Summer of the Redeemers (11 page)

It was foolhardy to stay in the barn with him, but there was nothing else I could do. Cammie had to be returned to her stall, and the horses had to have water. I picked up the curry comb and began to work over Cammie’s body the way Nadine had shown me. He didn’t say a word for the ten minutes it took to work around her. Then I took the hard brush and smoothed out the hair I’d roughed up.

“She seems to like that,” he said.

He’d moved to one side and was leaning against an empty stall.

“Nadine says it stimulates the blood supply to their coat, the same as brushing a person’s hair.” As awful as it was to talk to him, the silent watching was killing me. I wanted to pound him with my knowledge, with my bond with Nadine. There wasn’t a place for him there, and he had to know it. I hated the way he lounged against the stall, but he was alert. He didn’t miss a move.

“I like your pigtails, Bekkah.”

The only sound was the snap of the cross ties as I released Cammie and returned her to her stall. I removed the halter and hung it back on its hook, then latched the door.

“Is there a hose?”

“I haven’t looked for one. I found two Coca-Colas under the chinaberry tree. I’ve been drinking them.”

Damn him! He’d found our Cokes. Behind him I caught a glimpse of coiled green, the hose. “It’s there.” I pointed. He turned to look, and the trapezoid of light fell across his back. Long, deep cuts had scabbed over. There were at least a dozen, and they crossed and crisscrossed each other. He’d been beaten severely.

The sharp intake of my breath made him whirl back to face me. “Did you get your eyes full?” He was angry, coldly angry. “Don’t stare at me.” He stepped forward.

“Who beat you?” I knew suddenly. It was because of the shirt. He’d lost his shirt and he’d been beaten with some hellacious switch or whip. “Were the other boys beaten?”

“Only Jim. But his father doesn’t enjoy it so much as mine.”

“The shirts are out by the chinaberry tree. My grandmother was going to wash and iron them and take them back. Maybe that isn’t such a good idea.”

“Maybe it isn’t.” He backed into the shadows. “I’d better get home. Nadine didn’t say how long I was to work, and I got some things to tend to before dark.”

The fort. I knew but I didn’t say. “The shirts area—”

“Don’t worry, Rebekah Rich, I’ll get the shirts. I always get what’s mine.”

“Greg, stay away from my house and my dog. I mean it.”

“You gonna stay away from us, Rebekah Rich? Aren’t you the one
who started all this anyway?” He walked down the barn and picked up another white shirt that was hanging from a nail. He put it on, fastening the buttons as he walked back toward me in those fleeting but intense patches of light. His hands worked down the shirt, moving from button to button like animated images in a cartoon. When he was beside me again, he stopped. “I’ll see you later. Since we both work for Nadine.”

He walked out the crack I’d left in the door, and then suddenly slammed it completely shut behind him. The angle of light from the door disappeared. I was alone in the dark old barn.

Eleven

T
HE
scene I’d anticipated with Mama Betts over the shirts never happened. When I got home, Effie was crying in her room. The noises she made were soft, like a fall rain, but they also had the sound of winter in them, as if they’d never stop. It was not the tears of anger or frustration that came with trouble with her books. Those tears were hot and stormy. Electric tears that burst into angry exclamations and arguments on the telephone. These were the worst tears, the one that meant Effie was badly injured and grieving. She and Daddy had been fighting again, and this time over the telephone.

“There’s a bag with some sandwiches. Take them over to Alice’s and have a picnic,” Mama Betts said as soon as I entered the kitchen. She was making a pot of coffee, and her hands trembled.

“Is Daddy coming home now?” I needed him, and I knew that he wasn’t.

“Rebekah Brighton Rich, take those sandwiches and get out of this kitchen.”

Though her back was turned to me, I knew she was crying. Mama Betts hardly ever cried. She said she’d expended all her tears raising her children and she had none left except for extreme emergencies.

“Is Daddy sick?” A long-suppressed fear rose up and turned my gut to liquid. Three years before there had been whispering, telephone calls, trips to the doctor, and finally the hospital where Daddy was forced to stay for weeks while they made test after test. He’d been very sick, and no one would tell me or Arly what was wrong.

There was a morning, with the sun streaming in the blinds of the hospital room in Hattiesburg, when he’d lain in bed, eyes closed, his breathing hard and slow. Effie had gone for some coffee, and I was watching him sleep. I hadn’t been allowed to see him for two weeks, and I wouldn’t leave. If I could stay with him, I could make him better. There was a drip in his arm, and his hand was cool on the sheet. I woke him. I knew that if I didn’t wake him up and take him home, he might never come home again.

He said he was just tired and needed to rest, for me not to worry. He went back to sleep, and Effie came back into the room and took me home. In a few weeks he did come home, and the rest of that fall he stayed home and wrote, like Effie. He wasn’t completely well, but he was getting better. In the winter he went back to work, and nothing more was said about his sickness. But the mantel in their bedroom was filled with tiny pill bottles that we were told never to touch. He took medicine in the morning and when he came home from work, and he took it to work with him so he could take it at lunch.

Mama Betts put her hand on my shoulder and pulled me into a hug. “Your daddy’s fine, Bekkah. He’s just fine.”

“Is he coming home?” He had to be. Something was terribly wrong and I knew it. “When is he coming home?” I spoke into the fabric of her dress. She smelled of sugar cookies and lemon.

“Not for a while.”

My heart twisted so painfully I thought I might cry out. He wasn’t coming home any time soon. Something was wrong. They’d been arguing, Daddy and Effie, and it had gotten bad.

“How would you like to go up and visit your father?”

“To Missouri?” That question put a gentle brake on my fears. I wanted to see him more than anything.

“It isn’t that far. You could take a bus. Or maybe even fly there.” She was thinking out loud, weighing the possibilities of travel.

“Could I?” And in that same instant: “Effie won’t let me. She won’t even let me go to the beach.”

“This time she might not have as much say as she’d like.”

Mama Betts was finished crying. She had a plan, a goal. She patted my back. “Take those sandwiches and go play with Alice for a few hours. Let me talk with Effie. I’m beginning to see where a little trip for you might be good for the whole family.”

“And Arly?” He’d burn with jealousy if I got to go see Daddy. Especially if I got to fly.

“I’m not so sure about Arly. It might be better if you and The Judge had some time together alone. You’re very much like him, Bekkah. Perhaps the two of you can work out … the details.” She smiled and lifted a weight off my heart.

Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Daddy and Effie fought. They had since I could remember. There were arguments at the supper table about events so far removed from Kali Oka that Arly and I never even noticed who said what. Many times they agreed in what they called principle, but they had different ideas about how to go about changing things. Some of this talk was about Negroes. Some about poverty. Some about Europe or Mexico or other faraway places that were only names on a map. These arguments were part of the rhythm of Kali Oka Road. They were part of the smell of cornbread baking in the oven and the pop and sizzle of chicken frying. “Pass the mashed potatoes” would be spoken in the middle of a long speech on the brutality of immigration laws. It was the fights that went on behind the bedroom door that were the bad ones.

Sometimes at night, no matter how much I didn’t want to hear, there would be words that crept over the transom and into my room, dancing and pointing at me. One word they threw back and forth at each other was opportunity. Another was control. Dependency. Agreement. Promises. And my name. Bekkah. They argued about me. And Mama Betts.

Arly, stuffed full of supper and dreams of the girls he was going to kiss, would sleep like a log in his room. Or at least he never admitted that he heard any of the fights. Maybe he didn’t because I never heard his name batted back and forth like a shuttlecock.

“Now take these sandwiches, and you and Alice have some fun. Just keep an eye on that baby. I wonder Mrs. Waltman allows the two of you to go off with that infant.”

Mama Betts was pressing me out the door. The sack she’d handed me was filled with sandwiches and cookies and wedges of cheese and small bags of potato chips.

“She doesn’t even think about it. Alice says that since she’s got another cake in the oven, she doesn’t have time to worry about the one that’s already baked.”

“Rebekah!” Mama Betts’ arms went automatically to her hips, the stance of shock and disapproval. “Well, Alice said it, not me.”

“And don’t think that I’ve forgotten about those shirts, young lady.

We’ll attend to them later.”

“I ran into Greg, and he wanted them right then, so I gave them all to him. I told him we were going to wash and iron them and bring them back,” I hurried on, because I knew she’d be angry that I’d gone against her plans, “but he wanted them right away. He said he wouldn’t go home without them.”

Behind her glasses, Mama Betts blinked twice. “Well, maybe it’s for the best. The incident is over. You and Alice have the bikes back, and the boys have their shirts. And if you’re up in Missouri, I won’t have to worry about what the two of you are getting into with the church people.”

“Since they were their shirts, I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Where did you run into that boy?”

“I didn’t go on the church property, if that’s what your asking.” The bitter evidence of the lashes across the boy’s back almost made me flinch. I saw him again, chest glistening with sweat and then the sight of his back. I wanted to tell Mama Betts, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t right that I’d seen the boy without his shirt in the barn. There had been something wrong about it, something I couldn’t even begin to put my finger on. I just knew that I couldn’t talk about it.

“Rebekah, I’m an old woman. I grew up in the days before cars and televisions.”

She was staring at me, and I had no idea where she was going. I shifted my weight from foot to foot. Mama Betts was up to something, circling all around me with words to set the trap firm.

“From the time when I was a little girl, there’s a smell I remember. When I hugged you up close, that old familiar smell came back to me.”

The horse blankets soaked in sweat!

“I’m not telling you your business, but if it were me, I’d get some fresh shorts and a blouse, and I’d take a bar of soap and go for a dunk down at the spring on the way to Alice’s house.”

“Thanks, Mama Betts.” I started back to my room.

“What were you doing in the McInnis barn?”

“I took the blankets off the horses. They were sweating and Na—Mrs. Andrews was gone.”

“Blankets on horses in June?”

I shrugged. It didn’t make sense to me either. “She’d gone to get the rest of her horses, I think. Maybe she forgot to take them off.”

“I know a little about horses. Blankets in June is asking for pneumonia. Why, the nights are hot already. Too hot for a sheet, even for an old body like mine with no hair and thin blood. That woman must not have good sense, or she must be a Yankee.”

I nodded. The horses had been slick with sweat, but surely Nadine knew what she was doing. After all, she had nine horses and knew how to ride them. “Maybe it’s because they’re special show horses.”

“Harrumph,” Mama Betts snorted. “Even fancy horses sweat and get sick when they’re not cared for properly. I’ve been around stock, fancy and plain. And another thing, Rebekah, I don’t approve of you sneaking around behind your mother’s back with those horses. Don’t go back there until you have her permission.”

“I didn’t ride them. I only took the blankets off.”

“No matter. Effie has to say yes before you go back.” She paused. “Do I have your word?”

“Mama Betts …”

“No dancing around, Bekkah. I want your word.”

It wasn’t fair. “She’s offered to let me work there for lessons. Daddy said that I—”

“Your father isn’t here. Effie is, and she’s the one who worries about you.”

“She doesn’t worry about Arly the same way!” Arly was always going and doing just as he pleased. He played sports and ran around town and got to go camping with his friends and on trips to Jackson and Mobile … and to the beach.

“Your word, Rebekah.”

Mama Betts’ patience was wearing thin. “Okay.” I whispered it because I knew it was a lie. Probably the first intentional lie I’d ever told. But I was going to see Cammie and the other horses. No matter what the cost. No matter how big the lie.

“When you get back from Missouri, we’ll talk about those horses. It might be a good idea for you to take lessons. Maybe it wouldn’t worry Effie so much if she thought you’d learn how to ride safely.”

“It isn’t just the horses and you know it. It’s everything. Mama won’t let me do anything! She’s always afraid I’ll get hurt, but the truth is she doesn’t want me to do anything at all except stay right here!” The tears were burning my eyes and throat.

“Your mother loves you too much, child.”

“Yeah, well, that sounds good, but it feels awful.” I took the sack and hurried out the door before I started to cry. It was a matter of pride. I didn’t cry in front of anyone, except maybe Alice and Picket.

By the time I got to the Waltmans’, I’d calmed down. Alice and I enjoyed the lunch. We tempted fate and gave Maebelle V. a taste of pimento cheese. She seemed to like it as much as we did, but Alice was cautious. She only let the baby have a taste. Picket liked it, too, as well as the chicken salad and the peanut butter cookies that Mama Betts had baked the night before. While we lazed in the shade near the spring, I brought Alice up to date with the Redeemer boys and Nadine, and my forthcoming trip to Missouri. I tried not to sound too excited, ‘cause Alice had never been farther away than Jexville.

During the summers when Daddy wasn’t working away, we had always taken vacations to places like the Grand Canyon and the Rocky Mountains or Rock City in Tennessee. Daddy liked to travel, and he thought it was good for me and Arly to see the country. He said we could better appreciate the diversity of the people and their beliefs if we saw it firsthand.

Whenever we went away, it always took about a week for me and Alice to get back to the place where we’d left off. She acted as if she expected me to change while we were on vacation. I tried not to brag too much about what we’d seen and done. Once Effie asked Mrs. Waltman if Alice could go with us to Florida for a vacation at the beach. Mrs. Waltman said Alice had too many chores at home to be gallivanting all over the country, so Alice didn’t get to go. A lot of the fun of that vacation was gone because the whole time I missed Alice so much.