Summer of the Redeemers (35 page)

My punishment was still in force, so I didn’t go to the barn Friday afternoon. I helped Mama Betts as much as I could with the laundry and her garden, even volunteering to wash the supper dishes. I wanted to ride Cammie on Saturday, and I was hoping my attitude had improved in Mama Betts’ eyes. She was looking on me with a little more favor.

By seven, Arly and I were in the car, headed to pick up Alice and Maebelle V.

“How much trouble can you get in with a baby?” Arly asked, delighted we were stuck with Maebelle V.

“I’ll try hard to find out and tell you tomorrow,” I said, flipping my hair over my shoulder. “Frank loves my hair down.”

That steamed him to the point he wouldn’t talk. We picked up Alice and Maebelle V., and Arly didn’t say another word all the way into Jexville.

The football stadium is at the elementary school, which is strange because it should have been at the high school, but Jexville Elementary School had once been grades one through twelve for all the townspeople.

When it was decided that the Negroes were eventually going to go to school with us, the school board decided that all of the grades seven through twelve would go to the same school. That way all of the older black kids would be bussed into town, where they would be easier to watch. There weren’t that many Negroes in all of Chickasaw County, and they were resisting desegregation as much as the whites, but “plans had been made for all contingencies.” What the school board meant was that they’d have the system they wanted already in place.

Only the elementary schools were kept in the communities, a point of serious concern to Effie and delight to Arly. Back last fall Effie had gone to a school board meeting and warned that bussing all of the teenagers to town would destroy the community school system. It had been a carbuncle on her butt for months. She couldn’t sit down to eat without getting all worked up over it. And she tried to stop it. Boy, did she try.

Effie had a reputation among the folks in Jexville ‘cause she actually
attended public meetings. Old Sherman Smith, the superintendent, and Effie were bitter enemies from way back. They’d tangled over books, curriculum, personnel, budget, facilities, nutritional values, and bus routes.

During the meeting on consolidation, he said Effie was half a bubble off. He said it was common knowledge in the county that she had a hormone imbalance, or otherwise she’d be content to stay home and raise her children like a normal woman. He said it was a commonly known fact that she was such a bitch her own husband took jobs out of town to get away from her.

Effie had responded that any southern county that would elect a man named Sherman deserved to be left in ashes. Somehow she’d heard the story how his father, a forty-acre farmer from the Pixley Community, had taken one look at Sherman when he was born and declared him the ugliest baby God had ever created. His daddy named him Sherman after the hated and feared Union general, a name he said that went with his son’s face.

At any rate, her comment broke up the school board meeting, but it didn’t change what happened. The schools were consolidated, and the new high school was built immediately. But when they built the new high school they didn’t have enough money to build a new football field too. So the ball games were held back over at the elementary school.

A grove of pine trees surrounded the field, and Arly found a good spot and parked where nobody could accidentally bump into the car. He’d washed it up and waxed it before he found out that Rosie was in trouble with her parents, so she couldn’t ride to the ball game with him. She was meeting him in the bleachers. I wondered if I could manage to get Frank to sit with me somewhere near Arly. It would serve him right.

Once we were out of the car, Arly took his leave. Alice and I and Maebelle wandered over to the concession stands, where the smell of buttered popcorn made my mouth water even though I’d just had supper. I had fifty cents, so I bought two Cokes and a popcorn to share with Alice.

We walked on to the bleachers to eat and scout around for Frank. Alice was interested in a ninth grader named Mack Sumrall. He shaved his head close except for three little tufts of blond right at his forehead.
I thought he looked like a Hereford bull with his thick neck, square head and forehead curl, but Alice thought he was pure temptation. He was also ninth-grade quarterback. Next year he’d be a star with the high school team. Frank didn’t play ball because he had an afternoon job at a nursery. I was glad he didn’t play, because he had a real neck and all his teeth. Since I’d accepted his invitation to sit with him at the game, I’d given him a little thought. In a way, with his dark eyes and tan, he was handsome. He talked more than the other boys too. And he didn’t have time to hunt. I liked him for those things.

We were munching down the popcorn when Alice poked me. Jamey Louise was out on the football field, hanging on the arm of Dewey Merritt, the Panthers’ tight end. He was a junior who everybody said had a professional career ahead of him—if he could keep his pecker in his pants—that was what everybody said, even Dewey himself. Jamey Louise looked up at him, and he bent down and brushed her lips in front of everybody.

Alice sucked in her breath. “He’s a junior,” she said softly.

“Jamey’s a lot more advanced than he’ll ever be, no matter how old he is.” I felt sick when I thought about Greg. Like it was my business.

“Hi, girls. I didn’t realize I was going to have three dates.” Frank took the seat beside me and lifted Maebelle V. from Alice’s hands. I was impressed. Arly wouldn’t touch Maebelle V. if she was drowning. He held Maebelle high in the air, and she gave him a drooly grin. When he jiggled her, she squealed with delight.

“She’s easy,” he said, handing her back. “How about you, Bekkah?”

Before I knew what he was doing, he slid his hands under my arms and pulled me into his lap.

“Frank Taylor, put me down or I’m going to—”

He jounced his knees up and down. “I heard you liked to ride those horses.”

He was laughing, and so was Alice, and even Maebelle V. My face was red, but I laughed too. It was fun to be at the game, to watch all of the people talk and laugh and eat. Under the bright lights of the stadium, with the band tuning up thirty yards away, I felt thirteen and grown, and very much a part of what was happening. When Mack strolled over and took a seat beside Alice, it was perfect. The four of us and the baby rooted for the Panthers. Jexville won 21–18, and Frank
lifted Maebelle in his arms and danced out onto the football field with her.

Arly, who’d settled far enough away that I hadn’t seen him, finally stood up and gave us all a black look. It was time to go home, and no dillydallying.

“Looks like Arly isn’t having the time of his life,” Frank commented smoothly. “Why don’t I take you and Alice home?”

The idea sounded a lot more appealing than riding with Arly. I’d teased him pretty hard, and he wasn’t going to be easy to soften up.

“I’ll ask,” I said. “You do have a driver’s license?” It was a Mama Betts question, and it popped out of my mouth before I could help myself.

“Of course, Officer, would you like to see it?”

Alice laughed and I turned red. Suddenly the idea of riding home with Frank Taylor made me a little uncomfortable. After we let Alice and the baby off, I’d be alone with him. The idea made my heart hammer. Jamey Louise would know exactly how to behave.

And if I never did it, I’d never learn.

“Arly!” I yelled across the crowd to him. He was already heading for the car with his arm around Rosie, hoping, no doubt, to get a few moments of privacy before we descended on him. “Frank’s taking me home.”

He didn’t move much. He just stopped and looked. His gaze went to Frank, then me, then Alice and the baby.

“I don’t think so,” he grinned.

“That’s ‘cause you don’t think. You take Rosie and we’ll go with Frank. At least he talks to us and acts human.” Arly wasn’t the boss of me.

“Mama Betts said for me to bring you home.”

I could tell he didn’t really want to, but he was acting on what he felt was his duty. “Look, you can have some time alone with Rosie, and we’ll go on home. Once I’m there safe, Mama Betts won’t care. Alice and Maebelle V. will look out for me.” I dared a glance at her and saw the amusement on her face.

“You’d better go straight home. I’ll be right behind you.” Arly pulled Rosie a little closer to him. Her smile widened. “Taylor, you drive careful,” Arly ordered.

“You’re gonna get old before your time, Arly,” Frank said easily. “It’s only nine miles. I think I can make it.”

“Straight home,” Arly warned again as he started to walk away. He even looked back over his shoulder. “I’ll be ten minutes behind you.”

“That’s probably true,” I said to Alice and Frank. “Rosie’s on detention and can’t stay out. Arly will have to come straight home.”

Frank had parked his pickup on the edge of the field, where it didn’t take long to get out onto the highway and head toward Kali Oka. The center line of the highway whizzed through the windshield, and Alice cooed to a very sleepy Maebelle V. while her hair blew from the open window. I was sitting close enough to Frank that our hips brushed. Alice was pressing against my other side, but it wasn’t the same.

“Sure is a good baby,” Frank said. “She didn’t cry at all.”

“Naw,” Alice said. “Maebelle V. does everything Bekkah and I do. She doesn’t have time to cry.”

We rode along, listening to the radio and talking about whether the Beatles were better than American singers. Bands were Alice’s second passion, after makeup, and she knew everything about everyone. She kept me and Frank laughing until we pulled up at her house.

“Go straight home,” she teased me as she thanked Frank for the ride and slammed the door.

“She’s a great girl,” Frank said.

“The best best friend ever.” I held my hands in my lap, not knowing what to say or do. Everything had been fine until Alice left, and now I felt altogether too close to Frank.

“What’s down at the end of this road?” Frank asked, sort of casually putting his arm along the top of the seat.

“Cry Baby Creek.” I didn’t want to say the Redeemers. For one night I wanted to push all of that to the back of my mind, to forget.

“Ever heard the baby crying?”

I swallowed. “Not only the baby but the mother too. It was terrible.” I looked up at him, and in the glow of the truck’s old dash his face was different. His lips were slightly parted.

Frank eased the car a little down the road from Alice’s house and cut the engine beneath the branches of an old water oak. “Tell me all about it,” he said. “I love a good spooky story.”

“Here?”

“Well, I didn’t want to park in your yard. I don’t think your grandma would think a lot of that.”

He was right. Mama Betts wouldn’t let me sit out in a car and talk to a boy. But right on the main road someone was liable to come along
and think we were having car trouble. It could make a big scene if that someone was Arly.

Frank cranked the engine. “I have a solution,” he said softly. “We’ll ride down to the end of the road, and you can tell me on the banks of the creek.”

“Frank!”

“You aren’t afraid, are you?”

“No, but Arly will be home.”

“We won’t be gone longer than fifteen minutes. Just long enough for the story and to listen for the baby. I’ve always heard about the legend, but I’ve never heard the baby really cry.”

I wanted to go, for a couple of different reasons, but I was already in trouble with Mama Betts. I’d never been down to the Redeemers at night. Not when they were there. What did they do on a Friday night? Frank wouldn’t be afraid to look with me. But he wasn’t going down to the creek to spy on Redeemers. Or to listen to the ghost of a dead baby. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go parking.

Frank eased the truck in the road, and before I could protest, we were already past my house.

Thirty-two

T
HE
moon was a thin crescent in the sky, and looking at the stars made a tide of guilt suck at my heart. The Judge and I liked to walk at nights, and he was teaching me the constellations. Now here I was in a pickup truck with a boy, riding close in the warm September night. It made me squirm, and Frank took that as a signal he could drop his arm around my shoulders.

We passed Nadine’s, and I wanted to tell him about Caesar and Greg, but it was all so gruesome. That kind of talk had no place on a night like this. It would take a mental midget not to realize that other girls didn’t talk about stabbings and beatings when they were riding in the moonlight with a boy for the first time.

As the familiar trees and fields and houses slipped by, I tried to think what Jamey Louise would do. Well, she wouldn’t talk at all. She’d squeeze her arms together and show her breasts. And she’d rub on the boy. Maybe trace her fingers along his arm. Look up at him and invite a kiss. All of the things I’d never be able to do without feeling like a fool. Besides, I didn’t know if I liked Frank Taylor well enough to invite a kiss from him.

“Chain Gang” and “Love Potion” played on the radio, and I couldn’t think of anything to say. Not a single thing that I thought Frank Taylor might be interested in hearing. The things I did every day didn’t have anything to do with him, and shoveling horse manure wasn’t exactly a topic likely to win his heart. The things my family talked about would only make me seem weird to him. So we parked
in silence at the last turn in the road, the very same spot where Nadine and I had parked, and I sat beside him, holding my own hand in my lap. Elvis sang “Love Me Tender,” and I couldn’t decide what I wanted.

“I never knew you to be so quiet, Bekkah,” he said softly.

“I’m listening for the baby.” Even as I said it, a tingle of fear traced deliciously along my spine. I listened over the radio for the sound of a baby, or at least some noise coming from the Redeemers. They weren’t far, just around the corner.

“Maybe we should walk on down to the creek to get a better listen.”

“I don’t know.” I was suddenly afraid. If they caught us snooping, they might hurt us. They’d hurt Greg.

“Then you want to stay here?” Frank asked. His arm tightened, his fingers brushing my right upper arm.

A cat caught in a car motor couldn’t have been more glad to get out. I scooted across the seat, opened the door, and had my feet on the ground before he could get out from behind the steering wheel.

“You make it awfully hard to be a gentleman. I would’ve opened your door for you.” He talked easily as he came around the truck.

He was teasing me, but it still made me feel hot and awkward. “Arly isn’t much on showing me how boys are supposed to act,” I told him. “He’s more likely to slam the door on my hand.”

Frank laughed and slipped his hand around mine as we walked down the road toward the creek.

Crickets chirred in the still night, but there was no other sound. When we’d gone a little farther, I could hear the gurgle of the creek. Before the Redeemers, it had been a friendly sound. Now I wasn’t so sure. My feet scuffed in the dirt.

“It’s still warm enough for a swim,” Frank suggested.

It was, but the idea boggled my mind. I looked at him, in his jeans and shirt.

“We could wear our underwear.”

“Mama Betts would murder me,” I said. “Besides, we don’t have time.” As soon as the words were out, I knew he’d laugh at me. As if I’d consider the idea of swimming in my underwear with him if we had time.

He did laugh, and he squeezed my hand.

Would the Redeemers hear us? “Shush! If you want to hear the baby, you’re going to have to quit talking.” I pointed at the bridge in
the pale moonlight. The old wood was silvered, and the vines that grew along it were black in the night. The sound of the creek, heavy with the August and September rains, was softer than I’d ever heard it. It was a sigh and a whisper tinged with regret. Before the Redeemers, Cry Baby Creek had never sounded sad. They were over there, and they might be watching us.

“Maybe we should go home,” I said.

“We haven’t even listened for the baby,” Frank protested.

I drew him toward the woods on the right side of the bridge. If we were going to listen for the baby, I wanted to be secluded.

“There’s a log over here,” I whispered. “We can sit on it, but only for a few minutes. Then I have to go home.” He didn’t resist as I led the way. The old log I was thinking of had fallen in a curtain of scuppernong vines. The wild grapevine had grown up over some small dogwoods and laced around some pines until it created a natural arbor, but there was also a pretty good view of the creek.

When we were seated, I told him about hearing the baby and seeing Selena. I left out about trespassing and the graves and going into the church to spend most of the night. I just told him the high points, and how Selena had seemed to be in such pain, and that maybe she hadn’t killed her own baby, but that maybe it had been the preacherman.

Telling the story made my skin crawl, and I started hearing a few things in the woods around us. Frank eased a little closer and put his arm around me. I had to admit to myself that it was a comforting feeling. It inspired me to add a few more details.

“Listen!” Frank tightened his hold on me. “There’s someone in the woods, over by the creek.”

My heart started, but I knew Frank was pulling my leg. “Don’t try to scare me,” I warned him. “Selena’s ghost will get us both.”

His hands tightened painfully on my wrists. I started to protest, but something in his face made me remain silent. His eyes were riveted on something just behind my head.

“What?” I whispered.

“There’s someone watching us,” he said, his hands pulling me in closer to him as he eased backward along the log.

I started to twist and look, but his hands held me facing him. “No,” he whispered, “just come on with me. Easy.”

If he was trying to romance me, he was doing a terrible job. My heart was hammering and my brain was light. I had to concentrate on doing what he said, and I had to look around and see what he saw.

Frank stood up, his eyes never wavering from behind me. As I stood, I turned and looked too. There was a flash of movement that left small limbs and leaves vibrating. And nothing else. Frank’s arms tightened around me.

“I don’t see anything.” My heart started to calm, and I was more aware of how tightly Frank was holding me. It made for a different rush of feelings.

“Over by that cedar, see?” He pointed and I sighted down his arm. The bank was empty, but it had been the place I’d seen something.

“You’re just trying to spook me,” I accused him. I didn’t want to believe there was anything there. The thought of Selena wailing in her bloodied dress came back to me. “Let’s get out of here.”

“You’re the one telling the ghost stories,” he reminded me. “I thought you were enjoying telling about Selena.”

“I did see her. Alice and I both did. It was … I’d expected to feel some other way than I did. It frightened me, but it made me so sad too.”

“Feeling sorry for a ghost? Now, that’s a new one, Bekkah Rich.” I heard the tenderness in his voice, and I knew it was now or never. If I looked up at him, he’d kiss me, which after all was what we’d come down here to do. Up until that moment I hadn’t realized what I’d really wanted to do. I lifted my chin and met his eyes.

For one second his look was hot on me. His gaze flicked up and behind me. His face changed expressions, shifting to amazement and then fear. Swiveling, I turned to look, but there was only the movement of the dogwood branches, where something rather large had been. And it had been very close to us.

“Holy shit.” He grabbed my hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

“What?”

His grip tightened. “Run, Bekkah.” He maneuvered me in front of him and pushed.

“What was it, Frank?” He was really scaring me. Something had been there, but what?

“Go, Bekkah. Run!” The urgency of his voice pushed through my questions. I ran. Small limbs struck me across the face, almost blinding me. Behind me, Frank ran hard too.

“Get in the truck and lock the door.”

I thought at first that he was playing with me the way that boys do, but his voice frightened me. He was afraid, really afraid, not just spooked by some ghost story. He put me in the truck, locked the door himself and then went around to the driver’s side, got in, locked the door and cranked the engine.

In a spurt of sand and gravel we turned around and headed home.

“What did you see?” I demanded. “What?” I was panting, and I could feel a place beneath my eye where a limber branch had cut a welt.

His gaze caught mine in the rearview mirror. We were both white and shaken.

“It’s worse if you don’t tell me,” I demanded. “What I imagine is only worse. You don’t know what’s been going on here on this road. What did you see?”

“A woman.”

“In a white dress, with long dark hair? Was it Selena again?”

“No. She wasn’t wearing a white dress.” He spoke slowly, as if he didn’t want to tell me any more.

“Did she have long brown hair, about my age? Maybe it was Magdeline.”

“No, Bekkah.”

“Dammit, Frank, this is like pulling teeth. Tell me what you saw.” He didn’t understand about the Redeemers. It might have been one of them wanting to escape. They might have wanted us to help, and we’d run off like scalded dogs.

“She was naked. And she had a knife.” His gaze flicked to the mirror and watched my face. “She was staring at your back, and when she saw that I’d seen her, she disappeared.”

I looked hard at Frank Taylor to see if I could tell that he was lying. “You’re just trying to get even with me for my scary story.” I couldn’t decide whether to be mad or pleased.

He put his hand on mine and squeezed it. “I’m not lying, Bekkah. You saw the limbs move. I couldn’t make that up. She was there, and then she was gone. Like a wild animal.”

He was scaring me again. “That’s crazy, Frank. There aren’t any wild people living on Kali Oka Road.”

“What’s across the creek?” he asked.

“Just those Redeemer people.” As soon as I said it, I wondered.
They were strange, but they didn’t run around naked in the woods with knives. I doubted they even took their clothes off to take a bath, especially the women.

“That’s the bunch of folks moved here during the summer, some type of religious nuts?”

“That’s them. They stay down there. Nobody knows what they do.”

“What do you know about them?” he asked.

More than I was ever going to tell him. “Not much.” I shrugged. The worst of the fear was wearing off as we traveled down Kali Oka toward home. It had to have been one of the Redeemers spying on us. Frank had just imagined the naked woman. He’d seen someone, and he’d made the rest up. He was trying to scare me, and he’d done a pretty good job of it. Up until now.

“Folks in town say they’ve been run off other places. They’ve been so quiet down at the end of your road, everybody’s forgotten about ‘em. Maybe I should ask around, see what people know.”

He pulled the truck into the yard, and I was relieved to see that Arly hadn’t gotten home yet.

“Bekkah?” His hand caught my upper arm and he held me. “Promise me you won’t go back down to the creek.”

All of my thoughts of a few moments before disappeared. He was afraid. Even safe in my own yard, Frank was a bit unsettled by what had happened down at the creek.

“Maybe we should go in and talk to your granny.”

“No!” I was surprised at my own tone. “I mean, there’s no need to. I’m not allowed to go down to the Redeemers. It would just upset Mama Betts for no good reason.”

“But she had a knife …”

“Frank, we’re home. You can quit trying to scare me now.” I looked at him. “You got me good back there, but it’s okay now. I’m home and I won’t be going down there.”

He didn’t let me go. “I wish I was making it up, but I’m not. I saw that woman. She looked half wild. As good as I could tell, she was naked, and I saw that knife.”

The front porch light came on, and Mama Betts was silhouetted in the door. “Bekkah? Is that you?”