Peach Grove, 1904
“You trying to go lame on me?” Aidan rubbed Princess’s swollen right leg. She grumbled and stomped her left front foot, but tolerated the poultice he wrapped on the bad one. She nibbled at his pockets and he gave her a mushy pear. Overcome, he hugged her neck as she chewed. Princess tolerated a gush of emotion now and again.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me today. Ain’t everything coming my way?”
Money from the winter crop was burning a hole in his pocket. He should buy what he needed, spring seed and feed and such, so he wouldn’t have to borrow against the farm, so he didn’t lose it all buying drink.
“I’ll see to it in the morning,” he promised Princess, patting his alligator pouch.
As he walked from the shed, the sun sat low on the horizon, teasing him with a bit of warmth. Fog curled up from the creek. Garnett’s voice on the wind was faint; Aidan couldn’t hear what she was saying this afternoon. The nightriders were quiet too—or off riding torment somewhere else.
Aidan hoisted the jug he’d just bought from Leroy Richards yesterday. It was still full. He pulled out the stopper and the whiskey sloshed onto his hands, evaporating quickly and leaving a chill on his palm. He closed the jug and ’stead of licking his skin, he set the jug on the steps and walked into the house. He didn’t need to get stinking drunk tonight. Wasn’t nobody or nothing haunting him.
Redwood’s book, Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self by Pauline Hopkins, was the first thing he saw sitting on the kitchen table. Sober for a week, he’d been reading every night and was almost to the end. He hadn’t seen Redwood since she’d loaned him the book. Was this heartache, missing her? What would she think of his hidden self? The gal was quicksilver, one moment giving him a book to read, saying they had to talk as soon as he was done and the next moment mad enough to shoot him.
Why was he supposed to tell her what her own family wouldn’t?
She was headstrong and reckless, running ’round the swamp, sashaying through town with all those crackers, and colored men too, wondering what was going on between them long legs and switching hips. She didn’t want nobody to tell her nothing—she knew it all! If she did admit to ignorance, she wasn’t satisfied ’less she figured it out herself. Same as her brother, Redwood didn’t never want to be caught wrong, and she had to stick her nose into anything. Gal dragged him off to Chicago without an invite or a by-your-leave.
His heart was pumping like he’d run uphill, and he was just standing still, thinking.
He didn’t need to be loving a wild hoodoo gal, not a gal from the colored side of the creek, not in Peach Grove, not after all the bad water that come tearing his way. She was Garnett’s gal to boot. A stitch of pain in his side made him gasp. White Peach Grove wouldn’t give a damn if he dragged Redwood out back to a shed and used her like an animal. Colored Peach Grove might be angry behind their hands or think it served Redwood right for strutting ’round, a queen of Dahomey, getting friendly with whoever she pleased. If she loved him back, if he tried to marry her, if he tried to do right, upstanding citizens would want to string him up like a colored man. And the likes of Brother George would want to take a shotgun after him and risk getting strung up themselves. He should leave this love alone.
Aidan started outside for the jug.
Big Thunder and Miss O’Casey would’ve been disappointed by their son’s cowardly thoughts. His parents had always lived in their own world, not somebody else’s, istî siminolî. They steered clear of regular, drylongso folk who balked at any real test of freedom, exactly the kind of folk Aidan Cooper was turning into.
Course, he had plenty of help there.
Aunt Caitlin didn’t want anybody in Peach Grove to know squat ’bout Aidan’s parents. She never forgave Sister Aislinn for telling her son they’d both worked in a house of ill repute. Caitlin’s attempts at turning Aidan into a good Catholic failed miserably—mainly ’cause she didn’t like Mass any more than he did. She and Charlie Cooper were scared of any lazy Injun they saw in Aidan. Charlie Cooper couldn’t figure the point of reading books when there was so much work to be done. Whippings made the boy hide in the swamp. Once, after reading a few sentences (she claimed most of his writing was too blurry for her old eyes), Aunt Caitlin tried to set fire to his journal. She burned up her apron instead. When he told her writing in the book was Miz Garnett’s hoodoo spell for whatever ailed him, she let it be. Still and all, Aidan got used to living lies, to walking ’round the easy way.
“How can I do right, Miz Garnett? I just don’t see it.”
After washing his hands and face three times with strong soap and scalding water, he pulled out his journal and sat down to write. Aidan made hisself just another character in the tale, like how his mama told a story.
GARNETT’S CURSE
If there was a curse, the upstanding citizens of Peach Grove had cursed themselves, not Miz Garnett. From age fifteen, Aidan Cooper hid away from folks in a bottle or a jug. But he didn’t start suicide drinking till after Peach Grovers strung up Garnett Phipps.
In 1898, yellow fever took Raymond Phipps, Garnett’s husband, and a lot of men couldn’t stand a beautiful gal like her going to waste. They say Everett Williams offered her a pile of money, but she wasn’t giving up nothing ’cept roots and get-well spells. Everett put his hands to her, and Garnett shot him in the throat. When Miz Caroline Williams buried her rogue of a brother-in-law three days later, Garnett was long gone. She’d gathered what family yellow fever had left her—son George, baby Iris, and sweet Redwood—and vanished into the swamps.
Lone deputies hunting down a conjure woman as powerful as Garnett didn’t stand a chance, so a few days before Christmas the upstanding white men of the county rode out in a great horde. They shot up and burned colored Peach Grove. A war Aidan Cooper wouldn’t join, couldn’t do anything about, and sure couldn’t bear to see, so he took to hiding out in the woods, supposedly hunting deer. He was on the coward’s path.
A lot of folk in Peach Grove, colored, white, and Indian, always thought Garnett was too uppity for her own good, but this time they said she was goin’ get her people killed. Some colored folk were even madder at her than at the posse. Two days into the terror, when they gunned down Mr. Phillip Robeson and his two sons, burned the man’s house and his babies still in it, Garnett broke into Sheriff Harry’s office—locks never fazed her. She waited by the stove till he come back from hunting her. Seeing Garnett sitting at his desk, fool had a heart attack, certain his time had come and gone. Garnett nursed him back to life so she could turn herself in. Sheriff Harry didn’t bother to lock her in a cell.
Garnett had conditions. She swore not to turn the evil eye on the posse, and they swore to leave the rest of the colored in peace. Who wanted a conjure woman coming after you from the grave? Certainly not a powerful one like Garnett who come out of hiding to die for her people.
Christmas eve, Aidan Cooper hid from all the trouble up a chestnut tree in a hunting perch. But weren’t no deer, raccoons, rabbits, nothing, and he didn’t have the heart to sing ’em out of hiding. He was dozing off till twelve hooded nightriders come clomping by, scenting the air with sweat and fear. A barred owl cut the night with its barking cry. The riders stopped below a scorched pine tree. Peering through moss and sweet bay branches, Aidan noted how these men sat their horses, how they sounded all liquored up. He recognized more than a few. Somebody rumbling hell fever and damnation had to be the Baptist preacher. Twisted-hand Sheriff Harry was carrying a torch. The fellow almost falling off his nag was a dead ringer for that peanut farmer with eleven kids and a bad back. Bringing up the rear and ready to skedaddle out of there was a tall, broad figure—Hiram Johnson or Jerome Williams. Doc never put a horse between his legs. Their voices were low at first, muffled, unsure perhaps, but Aidan heard them all swear an oath to leave colored Peach Grove in peace: the barber, the deputy sheriff, Ken Smith who lost his farm to the Williams clan. Aidan and Ken had been fast friends once. Never thought to see him at a lynching.
Aidan told hisself he wasn’t sure, on account of the hoods and black robes. Didn’t the oily smoke from their torches ruin his vision till he couldn’t tell who was who? Well maybe Aidan didn’t want to look too hard. Maybe he didn’t want to see what he was seeing. Garnett, Aidan would have recognized anywhere. She was tied and trussed, her long legs dangling bare and raw in the cold mist. Her mouth bled around the gag. They stripped her naked in the cold air.
It took a long time for her to die. Seemed like they had to kill her four, five times. They tried to set her body on fire, but she just wouldn’t burn. Tall fellow who hunched over his black horse like Jerome, stayed in the shadows, never got close, didn’t ever join in. His horse kept trying to bolt. Garnett looked right at Aidan, red eyes burning, and then she closed her lids and was gone. Aidan swallowed a howl.
The nightriders left what remained of Garnett’s body hanging in that pine. Turkey buzzards gathered. The lazy flap of their wings could make Aidan scream, and to this day, the sound could drive him wild. The nightriders were gone an hour or more, and he didn’t move. Wasn’t sure he’d ever move again. When he finally climbed down from his perch, his legs were rubber and his bowels let loose all down his legs as he took off.
He wanted to run and run till he came to the end of the world and fell off, but he got no further than Aunt Caitlin’s front yard. The laundry still hung on the line, stiff and cold. He couldn’t leave Miz Garnett alone and tortured in that tree, to be pecked and mauled, to rot in the morning sun and stink to high heaven, with no company but torment and shame.
“What is comfort to a corpse?” The boneyard baron sneered at coward Aidan.
Aidan gathered hisself and ran back. After scaring the carrion eaters away, he cut her down from that tree and wrapped her in a sheet. Carolers in the distance sang at the stroke of twelve. Joy to the World, Merry Christmas. Nobody at the colored church really knew how the body came to lie with baby Jesus on Christmas morning. ’Stead of cursing a coward, folks blessed the angel who covered her in sweet bay branches and violet orchids.
Aidan never thought the living could haunt a body, but those twelve hooded men hounded him day and night, raided his dreams. Some days, every thought he had ended with nightriders blazing through his brain, the horses’ hooves stamping on his nerves. He might have learned to bear that, but along the middle of February, as he turned fields for spring planting, Garnett joined the demon posse, pleading with him to do right.
So Aidan sucked down rotgut liquor till white masked faces blurred into the moonlight on moss, till Miz Garnett was a silent whoosh in his ears. May Ellen, Aidan’s first wife, wouldn’t talk to him about what had happened, what he’d seen, and the Johnson twins, even Doc, thought he ought to let sleeping dogs lie. By Josie, Aidan stayed drunk. He picked fights over nothing, smashed up barrooms, and he cussed out everyone who came in range. He broke Graham Wright’s nose when the man was telling tales of glorious Choctaw valor—his ancestors whipping Creek and Seminole and colored folk too. Aidan couldn’t stand nobody. Colored, white, and Indian let him be. Josie was ten years older than him and desperate. Suckling a newborn baby boy that wasn’t his, she took off after a year, with half his seed money. Served him right.
Now, if Miz Garnett had sent her daughter Redwood to torment him, Redwood didn’t know anything about it. That gal was surely the balm of Gilead. She took to walking by his fields to chat, even when he had nothing much to say. She made him come to her house for supper and play with Iris and the cousins. Listening to Ladd’s lies and eating Elisa’s stews and pies, Aidan almost felt good now and again. After hiding his ways from everybody since he was twelve, after almost forgetting who he could be, he and Redwood celebrated first fruits, did a green corn ceremony like with his folks. And though she didn’t stop him drinking altogether, he never managed much lowdown behavior ’round her. Got him up in the morning, to smell the oil in her hair, to hear the E-LEC-TRI-CI-TY in her voice. Redwood was his medicine. With her at his side, the nightriders’ hooves and Garnett’s voice faded to a whisper. Still, Aidan wished he could go back and break the locks on his spirit, do what was right.
Whoever got to turn time around, though?
Aidan stowed the journal in his shoulder bag. Redwood could read this story for herself. He’d let her read any story of his that took her fancy. He wrapped his banjo in a blanket and slung it over his back. He strode out onto the porch and gathered the birds he’d finished carving last night: eagles, water hens, osprey, and an ibis. He’d been meaning to make a necklace with the yellow bead he brought back from the World’s Fair—something fine African women wore—and give it to Redwood. He’d show her the bead and see what she thought. Feeling good, he jumped over the jug of Leroy’s finest brew sitting pretty on the steps and headed for Ladd and Elisa’s.
Fifteen minutes later, stumbling over loose stones, he dropped the osprey and ibis in the dirt. “They don’t need to hear this story, Wildfire. Well, she don’t.” His banjo banged into his back, into his resolve, a dissonant chord. “Ain’t goin’ make her feel better. And she don’t want to see you either.”
He gathered up the toys but didn’t turn back home. He sank down in the dirt.
Iona downed several big swallows of moonshine before Redwood set the bone in her arm back in its place. She howled more racket than a wounded hound dog and almost passed out.
“You should see Doc Johnson.” Redwood didn’t pull too much pain. That spooked some folks, and she wasn’t sure ’bout Iona. “He know how to set a bone good.”
“’Less you think this little break’ll kill me, I’d rather not.” Iona gasped and grunted and drank another mouthful from the jug. Her twin boys watched anxiously. “I don’t care much for white folk. Suit me fine if I never have to see one again.”
“Be a blessing if they all dropped off the Earth,” Redwood said.
The twins cocked their heads at her. She wasn’t sounding like herself.
“Mm-hmm.” Iona was drunk with liquor and pain. She closed her eyes. “Wishing folk ill make you sick your ownself.”
“I guess.” Redwood finished fitting on a splint.
“Crazy Coop come by last night, sang a few songs, bought a jug. He asked after you.”
“Did he now? Well I ain’t studying him.” Redwood worried that she’d cut off the blood flow, wrapping too tight. “Keep still and don’t lift no weight, till it heal—a month, six weeks—or this ain’t goin’ work.”
“A month?” Iona laughed. “Ha.”
Redwood turned to the twins. “Don’t let her carry nothing or do heavy work, you hear me?”
“I’ll keep still.” Iona pressed a silver dollar in Redwood’s hand. “Leroy’ll give you a ride far as the creek. Just don’t spook the man. He believe in too much mess as it is.”
Leroy left Redwood at the old Jessup peach orchard. Jerome Williams owned it now. Aidan’s place was just through the trees a bit and down the road, closer than home.
“Mr. Cooper sounded good last night,” Leroy remarked, following her gaze. “He said it was your fault he ain’t buying so many jugs. Don’t hoodoo all my best customers, gal.” Leroy rode off laughing.
Everywhere she turned, Aidan Cooper was asking after her, talking ’bout her. It was not much of a secret anymore that something was going on between them. Even Bubba complained ’bout her having somebody else. Redwood hemmed and hawed under the peach trees. Aidan was supposed to be her special friend, somebody she could trust with anything, yet in all these years, he never told her what happened that Christmas night in 1898. In his favor, Aidan didn’t lie to her. He just didn’t say. The man carried all sorts of secrets. His journal was full of things he kept to hisself. She was dying to get a look inside and not really that mad at him. Mad at everybody else.
Truth be told, she felt ashamed for accepting what folks didn’t say to her, for being a grown woman and still believing angels took Mama to Glory. A trusting fool and a coward too, she never found the nerve to ask Aidan who his people were.
She started toward his place. Two bobcats fussed at each other, making her spine tingle. Bobcats didn’t scare her, and now that she’d imagined how it might feel for Aidan to hold and kiss her, for him to touch her, now that she’d imagined touching him, she wanted to do it and see if it felt as good as she hoped. Redwood stopped cold. What if he didn’t want her, like he wanted May Ellen or even orange-haired Josie Fields? Aidan barely let Redwood touch him. What if he didn’t like colored gals the way he liked white ones? You had to wonder ’bout white folk and all the misery they done in this world—even one that made your heart race. So how could she, with all this sadness hemming her in, still want Aidan to make her feel good right now? How come she would gladly do the same for him?
Can’t hide from God’s truth, just gotta work with it.
Mama hadn’t talked to Redwood since she’d gone on to Glory. To hear the wind buzzing with her voice was a blessing. Redwood was walking again. She stepped from the trees and spied somebody sitting in the dirt down the road a piece with what must’ve been a banjo on his back. She started to wave and shout at Aidan, but Jerome Williams rode his shiny black stallion right in front of her and dismounted. Redwood frowned at first. She didn’t want to see anybody but Aidan, yet Jerome looked so happy to see her, she smiled at him too. “How do, Mr. Williams.”
Jerome slapped at a bug. “How do yourself.”
“Fog coming in, but that don’t make the bugs no nevermind.” Cool mist tickled her ankles.
“Bugs don’t seem to bother you.”
“Me and mosquitoes and no-see-ums, we have an understanding.”
Jerome shook his head, charmed. “Do tell.”
“What you doing ’cross the creek? Coming to see Mr. Cooper too?”
“This is my orchard.” Jerome moved close. “Actually, I was hoping to find you. Cherokee Will said he saw you coming this way.”
“Me? You sick or something?” Redwood clutched the red mojo bag at her hip.
Jerome tilted his head, furrowed his brow. “Would that worry you?”
“Depends on how sick you are.” She teased him. “Ain’t Doc Johnson still in town?”
“I don’t need doctoring.” He sounded mad at somebody. “I’ve come to…” He searched for a good line. “I’ve come to take you away.”
“What you say?”
“Before they ruin you.”
“Who? No!” Redwood almost laughed, but his face looked too serious.
“Ruin you the way they did your mother.” Jerome’s gray eyes got misty, looking past now into back then. “You’re even prettier than she was.”
Redwood wanted to run, but the horse was behind her.
“I forgave her, you know. Uncle Everett was a pig. But I can take you away from all that.” Jerome was talking to hisself really, feverish eyes flitting ’round his face.
“I don’t need you to take me nowhere. You talking out your head.”
Jerome grabbed her wrist, so tight, he could’ve snapped the bone. “Every time you saunter through town, you got a smile for me.” He tried to kiss her.
Redwood shoved him away. “Stop, don’t.” How was this happening to her?
Jerome ripped at her clothes, tearing easily through her blouse and undershirt. Spooked by their thrashing, the stallion reared up and galloped off down the road.
“Can’t get your scent out of my dreams. Walking ’round like Queen Somebody.”
Redwood punched his chest with her free hand. He grunted at her blows and then caught her fist. She was strong, but not strong enough to escape him. They crashed to the ground with her fighting fiercely. The weight of him knocked the wind out of her. One of her arms got twisted and pinned under her back. Jerome was wiggling out his pants and pawing her tiddies. She couldn’t think straight.
“Don’t do me like this,” she hissed right in his ear.
Jerome didn’t listen. “I see stars in your eyes and a sweet night blooming between your thighs. Your honey ripe breasts and luxurious hips have called to my blood.”
“You talking poetry to me?” Redwood gagged as he tried to kiss her. “Stop!”
He bit her tongue. Blood oozed in her mouth.
“You do Crazy Coop, gal, so don’t pretend you’re all that particular.”
This shocked her still. Jerome had caught her in forbidden thoughts. Seizing this lull in her tight-thighed struggle, he thrust his hard member into her body, ripping and tearing delicate flesh. She shrieked: the sound startled the old oak trees all down the lane. They twisted and turned, lifting ancient boughs. Thick mats of roots strained under the fields. Yet they could not come to her aid. Redwood’s cry echoed against the rocks. A bear with a star-shaped scar on his cheek, curled in his den for a winter’s sleep, awoke in panic. He was far from Oak Lane and could only snort and bellow in Redwood’s defense. Jerome stuffed Redwood’s mouth with her head rag. As he pumped toward a climax, she was silent, still, her eyes as hard as flint.
A piercing yelp almost knocked Aidan over. The ground shuddered. He felt sighing branches and aching roots. He heard a bear hollering from his cave. He turned and squinted through fog. He could just make out a naked white behind flexing between a tattered skirt and flailing dark legs and the fog closed in again. He froze, praying for a moment that he was caught in a lurid nightmare. Terror gripped him as Jerome’s stallion galloped by. Redwood screamed again. Shaking hisself, Aidan dropped the toy birds and ran through the thick mist. Banjo strings twanged against his back as he clambered down the road. He would’ve thrown the instrument into the bushes, but he didn’t want to take the time. He strained and gasped, running so fast he flew through the air, scrambling now and again for solid ground. Still it took forever …
“That’s not so bad, is it?” Jerome pumped against Redwood’s rag doll body.
Flying over the last bit of ground, Aidan heard something crack, a dry wood sound and then Jerome’s scream, breaking up before it really started. Aidan grabbed the man’s shoulders and hauled him off Redwood. His fist was raised to slug him. Jerome’s head lolled back and forth, a rag doll too. Blood poured from his throat and out his lips. Terror had frozen in his eyes.
“He’s dead. He’s gone.” Redwood lay stone still, one arm still twisted underneath her back.
“What?!” Aidan dropped Jerome and backed away. “You break his neck with one hand?” Her hoodoo storm hand.
Redwood struggled up, grasping at her ripped blouse and skirt. Fumbling, Aidan unwrapped the banjo and offered her the blanket. She smacked it away with bruised fingers and hugged the tatters of clothing to her body. Aidan didn’t see many bruises or any wounds. But her sweet features were twisted into a ghoul mask. He had never wanted to spy such horror on her face.
“He was on me so fast, I didn’t know what…”
Aidan had seen this coming. He knew how Jerome was. Everybody did. The man didn’t hide his appetites. He was ruthless at any business and undefeated in love, what he called love anyway. Aidan was such a stand-around-and-do-nothing coward. He should have taken his shotgun and—
“You sure he’s dead?”
Aidan got down on the ground and inspected Jerome’s broken neck, whistled, and shook his head. He closed Jerome’s eyes and sprinkled dirt on the lids. Watching this, Redwood spit blood on the ground. Her tongue was bleeding. She flailed at fog licking her cheeks. She rubbed her skin hard, as if to clean something nasty off.
“I came too late, huh?” he murmured.
“He’s dead. Ain’t no later than that.”
“But you alive, gal.”
“Felt like he just wanted to burn me up.”
“Light a man’s passion the way you do, he ’llowed to burn everything in sight.”
“Never did anything to the man but smile,” she yelled. “Ain’t my fault what he be doing with my smile, you hear me? His fault.”
Nothing coming out Aidan’s mouth was right so he didn’t say any more.
They stood over the body a long while, just breathing at one another. Sun slid down under the horizon, leaving a purple glow. A trickle of blood ran down her leg and a trickle of white. Jerome’s future was cluttering up her insides. Aidan didn’t know how to comfort her.
Redwood clutched the tattered blouse over her tiddies. This left her private parts exposed. Aidan just stared at her, mumbling stupid talk, tears in his eyes as if Jerome Williams had rammed into him and torn up his insides. Redwood suddenly couldn’t stand still. Her feet itched, her mouth was sore, and her skin was crawling ’cross itself. Inside, bits of Jerome swam into tomorrow. But Jerome was gone from this world. With her storm hand, she’d broken his neck and dispatched him onto his next journey.
The wind picked up. The fog on her bare skin was driving her mad. She couldn’t see straight and tripped into Jerome’s cold butt. She gagged and almost fell over. Aidan broke her fall, and for no good reason she could think of, she beat his chest and face with her fists, hollering like a flock of crows. Finally, he took hold of her wrists, and she was just crying and crying and didn’t know if she could stop. She wanted him to hold her in his arms, protect her from what happened, but she didn’t want him to touch her.
When the heaving and weeping had drained all the madness and her arms were too tired to carry her fists, Aidan let her hands go and threw a blanket at her shoulders so she could cover herself. She clutched it tight. At least she wasn’t naked on the road, her shame on parade. She hugged the rough cloth tight against her raw skin. That was better than slimy fog.
“George was right,” she said, walking just to be walking.
“’Bout what?” Aidan followed her.
“Me, everything.” She quivered. “I ain’t got the sense I was born with, trusting a—”
“George might’ve figured out the likes of Jerome Williams, but that don’t make you wrong.”
Any other time she would’ve smiled at Aidan standing up for her. But there weren’t no smiles left in her. Every step she took hurt like hellfire and damnation, every jagged gasp of breath tore at her soul.
“This ain’t no place to be a woman,” she said.
Aidan gaped at her, shame-faced.
“Am I lying?” she asked. “Jerome say he’d take me away, ’fore they ruined me.”
“We have to think.” He licked a bloody lip. His right eye was swelling up. He was goin’ have quite a few bruises—from her hands, hands that killed a man too.
“My soul, what ’bout my soul?” she asked.
“You should go.”
“A hoodoo woman can’t always control the spell, don’t always know what she be conjuring.” She balled a fist. “I didn’t mean to kill him. But it—it felt good when I did.”
“Get you away from here. They’ll hang you over this.”
She tripped over nothing. He reached for her, but missed and hugged thick fog instead. She stayed out of reach.
“George is gone already,” she said. “I got a baby sister counting on me.”
“Iris can’t count on you dead.”
“What am I goin’ do?” She stopped.
“Keep walking,” he said.
Redwood lurched down the road toward his house. Aidan kept pace beside her, his arm barely touching her back, catching her every once in a while, so she wouldn’t fall. She wished he’d go away, but then she’d be alone. Her head was light. She couldn’t find the back of her breath. Nasty little gasps weren’t doing much for her.
“Come on now, take a good breath,” he said, as if she were a baby.
“I can’t. I just can’t.” But she did.
“You have to be long gone ’fore they set a posse on you.”
“Miz Subie say, demon posse can hunt you beyond the grave.”
“The demons I’m worried ’bout are men. You gotta run.”
“Where? Nightriders will hunt me down, same as Mama. Burn colored Peach Grove while they at it.”
Aidan looked at something she couldn’t see. He listened to sounds that didn’t touch her ears, then turned to her, the blood gone from his face. “Foot won’t take you far as a mule, but it’s safer. Easier to track a mule.”
Redwood halted and sank down to the ground, dragging Aidan with her. She jammed her fists in loose gravel. “Jerome deserve to die for what he did. I just don’t deserve his blood on my hands.”
Aidan pulled her fingers from the dirt, tried to lift her up. She flung his arms back at him. “Come on and get up now,” he said.
“What good is power if it can’t save you?”
“Don’t let Jerome Williams break your heart, scatter your spirit.”
“Spirits be too late to undo what I did.”
Aidan sighed. Maybe he was goin’ give up on her, abandon her, like a man waking from a nightmare can get up and go on ’bout his business. A twister of fog swirled toward them, gathering force. The old oak trees bent and swayed. Twigs and debris mixed with swirling gravel and vines. One enormous branch was ominously close to snapping. Thick Spanish moss lashed Aidan’s face and back. He clawed it from his eyes.
“Listen to me,” he shouted over howling wind. “Jerome Williams, he try to bust into you and it’s like to drive you mad, but—”
“Why he want to do that?” Jerome’s baby soft hands were all over her body still; his sour sweet breath filled her nostrils; his manhood swelled against bruised thighs, breaking a hole in the future. “And why you didn’t come sooner?” Aidan took hold of her face and looked into her eyes. She wanted to smack his callused fingers away. She didn’t want any man to lay a hand on her ever again or else. “What?”
“I’m not too late to say it was me who broke Mr. Williams’s neck,” Aidan said. The old oaks rocking above them were suddenly still. The wind dropped to a murmur. “It’s a clean break. Who’d believe a skinny snap like you got that kinda power?”
“But you can’t.” Redwood stood up. “Then I’ll have you all over my soul too.”
“I gotta do something right,” he said.
“Ain’t nothing right to do.”
“You got to quit being stubborn here.”
“I don’t know.”
He put his arm ’round her waist. She flinched, but he got her to walking again. “What’s to know?” he whispered. “Crackers will tear up colored Peach Grove if they think you killed Jerome Williams.”
She gazed ’cross a field and beyond a stand of Georgia pine to Aunt and Uncle’s place. Chimney smoke snaked over the trees. “Aunt Elisa’s making supper, laying out a place for me, Iris, my cousins, even a place for you. Uncle Ladd’s telling those big fat freedom lies the little ones love, that everybody love, ’cept George.”
“Don’t worry. Your sister got people to look after her.”
“You goin’ take care of Iris?” She raised her fist at him. “Like you took care of me?”
Tears welled in his eyes. “Better. I swear to you.”
She dropped her fist. “I can’t think,” she said. “My mind’s gone.” They trudged on.
Aidan was glad his house was in sight, even though it looked to have been hit by a storm since Josie left. Tools, clothes, bottles, firewood, empty sacks, broken harnesses were scattered in the yard. A window dangled from its casement. Jagged broken glass he hadn’t noticed before was looking deadly to him now. The front door hung on its hinges like a loose tooth. The jug of hooch sat in the middle of the steps calling to his parched throat. Aidan wound through the debris, supporting Redwood. She leaned her full weight into him finally. Princess snorted at them from the shed.
“Don’t know where to go. Peach Grove is the only home I got,” she said.
“Make your home on the road, make your life up as you go,” Aidan said. “Fix your soul somewhere far away from Georgia.”
“How am I goin’ do all that?”
Aidan let go of her and waited a breath to see if she would stand on her own. She was shaky but did not fall. He pulled a billfold from his pocket and thrust the contents at her. If he couldn’t turn time ’round, if he couldn’t go back and do what was right, he could offer her a decent chance.
“What’s that? More cash money than I ever seen. You rob the bank?”
“My life savings.” He stuffed bills and a tiny sack of gold coins in her hand.
“You just carry it ’round with you like that?”
“Had a feeling this morning.”
“I can’t take all your money.”
“I’ve been waiting for a special moment.”
Going up the steps was a challenge for her balance. He caught her twice. The bottle tree tinkled in the breeze. She hesitated at the door, almost breaking into tears.
“Why you do all this for me?” she said, as if she didn’t know he ached to do much more, as if his heart wasn’t breaking.
“You think I want to see you swinging from a rope? A colored woman ain’t ’llowed to defend herself and live to tell the tale.”
“Who you telling?”
Aidan’s eyes brimmed with tears again.
“I don’t want your cheap talk, your tears, or your money.” Her words were a whip lashing his face. She shoved the bills and gold pieces at him. He took hold of her arm before she could get down the stairs. She glared at him, but he wouldn’t let her go.
“I’ll say, you my gal, and Jerome Williams, he try to take you away from me. I’ll say, I saw him on you and I went wild and then I snapped his neck. I’m Crazy Coop, ain’t I? I’ll say what I should’ve done.”
Redwood’s lip trembled, but she couldn’t speak.
Aidan’s kitchen was as chaotic as the yard. Broken dishes and furniture, half-eaten meals, liquor jugs, smashed boxes, and dirty clothes were scattered everywhere. Redwood perched on a chair. Somehow, she’d gotten out of her torn things and was now wearing Aidan’s shirt and pants. Her red mojo bag hung from a rope cinching the loose waist. Laying her head on the table between Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self and a pile of money, she bumped into the banjo. It twanged out of tune. Aidan stuffed her feet into his dew-soggy brogans.
“They’re cold, wet,” she said.
“They’re clean. The clothes too … You need things that ain’t ripped.” He tied the straps tight ’round the ankles. “Good thing you got big feet…”
An old joke between them. Redwood shook her head. “All your money and your best working boots.”
“When’s your aunt expecting you?”
“She too busy to be checking my time. She just leave my food and fall down asleep.”
“Every shut-eye ain’t sleep. She could worry ’bout you in her dreams, wake up, and then come looking.” Aidan riffled through a cupboard till he found a music box. “Can’t nobody find your trail, you hear me?”
“Can’t say goodbye, not even to Miz Subie?”
He opened the false bottom of the music box and stuffed the bills and coins inside. “I’ll say you run off to Florida, so don’t go that a way. Your uncle could track a flea.”
“This shirt smell like you, musty and wild. And the pants are too short.”
He ran his finger along the box. “Your mama give me this.”
She didn’t want to think on Garnett. “They might hang you over a dead rich man or put you away from the sun, the oak trees, from your swamp stink and cricket racket. Why risk freedom for me?”
“This is freedom.” He twisted the screw and sang the old Stephen Foster song:
Way down upon the Swanee River
far, far away,
All up and down the whole creation
Sadly I roam
Redwood sat up out of her slump. “You a conjure man when you sing.”
“Garnett Phipps always had a kind word. The two of you, cut from the same cloth.” He put the music box in a burlap sack with biscuits, peach pie, slices of cured ham, and a bottle of Miz Subie’s cure-all. He thrust a pistol at her. “I know you can take care of yourself, but this’ll scare off the fools what ain’t got the sense to leave you be…”
Redwood stood up from the table, shaking her head at the gun. He thrust it at her again. Outside, an owl hooted. She jumped and gingerly took the pistol.
“Brother George is up in Chicago,” she said.
“Hush. I can’t tell what I don’t know.”
Redwood hugged him suddenly. He was surprised, but hugged her too. Her tears wet the back of his neck. “How can I thank you?”
“Forgive me.”
Redwood shook her head, but did not speak. He stroked her cheek once with clumsy, rough hands. She closed her eyes.
“I ain’t used to touching soft anymore,” he said.
She wiped at tears. He gently pushed her out the door.
“Forgive yourself and live a long, good life, Miz Redwood. That’s more than enough for me.”
Redwood walked down the steps into the yard. “Come with me,” she whispered, so soft she almost couldn’t hear her ownself.
Aidan was grabbing his shotgun from the porch. He didn’t hear her.