Summer of the Redeemers Page 3

  My bicycle chain whirred, and Maebelle had begun a soft, steady cry. The motion of the bike seemed to soothe her a bit, and I wasn’t slowing down for her anyway. At least not until we were well clear of the Redeemers.

  Sweat was dripping down Alice’s face, and mine, when we pulled over in the shade of a mulberry tree that had sprung up wild in P. C. Harless’s fence row.

  “Those folks are crazy mean,” Alice said as she took Maebelle out of the basket and rocked her in her arms. “It’s okay, baby,” she crooned softly. “Hush, hush, baby.” She was about to cry herself.

  Neither one of us wanted to talk about how close we’d come to serious trouble, but we couldn’t pretend nothing had happened. “It looks like they’re all going to live there together, doesn’t it? Mama’s gonna die when she finds out they’re going to have a commune.”

  “Mama said if Daddy stayed home all the time, I’d have twenty brothers and sisters instead of just ten,” Alice said. She made a face at Maebelle. “I couldn’t stand it.”

  “Me either. And they sure didn’t look like happy people. They were mostly wandering around like lost souls.” There had been something definitely eerie about them. Not a single spark of laughter or enthusiasm. It was as if they’d been drained of all vital juices. Sucked dry. “Until they got the gun.”

  “You were right; they’re zombies.” Alice hefted the baby to her shoulder. “We’d better get back. Mama’ll be lookin’ for me to help with supper.”

  I could see she’d abandoned the plan to eat with us. It had been too close a call. We needed some time to think about it. “Maybe we can go for a swim tomorrow.”

  Alice shot me a quick look. “Not at Cry Baby Creek.”

  “Why not?”

  “You just want to go and spy on those Redeemers. You don’t care a fig about swimmin’.” Her freckles were startling across her white, white skin. “After today you’d go back there? You don’t have a lick of sense, Bekkah Rich.”

  “Sure, I want to go swimmin’, and I want to look around the church a little more. If we hadn’t had Maebelle—”

  “And your dog! Chances are I’ll have her tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, until school lets back in.”

  Complaining that it wasn’t fair didn’t do a bit of good. Alice didn’t like it any better than I did. Still, part of my dissatisfaction with Kali Oka Road had more to do with Alice being pressed into child labor than with anything else. I missed my friend and the time we once had together.

  “Maybe Julie Ann will keep her.”

  “Yeah.” Alice put her back in my basket and signaled to go. She didn’t have to say that Julie Ann would never keep the baby. Julie was two years older than Alice, but she was the special child. Asthma had weakened her lungs, and she couldn’t do any of the chores. If any new clothes were purchased, they were for Julie and handed down to the other children. Those above Julie in age got even more work and less attention. In the Waltman household, Julie was the watershed. She was the best embroiderer in the state too. That’s all she did, pull those pretty threads through that hoop of cloth until she’d made a picture.

  At the cut through in the woods, Alice left her bike and took the baby. I rode on to the house, back in less than the hour Mama had given me.

  “How were the church folks?” Mama Betts asked as I pushed open the screen. She was standing in the doorway, concealed in shadow.

  “Spooky.” There was no point lying, exactly. “They acted lost.”

  “Stay away from those folks, Bekkah. Nothing good will come of them.”

  “I’m only lookin’ at ‘em. There’s no harm in doing that.”

  “And when they go to talk to you, what are you going to do then? Act mute?”

  “They won’t talk to me. They don’t want any of us around there.”

  “Did they run you off?”

  Mama Betts was too smart. She had a way of tricking all the details out of you just the way she squeezed a lemon for her pies until even the rind was dry. “Not exactly.” If she found out about Picket and the gun, I’d be in really big trouble.

  “But they weren’t too happy to see you, were they?”

  “Not really.”

  She laughed. “Effie called your dad and told him all about it. He said to keep you away from them, that you’d be joining up like it was the circus.”

  “Will Daddy call back?” I hated it when Mama called him and I wasn’t home. It made me feel like I’d been cheated out of a treat.

  “Tonight. Just to talk with you.”

  “And Arly?”

  “And Arly.”

  “Where is he anyway?” I hadn’t seen him all day. “Does he know about the Redeemers?”

  “He knows. He was all for running down the road to look for you.”

  “He couldn’t have made it worse than Maebelle V., whining and crying.”

  “You took that baby?”

  Her tone of voice made me realize how critically I’d messed up. “We only rode down there and back. The baby likes bicycle rides.”

  “You’re going to give that child brain damage. I know Mrs. Waltman has more than she can manage, and pregnant again, I hear, but it seems like she wouldn’t allow—”

  “Alice takes care of the baby. Mrs. Waltman has other things on her mind.”

  Mama Betts raised her hands to her hips. She didn’t like sass. “I know it isn’t fair, Bekkah, but a lot of children work harder than Alice. Maybe with Alice tied down with that baby you two won’t get into trouble this summer. And don’t deny it. I see it simmering in those devil blue eyes.”

  Four

  THE bite of the creek was cold, even set against the June sun and the sweat we’d generated on our bicycles. Cry Baby is fed by artesian springs that flow out of the hard clay earth fresh and icy. In places the bottom of the creek is pure clay and slippery as a buttered hog. Alice and I, little Maebelle secure in a sling we’d constructed across Alice’s chest so that she had full use of her hands, made our way past one of these slippery places to the slide. This was our favorite part of the creek, where the fast-running current had cut a gully in the streambed about four feet wide and eight feet deep and ran for about fifty feet, ending in a quiet pool. It was a roller-coaster ride of intense joy and fear. Picket was at my side, intent on scouting squirrels along the bank.

  “You go first and then you can hold Maebelle,” Alice suggested as she took a seat on a flat clay rock beside the cascading water.

  Edging into the icy water, I held my breath, partly from the shock of the cold and also from fear. The water churned around me, pushing, tugging, clutching at my skin and the second skin of my suit. It wanted me, and it was exhilarating and terrifying.

  “Go!” Alice urged. “Go!” The sun, penetrating the trees on each side of the bank, dappled her skin with larger freckle shadows.

  With a squeal I pulled my feet from the rocks and shunted down the roaring channel of water. I tumbled up and down, over rocks and around curves until twenty seconds later I jetted into the calm of the open pool. The clay sides were hard to grasp, but I pulled myself out and into the shallows.

  “You looked like a pink cork,” Alice said as she waved me back to the head of the slide.

  My suit had taken a hard knock against a jag of clay, and the yellow dirt was embedded into the pink of the nylon. My hip would bear a bruise, but it had been worth it for the moment of complete and total surrender to the grasp of the water. Maebelle was transferred into my arms as Alice took her place in the water. With a cry she launched herself in a more daring head-first journey. I lost sight of her completely, and for an unendurable few seconds feared she might have struck her head on one of the rocks. When she surfaced, she was flushed with the joy-terror of the ride and from holding her breath.

  “Why didn’t Arly come with us?” she asked after she’d clambered into the shallows.

  “I didn’t invite him.” He’d tattle on us if we went near the Redeemers. Arly would hold on to information until
he wanted something or he wanted to get even with me, then he’d blurt it out. “Mama, did you know Bekkah was snoopin’ down at that church?” I could hear him clear as thunder.

  “We’re not going near those church folks,” Alice said, reading my mind. “I mean it. They scared me and next time no telling what they’d do.”

  “You can stay here, then.” I’d already thought it out. I could wade down the creek and check them out from the eastern side. Cry Baby sort of crooked around the church and parsonage. The bridge was due south of the church, but upstream from there the creek angled northward in a sharp bend. That bend would be a perfect vantage point, and they’d have no way to suspect we were there.

  “You’re going to get in serious trouble, Rebekah Rich, and your mama and granny are gonna tan your hide.”

  “They won’t know unless you tell them.”

  “Or unless Picket attacks one of those Redeemers again.”

  “We can tie her by the bicycles.”

  “And what if she sets up a howl?”

  “She won’t.”

  “Like Maebelle V. won’t cry?”

  “Maybe she won’t.”

  “And if she does?”

  “Then we’ll leave. Besides, they might own the church property, but they don’t own the creek. The bridge was built with public money, so the creek is public property.”

  Alice snorted. “Says who?”

  “My daddy.” He’d never said any such thing, but it made for a sound argument. Alice had some sort of fixation on Daddy and never argued with a thing he said. I smiled as I watched her face.

  “Okay.” She hefted the baby onto her shoulder. Maebelle V. was smiling and laughing, a regular little red-faced adventurer.

  “See, Maebelle wants to go. She wants to know all about those wild folks who’ve taken up at the end of our road.”

  “I’ll just bet she does,” Alice said, kissing her sister’s nose. “She’d rather have a bottle and a nap, I’m sure.”

  “Well, dig out the bottle.”

  I called up Picket while Alice fed Maebelle. The dog was smart enough to know I wanted her for something. There were times I brought shampoo to the creek and gave her a bath. She hesitated on the high bank, looking down at me, her tail wagging. She heard me and understood what I wanted. She simply had no intention of obeying me. Daddy said she was smarter than all of us put together, and I believed him.

  “Let’s just go home,” Alice tried again. “Really. We were down here yesterday. Let’s give them some time to settle in. There won’t be anything to see for a while. Maybe Sunday we could sneak back and listen to part of their service. They might scream and shout and play the drums.”

  “Or handle snakes.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  Alice thought I was kidding. “Some of those strange religious sects do.” I’d paid a lot of attention to Effie and Mama Betts discussing this the past night. Sect was a word I was glad to acquire.

  “Why on earth?”

  “To prove they have faith. They believe God will protect them and let them handle the evil snakes. It’s a test of faith.”

  “And if they’re bitten?”

  “Well, I guess they didn’t believe strong enough.”

  “And if they die? Does that mean they went to hell?”

  Effie hadn’t gone into such depths. “Straight to hellfire.”

  “Let’s go home. Maybe they keep their snakes down here around the creek.”

  “Rattlesnakes don’t particularly care for the water, and they always use rattlers. The noise makes it more dramatic, when they have all those rattlers and the tambourines going. Then they get out the tubs and start to washin’ each other’s feet.”

  “I don’t believe a word of it, Rebekah Rich, you’re just pullin’ my leg.”

  I’d led Alice off on a dangerous bend, and now I had to get her back. “Maybe, maybe not,” I said with a smile. “While we’re here, let’s sneak a peek. Maebelle’s out cold after that bottle, and we need a little time before we ride back. All that jostlin’ around will make her upchuck her milk.”

  “Just a peek, then I have to get home.”

  By a streak of luck, Picket trotted down the bank, and I got her collar. I’d brought a piece of rope for the express purpose of tying her out of harm’s way. I hated to do it. She looked as if I’d beaten her and then spat on her, but I left her secured to a big magnolia with lots of shade. She didn’t howl. She was too mortally wounded by my betrayal to make a sound. Daddy had said that he’d never have a dog that had to be tied or chained. He said no creature should have to live on the end of a rope. Tying Picket was against everything I’d been taught, but I had to keep her safe. Alice wouldn’t even watch when I did it.

  “Guard the bikes,” I told the dog as I left. It made me feel better, as if I’d given her a job.

  The creek grew too slippery to stay in the current, so Alice and I, baby Maebelle tucked in her sling, made our way up the far bank, actually on the church property. The path was on that side, and I saw no reason to push through vegetation and brambles so thick that it would take an extra half hour on the opposite bank.

  It wasn’t hard to imagine the creek back in the days when the Pascagoula Indians roamed freely. Most of the woods had been logged when the area was settled, but there were some stretches of virgin pine, especially in the Pascagoula River Swamp, which was about ten miles south.

  The Pascagoulas had been a small tribe, living mostly along the banks of the Pascagoula River but moving inland to places like Cry Baby Creek to hunt and fish. There were burial mounds all over the place. Effie had found several. She’d unearthed pottery, arrowheads, beads and bones and finally called the state archives so that a team of archaeologists could come down and do a proper job of it. We hadn’t heard yet if the remains were Choctaw, Pascagoula, Chickasaw or some other stray band that camped on the banks of the creek. Mama Betts said it was positively Chickasaw, and she insisted that Kali Oka was the Chickasaw word for “the edge of the spring water.” She even broke it down, declaring that Oka meant spring and Kali-sita was the Chickasaw word for edge. She said no matter what the “experts” determined, she knew the truth.

  The woods were loaded with deer and squirrel and rabbit. There were wild boars, too, something that I’d learned to keep a sharp eye out for. Folks argued both ways whether the wild pigs were there before or after the Indians. It wasn’t much of an important issue when one of those pigs with red eyes was thundering after you. The big ones weighed in at better than four hundred pounds, and they could hamstring a grown man with one slash of their tusks. They were big, mean, and quite willing to hurt anyone who trespassed on their turf. It made me nervous to leave Picket tied, defenseless.

  I was deep in my Indian thoughts when a covey of Redeemers broke to my right. Alice and I both slithered down the bank of the creek at the same time.

  There were five boys, bigger than me and Alice. They all wore white shirts and gray long pants, even in the June heat. They were walking like they had someplace to go. They’d been quiet, but they were obviously in the middle of a conversation. A hot one.

  “He put his hands on her breasts.”

  Hidden below the bank, we couldn’t see who was talking. “He did not!” another boy answered.

  “He did too. I saw him. He came up behind her and put his hands on her breasts. She was wearing that white dress she sings in.”

  “I’m going to bash your brains out. My sister wouldn’t let him touch her. She hates him!”

  The argument was between only two boys. The other three were staying silent.

  “She might hate him, but he put his hands on her breasts and sort of squeezed them.” There was a taunting note in the boy’s voice.

  “Maybe she was afraid to stop him.” This was a new voice, a softer boy’s voice.

  “That’s right. Rev. Marcus does whatever he wants, and we all know that, don’t we, Tommy?”

  There was rough laughter, an undertone I didn’
t fully catch. It was as if the boys didn’t like each other, but there was some type of mutual thing between them.

  Alice’s fingers pinched a blister on my underarm. I almost squealed with pain. “What?” I hissed.

  Maebelle was shifting in her arms, squinching up her face as if she was going to cry. Alice jostled her a bit, trying to ease her out of her bad mood.

  The plump boy was talking again. “I’m going to tell Mama about Rev. Marcus. You said it was Sunday?”

  “Just after your sister sang that sweet song about being safe in the arms of the Lord.”

  The mockery was clear in the first boy’s voice. He was also angry. I couldn’t stand it anymore and edged up to the lip of the creek bank. The boy who had just spoken was the tallest. His dark hair was poorly cut and hung ragged in the back. His pants were baggy over his thin body, and his arms dangled. But he was fierce. He stood with his elbows bent and his fists clenched. He wanted to fight, and he didn’t care who. The boy who was defending his sister was better fed, better groomed, and very worried.

  “Mag wouldn’t let him touch her unless she didn’t have a choice. She hates him as much as we do.”

  “Ask her,” the first boy challenged. “And just remember, you go tattlin’ to your folks and who’re they gonna believe? You or Marcus?”

  The question hung between them. “Let’s go,” one of the other boys said. “Let’s take a swim.”

  They hurried along the path, headed up the creek. Alice and I could move on down to the parsonage or try to double back and beat them to the swimming hole. With Picket tied, I didn’t have a choice. We crossed the creek and started up the other side, hindered by the vegetation and by Maebelle in the sling. Where I could duck and twist around the brambles and undergrowth, Alice was slower with the baby.

  We were about there when I heard the howl. There was no mistaking Picket’s voice, and this wasn’t a bark of anger. She was in pain.

  “Run!” Alice pushed me ahead of her. “We’ll catch up! Run!”

  Cursing myself for everything I was worth, I ran. I didn’t feel the briars or the limbs. Picket’s howl of pain came again, and I thought my heart would burst. She was defenseless. I had left her that way.