Georgia Countryside, 1904
“If a man carry a gun all the time,” Miz Subie said, “he will kill someone. A gun can hoodoo you. Any weapon you carry, any hate you hold, will use you.” She sucked her teeth and shook her head. “Being mad at everybody in Peach Grove won’t help nothing. Set your mind to healing. We’re here.”
Redwood swallowed an angry retort and guided the canoe to shore. She’d never gone so far upcreek. Folks said it was dead land, haunted. She didn’t know anybody even lived here, till Subie said where they were going. Just beyond the creek, the soil was scalded, barren but for scraggly weeds. This land was once a fire forest, but the flame-resistant woods had laid down to loggers several years ago. A tiny cabin clung to hardscrabble ground. A stiff wind could’ve carried it away. The creek gurgled outside its lone window, which had no glass panes, just a dirty blanket keeping out the chill.
Subie walked through the rickety door without knocking. Redwood was close behind, carrying baskets of herbs, roots, ointments, and Subie’s special healing implements wrapped in clean cotton. They both wore red mojo bags at the waist, but Subie had her healing root bag too and bangles at her ankles, warding off bad spells. Redwood set the tools of their trade on a table. The cabin had one middling-sized room and a loft. Kitchen stove was only giving off a little heat, and the fireplace was cold. A bed was wedged in the corner, and a sick gal sweat blood in filthy sheets and twisted in pain.
“It’s goin’ be Christmas ’fore you know it, Rebecca,” Miz Subie said to her. “I got the shawl you made me last year.” She wore a green spiderwebby thing.
“A year already come and gone, and I missed it,” Rebecca said. Redwood had seen her at Iona’s. Rebecca wasn’t right in the head, but she loved the blues. Her teeth were yellow, her skin was ashy, and what flesh she had hung from her bones.
“Spring never come fast enough for me.” Subie touched Rebecca’s head and the gal shuddered. “I’m always waiting on the heat.” Subie chattered on, praising steamy summer days when the ground held the heat like a blanket for the night. Rebecca settled into her words and touch.
A middle-aged woman with a riot of nappy hair busting through a tattered head rag stepped out of the shadows by the chimney. She smelled sour and looked anxious. Trembling, she pointed a bony finger at Redwood. “What’s she doing here?”
“How do, Dora,” Subie said and tucked her mojo bag into her skirt. “Redwood’s working with me now. Getting old, got to pass it along.”
Redwood hid her mojo bag as well.
“Don’t tell my husband, Miz Subie. He wouldn’t want to know”—she looked right at Redwood—“that y’all been here.”
“I don’t talk to the man,” Subie said. “You can tell him what you please.”
Subie listened to Rebecca’s breath and felt the pulse of her heart. She wiped sweat from her brow, tasted it, and grimaced. Redwood did the same. It was salty and bitter and a few other tastes that Redwood would talk over with Subie later. Rebecca passed in and out, writhing in pain. Redwood reached a hand to her scrunched-up cheeks.
Subie held Redwood back. “Leave her pain be. It’ll guide us for now.”
Dora twitched and muttered. Redwood wondered if she had all her wits.
“Dora ain’t ask us here on her own account.” Subie read Redwood’s thoughts and pulled back the sheet. Her face hardened as she examined Rebecca’s bloody private parts. Redwood was wincing more than Rebecca, till Subie scowled her quiet. “Who cut her up so bad?” Subie said.
“She lost the baby—a sin against God,” Dora said. “Can you fix her up?”
Redwood answered quickly. “Sure we can. Don’t worry.”
Subie narrowed her one good eye. “Stitching her up won’t be enough. We got to bring the fever down.” She thrust a needle at Redwood and pushed Dora toward a bucket. “She’s all dried out, get us some water. We’ll do what we can.”
Subie didn’t say a word all the way back to her house. No hoodoo spells and wisdom, no stories of her wild youth, no catalogue of plants that can heal or poison, no discussing the folks they’d been curing all day. Redwood didn’t dare chatter or ask a question. Subie was in a mood. The temperature dropped quickly as the sun left the sky. Redwood’s hands got stiff with cold, and even though she did all the paddling for over three hours, Subie looked more tired than her when they dragged into her cozy kitchen. Healing wearied Subie worse than ever these days. The old woman dropped in a rocker by the fireplace and yawned like a bear.
“I’m feeling every minute of my long years,” she grumbled.
After the close quarters at Dora’s, Subie’s two-room cabin was a palace, fragrant and magical. Dried herbs and flowers hung from every beam. Amulets, mandalas, and painted spells decorated the walls. Bottles of her cure-all lined the mantel, ready for sale. Redwood lit a fire in the stove and stowed the roots, potions, powders, candles, dirt, and tools exactly where Subie liked to find them. The orderliness of her stocks was a lesson of its own. Subie knew the magic of setting one thing against another.
“Today seem like a hundred days,” Redwood said.
Not certain she put everything in its place, Redwood set the traveling basket by the stove and went out to the well. She hauled in two buckets of fresh water and set a kettle to boil. A bush by the door with colored bottles strung on bare branches tinkled in the wind each time she passed.
“You and Aidan both catching mean spirits,” Redwood said. “We tossed his in the stream. What you do with a bottle of badness?”
With great effort, Subie bent over to arrange kindling in the fireplace. “Don’t ever say you can do what you can’t.” The fire caught quickly.
“Sorry, Miz Subie, I just—”
“Don’t sorry me. A gift such as yours will turn to a curse without wisdom.” When flames were dancing to her satisfaction, Subie sank back in her rocker. “Garnett ask me to look out.” She watched the fire, as if it had a story to tell.
Redwood brought Subie a basin of hot water to wash up. “I almost can’t remember Mama’s face.” Redwood washed herself from another basin. “I remember how Mama smelled: hickory smoke, magnolia soap, and some ole nasty tea that seemed sweet till after you drank it.”
Subie struggled up again. The cold was settling in her joints. She creaked and cracked like an old door. “I know this tea. Give you the runs. Clean out every evil thing in you.” She hobbled over to a chest of drawers and riffled through several. “Here.” She pulled out a photo wrapped in a violet handkerchief.
It was a black-and-white image of Garnett Phipps with an orchid in her hair, looking how Redwood would at thirty-five. “I didn’t know you had a photo of Mama.”
“From the Chicago Fair.” Subie sat back down. “I got plenty you don’t know.”
“Mama don’t talk to me since she gone to Glory.”
Redwood had promised Miz Subie not to do anything wild till she was good and strong, but holding a picture of Garnett, Redwood couldn’t help herself. She’d been feeling so much better lately, practically her old self. Being mad at everyone for lying to her hadn’t dampened her spirit; in fact it was a tonic for what ailed her. So with Subie nodding off to sleep in her rocker, Redwood squinted through heavy-lidded eyes at the black-and-white image till it came to life: Mama’s hot breath fogged the air; big brown eyes reflected red firelight, but not at the Chicago Fair like Redwood expected. It was Christmas 1898, and the family was running through the swamp. Crackers were burning colored Peach Grove. Garnett pulled a young Redwood out of the mud and hugged her as she shivered. Baby Iris gurgled on Garnett’s back. George stood beside them, his teeth chattering.
“I know you feel the cold,” Garnett said. “We got to keep going till I see the way into tomorrow.”
Redwood gulped cold swamp air, and the chill startled her eyes wide again. She was on her knees in front of the fireplace soaked in dew. She clasped the photo to her chest and fought tears. Subie was wide awake watching her, fierce and sharp as an osprey fixing to dive for a big, juicy fish.
“You can’t control a spell like that. You go where it take you.”
“I was running and hiding with her again,” Redwood said.
“I found you that night.” Subie nodded. “Garnett left a trail that I had to follow.”
“If Mama had all that hoodoo power like everybody say, how come she let ’em string her up that way? How come she died swinging in a tree? How come they burned her, till you almost couldn’t tell who she was?”
Subie stuffed tobacco in a pipe. “Garnett run you all ’round that swamp hoping to find a spell.”
“Why’d she leave us?” Redwood stared at the red-eyed photograph. Flower in Garnett’s hair had a spot of purple color too.
“Can’t know all what’s in a person’s heart,” Subie said.
“Why didn’t she kill ’em ’stead of letting ’em kill her?”
“Killing goes both ways. Dying is your own business.”
“Don’t we get to defend ourselves without it coming back down on us?”
“She didn’t want more blood on her hands.”
Redwood shook with so much anger and hurt, her backbones popped and cracked. A mighty pain shot up her neck. “Why didn’t nobody tell me?”
“Don’t know ’bout all of everybody else,” Subie replied.
“Why didn’t you then?” Pain shot down Redwood’s legs. She could pull somebody else’s ache and throw it away, but not her own.
Subie drew on her pipe. “So you could grow into yourself, big and strong, without a shadow over your soul. So this heartless world wouldn’t snatch your power ’fore it got going good.” Subie sighed. “Garnett asked me to see to that. I did the best I could.”
Redwood sat down in a rocking chair that had swamp flowers carved ’cross the back and vines twisting into armrests. She rocked hard back and forth till she could stand herself again. “Is this a new chair?” She rubbed the wood.
“Yes, Mr. Cooper come by, bought a spirit spell, and left that chair.” Subie sucked her pipe. “He asked after you.”