Summer of the Redeemers (15 page)

The last night before I was ready to go, I told Daddy that I had to talk with him. The Redeemers had been heavy on my mind, especially the girl who had fornicated. I’d as much as promised Alice I’d have a solution when I came back, and I hadn’t thought up a thing on my own. Daddy had to be consulted.

After a supper without Cathi, I went to his study and waited for him. The faculty housing was small but cozy. He had a two-bedroom house with a study and a fireplace. He’d already told me he could get a larger house for very reasonable rent if we should all end up in Missouri. There was a picture of Effie and me and Arly on his desk, and I looked at it while I waited for him. It was Halloween and we were all dressed up. Effie was a really scary-looking witch, and I was a goblin and Arly was Satan. Daddy had said we were the perfect family when he took the photo. He didn’t dress up.

I was putting the picture back when he walked in the room. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t worry about the family. You know I love all of you more than anything. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep us all together.”

That scared me more than anything he could have said. I knew he and Effie fought, but I hadn’t realized they’d actually talked about not being together.

“After this week with you, Bekkah, I couldn’t leave my children. Or my wife.” He smiled. “Your grandmother was very wise to send you.”

“Arly wanted to come too.”

“Arly might have made me decide the other way.”

“Daddy!” I ran into his arms and he held me tight.

“I love you, baby girl. More than you’ll ever know.”

I could have stayed in his arms, safe, forever. It didn’t matter that Mama Betts had used me as a tool of blackmail. What mattered was that whatever had gone wrong between Daddy and Mama had been set right.

“When will you come home?”

“At the end of summer term. In August.”

“Summer will be over then.”

“Maybe we’ll take a trip in the fall. I’ve been thinking about the Grand Canyon. How would you like to see that?” “I’d rather take riding lessons this summer.”

To my surprise, he laughed. “Your grandmother says that you get that stubbornness from me. I think it comes from your mother’s side of the family. Or maybe it’s just the female nature.”

“Daddy, Nadine is a wonderful rider. I want to learn, and she’ll teach me for the work I can do. If I don’t do it this summer, school will start and I won’t have time.”

“I’ll talk with your mother, Rebekah. That’s all I can promise.”

That was enough, for right now. The Redeemers still had to be dealt with. “Daddy, you know how you told me that when someone is doing something wrong, it’s up to me to address that wrong?”

“What have you done, Bekkah?”

“I went down to that church and spied. I went down there last Sunday, and I heard a girl about my age confess to fornicating, and I think they beat her.”

“Did you see them strike her?”

“I got scared and ran away, but I heard her scream. And beg. Alice heard her too.”

“You went to all the trouble to spy and then didn’t see anything?” Daddy could make me feel shame like no one else. Effie and Mama Betts were better at remorse. With Daddy it was total shame.

“You don’t know how those people are. They beat Greg, the Redeemer boy.”

“In church? You know this for a fact?”

“No.” I shook my head. “His parents, I think. It was over his shirt.”

“The shirt that you took?”

I looked up at him. He’d been talking to Mama Betts. “That shirt.”

“What is it you think should be done?”

“Daddy, those boys said it was the preacher who was touching that girl. They said—” I stopped.

A terrible look crossed his face. “You’ve been talking about this with those boys?”

“Good grief, no! I eavesdropped on them.” He must have thought I’d lost my mind talking about fornicating and touching with boys.

“Bekkah, I’ll talk to your mother about the horses, but I’m telling you, stay away from that church and those people. When I get home,
I’ll make it a point to see about them if they haven’t already moved on. They have a right to their beliefs and their privacy, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone.”

“What about that girl? She might be getting hurt.”

“I’ll have someone look into it. I promise you. Just stay away.”

The Judge was mad, but I couldn’t tell if it was at me or at the church people. All I knew was that the subject was closed. He had walked away from me and was staring out the window into the early night.

“The stars aren’t as bright in Missouri,” he said.

“There’s more lights around than on Kali Oka Road. You said that lights take away from the splendor of the night sky.”

“You were only about six when I told you that. You have a very good memory.” He turned back to me and he was smiling.

“I’m precocious, remember?”

He laughed out loud. “You’re arrogant.”

“Mama says I’m just like you.”

“Your mother is vicious. If she’d put that in print it would be grounds for libel.”

“She says that you’d never win in that case because truth would be her defense.” We were both laughing. Daddy came to me and hugged me hard. “I don’t want you to go home, Bekkah. Why don’t you stay the rest of the summer with me?”

“Oh, Daddy. I have to get back to Kali Oka Road.”

His laugh was sad again. “What is it about that road that the women in my life can’t seem to leave it behind?”

Fourteen

M
RS.
Welford and Jamey Louise met me at the Mobile airport. It was an unpleasant shock to my system to see Jamey Louise waving at me like I was some kin to her. I tried to ignore her, but she squealed and ran out across the tarmac to meet me when I started down the steps of the plane. She reeked of Evening in Paris cologne, and she had on silvery pink lipstick that made her look like she wasn’t getting enough blood to her face. On Jamey Louise’s insistence, I had to ride in the backseat with her so she could whisper to me all of the things I’d missed in my week away from Kali Oka Road.

Jamey Louise was delighted to report that Alice had been slapped by her mother Thursday afternoon in the Waltman front yard as the Welfords were driving by. Arly had also been in trouble, something I found not unusual. Jamey Louise didn’t have all the details, but she’d heard he kissed a girl in one of the booths at the Jexville Drugstore. Old Mr. Hartz, the pharmacist, had seen him do it and called Effie. Such public displays weren’t in good taste.

Someone had given Addy a new kitten, and she was keeping it in her house for fear someone would hurt it. Instead of a gray tabby, it was a marmalade. Carrie’s plums had gone ripe, and everyone on the road had picked at least a bucket for jelly. The Spooners got a new car, a ‘62 Chevy, red with white interior.

I listened, waiting for a chance to ask where Effie and Mama Betts had gone. I’d looked forward to seeing them at the airport. Truth told, I was sort of homesick to see them. I’d never been away from Effie
before. She’d been angry with me when I left. Even though it upset her, she had taken me to the airport and watched with her lips tight as I went through the door that led outside to the plane. In so many words she said I’d betrayed her by going off to Missouri. She made it seem as if I’d chosen travel and seeing Daddy over staying on Kali Oka with her. But even mad, she would have been at the airport to get me. A knot of worry was growing in my stomach. Something bad had happened.

“Why didn’t Mama and Mama Betts come for me?” I finally got a chance to ask Emily Welford.

She tried to avoid the question, but Jamey Louise was sitting on ready. “It’s that nigger they’ve got in jail. Someone tried to break in the jail and hang him last night. Your mama’s down there standing vigil.”

By the way she said it, I could tell that no one in the Welford family appreciated what Effie was doing. Jamey Louise was just spouting off what she’d heard at her dinner table.

“Why’d they try to hang him? He hasn’t had a trial yet.”

“No need for a trial,” Jamey Louise said, her chin lifting a bit. “He’s guilty. He didn’t deny it. He said he killed Mr. Fallon.”

“But Mr. Fallon killed his brother.”

“Yeah, but he was just a nigger. That don’t count.”

Maybe it was the way she said it. I knew suddenly that Effie was at the jail to protect a Negro man she didn’t even know. Folks around Jexville were thinking like Jamey Louise. That Ollie Stanford had killed a white man without good cause. In their minds there was no reason for a nigger to fight back. They could fight among themselves, but they couldn’t fight a white man. It was the law, unwritten but very real.

“Take me to the jail.”

“Your granny said to bring you straight on home,” Emily Welford said, already sounding nervous.

“I want to go to my mother.” I was scared, and it made my voice sharp.

“Don’t go getting on your high horse with my mama,” Jamey Louise said. “You can’t order us around like you do Alice and the others.”

“Mrs. Welford, I’ve got a terrible feeling that Effie may need my help. Is she down there alone?”

“I don’t know,” Emily admitted. “Not many folks feel the same way she does. Not white ones, at least. And the Negroes are too scared to go down there.” She cast a nervous glance in the rearview mirror and our eyes met. Emily Welford would never admit in public that she agreed with Effie, not about a black man. But she felt something, and a reflection of it was in her eyes. She frightened me.

“What is it?”

“I heard there was a crowd gathering at the jail. Joe Wickham called her and said the men folks had been drinking and were getting rowdy. Your mama called some lawyers in Hattiesburg, but they couldn’t get to Jexville in time. That’s why she went down there. She was afraid something violent would happen. She went to stop it.”

“By herself?”

Emily nodded.

Mama was alone. In all of my life, I’d never been afraid of the people living in and around Jexville. There was always talk about fights and brawls, but none of it touched Kali Oka Road. These were folks I’d grown up with, or at least heard about. Now I was afraid for Effie. She’d stepped over the line by going to the courthouse.

“Take me to be with her. If there’s trouble, we’ll both ride home with you.”

“Now, Bekkah, your granny said—”

“If Mama gets hurt, Emily, it’s going to be your fault.”

Cold and flat, the words made Jamey Louise gasp. “Well, I never heard such a thing in my life. It won’t be anybody’s fault but hers. No one made her go there. No one—”

“Jamey Louise, you’d better shut up.” I was rigid with fear. The Welfords’ old Plymouth rattled toward Chickasaw County.

“We’ll ride by the jail,” Emily said slowly. “We can see if your mother’s okay. Then we’ll decide. If it looks dangerous, I’m not going to stop. Your mother is an adult. Besides, the sheriff is there with her. Nothing bad will happen.”

“It already has,” I whispered. I could feel it. There wasn’t a name for it, not exactly. In a week’s time, though, something very important had changed. “Please hurry, Mrs. Welford.”

It was only another twenty minutes to town, but it seemed as if my eyeballs had gone completely dry. I couldn’t blink. The white lines disappeared beneath the front of the car and the tires whirred. Pine
trees whipped by, followed by red dirt roads cutting into the woods. More pines. A few fields. A house here and there. The outskirts of Jexville. There wasn’t any air in the car. My fingers gripped the back of the front seat until the little plastic bubbles on the seat covers were permanently indented. There was the Soloman wrecker business that marked the east side of town, junked cars parked all around a nice house. Then the little house on the right beneath the hill, where one or another of Effie’s school friends had been beaten by her husband with a dog chain. I never knew the whole story, but I’d heard Mama Betts and Effie whispering about it.

The old stores of downtown crested the top of a hill. There had once been enormous oak trees that canopied the main street, but the power company had cut them all down. What was left was a flat, ugly, half-mile strip of shops that needed a lot of paint and a lot of money. I knew every business on the street. Arly or I could walk in any of them and charge anything we wanted by saying our parents’ names. Most days I enjoyed shopping in Jexville, but I didn’t see the display of summer shorts in the window of the Dale Shop. The dark recesses of the Jexville Drug held no secret promises of ice cream and comic books. I wanted my mama. I wanted Effie, to feel her hand on my shoulder or tugging my braid.

Emily turned left at the second red light and drove the two blocks to the county jail. Old and square and red brick, it was surrounded by a twelve-foot chain-link fence with rolled barbed wire along the top. I knew it was bad when I saw the men standing in the jail yard with rifles held across their chests.

On the east side of the jail a large crowd had gathered. They were milling and talking. Mostly men, there were a few women scattered in it, and a handful of children. There wasn’t a sign of a Negro anywhere.

They didn’t seem to be doing anything, just staring at the old jail. Two stories with crumbling masonry, the jail operated on a mutual-agreement basis. Convicted felons agreed to do time in the jail so they wouldn’t be sent to the state pen in Parchman. The jail wasn’t exactly secure, and often the prisoners were allowed out to pick up litter or to walk down to the Coffee Cup to get their lunches handed out of the kitchen door to them. About five times a year one of them would tie his bed sheets together and escape from the second floor of the jail. Since the crimes committed were seldom worse than burglary or public
drunkenness, nobody got terribly upset. Joe Wickham would generally wait for the prisoner to get his business done and return to jail voluntarily.

What struck me, though, was that if the jail couldn’t keep prisoners in, it certainly couldn’t keep that crowd of people out. From the distance of the courthouse yard, it didn’t look too bad. But there was something about the crowd, like a pot just getting ready to boil over. When it happened, it would be sudden and dangerous.

Emily Welford slowed down when several of the men walked across the street in front of her car. They acted like they had more right to the road than she did, and she obliged them by almost stopping. It was my chance, and I opened the back door and made a dash for the courthouse. I knew where Joe Wickham’s office was, and I was hoping Effie was in there. I hadn’t seen her anywhere else, and I knew she wasn’t mingling with the crowd.

For all the hubbub outside, the courthouse was quiet. The heavy wooden door to the sheriff’s office was hard to push, but I slipped in. I’d been in there several times with Daddy and Mama, and it was normally a place where the men leaned back in their chairs and talked on the phone or joked among themselves. There was only one sheriff and one deputy, but there were always a handful of men who volunteered to be constables. They liked the law enforcement work. Daddy said they were bullies by nature and deadbeats by fact. I didn’t fully understand what he meant, I just knew he was careful around them. He didn’t like any of the officers except Mr. Wickham, yet he was always harping how they needed more pay. There were lots of things about Daddy I didn’t understand, but as I walked up to the high wooden counter, I would have given anything I owned to have him with me.

“Where’s Effie Rich?” I asked. I was tall enough to see over the counter, so I saw the glance the men exchanged. There were two volunteers and the deputy sitting around a scarred old desk. They were all smoking and drinking coffee from thick white mugs.

Not a one of them answered me.

“Where’s the sheriff?”

“He’s busy.” The deputy smiled at his friends and then walked over toward me. He was holding his cigarette between two fingers stained yellow. “He ain’t got time for little girls.” His name tag said
WAYLON SMITH.

“I’m Rebekah Rich, and I’m looking for my mother.” He frightened me. He was playing with me like a cat plays with a mouse, and I didn’t know why.

“Tell me something, Rebekah Rich. Do you like niggers as much as your mama?”

One of the men at the desk laughed. The other one put his coffee cup down and slowly stood up. “Maybe that ain’t such a good idea,” he said to the deputy.

“I simply asked Miss Rich a question. She looks like an educated young girl. She can answer a simple question, can’t you, Miss Rich?”

My lips were very dry and my tongue was sticking to my teeth. I knew they were being mean, but I didn’t understand why. I had the sudden thought that the plane had brought me back to a place I didn’t know. I’d come home to the wrong Jexville.

“Maybe Miss Rich only talks with niggers.” The deputy leaned on the counter. “Is that the problem? Am I too white to answer?”

The man at the desk laughed again. With a grumble of disgust, the other man left the office. He banged the door hard behind him.

“I want to see my mother,” I said, trying not to let my voice shake but doing a bad job of it. I grabbed the edge of the counter and held until my knuckles turned white. “Where is she?”

“She wanted to be with her nigger friend, so we put her in there with him.”

The deputy’s little brown eyes were rimmed in red. As he leaned over the counter, his breath smelled of wintergreen. He’d been eating Life Savers. The roll was still in his shirt pocket.

Mr. Wickham had given me a tour of the jail the past year when The Judge had taken me to the courthouse while he bought a car tag. The only way to get to the jail was through the sheriff’s office and out a back door that opened up in the jail yard. I’d have to run across the open space of yard to the jail building. That was a big metal door that required a special kind of key. I remembered Mr. Wickham showing me the key and how he hung it by the back door. With that mean deputy watching, I knew I couldn’t get the key and get inside, but I could call out for Effie and make sure she was okay.