Summer of the Redeemers (25 page)

He didn’t try hard to cover the bitterness in his voice, and I suddenly knew that Greg loved books. It had never occurred to me. In all of the church I didn’t remember seeing a book. Not even a hymnal.

“My father has a lot of different kinds of books. If you’d like, I could bring some for you.”

“If they found them, they’d burn them.”

“Leave them in the loft. Read them here.” I felt a tiny ripple of excitement. “My mother writes books.”

“What kind?”

“Children’s. They’re really good, though. I like reading them, even though I’m too old now.” I wanted to tell him that I helped Effie by reading her books before she sent them away, but that would sound too much like bragging.

“Bring me one of hers. Bring me your favorite. Once I had a book by a writer named Poe. They were scary stories. I’d like to read some more of his stuff.”

“Okay.” I stood for another minute, but there was nothing else to say. Greg and I had stumbled into some kind of uneasy friendship. “I’ll bring them tomorrow.”

“I won’t let anything happen to them. I promise that.”

My father’s study was lined with books. They were double stacked and piled on the floor. Effie went to the library in Jexville twice a week, and there were times she loaded up the car and took books there to give away. Books came in the mail, sent by friends, publishers and other writers. Effie bought them at yard sales and in stores. We had so many books that I never thought someone else might not have any. Even I had a full bookcase in my room that I’d read, but I didn’t think Greg would be interested in Nancy Drew, the Bobbsey Twins, the Black Stallion. Robin Hood was a possibility. Arly had some Hardy boys. I liked them almost better than Nancy Drew, even though Arly said they were boys’ books.

“Bekkah?” He called me back to the present.

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t kill that old woman’s cat. No matter what you think, I didn’t do that.”

“I’ll bring the books tomorrow,” I repeated, and then left him.

When I got to Cammie’s stall, I couldn’t find the ants, but I took the stall down to the hard-packed red earth. By the time I finished, Greg was through burying the dog, and he sprinkled lime around the floor of the stall, and I refilled it with clean shavings. Cammie stood in the cross ties, digging with her right front foot.

“She wants to run in the pasture,” Greg said from up above me. He was forever rearranging the hay, moving the old forward and putting the new up in back.

“I’d like to see her run.” I looked up and down the hall. Nadine didn’t even like the suggestion of turning the horses out. “Where is Nadine, anyway? And Jamey?”

“They were stewing up something together early this morning. They went off about eight.”

“On foot?” The green truck was there.

“I guess.” Greg went back to his job, and I finished cleaning my stalls and Jamey’s. She’d done it for me the past few days, I supposed. I was feeling left out. Where had they gone? The morning was almost over and it was time for my lesson.

I hayed and watered, just to kill time. Greg came down out of the loft and ate his lunch sitting on the cement block that was usually Nadine’s perch. I couldn’t tell what was between the two pieces of white bread in his sandwich, so I ate the peanut butter and jelly sandwich Mama Betts had made for me. She wouldn’t make anything with mayonnaise because she was afraid it would go bad in the heat. I was getting pretty tired of peanut butter or cheese, though. I wondered if Greg’s mother was so concerned about the lack of refrigeration.

I didn’t have a chance to investigate. Greg finished his sandwich in two bites. He wiped his mouth on the brown paper sack and looked at me.

“What kind of jelly?”

“Plum. My grandmother made it.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. There had to be jelly there or he wouldn’t have known.

“Some of the wo—mothers made some dewberry jam before we moved here. It didn’t last long.” He looked at my lunch sack.

Mama Betts always made more than I could eat. Usually I gave half of it to Nadine after we had my lesson. I passed the sack to him. With a deft motion he had the second sandwich out and half eaten.

“Great jelly,” he said.

I almost asked if he’d had time to taste it, but didn’t. Maybe he was really hungry.

“Jamey usually gives me her lunch. I was worried when she didn’t come back.”

“Yeah, well, you can have half of mine and I won’t even order you around.”

Greg laughed. “Taking a few orders is worth some of the food she brings. Her mama can bake a pound cake.”

Emily Welford was the undisputed pound cake baker in Chickasaw County. To deny it would be a lie.

“Mama Betts makes the best pies. And biscuits. And mashed potatoes. And—”

Greg laughed again. He tossed my empty lunch sack back at me. “And peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They’re my favorite.”

“Peanut butter?” I thought he’d lost his mind. I liked chicken salad with celery and crisp red apples. Or ham and cheese. Or fried oyster po-boys.

“Well, thanks for the sandwich, Bekkah. I guess I’d better head back for the church.”

“How was the meeting in Hattiesburg?”

His body seemed to pause, just for a second, like when the television rolled only once and then stopped. “There were a lot of meetings. Me and the guys snuck off and went to a movie theater. We saw
Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Ever heard of it?”

I had, but I hadn’t seen it. “Was it good?”

Once again he gave me that look that said he was seeing something different in me. “You’d like it. It had a happy ending, and the woman in it was very beautiful. Maybe one day you’ll live like that.”

Since I didn’t know the movie, I didn’t understand what he was saying. “What about the Redeemers? Is everything okay?”

“I suppose.” He shrugged and stood up, reaching for his shirt. “There was a lot of arguing and carrying on, but that’s grown-ups for you. They’d rather jawbone and fuss than just do something.”

If anyone had noticed anything amiss at the church, I couldn’t tell by watching Greg. And Nadine obviously hadn’t said anything to him.

“Tell Nadine I left at twelve sharp,” he said. “She likes to keep up with my time. She’s afraid she’ll pay me for five minutes I didn’t work.”

“I’ll tell her.”

Greg walked down the barn, moving in and out of the light that came through the windows. When he got to the door he turned and faced me.

“I forgot the rake up in the loft. If you’re going to hang around here, would you bring it down for me? I’m late.”

“Sure.” Greg sometimes helped me finish my chores if I was way behind and Nadine was waiting to give me a lesson. I never went in the loft, though, unless Nadine was with me. The loft was Greg’s domain,
and to enter it without an invitation or without Nadine would be a violation.

He closed the door as he left, and I was alone in the coolness of the old barn.

There was still no sign of Nadine and Jamey, so I climbed the ladder to the loft. It was an eerie place with bales of hay stacked from the straw-covered floor to the eaves. Nadine had a thing about running out of hay. Since the horses didn’t get any pasture, she said the hay was vital. If the horses missed their hay, they might colic and die. One of Greg’s jobs was to keep the oldest hay pushed to the edge of the loft so it could be dropped straight down into the hay racks in the horses’ stalls. It was a very efficient system.

I moved around the bales to the end where Greg’s rake was leaning against a support beam. Nadine didn’t want any tools left in the loft. She was afraid one might fall and injure one of the horses. She said she’d boarded at a stables where that very thing had happened—a pitchfork had fallen and stabbed a horse. She said it was a horrible way for an animal to die.

I made sure I had a good grip on the rake. It was a garden rake with heavy metal tines that Greg was using to clean up the loose hay. He was about three-fourths of the way through with the loft. In the section where he hadn’t cleaned yet, I stopped to look at the hay. Nadine was always fussing about mold, but I’d never been able to find any. She complained about dust and briars, too, but it was mold that could kill a horse.

The tiny edge of white caught my eye. It looked like a handkerchief someone had lost. I could imagine that Greg would get another beating if he went around loosing items of his wardrobe. I pulled it out of the straw, intending to leave it tied to the ladder for him. But it wasn’t a handkerchief. It was a dress. Soaked in blood.

I almost lost my balance. Only the support of the rake kept me from falling ten feet to the dirt aisle below me. The dress and the blood were so vivid; I couldn’t think. Something horrible had happened, but I didn’t know what.

The dress was familiar. Was it Jamey’s? Had something happened in the three days I hadn’t come to work? Surely Emily Welford would have called Effie and told her if Jamey had met with an accident. I knew the dress wasn’t Nadine’s, but the white dress had the look of
Jamey about it—soft and lacy. I sank down in the hay and stared at the dress. The blood was a dark brown stain. Hay was sticking in it in places.

I smoothed out the skirt to get a better look. I knew then that it was Selena’s. I’d seen it before—at Cry Baby Creek.

I suddenly remembered that I was alone in the old McInnis barn. Greg had gone home. Nadine wasn’t around, and neither was Jamey. I was alone in a barn haunted by a crazed sheriff who’d killed his wife and children and then himself. I was alone in a hayloft holding a white dress marred and ruined by blood.

Twenty-three

B
EKKAH?”

Effie came up behind me, slipping her hands on my shoulders and then letting them fall to scratch my back. The gentle pressure caused the swing to move ever so slightly.

“Is something wrong?” She found the place just at each shoulder blade where she used to tease me and tell me I’d been born with angel’s wings. She said the doctor convinced her to let him remove the wings so I could be accepted by other children. I’d always believed it was a bad trade-off. “Is there something you want to talk about?”

She and Mama Betts and Arly had come back from Mobile late, talking about the wild bus load of people they’d seen in the McDonald’s. Mama Betts said it was a disgrace that mostly grown Americans were traveling by bus loads around the country making fools of themselves. They’d taken over the McDonald’s, forming long lines, smiling and crying out “Up, up, America!” while hugging each other.

Arly said one of them tried to hug Mama Betts, and she stomped his foot. He said he was mortified by her behavior.

Effie said they were some kind of chorus or singing family that all wore white dresses or white slacks and white shoes. She said the bus had red, white and blue stripes down the side.

Mama Betts said they looked like orderlies who’d escaped from hospital duty for an eating spree. She said they had enough strong white teeth among them to cannibalize half of Mobile.

Arly said they were all young, without any adults to boss them
around, and they were having a good time. He added that if he could get on a bus and travel around the country eating McDonald’s, he’d do it in a heartbeat.

They’d brought me a burger and some cold fries, which I ate without appetite while they rattled on about their trip. All I could think of was the white dress that I’d buried down by the spring. Selena’s dress. I’d taken great pains to cover the area with old leaves and vines so Alice wouldn’t see it. No one could see it. No one.

As soon as I could escape from the kitchen without causing too many questions, I’d slipped outside to the swing. I wanted to be alone, to try to sort through what I wanted to do and what I ought to do. If I could have brought The Judge home on a wish, he would have been standing there and I would have told him everything.

“Bekkah, if there’s something you want to talk about, you can with me. Anything. You know I’ll listen.” Effie continued her gentle scratching. It was the most soothing thing she could do.

I wanted to tell her. Somehow, though, it was as if I’d brought it all on. If I’d stayed home, if I’d never gone down to the end of Kali Oka Road, I wouldn’t have a blood-soaked dress buried in the woods behind my house. Effie would know that.

“Bekkah, so many things are happening. It makes me feel old sometimes to watch the way you’ve grown over this summer. You aren’t my little girl anymore, and it breaks my heart to think you’re growing up.” She paused. “Growing away from me.”

“I wish I could be five again.” When I was five, before I started school, Effie and I had spent the entire summer playing in the backyard and woods. We hunted elves and waited at the spring for a unicorn to visit. We picked berries and plums and made pies. We swam in the spring and took trips to the river. We made magic.

“I wish you could be five again too.” She picked up my hair and combed through it with her fingers. In a minute she was braiding. The gentle tug on my scalp reminded me of all the safe and wonderful mornings when she’d braided my hair for me, before I learned to do it myself. “Bekkah, sometimes I love you too much. When I feel you growing up, growing away, I want to hold on too tight.”

“I hate feeling like this,” I said.

“Tell me how you feel, Bekkah. Maybe I can help.”

“The summer is almost gone and I feel like things have changed.
Sometimes I think I’ve changed so much I don’t know who I am. But then nothing has changed.” I wanted to tell her everything, but I couldn’t. I’d fought so hard to get those riding lessons that now I couldn’t tell her there was anything at all wrong at the barn. Things were so complicated between us now. With The Judge it was simpler. With Effie I felt that some process had started that couldn’t be stopped, and it was pulling us apart. The truth of what I knew would only widen the gap.

She pulled me back into her arms, and I relaxed against her. “I wish you could stay my little girl, Bekkah. It tears my heart out to see you growing up so fast. There are so many things out there that can hurt you. Kali Oka is our haven, our place to be safe. One day, when you leave, I won’t be able to protect you.”

“Oh, Mama!” I fought back the tears. She couldn’t protect me. Not even on Kali Oka Road. I’d fixed it so no one could ever protect me again. I already knew too much.

“You know what I’d really like?”

“What?” My heart was pounding. She was going to ask me to stop riding, to stay home with her for the last few days of summer. I would do it too. I needed it. I wanted to turn and hide my face against her and wipe out the memory of a blood-soaked dress and a room where babies were born. Just a few days wasn’t too much for me to ask.

“I’d like to come down to the barn and watch you ride tomorrow. I’ve been thinking about it. I must say your father has pointed this out to me too. He’s made a great point of the idea that I should see you ride. I’ve been so afraid you’d get hurt that I didn’t want to think about it. Can you understand that?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Confusion made me sound dull, sullen. That she wanted to come watch me ride was more than I’d ever dared to expect. A week before, it would have made me ecstatic. Now I didn’t know if I wanted her at the barn.

“Can I come?”

“That would be great.” I tried to sound enthusiastic. She was making a big gesture, a serious move to make things completely right between us. “I’d love for you to do that. And I think you’ll like Nadine if you give her a chance.”

“Well, it’s about time, isn’t it?”

“That’s okay. I’m just getting where my riding is good enough to watch.”

“I bought some things for you. They’re in your room.” She hesitated. “There’s a bra. You’re going to have to wear one, and if this one doesn’t fit we’ll take it back one day next week and get the rest of your school things then.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“What? No big argument about how bras are devices of torture?” There was laughter in her voice.

“They look like some kind of harness that you’d use to walk a dog, but I guess I can get used to one.”

Mama rumpled my bangs off my forehead and kissed the top of my head. “It’s hard to watch my little girl grow up, but Walt has made me promise that I’ll ease up on you. I was thinking when school gets started maybe you’d like to have a party here. Maybe some girls to spend the night or just a get-together after school. You’re going to be a seventh grader now. You’ll be going to a junior high where the children from all over the county go. There’ll be lots of new faces. A party might be a good way to make friends.”

I spun around in the swing and looked at Effie. No wonder her voice sounded weird. She was crying.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t help but think that in a few more years you’ll be gone from me. Walt is already talking about where you’ll go to college. He says Arly can go to one of the junior colleges nearby because his grades are so poor. He says you’ll get a scholarship, Bekkah. You can go away to school.”

A large tear hung on the edge of her jaw, a jaw that was square and determined, just like Mama Betts’. Just like mine. I brushed it away with the tips of my fingers.

“I don’t think I’ll want to go away, Effie. Couldn’t I just stay here and go to junior college too?”

Effie sniffed. “Walt said it would be a waste.”

I couldn’t believe they were going to make me go away. It was like being cast out, driven from my home. My own eyes filled with tears. “What if I don’t want to?”

“Your father only wants what’s best for you. He says you can be anything you want, Bekkah. He said there are no limits to what you can achieve.”

“What if I want to stay home with you?”

She rubbed the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I
shouldn’t have started this now. It’s just that I talked to Walt this morning before I went to Mobile. He was raving about some new program that would be in place in Missouri by the time you get ready for college. I hate that state. Missouri. He …” She sighed. “He’ll be home for good Friday. The quarter is over and he just has to pack up his things and have them shipped.”

“More books?” I tried to sound funny.

“More books. And papers. But it’ll be good to have your father home with us, won’t it?”

It would be good. The knowledge that The Judge would be there by the end of the week seemed to lift a heavy burden from my heart. I could wait until then to tell him about the bloody dress and all. I could wait two more days.

“Where’s Alice?” Effie was deliberately shifting the subject.

“Mrs. Waltman and Sukey are over at the church. Sukey’s playing the piano for a double wedding, and Alice got stuck with Maebelle V., Lucinda and Arlene to watch. She said it was too hard to try to bring them over here.” She’d asked me to go to her house, but I’d declined. The white dress was all I could think about.

“Well, come on in the house and try on your new clothes for me.”

I didn’t want clothes. I didn’t want to go to school, and I surely didn’t want to go to college and leave Effie and Mama Betts on Kali Oka Road. I followed Effie back into the comforting smells of the kitchen and into my bedroom, where the clothes were neatly stacked.

The bra was as bad as I thought, but I put it on and then the dresses. Effie nodded. They would do. By mid-year I’d have grown out of them, she said. I was already too tall, with arms and legs that Arly said were apelike because of their length. The idea of additional growth was about as appealing as the other “womanly changes” I’d been told to expect. It was going to be a great year.

I was unbuttoning the last dress when I heard something outside the house. It was that pleasant time of twilight in the heat of August when the first breath of coolness can be felt. It was almost as if the house sighed, and a breeze touched the sheer curtains in the windows of my room. I heard Picket barking in the yard before the lights of a car swung through my window.

“Who can that be?” Effie asked. “Arly didn’t say he was expecting any friends.”

“I guess not,” I added, unable to stop myself. “Arly’s friends are too stupid to pass a driving test.”

“I wish that were true,” Effie said under her breath as she went to the screened porch to see who’d come visiting.

There was the murmur of two female voices. I recognized Effie’s but not the other. My curiosity got the better of me, and I put on my shorts and went to the kitchen. I almost swallowed my tongue when I saw Cathi Cummings sitting at the kitchen table.

Blond hair spilled down her back, and her skirt was tight and short. She looked at me in the doorway and smiled. “Hello, Bekkah. I was driving through to Pensacola, and I promised your father I’d stop and see you.”

“Hi, Cathi.” I shot a glance at Effie. It was the complete calmness of her face that told me how upset she was. When Effie was angry to the core of her being, her face lost all expression. She looked at me with her mannequin face and her eyes glittered. “What are you doing in Jexville?” I asked Cathi.

“Since I earned my master’s, I decided to reward myself with a little vacation on the beach.”

She was smiling, but she was tense too. What in the hell was she doing in Effie’s kitchen? “Where’s your husband?” I asked into the silence of the room.

“Phil couldn’t turn loose of the desk long enough for a break. He told me to come on my own and he’d try to join me on the weekend.”

“Cathi’s husband is an editor at the
Washington Post.”
I wanted Effie to know she was married.

“He’s a much better editor than he is a husband,” Cathi said.

I’d never seen a woman drinking, but I wondered if Cathi was. Her face was flushed and her eyes challenged first Effie and then me. Something was definitely wrong with her.

“Did you go home to Hushpuppykenya?” I asked.