Summer of the Redeemers (32 page)

“It’s Greg. He’s in the barn and he’s hurt bad.”

“That little bastard can’t come here to lick his wounds after he left me without help.”

Her voice was fuzzy, like each word slammed over the next. The screen door pulled back easily in my hand, and I stepped over a fresh sack of garbage near the door and entered. “He’s hurt bad.”

Nadine blinked three times. “Where is he?” She ran a hand through her hair. She was dressed in an old T-shirt, too big and with holes, and her underwear.

“In the loft.” I had to choke back the tears. “I think he’s been there since Caesar was killed.”

“Three days?” Nadine said it like she was asking a question, but she wasn’t.

“They beat him at the church. They beat him bad. I tried to doctor him, but I guess it didn’t work.” I grabbed Nadine’s hand and pulled her with me to the steps. “I put that horse salve on his back.”

“Shit!” Nadine gathered momentum and started after me. As we hurried down her steps, she took the lead. Running barefoot in her T-shirt and panties, she raced across the yard in the dark.

She was halfway up the ladder by the time I started. At the top she halted. “Fuck.” The word was a simple statement. “What the fuck happened to him?” she asked down to me.

“The preacherman beat him. Greg confessed that he’d painted Jesus’ face black on the crucifix, but he didn’t. Someone else did, but they were going to beat Georgie and Greg confessed.”

“The stupid little fuck.” She went on up.

When I cleared the opening, she was crouched beside Greg, her hand on his head. “He’s burning up with fever. It’s a wonder he isn’t dead from infection. Get a flashlight from the house,” she ordered. “In the bedroom, beside the bed.”

With Nadine’s presence, a sense of calm touched me like a cooling hand. I ran as fast as I could, but I wasn’t panicked. I turned on the light in the kitchen and followed the hall toward the front rooms. It wasn’t a large house, and the door to the bathroom was open. Dirty towels covered the floor, and I went past. The next door was closed. When I opened it, I found what looked like a storage room. There was a terrible smell, so I closed it back. The next door gave access to Nadine’s bedroom.

There was a switch for an overhead light, so I hit it. Nothing happened and I stumbled over shoes and things on the floor until I made it to the bed and found the bedside lamp. The flashlight was beside it.

“Bekkah! Hurry it up!”

I could hear her hollering at me through the open windows. She was worried, really worried.

As I reached for the flashlight, I knocked a bottle of pills off the table. The cap wasn’t on good, and they spilled across the floor. I picked up as many as I could. They were tiny, like Mama Betts’ blood-pressure
medicine, sort of, except hers were a pale orange color. These were red. The label showed they were sleeping pills. I tucked one in my pocket. Maybe it would help Greg.

I tried to think of anything else I might bring from the house for Greg. I stopped in the bathroom and looked for some clean towels, but I couldn’t find them. I gave it up when Nadine hollered again.

By the time I got back to the loft, she had Greg on his stomach with his shirt pulled off. The diaper bandage I’d made was stuck to his back, crusted with dried blood and a yellowy substance.

“What else did you put on him except the salve?”

“I cleaned it with salt water.”

“How deep were the wounds?”

“Some were deep. Maybe a quarter of an inch. They beat him with a coat hanger. It was the places where they crisscrossed that were the worst.”

Nadine nodded. “This bandage has to come off. We need to get him to the house.”

“Nadine, we have to call Dr. McMillan.”

“Let’s get him down first.”

“The doctor could help us.” I didn’t see how we were going to get Greg down from the loft. He weighed as much as Nadine, even as skinny as he was. He was tall and gangly, but working all summer and eating Jamey’s lunch, and part of my lunch, had begun to fill him out.

“We’re going to tie him in the horse blanket and lower him out the loft with the winch, like we get the hay up.”

“We could kill him.”

“If he doesn’t get some help, he’s going to die, Bekkah.” Nadine went to the ladder and started down. “I’ll get some rope.”

Greg tried to turn on his side, but he was too weak. We had to get him out of the barn. Nadine knew what she was doing.

She came back with the rope and tied Greg in the horse blanket. Nadine put another rope through the winch that was used to hoist hay into the loft through the top door in front. Then we dragged Greg over to the opening.

It took both of us holding the rope with everything we had to lower him, but we did it, slowly and carefully. When he was almost to the ground, Nadine sent me down the ladder to grab him so he wouldn’t hit too hard.

Together we hauled him to the house.

“It’s almost like moving a dead body,” Nadine said.

I didn’t answer. I was afraid we’d killed him with such rough treatment.

We left the horse blanket at the steps and got Greg out. He was moaning a lot more, and he felt even hotter to my touch.

“Run the tub full of lukewarm water,” she ordered me. “We’ll soak the bandage off him and cool his fever at the same time. Just lukewarm.”

I rinsed out the tub as good as I could and put in the plug. It seemed to take forever for the water to fill it. When it was done, I checked once again with my elbow to make sure it wasn’t hot. That was the way Alice tested Maebelle’s bottles. It felt just slightly warm, so I went back out to help with Greg.

Nadine had stripped him. In the light that spilled out the back door, his butt and legs were moon white against the darkness of his arms. It was like someone had cut him in half, two separate pieces of different boys. I looked away, embarrassed.

“Help me get him up.”

Nadine was lifting him by one arm, but she was struggling.

“Bekkah!” She spoke sharply.

“He’s naked.”

“Well, aren’t you the one with sharp eyes?” Nadine’s voice cracked. “Get over here and help.”

I’d seen Arly naked at the creek when we used to go skinny-dipping. But that had been a few years back. And Arly was my brother.

“Bekkah, either help me or go home.”

I went to Greg’s other side and bent so that I could wrap his arm around my neck. My face was almost as hot as Greg’s back, but I lifted him. I assumed we were going to drag him into the house and put him into the tub.

“We should call the doctor.”

“And pay for it with what? You think the Redeemers are going to reimburse me for a doctor’s visit?”

I hadn’t thought about money at all. “Dr. McMillan will do it for free. I mean, he wouldn’t make you pay.”

“Let’s get that bandage off and worry about a doctor after I take a look at him.”

We started up the steps, Greg dragging between us. “He isn’t going to die, is he?” I was panting with exertion.

“Not if I can help it. Now shut up and help.”

Once he was in the tub, Nadine sat on the side and made sure he didn’t drown. Water had splashed up on her T-shirt, and it was molded to her body. The night was sticky hot and she didn’t seem to mind.

I’d taken a stand at the doorway, my face averted. Greg would be humiliated to know that I had seen him exposed. Nadine treated him like one of her animals. She took no notice of his sex.

“You’d better get on down the road,” she finally said. “The Redeemers are going to be looking for this one, and your folks will be after you. Before I know it the law will be down here arresting me for kidnapping.”

“The Redeemers don’t care about Greg. He’s been gone for days and they haven’t even bothered to ask around.”

“He’s too old to sell,” Nadine said. She bent forward to work at the tape I’d put on his chest to hold the diaper in place.

“Nadine?”

She stopped picking at the tape and looked at me. Her hair, wild and uncombed, fell across one eye.

“Did that horse salve make him sick?” I had to know.

“I doubt it. He needed some real medicine, but I suspect he would have gotten sick no matter what you did.”

A heavy rock shifted off my heart. “I’ll telephone Mama Betts and tell her I’m coming home. Do you need help getting him out of the tub? Arly could come over to help.”

Nadine shook her head. “I can manage, but the phone is dead. You’ll have to go home.”

“Dead?”

Nadine had gone back to picking off the tape. Greg was stirring slightly in the water, acting as if his eyes wanted to open.

“I forgot to pay the bill so they shut the phone off. I never used it anyway.”

“I’d better go, but I can come back and help.”

Nadine shook her head. “I can manage. You know, that horse salve didn’t hurt him, but it could have been the salt water that sent him into shock. Salt is very abrasive, Bekkah.”

I swallowed. “I wanted to get help, but he wouldn’t let me. I thought the salt water would help. I made it just a little warm and real mild.”

“He’s a tough kid. He won’t die from it.”

“Nadine …” I swallowed again. “Did I almost kill him?”

“You had a little help, what with the Redeemers, but Greg’s tough. He’ll pull through this. I’ll take care of him until he’s better.”

“I’ll pay for the doctor. I’ve been saving up to buy some boots and clothes for the horse show, but I have enough for the doctor.” If Greg was sick because of me, I wanted to make it right.

“There’s nothing a doctor can do that I can’t,” Nadine said. “Once I get the bandage off and the wounds cleaned out, I’ve got some antibiotics in the refrigerator. A few penicillin shots will kick this infection in the butt. He’ll be fine.”

“Shots?”

She pulled the tape on his right shoulder free. “Yeah, I can give them to people as well as animals. Greg’s going to be fine, and I don’t think he’d want to call the doctor. It might start too many questions about his family down at the end of the road.” Nadine looked directly at me. The yellow bathroom light glittered in her eyes. “And we don’t want lawmen going down there. Not yet. Not until we have a chance to find out for ourselves, do we, Bekkah?”

Twenty-nine

M
AMA
Betts was waiting for me on the screened porch, almost hidden in the darkness. I sensed more than saw her. I anticipated that she would be there. The screen door slammed behind me in the darkness, and she didn’t say anything as I stood in the doorway. I couldn’t tell if she was too mad to talk or waiting for me to start.

“Mrs. Andrews’ telephone has been disconnected,” she said.

“She didn’t pay the bill. She ran out of money, and she said she never used it.” I’d never known anyone who didn’t pay their bills. Mama Betts would be scandalized. I wanted that, but I didn’t know why.

“Bekkah, it’s nine o’clock. And a school night.”

“Greg got hurt at the barn. I had to help Nadine, and I would have called, but the phone was out.”

“Is he hurt badly?”

“I don’t know.” My voice broke.

“Do you need to call the doctor?”

I shook my head but realized she couldn’t see that in the dark. “Nadine says she’ll watch him tonight. She has medicine.”

“Is Nadine a doctor?”

There was a blade of sharpness in Mama Betts’ voice. She cut swiftly, accurately.

“No ma’am, but she knows some about doctoring.”

“What happened to him?”

This was the hard question. But I was tired of lying. Sick of trying
to think up what to say so that I told just enough and not too much.

“The preacherman down at the Redeemers beat him with a coat hanger.”

Mama Betts stood up. “He beat him, with a coat hanger?”

“I tried to doctor him—”

“Bekkah Rich, you know enough to call a doctor for someone who’s injured.”

“I know enough, Mama Betts, but Greg didn’t want a doctor. Those people are strange. They don’t want him associating with others, outside the Redeemers. He wouldn’t have a doctor, and he wouldn’t come down here for you to help him.”

“He’d of had a doctor—and the sheriff—if I’d had anything to do with it!”

“And he might have suffered more because of it.”

Mama Betts stopped talking. In the darkness she brushed past me, opening the kitchen door and flipping on the light. I followed her inside and watched as she brought a plate of food from the oven and put it on the table for me. I wasn’t hungry, but it would be easier all around if I ate.

“How sick is the boy?” She took the chair across from me.

“His back got infected.” I was suddenly afraid to tell her that he’d been in the loft for days. Not afraid that I would be blamed, but afraid that she might think he was going to die. I’d see it on her face, and I couldn’t stand it.

“Does he have a fever?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I ate a bite of pea salad. The peas were crisp and fresh. “Pretty high too. He was moaning and … well, I couldn’t wake him.”

Mama Betts folded her arms on top of the table. “When was Greg … beaten?”

“A couple of days ago.”

“And you found him where?”

“In the loft.”

The look I didn’t want to see passed over her face. She looked at the tabletop. “Bekkah, has that child been up in the loft since then without anyone to care for him? Without food or water?”

“I took him some food and water.” I swallowed the salad. It no longer had any taste. “That was the first day, though.” I held my fork and watched her not look at me.

“Nadine has penicillin? She has a way of giving it to him?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I wanted Mama Betts to go, to look at Greg. She’d know if a doctor had to be called. I wasn’t certain Nadine was a good judge of how sick Greg was. If it cost more money than I had, Mama Betts would take care of it. Even if he had to go to the hospital.

“She can give an injection?” Mama Betts was following her own thoughts.

“Who?”

“Nadine. She can give Greg something to fight the infection?”

“She said she was going to give him some shots.”

“Bekkah, do you really think that if I called the doctor to go down there, Greg might suffer from it?”

I didn’t answer right away. She was putting me in a spot to make a terrible decision. One I’d already made once when I tried to help Greg. One I’d botched too. “Greg led me to believe that he’d be in more trouble if the doctor was called. He was hurting bad, and he’d rather suffer than have the doctor.”

Mama Betts didn’t say anything. She stood up suddenly. “Eat your supper and then go take a bath. There’s school tomorrow.”

“Did Effie and Walt call?” The idea of them almost made me cry. Effie would tuck me against her side and hold me while Walt did what ought to be done. My need for them was a vice grip in my gut.

“They called about eight. They wanted to talk with you, but I said you and Alice were out enjoying the last of the summer evenings.”

Mama Betts had lied to cover my tail.

“I didn’t want them to worry the way I was worrying.”

“Thanks, Mama Betts. They don’t need to worry.” I sighed.

“Clean that plate, Bekkah. You look wrung out and peaked.”

She started out of the kitchen and down the hall. I stopped her with a call. “Mama Betts?”

“Yes?” She came back to the doorway.

I fiddled with the scalloped potatoes on my plate. “Is Greg going to be all right?”

“I’m assuming Nadine Andrews has sense enough to get a doctor if she needs one.” She went down the hall, and then I heard the sound of water running in the tub. I finished as much of my supper as I could and took the plate to the sink. I was almost too tired to bathe, but I went to the bathroom, shucked off my clothes and sank into the deep, warm water.

The face of the crucified Jesus came to me. The black paint had eradicated his features. The eyes and lips and the blood were all black, giving him a sort of flat appearance. He didn’t seem to suffer as much.

Who had done such a thing? If not Greg, then who? The Redeemers weren’t looking for any more answers, not since Greg had confessed. But they might be looking for the crucifix. Had Greg stolen it, or had he been sent out of the Blood of the Redeemers church with the crucifix?

And Caesar? That was beyond imagining. It was something from a nightmare, or a
Twilight Zone
episode where some foreign creature had landed on earth and didn’t know the rules. Whoever had done that couldn’t be from Kali Oka Road. Not even from the end of it.

I thought back to the ride I’d taken with Cammie, the terror of the Redeemer women, as if I might force the horse to stomp on them. They were more afraid of me than I’d ever been of them, and it wasn’t just the horse either. Dressed in their gray shifts, they reminded me of rabbits caught in the open by a big dog. Too far from the hole to run and hide, they stood frozen in place until their heartbeat pulsed against their ribs.

But the men were another story. I remembered the one who had chased me the first time. And Georgie’s father—big and tall and strong and doing nothing to help his daughter. There was the dwarf too. And above all, the preacherman. Rev. Marcus, who touched Magdeline and probably made her pregnant. Rev. Marcus, who might be from Nadine’s past. Funny that she hadn’t gone down there and looked at him. Maybe she would now. One good look would tell her if he was her ex-husband. In the stillness of the August night, that seemed improbable. It was hard to remember who had come first, Nadine or the Redeemers. They were interwoven in the summer with Alice and Maebelle V., the heat, and the appearance of Selena at Cry Baby Creek.

My wet hair floated out beside my head like lilies in the quiet pools where Cry Baby Creek widened near the Pascagoula River. A whippoorwill started up outside the open bathroom window, a lonely cry that brought me back to Greg. Whip Poor Will! Whip Poor Will! Mama Betts had told us when we were little that the hoot of the owl and the cry of the whippoorwill foretold death. That couldn’t be true, though, because I heard the call of the bird almost every night. Besides, Greg wasn’t going to die. Nadine would take care of him. He was sick,
but not that sick. He was too young. Just a boy. Whatever infection had set in, he’d be able to fight it off.

I forced my body to lie still in the water. It was an old claw-foot tub, deep and spacious. I braced my feet against the end and held myself steady. The house was too silent around me. Effie was gone, her absence a vacuum in the quietness of the old house. The Judge was gone a lot and I was used to that, but tonight it seemed that they’d never come back. Maybe Daddy had finally gotten Effie away from Kali Oka Road and she’d never want to come back, not even to get me and Arly.

If she knew what had happened, she wouldn’t think Kali Oka was so safe. Maybe she wouldn’t want to stay here at all. Or maybe she and Daddy would go down to see the Redeemers. They’d find out what was going on down there and just who the preacherman was. If something was happening to babies, The Judge would figure it out.

In all of the times I’d been to the church, I hadn’t seen a baby. There were children, to be sure, but they were all older. It might only mean that there was a nursery in the church, a place where young babies were kept during the day and during church services. I tried to remember if there had been any babies in the congregation the time I’d seen the singing dwarf and the testimonials.

I couldn’t recall a single infant.

But Magdeline’s face was clear, in every detail. Her fear, her courage. Her determination to come forward and tell her story.

It had cost her dearly.

Had she been angry enough to blacken the face of Jesus? Would she let Greg take the blame? I couldn’t begin to answer those questions.

I’d never given much thought to the other Redeemers I knew from my eavesdropping. Jim had been beaten too. And Georgie was part of it. I couldn’t remember the other boy’s name, but I had an image of them. Did they know how bad Greg was hurt?

The questions tore at me as the bath water cooled.

“Bekkah?”

Mama Betts’ knock on the door made me bolt up straight in the tub.

“Get out of there and get in bed. It’s going on ten o’clock. The bus will be here at seven in the morning.”

“Okay.” I pulled the plug by wrapping the chain around my toe.
Even though the water had cooled considerably, I still felt a chill when I got out and started to dry. A premonition of winter tickled my mind. Things would be better when the earth cooled. When summer was over and the oppressive heat was not smothering down on everyone.

I dried my hair as good as I could with a towel and hurried barefoot to my room. The cool sheets settled over me, and I snapped the light out. Homework would have to wait.

When the hand grabbed my ankle, I sat up straight in bed and opened my mouth to scream. A strong hand covered my mouth and forced me back to the bed.

“Bekkah, you idiot, it’s me, Arly.”

He shook me for good measure, sending the breath from my lungs in rapid bursts.

I managed to punch his hands off me. “What do you want?” I wanted to kick him as hard as I could in the shin.

“You stay away from Frank Taylor, you hear?”

Arly had lost his mind. Lusting for Rosie Carpenter had finally driven him over the edge.

“What are you talking about?”

“I saw him playing with your hair at school. He’s been watching you, hanging around the hall where you have classes. Stay away from him. He’s trouble.”

“Arly, if you ever did have a brain, it must have leaked out your ear.”

“I mean it, Bekkah. Frank Taylor is trouble. He’s already got one girlfriend.”

“Well, he can have a dozen for all I care. Now get out of my room.” Frank Taylor had been the very last thing on my mind, even below what I was going to wear to school the next day.

“He’s going to ask you to the ball game.”

“Arly, I’m going to count to ten. If you aren’t gone, I’m going to call Mama Betts. She’ll make you go.”

“He’s only doing it to make me mad.”

“One, two, three …”

“He just wants to get back at me because he liked Rosie before she started going with me.”

“—four, five, six, seven …”

“He’s telling people Rosie went all the way. He’d say the same thing about you, you know.”

“Ten.” I took a lung full of air in a real dramatic way.

“Okay.” Arly opened the door. The hallway had a small night-light burning, and I could see his silhouette. He ran his hand through his hair. “I’m trying to warn you so you don’t look like an idiot and a … slut.”