Redwood and Wildfire Read online

  A young bear trotting through the woods with a rack of ribs in its mouth stopped right under Aidan. The bear gobbled the food and scratched sharp claws on the hard bark. “What you looking at, bear? Go climb your own tree.” Aidan threw a stick at him. The bear scarcely flinched. “All right, so I gotta go home. I will. I will. Get on now.” The bear licked his lips and cocked his head. Aidan sighed and sang a bit of Princess’s twilight song. The bear gurgled and took off into the gloom.

  The song petered out. Aidan didn’t move like he promised. He would’ve just drifted off, but The War of the Worlds book he’d been planning to read for two days dug into his side. Doc Johnson wouldn’t want it back all sweaty and wrinkled. Aidan certainly couldn’t afford to buy the man a fresh copy. He reached to pull it from under his hip and fell out of the tree more than climbed down. Miracle he didn’t break his neck. Funny too, but he couldn’t manage a laugh. He rubbed at bruises on his knuckles that hadn’t come from the fall yet looked new. He fingered a dent in his boot and wondered where else he’d been banging ’round this night.

  Since he was half out his mind and lost no matter which direction he took, Aidan stayed on a path that led into a peach grove. He recognized a gnarled tree corpse shaped like a gator swimming for the stars. This grove used to be part of the Jessup place, but Jerome Williams owned it now. Jerome aimed to own every direction you looked. Two snowy egrets flew over the orchard. A sharp breeze smelled and tasted of the distant ocean. Storm clouds crossed the moon and chased more birds from the sea to the woods. Stumbling, Aidan followed the path as it climbed up out of the grove. A young colored gal stood above him, her face turned to the sky. She was tall and fierce and beautiful, a bolt of lightning lingering in the grass. Spats of water splashed her face.

  “Folk conjure this world, call it forth out of all the possibilities,” she shouted at him.

  Spooked, Aidan nodded. Hoodoo talk; what Garnett Phipps often said. Ghost clouds swirled above the gal, furiously doing battle over something important. Suddenly these flimsy gray and white figures broke apart and silver daggers of rain pelted the hilltop. He and the gal were soaked in an instant. Fists of wind buffeted them this way and that. She grinned and danced as trees in the orchard bent and split. Peaches shot through the air, smashed into trunks, and pummeled Aidan. It was hard to catch a breath or hang on to balance, yet the alcohol fog in his head cleared a bit.

  “Damn, you ought to take cover ’bout now,” he yelled.

  “What ’bout you?” She twirled ’round behind him, a whirlwind herself. “Why’re you still out?”

  Aidan was a haunted fool, but he couldn’t say that.

  “I ain’t ’fraid of no rain,” she said. “I’m rehearsing. I’m goin’ do a show, see.” She storm-danced right past him again.

  Aidan pivoted and should have keeled over, but he didn’t. “I know you,” he said, staring at his feet still on solid ground. A swollen peach branch sailed by and landed heavily beside them. Twenty ripe peaches busted open. He thought of dashing to cover, but he couldn’t leave this crazy child behind. “You Miz Garnett’s gal. Redwood?”

  “I know you too, Mr. Aidan Cooper.”

  “You move like a storm brewing.”

  He wiped his face, flung peach flesh at the sky, and took a long swig from his jug. His stomach rebelled and the hooch came right back up. He turned from her to vomit, and the wind almost tipped him over. The jug flew from his fingers and shattered on an outcropping of rocks. Punishing rain beat the back of his neck. An angry dervish of dirt and debris charged through the orchard. Aidan strode toward Redwood, shouting against the wind. “The full fury of this storm is on us.”

  “You ain’t ’fraid of the storm or me.”

  “Naw, but ain’t no call for us to be out in all this. Let’s you and me both go find —”

  The wind snatched the final words from his mouth. Smiling, Redwood talk/sang Sea Island Gullah words, working some spell, then darted away from him. Aidan matched her moves and gripped her at the waist. She gasped at his boldness but didn’t struggle as he turned her away from the on-coming monster storm. A twister of dust, moss, leaves, and debris blotted the orchard, the hilltop, and the sky from view. Whirling silver specters, a ghost army, a haint battalion battered them with cold, muddy water. Sharp stalks and broken branches pierced Aidan’s back. He yelped as hot blood drizzled down his side. This deadly gale hadn’t come up out of nowhere — the boneyard baron had been stalking him all day it seemed.

  “Spare Garnett’s child,” he muttered, not sure if anyone was listening, if anyone cared, but he couldn’t help hoping. “Spare her child.”

  Redwood reached a hand ’cross his shoulder back toward the storm.

  “You want to touch the fury, huh?” Aidan whispered in her ear. “Well…”

  The monster squatted on them now. Staggering air pressure slowed Aidan’s heart, stopped his lungs, and crushed his muscles into his bones. Just before he would’ve blacked out, the roar of wind and rain cut to utter silence. He gasped. The storm went absolutely still, suspended, a photograph of twisted fury. At the center of the dark spiral mass, Redwood’s palm trembled, and Aidan clutched her wrist, his fingers digging into soft flesh.

  After a drunk moment or two, the twister moved again, slowly at first, like a swamp current. Its funnel coiled into tighter and tighter circles above Redwood’s palm. Aidan felt the storm racing through her and had to resist an impulse to snatch her hand away. She leaned into his chest; her breath on his cheek was cold as January fog. Going faster now than he could see, the monster gale blew itself to nothing, to a dark swirl ’round a blade of grass in Redwood’s hand. She squeezed her fist shut.

  In the stillness, in the quiet moonlight that replaced the storm, Aidan let go of her and staggered to the crest of the hill. Two turkey buzzards flew over their heads, disappointed at the lively beating hearts below. Nearby, in a small circle of destruction, battered peach trees leaned into each other, their broken limbs dragging in churned up muck. A bit further out, untouched boughs swayed in a gentle breeze. Plump peaches gleamed in moonbeams. Aidan glanced at Redwood’s trembling fist and lost his balance finally. He fell to one knee and groaned.

  Redwood looked frightened of her ownself. “You goin’ run away now?”

  “No…” Aidan stood up on shaky muscles. “What you do, gal?”

  “This is the first one.” Redwood took a step toward him.

  “Yeah, storm season’s just coming on.”

  “No, the first time I ever catch the wind.” Another step. “I ain’t never done nothing so grand!”

  “What? You a hoodoo conjurer?” He felt lightheaded, but the drink had left him. He was sober as a Baptist choir.

  “And you believing in me. Conjure woman say that’s what a hoodoo need to work a powerful spell, folk believing.”

  “Miz Subie ought to know better than to fill your mind with —”

  “Believing, but not scared.” In one swift move, Redwood pulled a sharp stalk out of Aidan’s back and tossed it aside. The pain was hot, but whatever she pressed against the wound was cold and soothing and drove the hurt to the dull part of his mind.

  “Redwood! This ain’t no night to go running off.” A woman yelled, not a haint scolding her daughter but Elisa Glover, Garnett Phipps’ younger sister. Aidan was glad for that. A light swung in the distance, coming through the dense woods. He heard four feet heading for the orchard.

  “We’re over here, Aunt Elisa,” Redwood shouted and then whispered to Aidan. “This is our secret, all right?”

  The light turned and headed toward them now.

  “You a magic gal?” Aidan’s voice cracked. “Same as Miz Garnett, huh?” He backed away without meaning to.

  “Working my way to it. Mama could barter with the boneyard baron. I just —”

  “Just? Either I’m drunker than I ever been,” Aidan wanted to shout, “or you snatched a hurricane down out the sky.”

  Redwood reached her storm hand toward
him. “This is good for what ails you.”

  Aidan stepped out of reach. “What you know ’bout what ails me?”

  “Take one storm to clear away another.”

  Gazing in his eyes, she moved toward him. Her palm hovered over his chest. He nodded slowly, and she put that storm hand atop his heart. The cool pressure against his wet skin settled his heart right down. He didn’t know what he expected. A hoodoo lightning bolt? Hellfire? They just stood silently, close to one another, breathing each other’s breath, tasting each other’s spirits — felt like his whole life was with him and all of Redwood’s time too, the sorrow, the joy, the thrill… He hadn’t been so close to anybody for a long time, not even to May Ellen when she was singing to sweet Jesus for him to do her again. Indeed Aidan hadn’t been this close to hisself since he was a boy up north in the Blue Ridge Mountains feeling close to everything, lost in everything, his spirit as wide as the sky.

  “I hear Miz Garnett on the wind every time the sun go down,” he said.

  “She talk to you out loud?” Tears brimmed in Redwood’s eyes.

  Four years now and he hadn’t told a soul. Why’d he pick on her? “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go and make you cry.”

  “Mama don’t talk to me since she gone on to Glory.” Redwood sniffled against him.

  “A blessing, and you should count it so.” He patted her back.

  “I’m ’fraid I won’t remember what she said or who she was or how she looked or…”

  He spied a postcard in the mud and picked it up. “Miz Garnett’s in you. You won’t forget that. You the love she had for this world.”

  “Listen to you.” She wiped at tears and left streaks of mud on her cheeks. He pulled a gob of peach from her hair. “Saying just what I want to hear!” She smiled at him.

  He smiled back. “Did you drop this?” He held out the card. In the moonlight, the White City on the front glowed.

  Redwood grabbed it. “From when Mama and Daddy went to the World’s Fair.”

  “Well, looks like a place you ought to visit too.”

  “We could go together.” She looked thrilled at the prospect. “Couldn’t we?”

  As Aidan entertained this crazy idea for a second, Ladd and Elisa Glover slogged through underbrush onto the moonlit hilltop, just twenty yards from them. Dry as dust, they wore sturdy, Sunday church clothes and working boots. Elisa didn’t have her sister Garnett’s height, sharp features, or the hoodoo flare. A round woman with pearly teeth and a fierce jaw, Elisa carried a shotgun and a Maskókî hunting knife like Aidan’s. Ladd was tall and broad and dark as the night sky. His deep-set eyes always twinkled and flashed with emotion. He carried a shotgun too and a lantern.

  “Storm come up here and disappear,” Ladd said.

  “Don’t tell.” Redwood whispered to Aidan and made a whirlwind gesture. “They ’llowed to skin me alive if they knew.”

  Ladd and Elisa slipped in the mud and debris and slowed down.

  “You want me to lie for you?” Aidan asked, watching them.

  “Believe in me, the way you did in my Mama.”

  Aidan wheezed and sputtered. What did she know ’bout him and Miz Garnett?

  “Please.” She sounded like a young gal and a grown woman too. “Believe in me.”

  “That’s the most a person can do for another,” Aidan said.

  “I believe in you too.”

  “Me?” Aidan choked off a bitter laugh. “Why me?”

  “Just between us.” Redwood was moving to a safe, proper distance from him. “Everybody already ’fraid of me. They don’t need more ammunition. You promise?” She stared in his eyes, like she could see clear through him, back to his ancestors, back to the beginning of everything and up to now. Or maybe that was what he saw looking through her and ’round to hisself. Not a pretty picture.

  “All right, I promise.” That was the least he could do.

  “Friends then.” Redwood’s face lit up. Her dress was a ruin; wild hair twisted out of once neat plaits; big feet busted out of broke-up brogans — a real sight. What would her aunt and uncle think?

  “Friends.” Aidan nodded to her.

  “Redwood Phipps, you know better than to have us chasing after you,” Elisa said. “What is the matter with…” She quit scolding when she spied a soggy Aidan shaking mud and peach slime from his mane of thick black hair.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Elisa.” Redwood ran to her. “Crazy Coop’s been looking out for me though.”

  Ladd pulled off his cap and stepped forward, his chest caving in, his shoulders hunched. Four or five inches of height got lost to the wide grin masking his face. “Mr. Cooper, don’t mind her.”

  Elisa hugged Redwood to her ample bosom and whispered loud enough for anybody to hear, “Hush your fresh mouth, child.”

  “She can say whatever the hell she want.” Aidan preferred that to Ladd and Elisa acting like he was some fool white man who needed colored folk to act the coon for him. Ever since Miz Garnett passed, since Aidan was a grown married man, it took hours before they let down their guard even a little. The Glovers and the Phipps were his neighbors since he come to Peach Grove from the mountains up in north Georgia, almost family he once thought, yet they acted as if they ain’t been knowing him these nine-ten years. Or maybe since he started drinking too much and was a stranger to hisself, Elisa and Ladd weren’t sure if they should trust him anymore. Who could blame them? Stumbling away, Aidan got tangled in his feet. Still groveling and grinning, Ladd moved to help.

  “I can stand on my own, damn it!” Aidan flailed against Ladd’s sturdy arms. Ladd backed off, perfectly happy to let Aidan fall on his ass.

  “Thank you for your kindness, Mr. Cooper,” Elisa said with warmth in her voice.

  “It’s still Aidan, and no need to be thanking me.”

  “I do how I think is right. You too?” She jutted her jaw out, challenging him.

  Aidan sucked a deep breath. “Well, Ma’am, I do try.”

  Elisa smiled. “I appreciate you having an eye out.”

  “No hardship there.” Aidan glanced at Redwood. “Good evening.”

  “Good evening, Mr. Cooper.” Redwood smiled.

  Feeling better than she had for ages, she watched Aidan tramp toward the woods. Before when she’d tried to catch even a little ole breeze, it’d just blown through her hand. She sighed. A magic man for sure, he was tall and handsome and wild — eyes the color of Spanish moss and hair as dark as coal. He carried a scent of hard work, strong drink, and heavy sorrow. Aunt Elisa and Uncle Ladd watched him too, ’til he was a streak of light among the dark pines. She had someone to believe in her now. And didn’t that make all the difference?

  Ladd glared at Redwood. “Where you go off to in the middle of the Reverend Washington’s sermon?”

  “You look like something the cat dragged in,” Elisa said.

  Redwood glanced down at Mama’s ruined dress.

  “I tole you don’t go traipsing out, dancing with the moon.” Elisa shook her head. “Colored Peach Grove don’t need more to run they mouths ’bout.”

  Ladd grunted. “What you been doing up here with that wild man?”

  Aidan turned and waved, his pale face glinting in a moonbeam. They all waved and smiled at him ’til he faded into the gloom.

  “You ever see that boy drunk? He a mean drunk.” Ladd said.

  “I ain’t seen it.” Redwood could believe it though. “Peach Grove get under his skin.”

  “This place get under my skin too sometime, but…”

  Elisa wagged her hand at Ladd and he clamped his mouth shut.

  “He ain’t goin’ do me no harm.” Redwood shivered. The fury of the storm had chilled her bones. She missed Aidan Cooper’s dizzy warmth. She couldn’t catch a breath. Her heart skipped and she almost fainted. Reckless, sticking your hand into all that, Brother George would have said, but she wasn’t goin’ tell him what she’d done.

  “You know it all, huh?” Elisa gripped her. “Men can�
��t always control themselves. Plenty times they don’t want to. Aidan Cooper sure ain’t no shelter in the storm.”

  “He brought Mama orchids.” Redwood pouted. “I just know what I know.”

  Aidan reminded Redwood of George, not ’fraid of what he hadn’t seen before, not ’fraid to make his own way. And like George, some poison or sickness twisted Aidan’s insides. Thank the Lord, George didn’t drown his hard head in a jug of hooch. Instead her brother read books, picked fights, and stayed mad at everybody in Peach Grove — colored, white, and Indians too — for being cowards, fools, and nowhere near free men.

  Redwood frowned. “How you find me?”

  “I didn’t believe her, but Iris say you was up here catching peaches,” Ladd replied.

  “Crazy Coop caught all the flying fruit.” Redwood’s storm hand tingled where she had touched Aidan’s heart. “Is he goin’ be all right?” She didn’t know how to heal what ailed him or her brother. Not yet.

  Elisa sighed, probably so she wouldn’t scold. “Subie say he got Maskókî Creek or Seminole in his blood, and the spirit of his ancestors be looking out.”

  “And driving him crazy.” Ladd blew his irritation into a tattered handkerchief.

  “Indian blood and all, he hear Mama on the wind,” Redwood said. She’d ask Miz Subie what to do for him. “He’s a friend.”

  “Friend?” Elisa exchanged glances with Ladd. “How’d you get soaking wet, child?”

  “Storm come up here.” Redwood grinned and stared up at the moon.

  When Aidan finally made it home, he found broken peach branches stuck in muddy wagon wheel ruts. The monster storm had blown through his front yard and chased behind a wagon as it lumbered over May Ellen’s herb garden. Aidan fingered battered chives, savory, and St. John’s Wort. Pungent fragrances screamed at him. Actually, Princess was complaining from the shed. Something didn’t set right. Duchess wasn’t making a sound, and that ole mare liked nothing better than to sing with Princess. A cold hand gripped Aidan’s insides as he tripped up the stairs and through the half-open door. He lit a lamp and lurched into the bedroom. The stench of liquor assaulted his nose, like he was breathing needles and thorns. He snorted blood onto the floor.