of milk and honey, no castles of gold, when you stepped off the boat. Pleasuring poor workingmen, that was the work there was.
Glass shattered and shouts and curses erupted from the second floor of this house of ill repute. Aislinn O’Casey—your own dear mother—and her older sister Caitlin squeezed through a window wedged at half-mast and stepped out onto the roof. They took a breath of free, clear air under the sparkling stars. Back then Aislinn and Caitlin both had red hair, moss-green eyes, and more freckles than clear skin. Dressed in flimsy white nightgowns and carrying bundles with all they owned in this world, they raced across the roof and shimmied down a Greek column to the muddy ground. It was the Athens Bordello, you see. A naked man stuck his head out the window, screaming bloody murder. He’d paid for both girls, thought he owned them for the night, body and soul.
Aislinn and Caitlin stared up at him, laughed to each other, and then ran like the dickens all through the night. They ran with the energy of dreams, dreams for a new life, if not milk and honey running in the streets, a little less sweat from stinking men. Being the foolish young girls that they were, they got all turned around and thoroughly lost.
Dawn broke open the dark. Aislinn and Caitlin slogged through a swamp and stopped at an island of solid ground. They were hungry and desperate and terrified, fighting with each other about who was to blame for the pickle they were in. They had stolen raggedy coats from their poor customers and thrown these rude garments over their nightclothes, which were now filthy. Standing there, scratching at the bugs, they considered going back to the Athens Bordello. Caitlin did anyways, but she hadn’t yet persuaded her sister.
Aislinn heard a thunder of grief. Beyond fluttering swamp grass, a Seminole man stood over his dead wife and a newborn child, still wrinkled and red, an umbilical cord twisted around her neck. The man was a strapping fellow, with an alligator pouch hanging at his waist, a big hunting knife riding on his hip, a bright turban on his head. He sank down, shaking with grief.
Caitlin wanted to run away from this wild Indian, but Aislinn felt his grief and sat on the ground in front of him. It wasn’t right to be alone with death, and this fellow looked grieved enough to do himself harm. Reluctantly, Caitlin clutched Aislinn and sank down too. They did not make a sound. They did not move, and then the sun sank beyond the tall grass. Lightning crackled in the dark above, and the thunder was so big, it rocked their little island, yet no rain cooled the hot night. It was as though the man had called his ancestors to witness with him, to grieve at the wake for his family.
At sunrise, the Thunder Man still sat silently by his dead wife and child. A breeze plowed through saw grass. Aislinn got up, so stiff and achy she walked like an old crow. Caitlin tried to hold her back, but Aislinn was bold and strong-willed. She strode close to the Thunder Man, and with an Irish lilt to her English asked, “Are you fixing on dying too?”
The Thunder Man stared up at her, hurt and loss all over his face.
“Wasting another life would be a shame, sir,” she said.
He jumped up and grabbed her roughly by the shoulders. She did not flinch or wince, but grabbed him back. They stood taking measure of one another with an owl hooting in the distance.
When night came again, the Thunder Man buried his wife and child in a high tree as Aislinn watched. Caitlin huddled on the ground behind them. Aislinn remembered an old Irish prayer and sang it:
She is the queen of every hive
She is the blaze at sunset
She is the grace of every hope
She is the shield protecting your heart
May the blessings of the Earth be on you
Your father, whose name was Big Thunder, of course, finally spoke, with a whisper of a Seminole accent, saying, “I’m not dying in captivity.”
“So, where are we going?”
Aidan stroked his red leather journal buried in the bottom of his bag.
“You goin’ tell us or just tease us?” Redwood said. “Your stories are like a trip to the Fair, to the E-LEC-TRI-CI-TY.” She drew out each syllable. “Or like riding a hot-air balloon to places of adventure and wonder.” She almost melted his heart. “Tell us something, why don’t you?”
“Please! Please!” Becky and Jessie had their eyes open. “A story we haven’t heard.”
Aidan was tempted, but he didn’t want to steal Ladd’s thunder. “Just tall tales, you know, how my folks met. You don’t want to hear that.”
“A regular romantic entertainment, I suspect.” George ate the last hunk of apple pie.
Elisa’s voice turned sharp. “If you can’t be civil, George.”
“I don’t guess anyone wants to hear my tale.” George stomped out the room.
After that, Aidan wouldn’t let hisself be persuaded into telling a story, not even by Redwood, but playing the banjo was another matter. Without coaxing, he was strumming away. Ladd joined him on the spoons and Elisa sang, as long as it wasn’t the blues. Redwood didn’t add a harmony, but she danced the sleepy children into their bedroom. “We’re not tired,” they protested and almost fell asleep washing their grubby hands and faces. Carrying Iris, Aidan followed Redwood to a room with several beds jammed together. The cousins were stuffed between the sheets and already dreaming when he set little Iris’s head on a pillow and tucked a blanket to her chin. She still clutched her carved bear and raccoon. Tiptoeing back into the kitchen, Redwood took Aidan’s arm. Ladd and Elisa pretended not to notice.
“I’ll tell you that story sometime,” Aidan said.
“Iris sure loves her some Crazy Coop,” Redwood said.
Aidan blushed and reached for his banjo, fixing to go. “Love goes both ways.”
“Stay the night,” Elisa said.
“I don’t want to trouble you, ma’am.” Aidan looked from her to Redwood.
“There’s frost in the air.” Elisa shivered. “Your place is a good walk from here.”
“Don’t nag the man.” Ladd put his arms ’round his wife. “Let him find his own mind.”
“I’m just saying.”
Aidan stepped out into the night. Bitter cold cut right through him. He didn’t relish the idea of walking the hour and a half home. It was pitch dark too. He’d have to borrow a lamp.
“The moon ain’t up yet.” Redwood stood behind him, radiating warmth.
There was nothing but a jug to go home to. Was he really crazy? Aidan stepped back inside. Elisa was sitting by the fire cleaning her shotgun. Ladd was smoking a pipe.
“If you staying, close the door and keep the heat inside,” Ladd said.
Aidan sat by the fire too and pulled out his red leather journal. After a few moments, he was writing away. Redwood sat next to him, close enough for her thigh to graze his. Reading Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self by Pauline Hopkins, she come to the end of a chapter and sighed.
“Good?” He turned the book title over in his mind.
“Oh yes.” Redwood’s eyes flashed with real excitement, like when they were going ’round the Ferris Wheel. “There’s this colored American medical student who gets crowned emperor of a lost kingdom underneath a pyramid in Ethiopia.”
“That’s clear ’cross Africa, to the east, to the horn,” Aidan said. Doc Johnson had a big map of the world on a wall in his library. Aidan could see it plain in his head. “That book must be quite an adventure. I’ll have to read it when you finished.”
She displayed the title page. “Pauline Hopkins is an actress and a singer and a playwright. A colored lady doing all that and writing books too.”
“You don’t say?” Aidan was surprised and impressed. “I ain’t been reading so much. Been hard to find time for anything.” He’d been drinking moonshine till he blacked out and could wake up with another haunted night behind him, forgotten.
“What you putting in your book?” she said. “I don’t mean to interrupt.”
“I like to write down what happened on a good day, like this evening with you all, make it last longer that way.”
She traced her fingers along his handwriting. “All that happen today?”
Aidan pulled the journal from her. “I write what I remember too.”
“You got a hidden self, huh?”
“I reckon so.” He glanced at the words.
COMING TO PEACH GROVE
It was 1892 or thereabouts. Big Thunder and Aislinn, jaundiced and sick, rode through the woods, tearing down a mountainside. Aidan was eleven or twelve and riding between them. It was a hot night. Skunk odor filled the air. The horses were skittish and couldn’t always find sure footing. Ahead of Aidan, Big Thunder almost fell from his horse. Aidan cried out.
“Don’t you worry now,” Aislinn said as Big Thunder righted himself. Her voice was thin. “My sister, your Aunt Caitlin, is in Peach Grove. Not far now.”
“You don’t even know where she lives,” Aidan said.
Aislinn and Caitlin had a big falling out over savage Indians and wild mountain folk.
“We’re taking you to a conjure woman. Her people come from the Sea Islands. I knew her growing up. She’ll find your aunt.” Big Thunder gripped his reins and squeezed his knees into the horse’s skinny ribs and they rode on.
Aidan thought his parents might drop dead any moment, and he’d be alone in strange woods. When it started to rain and the gloom thickened, he didn’t know how his daddy would find the way. After several wet hours, they reached somewhere. Aidan smelled cook fires and cow manure and ripe fruit hanging in trees. Peach Grove. Big Thunder and Aislinn tied their horses to scraggly branches and staggered in the dark a ways with Aidan between them. Icy rain pelted their thin coats. It was hot and cold all at once. They finally came to a house with lights burning in the windows and smoke curling from a chimney.
“I can’t go any farther,” Aislinn said. “We do it now, or I won’t.”
At the steps to the porch, Aislinn hugged Aidan, and Big Thunder hugged them both. They pushed Aidan up to the door. He clutched a red leather journal, alligator bag, hunting knife, and an orchid. He refused to move.
“Go on, boy,” Big Thunder said, all the rumble gone from his voice.
“Don’t forget to give her the flower, Aidan,” Aislinn said.
“You all not coming?” Aidan said.
“We’ll come for you as soon as…” Aislinn faltered.
“As soon as we can…” Big Thunder said.
Aislinn backed away, holding on to Big Thunder. “My sister will look after you, for a while.”
“Where you all going?” Aidan shouted.
“Cross River,” Big Thunder said.
“Why can’t I come?”
“Remember what we told you,” Aislinn said.
“And if we’re gone a long while, just remember who you are, Aidan Wildfire.” Big Thunder sounded a moment like his old self, and then they disappeared into the rainy dark.
Aidan would have stood at the doorsill all night in the rain, but Garnett Phipps came and pulled him in out of the wet. She wrapped him in a blanket and stood him by the fire.
“Thank you for the orchid,” Miz Garnett said. She was tall and fierce with strong hands and bold features. Her eyes were deep brown with a flash of fire underneath. She let Aidan stare out the window for his parents, even though there was nothing to see. When he started crying, she patted his shoulder and he turned into her, crying full force, and she hugged his sorrow. She smelled of hickory smoke and peach brandy and magnolia.
“What are these tears?” Aunt Caitlin had the same Irish lilt as Aislinn, but it did Aidan no good to hear it. “You’re all grown up since I saw you last. A man almost. Can’t be no more crying.” She was a proper married lady now, Miz Caitlin Cooper. But her life before had messed up her insides, till she couldn’t have no children. “You’ll be the son I never had, Aidan Cooper. Put that old mountain life behind you, like a bad dream.”
Aidan didn’t want to let go of Garnett Phipps. He clutched her fiercely.
Miz Garnett smiled at him. “You got a journal, I see. Write yourself down, Aidan. Keep good counsel with your ownself. That’s a powerful spell, a hoodoo trick for whatever ails you.”
The fire was thundering up the chimney and hissing at the cold air. Ladd poked it absentmindedly. Elisa looked up the barrel of her gun.
Aidan closed the journal quickly. “How we came south out the mountains is nothing fancy like Miz Pauline Hopkins’s adventure.”
“I don’t mean to pry.” Redwood bit at her lip. “Don’t worry. I didn’t read nothing.”
“I just write ’bout my parents, my aunt.” Aidan hugged the journal against his chest. “I write down Ladd’s stories too. All the stories I hear, what happened, and tall tales too.”
Redwood seemed pleased with that. She was right under his nose. He couldn’t help but breathe her in. Her skin was lily of the valley soap, and a sweet nut oil filled her hair. And there was her own scent too.
“You know I’m no good at storying out loud,” he whispered.
“That ain’t true, but if you fixed on believing it.” Redwood shrugged. “I been writing stories that ain’t never happened yet, but it’s like I remember them.”
“Stories you think up yourself?” Aidan had never considered doing that.
“Why not?”
“Aunt Caitlin used to say writing foolishness was a waste. God only give us so many days.”
“Foolishness?” Redwood sucked her teeth. “Your Aunt Caitlin ain’t never read my stories.”
“You burn ’em up ’fore anybody can read ’em,” Elisa said.
“Speaking of your aunt, may she rest in peace, I just know Miz Caitlin wouldn’t want you to lose that farm now,” Ladd said. “That’s good property, real good soil.”
Aidan had been doing fine with the farm till recently. “Don’t see the point sometimes to bringing in the crop.”
“Better than letting it rot on the vine,” Redwood said.
“Miz Caitlin and Mr. Cooper worked too hard,” Ladd said, “to see it all go to ruin.”
Aidan shook his head. “You think the dead care what we do?”
“What kind of talk is that?” Elisa said.
“You bad as George.” Redwood sucked her teeth again, disgusted.
Elisa set down the gun she was cleaning and flicked a cloth at Aidan’s sour expression. “We’re all that’s left of the dead. Of course they care.”
“Caroline Williams be eyeing your land,” Ladd said, deep anger in his voice.
“Well, she can eye it all she wants,” Aidan said. Ladd nodded.
“Daddy sent me this one. I’ll give it to you.” Redwood dropped a picture postcard in his lap. “Where all the trains meet—the whole world’s riding into Chicago. That’s a true story for your journal book too.”
This postcard of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair featured a lively rendering of Cairo Street. Aidan recognized the temple mosque, market booths, snake charmers, and dancers. He closed his eyes and the Egyptian ladies were doing their belly dance with Redwood. An audience from ’round the world applauded.
“Them grand buildings be long gone. Workingmen set fire to dreams,” Ladd said.
Aidan’s hand shook as he tucked the card in his journal. “I’ll write on that soon.”
“Good.” Redwood leaned against him. “Sometimes I open my mind so wide, I can feel myself in everything, dead and alive, yesterday and tomorrow.”
“She sound just like her mama,” Elisa whispered.
Everyone was dazzled. The fire spit out a shower of sparks.
Aidan leaned into Redwood. “Used to feel that way, as a boy, up in the mountains.”
Do right, for the sickness cured, for the babies born true, for the evil spirits chased from your gates, have mercy.
Aidan covered his ears.
“What’s a matter?” Redwood asked.
Aidan shook his head as riders in black robes tore down a dark road raising dust, right past Elisa’s ironing board.
“You sick, boy?” Ladd was standing over him.
“Just sober,” Aidan rasped. He was usually stinking drunk at this point in the evening. He tried to speak again, but his voice was caught in another time. “I hear you, Miz Garnett. I’m trying,” his other voice said.
“What he say?” Elisa asked.
Aidan lowered Garnett’s body through dense foliage to a white cloth on the ground. Wrapping the burnt remains up, he was grim, fighting tears. Running with the body through the woods, he almost fell.
Redwood had her storm hand against his heart. It was cold as snow. He clutched it for a moment and then pushed her away. “You feeling better now?” she asked.
“I’m out of sorts, maybe I should go.” Aidan stood up.
She stood up next to him. “Out of sorts is the time for you to stay.”
“I … ain’t right.”
“Why you saying that?” Elisa said.
“I run one wife out the county and the other one out the state with my—”
“You’ll find a good woman again,” Ladd said.
“Yes, you will. A handsome, hardworking man like you.” Elisa smiled at Redwood.
“And scare her away too. They don’t call me Crazy Coop for nothing.” But the worst had passed and without him downing a jug.
“I won’t hear you talk yourself down.” Redwood stormed out of the kitchen.
Aidan fingered his journal.
Aunt Elisa was so desperate to get Redwood married till she’d see her niece jump the broom with Crazy Coop! Redwood wanted to be furious or laugh, but she stopped in the hallway and tried to imagine Aidan kissing her or touching her secret spots. She imagined touching him, having his manhood inside her. In the drafty hall, she felt warm, hot almost. A sweet ache deep inside caught her breath. She’d never gone so far in her mind with anybody else. This certainly eased the chill in her lungs.
Didn’t Aidan say, loving was always a good thing?
And talking with him, saying what was on her mind, the nasty tingle under her skin let up. Aidan didn’t run scared when he saw who she was or what she wanted. He believed in her and she believed in him. Redwood let herself smile. The way he looked at her sometimes was how Ladd looked at Elisa, as if the world would end if something should happen to her. Truth be told, Redwood didn’t know what she’d do without Aidan either. Maybe he was somebody to love after all, even in Peach Grove, Georgia. Course George would have a bird. And then there was the law against them. Since Aidan was probably Indian too, Cherokee or Seminole, might be different, or maybe they could run off to Chicago together and be who they wanted.
But Redwood wasn’t ready to marry nobody yet.
She walked into the back room feeling better than she had since coming back from the World’s Fair. Her voice was full and strong. She could’ve broke out singing. George was packing clothes in a canvas bag. Redwood snuck up behind him, ready to poke his ribs. Her smile turned to a frown. One of his hands was wrapped in a bloody rag. He glanced at her, shrugged, and then turned back to packing.
“You been in a fight,” she said.
“Can’t deny it.”
Filled with dread, Redwood stepped ’round a bedroll and tripped over a stack of books and papers. “Don’t go, Brother.”
“I can’t be a man in Peach Grove.” He stuffed money from selling feathers for over a year into a pouch. He was a rich man now and could go where he wanted. Still—
“You be you wherever you go, George Phipps.” She didn’t want to lose him too.
He packed the books and papers. “It’s better up north, in Chicago.”
“Chicago? Take me with you. In Chicago I could find a bright destiny.”
“No.” George grabbed his bedroll and headed for the back door. He was sneaking out, like a thief in the night.
“You just goin’ leave us? Not say a word?”
“Look, I don’t know what trouble be on this road.”
Redwood blocked his exit. “Why you run from here into trouble?” She took hold of his bloody hand. “Tell me what you think’s so wrong with Peach Grove.”
George winced as she peeled off the makeshift bandage. “You see good wherever you look, Red. That’s not worth a damn where I’m going.”
“You’re lying to me with a bit of truth.” Redwood pulled the pain from his hand, but held the hurting a moment ’stead of throwing it away. “I can feel it.”
“Uncle Ladd tell them freedom lies, but he don’t live none of that, too ’fraid to.”
“I ain’t ’fraid. Miz Subie say—”
“Subie a conjure woman, same as Mama. Death don’t scare her none.” He tried to push past her. She didn’t budge.
“So what scare you so, you sneaking off in the night?” Redwood threw his pain at the ground. It sparked in the air. “Something ’bout Mama, huh?”
He turned to her, hoodooing hisself. It was dragon George now flexing a healed claw. Scaly wings unfurled from his back. He snarled fire breath through dagger-sharp talons.
“You don’t scare me.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I can catch a lightning storm. Tell me what’s what. I won’t let you go till you do.”
The air sizzled with fierce energy. George still looked scary, but his regular self again. “Peach Grove crackers, like the crazy one sitting in our kitchen, strung up Mama after god knows what else and set fire to her.”
“What?” Redwood backed up, stumbling and swaying. The solid ground gave way under her feet. She was sinking in quicksand. She gripped the doorway.
“That’s how Mama went to Glory on Christmas day.” His words burned more than dragon’s breath.
“I don’t believe you.” The air was wrong, grainy and hard. She gasped and gasped, but nobody, not even a conjure woman could breathe dirt. “No.” Her blood turned thick and heavy, and her chest throbbed. Nobody’s heart would pump mud either. She could’ve died then and there. “Aidan Cooper wouldn’t do Mama terrible wrong and sit up in our kitchen after. Aunt and Uncle wouldn’t be having none of that.”
George considered lying some more. His twitching nose gave him away, but then he sighed. “Okay, not him. Other white men.”
“I could fly apart into every direction.” She clutched her chest.
“Mama was busy saving colored Peach Grove, and these chicken-livered Negroes act as if she had it coming to her. ’Cause she held her head up. ’Cause she shot a white man who tried to force her.”
Redwood’s legs gave out and she slid to the floor. “Why I ain’t never heard any of this before?”
“Cowards and brutes each got their reasons to hold their tongues. And the family, well, who’s goin’ tell you that? You the spitting image of Mama.” He paused, like he was seeing a haint, ’stead of his sister. “Folks be ’fraid … I see how everybody look at you. Bubba Jackson only come sniffing ’round to prove he ain’t scared.”
Redwood felt hollow and so cold, mountain, ice cold. “Mama was wrapped in a white cloth with orchids and bay branches … I was the first one in the church. I saw her there with baby Jesus and the wise men. One wise man was broken. I set him upright against an orchid.”
“Coop cut her down and brought her to the church. I’ll say that for him.”
“Aunt Elisa say it was an angel did that.”
“You still believing that?” George shook his head. “Time you grew up!”
Redwood covered her face. “Ain’t nobody tole me nothing different.”
“Folks swear Coop put them orchids on her. What’s that? Did he stop ’em from stringing her up, from—”
“Stop who? Who did it?”
George sputtered and shook his head.
“Don’t lie. Tell me, so I know what’s what.”
“I don’t know who did it,” he snarled. “Believe me.”
“Why? All the lying everybody been doing ’round here.”
“I don’t know who those men were, that’s God’s truth, ’cause if I did…” Fire was on his breath a moment, then he swallowed it down. “You were just a little child.”
“Somebody in the family could have tole me something, ’stead of lying.”
“You look like Mama. Act like her too. If she coming through you, why we goin’ tell you how she’s dead?”
“Mr. Cooper was one of them what believed in Mama.”
“Daddy and Miz Subie believed in her too. What good did it do?”
“Subie say Mama cheat that boneyard baron.”
“Yeah, one colored life ’stead of the crackers burning us all out.”
“Now you sneaking off?” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “So when were you goin’ tell me?”
“Get off the floor now.” He stood over her.
She couldn’t move. He reached down for her. She fought him, but he finally lifted her up and hugged her.
“I’ll write from Chicago, when I get settled.”
Before Redwood took another breath, George was gone out the back door.
Mama had been lynched and nobody ever told her!
Feeling like a fool and mad enough to spit poison, Redwood marched into the kitchen. Ladd was smoking and staring in the fire. Aidan was reading Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self. Elisa dozed in her rocker but woke with a start as Redwood charged over to Aidan.
“If you fixing on lying to me with the rest of ’em … you best be leaving, Mr. Cooper.”
“I don’t ever be lying to you.” Aidan set down the book and stood up. “What’s wrong? You been crying?”
“You tell me every other story ’bout what happened on this land, but not this story!”
Elisa ran over to Redwood and took her arm. “What George go and tell you?”
“He say, this ain’t no place to be a man. I reckon it’s no place to be a woman either.”
The fire went out. Embers settled with a sigh. Outside horse hooves pounded the ground as George rode off to make a new life in Chicago.