Summer of the Redeemers (21 page)

“Want me to go first?” I asked Alice. We had to get going so we could get home.

She shook her head. “You go last. I don’t want to be the one who actually digs it up.”

I’d brought a knapsack and some old newspaper from the house to wrap it in when we finally got it. I didn’t think that was exactly the right thing, but it was the best I could manage without getting Mama Betts to asking all sorts of questions. I hadn’t told Alice about the newspapers, which were hidden in the knapsack that was stuffed in my bicycle basket. It was better if she didn’t think that far ahead. I didn’t
want to spook her before we even got started, and the idea of carrying anything dead home in a knapsack would certainly upset her.

Alice put the shovel at the edge of the grave and rested a foot on it as she stared at me. “Ready?” Her glance darted to the woods, which seemed to have inched even closer to us.

“Go on.” I folded my arms across my chest. Picket sat at my side as if we were part of some religious service.

“You’re sure the Redeemers are gone?”

“Come on, Alice. I’m positive. Just get on with it.” My own nerves were jangling and it made me snappy.

Alice jumped on the shovel, and it went in the ground about three inches. The dirt only looked loose and easy to dig. Kali Oka was red clay and sand. Digging anywhere on it wasn’t easy, and especially since it hadn’t rained for at least two weeks. Alice set to work with all of her wiry strength while I walked around and brushed my fingers over the inscriptions of some of the older tombstones.

Picket heard the noise first. She didn’t get up, she just shifted her weight so that she could turn her ears toward the creek. Since she didn’t bark or ruffle her fur, I didn’t think much about it. Probably a squirrel or something shuffling around in the underbrush attracting her attention.

Alice kept digging, hard-packed inch by inch. She had a little mound of red dirt beside a shallow hole. I knew I could dig faster because I was heavier, but she needed to dig. Her work preoccupied her.

Suddenly she stopped, shovel half lifted, and looked toward the woods. “Did you hear something?” she asked.

“Just the normal stuff. What do you suppose Maebelle V. is doing right now?” I had to keep talking. “I wish I had a flashlight so I could read these tombstones. Arly and I read them once, but he was in a hurry and wouldn’t let me really dwell on them. Some of them are so old that the writing is almost worn away.”

“Shussh!” Alice lowered the shovel and waved her hand at me. “Listen!”

But I didn’t want to. We were trespassing, surrounded by dead folks and robbing a grave. It wasn’t likely that we were going to hear anything we much wanted to hear, especially not from someone hiding in the woods.

“Alice,” I whispered, but all of her attention was focused just beyond the clearing of the cemetery in the woods.

“Some of these graves have verses, like poetry or Bible sayings. They’re really morbid, but some are beautiful. Mama Betts said the graves are much, much older than the church.”

Without taking her eyes off the woods, Alice lowered the shovel. Her right arm came up in a point. Not wanting to but unable to stop myself, I looked down her arm to the tip of her finger and into the woods. There was total blackness.

“I saw something move back in there,” she whispered.

“Don’t be silly.” I tried to be stern, but I ended on a giggle. “You think it’s a ghost?”

Alice giggled too. “I’d rather run up on a ghost than one of those Redeemers,” she said.

That struck me as pretty funny. “Yeah, those Redeemers are a lot scarier than any ghost.”

“They’re truly scary,” Alice said, laughing. “Remember when you called them zombies?”

I remembered. I glanced around the graves nearest us just to make sure nothing was peaking out to watch us. Alice picked up the shovel again.

“The ground’s a lot harder than I thought it would be,” I said. Alice answered with a grunt. It didn’t seem possible, but there was a root in her way. She was using the shovel to try to lever it up so we could chop it in half.

Picket had flopped down on her belly in some of the cool red dirt Alice had thrown out. Without any warning she rose slowly to her paws and growled deep in her throat. She was staring directly into the woods, and her hackles rose.

“What is it?” Alice asked. The shovel was under the root, and she was trying to pry it up.

“I don’t see anything.” I didn’t, but Picket’s behavior made my skin crawl with dread. I looked around the cemetery again, checking to be sure no bony fingers were scrabbling to get out of a grave.

“Maybe we should go home,” Alice said. “We can’t dig this up.”

I took the shovel and turned the conversation to the only thing I knew never failed to get Alice’s attention. “Do you think Maebelle thinks you’re her mother?”

Alice eyed the woods before she answered. “I might as well be.”

“Will you get married and have ten children?” The future had become almost a forbidden topic between us, but I broached it as I put the point of the shovel on the root and jumped on it with all of my weight. For a moment the root held, and then the blade sliced cleanly through it.

“Well, I doubt I’ll be going to Paris,” she answered. “I can promise you, though, that I won’t have ten children. It isn’t fair. Nobody gets enough of anything. There’s never any time. It’s not like with you, Bekkah. You’re special at your house, and what you want matters.” Alice took a seat on a big tombstone.

That painting of Paris with the woman in her red dress walking her poodle replaced the midnight splendor of the old cemetery for a moment. I could tell by the way Alice talked that she’d given up the idea of Paris. For one brief second I hated Kali Oka Road. I hated Paris. I dug with a vengeance.

I was about to jump on the shovel with my full weight when I heard the sound again. It came from the creek, and it was almost a laugh but maybe a sob.

“What was that?” Alice’s blue eyes were enormous in the moonlight. Her freckles had disappeared in the whiteness of her face.

“Something at the creek. Some raccoon or something.” It was nothing more than that. The entire time we’d been in the cemetery I’d felt as if someone had put salt under my skin. Alice and I both were making every sound into something terrifying.

I hit the shovel hard, and it slipped through the heavy earth. I turned a big shovelful of red dirt out beside the grave.

“Be careful,” Alice cautioned. “They didn’t put it in a coffin or anything. We don’t want to cut it in half.”

I moved out a little farther, making the grave wider.

A low wail came from the creek. It started out soft and mournful, then reached up higher on the register of horror to qualify as something that tightened the skin on my neck.

Alice abandoned her seat and edged toward me, close enough that I could feel the heat of her body in the sudden chill. Picket rose to a sitting position, ears alert and pricked toward Cry Baby Creek. That was when we heard the infant. At first it was a wail of anger, the shock of cold water on a little warm body. The baby’s protest came just after the sound of something small striking the water.

“Holy shit,” I whispered.

“Bekkah! It’s the baby! It’s Evie!”

Alice’s hand gripped my arm and her fingers dug deep. I didn’t care. At least Alice’s punishing fingers were real. What I saw at the edge of the woods was not. It couldn’t be. Picket saw it, though. She stood up, and the hair on her back ruffled as a low growl rumbled in her throat.

“My God,” Alice whispered.

Dark hair streaming about her face and shoulders, a woman stepped out of the woods to stand on the edge of the clearing. She held out her hands in supplication to us. “My baby,” she cried. “Please don’t hurt my baby.”

Alice’s body jerked twice, and I grabbed her wrist with my hand. It felt like she was going to either run away or explode. “Be still!” I whispered.

“Oh, my God,” Alice moaned. She jerked against my grip. “I want to go home.” But the woman blocked our way to the bridge. My heart was pounding in my ears so loudly I could barely hear.

“Please,” the woman moaned. “Help me save my little baby.” She started forward. She wore a white dress that was soaked in what looked to be blood.

Alice screamed, a loud, terrified wail that sliced clean through me. I felt as if I’d been electrified. Picket lunged forward, her teeth bared and a savage snarl coming from deep inside her.

The woman faded back among the trees. “Help me,” she moaned as she disappeared into the trees. “Oh, God, someone please help me.”

She was gone.

The sound of a baby crying came from the creek. It was pitiful, the sound of doom.

“The baby!” Alice wailed. She started toward the creek automatically and then stopped. “What are we going to do?”

I held her arm. “No! Don’t look! It’s a trick. There’s no baby. It’s a ghost. That baby’s been dead for ten years.” I was staring at the place in the woods where the woman had disappeared. I had never been so afraid in my entire life. The one thing I knew for certain was that I wasn’t going near that creek. I didn’t want to see what might be waiting down there for us. What might look back.

We stood for several minutes, too afraid to move at all. My grip on Alice was clammy with sweat. I didn’t want to take my eyes off the
woods, yet I had to check around the cemetery. I had to be certain all of the graves were still secure.

“What are we going to do?” Alice said, tears in her voice.

“We should go home,” I said.

The baby’s cries came from under the bridge.

“No!” Alice backed away from me. She looked from the bridge to the woods. “I’m not setting foot on the bridge.”

“Maybe we can cross the creek down a little ways from here.” I didn’t care which way we went, I only wanted to get home.

“No!” Alice’s rejection of that plan was sharp.

“We have to go home!” I insisted as sharply.

A loud and horrible scream came from the woods. “No! Oh, please, God, save me and my little baby.”

In the ringing silence that followed, Alice stepped back from me. “I’m not going near that creek.” She gave up her search of the woods long enough to look directly at me. The baby cried, this time weaker and more pitiful. “No matter what you say, Bekkah, I’m not going near that creek. I’ll die here first.”

She meant it. I’d left her once at Cry Baby Creek. I wouldn’t do it again. Not even a ghost could make me. “Okay,” I said. There was no way I was going to spend the rest of the night in a cemetery waiting for something to crawl out of a grave. “We can stay in the church. Just until daybreak.”

Alice nodded slowly. Arms brushing, we backed our way across the clearing to the front door and pushed it open. Stale air rushed out at us, the smell of the grammar school on the first day. We walked in together, Picket at our side.

Twenty

I
SPENT
the next five hours staring out the same window I’d peeped into the day I watched the singing dwarf. I must have slept, but I don’t remember. I was very thirsty. I knew there was a drinking fountain in the corridor behind the sanctuary, but I didn’t want to go there. As bad as Selena’s ghost had been begging in the woods, I didn’t want to see the ghost of the preacherman. Selena was sad. And the preacherman? Sometime during the night I had adopted Nadine’s version of the Legend of Cry Baby Creek. The preacherman was evil. So I stared out the window and watched, ignoring my dry mouth and the discomfort of the hard pew.

At times I thought I heard the faint crying of a baby, but I couldn’t see the creek from my window. I could only be certain that Selena did not come out of the woods again. To my knowledge, Alice, Picket and I were the only presences at the end of Kali Oka Road.

Alice dozed beside me, her hand in Picket’s fur. Only her greater fear of Selena and Evie could ever had driven her into the Blood of the Redeemers sanctuary. Only fear could have drained her to the point that she could sleep on those hard pews. I was too afraid of what might be standing over me when I woke up to trust myself to the helplessness of sleep.

When the pink light of dawn touched the sanctuary with the first hint of softness, I eased away from Alice’s sleeping form. I had the creepy feeling that Jesus crucified on the cross was watching me. Hanging on the wall, he had nothing to do but suffer and watch me. His
anguish was so plain, I felt it too. I needed to get outside where I could think.

Picket fell into step beside me as I walked out of the church toward the creek. In the gray wash of dawn there was no sign of Selena in the woods. Even as I looked, the possibility of her made the hair on my arms stand on end. Since I’d had most of the night to think about what had happened, I’d come to a few conclusions. It only made sense that one day we’d see her. If we could hear the crying of little Evie, then it was natural that Selena was not far behind. Whether murderess or helpless victim, she would have been near Cry Baby Creek when Evie died.

Maybe just a few feet inside the woods. Maybe she waited for someone to change history, for someone to save her baby and herself. Maybe she was waiting, and watching, now. My eyes caught a flicker of movement just beyond the trees. I had been staring so hard at them that I had to blink. In that split second I lost whatever had moved. Had it been a white dress gliding through the secret dark of the woods? My muscles clamped down with an unpleasant grip, and I had to force myself to take a step forward into the cemetery.

Our shovel was still lying on the ground near the small grave we’d excavated. In the growing light of dawn, I saw clumps of red clay and several fresh piles of earth scattered around the cemetery. The grave Alice and I had chosen was not the only fresh hole that had been dug. It looked as if several body snatchers had been busy, digging away for corpses. My body shuddered and I tried to push that thought out of my mind. I’d seen too many old movies and read too many scary books. Body snatchers weren’t part of Kali Oka Road. They weren’t even a part of Jexville.

Even though I’d seen it a hundred times, I found Evie Baxter’s grave. The sod there was untouched, a flat surface of grass. My finger traced the contours of a baby angel that had been carved into the face of the granite stone. The inscription read:
And He called the innocents unto Him. Evie Baxter October
18,
1953-October 24, 1953.

The residents of Kali Oka Road had paid for the tombstone. Mama Betts said everyone on the road had given something toward the cost. The church people moved on after that, but little Evie was left behind on Kali Oka Road. I guess maybe she belonged to the road as much as she’d ever belonged to the church people, or even Selena. Maybe
the tombstone was right. Maybe she’d never belonged to anyone except God.

Stepping carefully around the fresh mounds of earth that pocked the cemetery—five newly turned mounds in all—I tried not to look into the woods. I had the creepiest sensation that someone, or something, was watching me closely. If I looked up and saw something, I’d panic. I didn’t have time for that now. Alice and I were going to have to get home, and soon. To occupy my mind, I tried to think what had become of Selena. No one had ever told me that part of the story. Selena might still be locked away in Parchman State Prison, where murderers worked in cotton fields that stretched from horizon to horizon.

I’d never personally seen the state prison farm at Parchman that covered twenty-two thousand acres, but Nadine had. She’d described it one day, talking about the long sacks the inmates pulled behind them and filled with cotton as they sweated under the broiling sun. She said the top soil in the Mississippi Delta was eight feet deep and could grow anything, but that cotton was king, even in the 1960s, especially at the prison.

Nadine had volunteered to go there to do some research for a high school paper in her civics class. She’d gone there just to look, because she wanted to see for herself if prison was as bad as everyone thought. She said it was worse. The guards carried bullwhips and sometimes set dogs on prisoners.

The Judge and Effie talked about Parchman too. They said it needed to be reformed. Just recently they had said that Ollie Stanford was headed for Parchman, and he wouldn’t be there a week before he’d commit suicide by jumping out of his top bunk with his belt wrapped around his neck and hooked to the bunk bed. The Judge said that type of suicide was a favorite of the Parchman guards. The way he said it, everyone at the dinner table knew Ollie wouldn’t hang voluntarily. It would be a “legal lynching.”

No matter how I turned my thoughts, they always seemed to lurch back toward something gruesome or violent or both. I guess I knew what was waiting for me. Before I woke Alice, I had to look down in Cry Baby Creek. No matter what was there, I had to look.

My mind conjured up terrifying images, and I fought against them with logic There wouldn’t be anything there. Ghosts didn’t leave evidence,
at least none that could be picked up or touched. Now that daylight was practically a fact, all traces of what we’d seen and heard the night before would be gone. All I had to do was look, and then it could all be over. I’d wake Alice and we’d go home.

My footsteps echoed hollowly on the wooden bridge, and just above the creek I stopped. When I looked down, I wasn’t surprised to see the white lace of the christening gown floating in the creek. It was snagged on the root of a tree not three feet from the bridge. I didn’t even take off my shoes when I slid down the bank and waded out into the shallow water to retrieve it. My legs were rubbery, and I fell once, sending cold water up to my crotch. I barely felt it, my mind was so set on getting that tatter of lace. When I reached out for it, I expected to look up and see Selena on the bank, or the little baby floating downstream from me, blue with cold and eyes rolled back in its head. But there wasn’t anything. I touched the lace to make sure that it was real, and then I took it from the snag. It was very old, fragile in my hands. It felt like cobwebs.

On the bank there wasn’t a sign of another human life—and no footprints except for my own. When I got out of the creek I went to the grave Alice and I had tried to dig. Working quickly, I smoothed it over and replaced the sod as best I could. I wanted everything done before I woke Alice. We had to get home. The sun was a third up on the horizon, and if we weren’t in bed before everyone got up, we’d be in serious trouble. To sneak out was one thing. To stay out all night was a crime that deserved punishment—as Arly had found out only a few weeks ago.

I didn’t think that spending the night in fear at the Blood of the Redeemers Church would deserve the same punishment as spending the night in the backseat of a car with a snoring Rosie Carpenter, but I didn’t want to press the issue. Maybe what I’d done was worse.

I showed Alice the lace clinging to a bit of torn gown when I woke her. She burst into tears.

“We could have saved that baby,” she said.

“There wasn’t anything we could do.” But the christening gown belied my denial. I wasn’t certain what to think about it. Sure, different folks, mostly teenagers, said they heard the baby crying in the creek. That was the legend. But what about the gown? No one had ever come
back with evidence of the dead baby’s ghost. And no one had ever reported seeing the mother, all bloody and anguished, pleading for help to save her child. Maybe if we had gone into the night we might have saved that little baby. But that was stupid. Evie Baxter was dead and buried in the churchyard cemetery.

“Hey,” Alice nudged my arm. “You okay?”

I nodded. The gown was so thin that it was already drying in my hands. It wouldn’t have given much protection to a newborn in October, not even on dry land. “Let’s get home.”

Alice ran across the bridge, the shovel in her hand. She was mounted on her bike and pointed toward home before I could even pick mine up out of the dirt.

“What about the grave?” she asked.

“There wasn’t anything there. Even if there was, we were digging in the wrong spot.”

“How do you know?”

“There were five other graves. Or at least the ground had been turned. The place we were digging, the sod had just been lifted up. It looked like the right place, but it wasn’t.”

Alice looked back over her shoulder at the cemetery. She stared like she was hoping an answer would appear. “Are you sure?”

“If someone had dug there before us, the root would have been chopped already.” It was true. The question was why had someone made all of those pretend graves. And when?

She nodded. “I thought about that.” She lifted her weight up on the right pedal and started home. We rode so fast there was no time to talk. When we got to the woods behind my house, breathless and sweating, the sun had inched into the sky.

“Come over this afternoon,” I whispered.

“Okay,” Alice answered as she disappeared down the trail to her house. I ran toward home, praying I could make it inside and duck under the sheets before Mama Betts got up to make breakfast.

I left my wet sneakers on the front porch and tiptoed barefoot back to my room. I’d just closed the door when I heard Mama Betts come out of her bedroom and shut the bathroom door. There was the sound of the toilet flushing and the tap running.

Without bothering with pajamas I tossed my clothes in a corner and slipped beneath the cool sheet. My own bed had never felt better.

I looked around my room, taking in the shelves of books and the glass figures of horses that I’d collected for as long as I could remember.

The large gray Percheron The Judge had bought for me on a trip to his relatives in upstate New York was the last thing I remembered seeing.

“Bekkah Rich.”

I heard my name from a long distance. There was a lot of warm, soft cotton between me and my name, and I wrapped myself tighter away from the noise.

“Bekkah! It’s nine o’clock. That Mrs. Andrews is sitting out in the yard in that old rusty truck with the motor running. She says you’re late for work.”

Reality and panic hit about the same time. I sat bolt upright in bed to find Mama Betts standing beside me, arms akimbo. I could read a lot of things in her expression, but it all boiled down to disapproval. The list of my sins was long—I’d slept way into the morning; Nadine was in the yard; she hadn’t gotten out of the truck but had probably blown the horn; she was waiting for me.

I started to throw back the covers, then remembered that I was naked as a jay bird. “Okay, I’m awake.” I said. “Please tell Nadine that I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“At least you know how to say please,” Mama Betts said as she left the room. At the doorway she turned around to face me. “This afternoon I want to talk with you about your shoes.”

“My shoes?”

“Indeed. How did they manage to get sopping wet sitting on the porch all night?”

“Damn!” I whispered as soon as she closed the door. Before I could get into any more trouble, I picked up my dirty clothes and bundled them into a knot. I stuffed them under the mattress as I made my bed, found some clean shorts and a blouse and grabbed another pair of sneakers. If I’d had a bit of sense I would have hidden those shoes. Mama Betts swept the porch every morning. I’d been so tired that I hadn’t even stopped to consider that she would find them—and think it strange that they were wet.