Summer of the Redeemers Read online

  Effie and Mama Betts and I ate watermelon and homemade peach ice cream and pound cake and potato salad and Mrs. Spooner’s pickled okra and fried chicken and enough other things until we were stretched out on the ground under a big oak tree. The late afternoon sun beat down hard on the church grounds until even the little children were tired enough to sit and listen to different ones of the congregation sing and talk. Several of our neighbors dropped by and visited with Mama Betts and Effie. I caught a glimpse or two of Arly’s friends on the fringes of the crowd. He was spoonin’ with one of the Carpenter girls. I think it was Rosie, but I couldn’t be certain. Talk around school last year was that Rosie was the best kisser in Chickasaw County. Leave it to Arly to follow the scent.

  The day wound down to an end, and when the boys lit the fireworks and set the dusky sky on fire I realized with a bump that summer was half over. School would start the last week of August. I’d be in the seventh grade.

  Riding back home in the velvety night with the car windows down, Mama warned me that when school started up I was going to have to wear a brassiere, whether I needed one or not. She said we’d go to the Dale Shop the next Saturday and get fitted. That took what little magic there had been out of the night.

  I rode my bicycle down to Cry Baby Creek several times during those two weeks, and I even hid an old shovel down there so I could dig up whatever had been buried in the cemetery. Picket and I hunkered down in the creek bed and spied on the Redeemers, but there was never a time when no one was about long enough for me to rush across the creek and dig. Nothing was happening that I could tell. Women walked along by themselves or with other women. The men were invisible. They stayed indoors, it seemed. And the five Redeemer boys came and went, but they always looked as if they were doing something important. At the barn, Greg refused to talk about the Redeemers at all, not even when Nadine teased him about worshiping Satan and other strange rituals.

  Daddy did talk with Effie, and it was agreed that I could work at Nadine’s barn for riding lessons. It was all settled with a lot less commotion than I’d ever thought possible. Daddy had to finish out his contract in Missouri, but he was home every two weeks for three or four days. Effie was trying really hard to make life easy for Daddy. I know he never told her how close he came to staying in Missouri. He didn’t have to tell her. Both she and Mama Betts seemed to know. In the kitchen when they were cooking, Mama Betts would say something about Daddy’s favorite dessert being apple pie, and that would be exactly what Effie had planned to make. That glance would pass between them, and the rolling pin would be put in the refrigerator to chill.

  I got a card from Cathi Cummings, and I didn’t show it to Effie. Or to anyone else since I wasn’t talking with Alice. It was a cartoon card about dog days in summer and how she wished I’d come back to Missouri. She said she missed her horseback riding partner, and that made me feel good. She said that she was looking out for Daddy for me while he was still in Missouri and that she was going to miss him a lot when he came home to us.

  That was the part that made me hide the note from Effie. I’d given it a lot of serious thought, and I didn’t believe Daddy and Cathi were fornicating. I think she wanted to, and maybe him too. But I don’t believe it ever happened. If it had, they would have said they were in love, or something like that. But instead of being all cow-eyed at each other, Cathi always had that look of sadness whenever she looked at Daddy, like he was something she wanted but couldn’t have. And The Judge just wasn’t the kind of man who did the sort of thing that required sneaking around and lying.

  It was hard not to think about fornicating when Jamey Louise was in heat every day. Working at the barn each morning, I was getting a real education about teasing boys. She kept Greg on a slow sizzle. Nadine was right about one thing: Jamey Louise knew how to work when the payoff was time alone with Greg. Since she wasn’t interested in riding, she flew through her chores and was sitting like a cat at a milk saucer when Greg finished his. Then they’d disappear up in the loft and spend the next hour or so giggling until Greg had to go back to the church. He had a job there, too, but he wouldn’t tell us what it was. Jamey didn’t bother to talk to me at all, unless she wanted to trade some chore for another so she could be around Greg more.

  Cammie and I were becoming a real team. I’d fallen off twice, but it had only been a few scrapes and bruises, and I’d taken great care to hide them from Effie. If she saw any marks on my body, she’d have a fit and demand that I stop riding. One time the stirrup leather broke over a jump, and I fell into the jump standard, and another, Cammie spooked when one of the cats leapt off the roof and startled us both.

  We were getting good, though. We were going over two-nine jumps, and Nadine said I’d be ready to show over three-foot fences by September if Effie would buy me the boots, a hard hat, and jacket. I hadn’t asked her yet, because I was afraid if she knew I was jumping at all, she’d make me stop going to the barn. It was a hard situation because more than anything I wanted to tell her. I wanted her to come and see me and be proud. But she’d just be frightened.

  Nadine said she wasn’t going away for the fall circuit this year. She was tired and wanted to stay put on Kali Oka, so if Effie would spring for the riding gear, she’d take me and Cammie to the local shows in Mobile. It was more than I’d ever dreamed of, and I began plotting ways to get the boots and jacket. There were times I did Jamey Louise’s chores and she gave me what little bit of pay Nadine gave her.

  A routine of sorts began to build around my days, but there was a big hole in it named Alice. The barn kept me busy until lunch, and then Mama Betts always had a few chores for me to do. But by three o’clock I was always finished. From then until bedtime I hardly went five minutes without thinking of Alice. Mama Betts asked where she was, and I said she was too busy to play with me.

  “She’s too busy, and you’re too stubborn to apologize,” she said.

  “What have I done to apologize for?” I asked her back.

  “I don’t know, but it must be something. I know you, Bekkah Rich, and you’ve hurt Alice’s feelings or she’d be over here.”

  I stormed out of the kitchen, but it didn’t take away the sting of the truth. It took me two weeks to decide to offer an apology, and by that time I wasn’t certain she’d accept.

  Jamey Louise hadn’t spent any time with her, and though I couldn’t prove it, I suspected Jamey had snubbed her good. Jamey had Greg. She’d never wanted to be Alice’s friend, she’d just wanted someone to help her catch Greg’s eye.

  Picket and I took the path through the woods. We stopped for a while at the spring. I’d kind of hoped Alice might be there, where we could meet on neutral ground. But even though I dawdled for a good fifteen minutes, there wasn’t a sign of her. We walked on toward her house, stopping at the edge of the woods. She was sitting in the swing with Maebelle V. in her lap. The baby had grown two inches and a good five pounds. Maybe all that jostling around in the bicycle basket had been stunting her growth.

  Picket bounded forward and barked a greeting at Alice. I’d hoped to be a little more dignified, but my plan was lost when she turned around and saw me.

  “I’m sorry I left you at the creek with the baby.” I wanted to go closer, but I was afraid she’d tell me to leave. To make it worse, I thought I might cry.

  “We made it home okay,” Alice said. “It didn’t matter.”

  “I felt like you’d taken up with Jamey Louise. It made me feel left out that you were telling her all of our secrets.”

  Alice slipped out of the swing. Holding Maebelle V. on her shoulder, she walked toward me. “I didn’t tell her anything, Bekkah. You never gave me a chance to explain.”

  “I didn’t know if you’d come back from Missouri. I wasn’t certain you wanted to come back here. Maybe me and Kali Oka Road weren’t enough anymore. You’re going to go away one day. Maybe it was going to be this summer.”

  The truth of what she said stopped me from saying anything at all. I had
n’t wanted to come back, not completely. A part of me wanted to go, to see things I’d never seen before. One day I would leave. I’d be going to a university like those people in Missouri. I’d be sitting in a room with people from all over the place. The Judge expected it of me.

  And Alice would not.

  “I hate this summer,” I said. “Why does everything have to hurt?”

  “What’s it like working with Greg and Jamey?” Alice’s smile was tentative. There wasn’t any apology to make right what had gone wrong. The only thing we could do was keep going, either as friends or not. I wanted to be her friend more than anything, except maybe riding Cammie.

  “They smooch all the time, but you can’t tell anyone.” Alice hefted Maebelle V. a little higher in her arms, and I whistled for Picket as we walked back to the spring. I had a lot of gossip to tell Alice, and it wouldn’t be breaking Nadine’s rules, because Alice wouldn’t tell a soul.

  Eighteen

  THE plan to dig up the Redeemers’ cemetery took shape without any real effort on my part or Alice’s. Mostly it was happenstance. Greg asked for three days off on the first of August, a request that ignited Nadine’s curiosity. After weeks of routine, Greg was doing something different. Nadine demanded to know what it was.

  Greg said only that the Redeemers were having some sort of congregational gathering in Hattiesburg and that the entire push of them were going to board up on the buses and drive there for the first two nights in August. Under Nadine’s inquisition, with Jamey Louise helping out, Greg said it had to do with policies, but he wouldn’t give any details. I personally thought maybe he didn’t know any more about it, but for a couple of days, until she tired of it, Nadine tried to worm more information out of him. He told nothing except that a lot of the Kali Oka Road Redeemers were upset and that everyone had to be in Hattiesburg for the vote.

  I was so caught up in riding Cammie that I didn’t even realize the implications of what this information meant. Not until I was reading Mama Betts’ almanac to find out about planting pansies did it dawn on me that August first was a full moon.

  The perfect night for a sneak raid on the Redeemer cemetery.

  Things were still a little raw between Alice and me, and she agreed too easily to my plan. We were both trying hard to recapture the bond we’d shared so effortlessly in the past. A grave-digging adventure seemed just the ticket, especially since the Redeemer girl Magdeline Scott was the subject. Magdeline and her plight had crossed us up, and now she’d get us back together.

  I was so keyed up that morning that I had a lot of difficulty calming Cammie down enough to ride her. Nadine was impatient in her funny way, calling out orders and cursing when I didn’t obey. I didn’t mind Cammie’s sidestepping and crow-hopping. She was just feeling good because she didn’t get out of her stall except when I rode her, and she wanted to stretch out and shake out the kinks. I asked Mama Betts about this in an offhanded kind of way, and she explained that horses were grazing animals and that it was harmful to keep them pinned up in a little stall. Nadine was afraid Cammie’d scar her hide or twist a leg in the hardscrabble pasture.

  Jamey Louise leaned against her pitchfork in the door of the barn. Knowing that Greg wouldn’t be at work, she’d worn faded blue jeans and a red checked shirt, which was the most appropriate thing she’d worn to work yet. I could tell by the way she watched that she hoped I’d bust my butt right in front of her.

  When the six Redeemer buses flew down the road, a trail of dust choking after them, I must have smiled.

  “What’s going on?” Nadine asked as she grabbed Cammie’s bridle and brought her to a dancing stop. She motioned for me to climb down.

  “Nothing. It’s just the Redeemers leaving for the gathering in Hattiesburg.”

  “Yeah, yeah”—she waved impatiently in the air—”I know that. What’s going on with you? You look like you won a prize.”

  “Nothing.” I wanted to tell Nadine about the adventure Alice and I had planned, but I couldn’t. Jamey Louise was always hanging around and listening in on every private conversation. If she knew Alice and I were going to Cry Baby Creek, she’d insist on going with us. She’d be worse than useless too.

  I guess I must have looked down the road, because Nadine smiled real big. “What are you up to, Rebekah Rich? What’s happening down at the end of the road?”

  “When I was a little girl, my grandma used to tell me about the baby that drowned in Cry Baby Creek,” I answered. I was hoping maybe the legend would distract her. “Late at night, have you ever walked down the road and listened? When it gets real still, you can hear that little baby a’crying so pitiful. They say she floated for a long time before she finally drowned.”

  I walked Cammie into the barn, and Nadine followed. Jamey was still standing at the door, listening to every word that passed between us.

  “So why did the baby’s mother put it in the creek?” Nadine asked.

  “It’s a long story, and it goes back to the church people who originally lived down at the end of the road.”

  “I got time, and Jamey can clean your stalls while you tell me,” Nadine said. “Right, Jamey, since you’re standing around doing nothing?”

  “I know the story,” Jamey said. “I’ll tell it and Bekkah can clean her stalls.”

  “Not this time,” Nadine said. “Let Bekkah tell it.” She signaled me to continue. I’d put Cammie’s saddle and bridle away, and she needed a few minutes to cool before I started grooming her. Nadine had jumped up to sit on Caesar’s door, and I leaned against the wall on the opposite side of the barn, rocking back on my heels so I could crouch and rest against the wood.

  “Well, the young woman’s name was Miss Selena Baxter. I remember because Selena was such an odd name. And her baby’s name was Evie.” I was trying to remember exactly everything Mama Betts had told me, but I knew I was going to have to fill in with a lot of my own details. It was only this summer that I’d come to realize several important things about little dead Evie Baxter, and how that baby had come to be that way.

  “Selena was a beautiful young woman with long dark hair and green eyes.” I was making all of this up, but it didn’t really matter. Now, in my mind, when I pictured Selena Baxter, I saw Magdeline. “And she had the most beautiful voice. She was thought to be truly blessed by God with the way she could sing. She didn’t need a piano or anything else, just the words and a tune, and she made everyone believe that God was among them.”

  “You’re making this up, Bekkah,” Jamey accused. “I know this story, and there wasn’t ever anything about that girl being able to sing.”

  “Shut up and shovel,” Nadine directed. “I want to hear this.”

  “Selena didn’t have any real family. Her parents had died in an epidemic of some fever or something, and she was left all alone. Since she was too old to be really adopted and too young to live by herself, she ended up with the church people at the end of the road. It was the Church of the Risen Christ back then.” I couldn’t remember for certain, but that sounded good enough, and I knew Jamey Louise wouldn’t know any better.

  “How’d she find out about them?” Jamey asked. She was still holding up the end of the barn.

  “Must have been that one of her people knew about it,” I said. “I’m not a historian, Jamey, I’m just trying to tell the story.”

  “Go on,” Nadine urged.

  “Well, Selena didn’t always feel that she fit in with the church people. She’d been used to going to school and doing regular things, and now she was isolated down at the end of a red dirt road without any real friends. The only one who made her feel at all welcome was the preacherman who was in charge of the church. He was always telling her she was a beautiful child of God and that her voice was a special gift, a sign of God’s pleasure with her.”

  “I can see where this is going,” Jamey said darkly. “He’s going to rape her.”

  “Not rape. It wasn’t like that at all. Selena believed that he loved her and
that it was God’s wish that they join together.” I was proud of that phrase. I’d been wondering how I was going to skirt around the fornicate issue. When Mama Betts told me the story, she’d avoided all mention of that. She’d only said that Selena Baxter had had a baby. Although Mama Betts had never come right out and said it was the preacherman’s, I’d finally figured that part out.

  “I’ll bet it was the preacher who told her it was God’s will,” Nadine said dryly. “He probably told her that she was serving the Lord.”

  “And he told her that he loved her,” I said. “The preacherman was very handsome, and he was the leader of all the people. It made Selena proud to be chosen by him. And he said he would marry her and make her his wife. It didn’t matter that she was lonely and treated like an outcast by the congregation. As soon as they were married, she would be accepted and loved, just like he was. But it didn’t happen that way.”

  “She got pregnant,” Jamey said. “Somebody should have told her the facts.” She laughed and Nadine threw a clump of dirt at her.

  “She did indeed. And when she told the preacherman, he said it wasn’t his baby and that she’d been sinning with someone in the congregation.

  Selena was so upset that she fled the church and ran into the woods to think.

  “Too afraid to tell anyone what had happened, Selena spent more and more time alone in the woods. She walked beside the creek and tried to think of a solution to her problems. She had no one to turn to, and the members of the congregation, as her stomach started to grow, treated her very ugly. It was obvious she was pregnant, but she refused to name the father of her child.”