Summer of the Redeemers (36 page)

“Thanks for the ride, Frank.” I felt awkward and suddenly guilty. I didn’t understand either emotion, I only knew I had to get out of that
truck. “Don’t bother being a gentleman.” I slid across the seat away from him, opened the door and stepped to the ground. “Thanks again,” I said through the open window. I turned to the house. “It’s me, Mama Betts. A friend gave me a ride home so Arly could smooch a little with Rosie.”

Mama Betts held the door wide. “You children are as wild as March hares. You leave in one bunch and come home in a different state. Was that you going down the road toward Cry Baby Creek in that pickup truck?” Frank turned back into the road as she was talking. In a moment his taillights were gone.

Mama Betts had been sitting on the porch swing, watching and listening for us to come home. I hadn’t considered that possibility.

We went into the kitchen, and I opened the refrigerator door. I was suddenly starved. “Yeah, I wanted to show Frank Taylor Cry Baby Creek. He’d heard the legend but had never seen the creek.”

“That’s no place for a girl and a boy.”

I chanced a look over the refrigerator door at her face. Thunder-clouds. I had to think fast. “We saw someone in the woods. Or at least Frank saw her.”

Mama Betts hesitated. She knew she was being foxed off the trail. “Who did he see? If you’re making this up, Bekkah, you’re going to be in real trouble.”

I grabbed an apple and some cheese and went to the table with a knife. “I didn’t see anyone. Frank saw her. He said she had a knife.” I edited out the naked portion.

Mama Betts snorted. “Yeah, and then he tried to hold you close.”

“Something like that.” I grinned at her. “But I didn’t fall for it. I knew he was trying to scare me. And if you heard us drive down the road, you know we didn’t stay long enough to get into any trouble. I showed him the creek and told him the story. Then we came home.”

She sat down at the table with me. “Listen, Bekkah, you’re growing up, sometimes a lot faster than Effie or Walt or me want to see. When you go off with Arly to something, you have to come home with him. Okay?”

“Alice and Maebelle V. were with us.”

“You leave with Arly, you come home with him. That’s the rule until Effie and Walt get home.”

It wasn’t unreasonable, and not as harsh as I had expected. “Okay,” I agreed.

We heard Arly pulling into the yard, and Mama Betts went to the door.

“Don’t fuss at Arly,” I requested with a measure of pleading in my voice. “This really wasn’t his fault. He didn’t want me to ride with Frank, and I sort of engineered it to get under Arly’s skin more than anything else.”

Mama Betts didn’t turn around. “I didn’t think you had any real interest in going off down a lonesome dirt road with a boy. At least not yet.”

“Arly hates Frank. It’s personal between them, and I was sort of getting his goat.”

She turned around, and to my surprise she was smiling. “This time I won’t say anything to Arly, but I’m going to tell him the same thing I told you. Leave with him, come home with him. No exceptions.”

“Okay.” I put the apple core in the garbage and got the dish cloth to wipe off the table. “Thanks, Mama Betts.” I hurried off to bed before Arly could get in the door.

Saturday morning Mama Betts relented and let me go ride Cammie and work at the barn. I didn’t know who’d been helping Nadine since Greg was laid up and I was under punishment. I knew Jamey Louise had quit for good. There would be a lot of work to do, and I wanted to ride more than anything. The night before, I dreamed I’d ridden Cammie in the woods. We’d floated beneath the canopy of trees, the wind whispering in my ear and the hot sand spurting out behind us.

I went to the house first, but no one came to the door. I thought about going in, just to make sure Greg was okay, but something held me back. If he was in there and didn’t hear me calling, then he was asleep. In that case I didn’t need to be in the house. But where was Nadine? The truck was parked behind the house. Wherever she’d gone, she’d gone on foot.

I escaped the back steps and the flies as quickly as I could and went to the barn. The door was shut completely, and I opened it wide. Before I could see anything, I heard the horses. They were restless, shifting in their stalls. Someone was kicking a wall over and over again. I knew they hadn’t been out. For nearly a week they’d been penned
up without any way to walk or move. Expecting the worst, I went and looked in the first stall. To my surprise, the bedding was clean. There was fresh water, as if Nadine had just been through with the hose. Mounds of hay were neatly stacked in the left rear corner. Bacchus shifted in his stall and struck out with his front hoof. His ears went back to his head.

He was furious. I held out my hand as a peace offering, and he snapped at me, his teeth clicking together. He’d never had a great disposition, but now he was mean.

I heard Cammie’s soft whicker, so I walked on down to her. She danced up and down in the stall, eager for my pets but unable to stand still. I was furious with Nadine. She had no right to confine the horses if she wasn’t going to ride them. Even Mama Betts knew that much.

The far end door of the barn was closed, and with a sudden decision I went down to open it. The sudden shaft of daylight penetrating the barn made the horses shift and jostle even more.

I thought I heard something in the hayloft, a scurrying of some kind, a noise like a giggle, but the horses were so restless I couldn’t be certain.

“Nadine?” If she was up there she’d surely let me know. “Nadine?” There was no answer.

I knew then what I was going to do. There might be hell to pay, but I didn’t care. I slid the bolt on Cammie’s stall open and flung the door wide. She charged forward, cornering the stall and sprinting down the aisle like Satan was riding her tail. One by one I let them all out. The barn was churning with dirt and the sound of hooves pounding outside.

I might have to spend the entire day trying to catch them, but it would be worth it. I walked to the door and looked out. They were bucking and leaping, snorting and running. I’d never seen anything more beautiful in my life, and I was a little frightened that they would run into a fence or slip and fall and break a hip with their antics. But they were magnificent. The September sun beat down on their gleaming coats, and beneath their hides, muscles rippled.

In fifteen minutes the show was over. They bent their heads and began to explore the sorry mixture of weeds that had taken over the pasture. There wouldn’t be much of nutritional value, but they would enjoy the pleasure of grazing. From Mama Betts’ frequent comments I
knew how important it was for grazing animals to graze. “All creatures to their natures,” Mama Betts had told me a million times. “When we domesticate an animal, we take on the responsibility of caring for it and providing for it, but we aren’t allowed to change its nature completely. That wasn’t what God intended.”

Picket was running around the pasture, frolicking with any horse who would join her. I’d never seen her go after the horses, but it was with such playfulness that I knew she intended no harm. I whistled her up and went back into the barn. I’d clean tack as penance for letting the horses out. It wouldn’t make Nadine any less mad when she saw what I’d done, but it might make it easier for her to forgive me later on. She hated cleaning tack, yet she demanded that it be kept spotless. As I got out the rags and saddle soap, I couldn’t help but compare the barn with her house. Why would she live in such squalor and demand that the barn be so immaculate? Maybe it all did have to do with having a maid in the house. It occurred to me that if a person was doomed to act like they were raised, I’d spend the rest of my life cleaning and ironing and working. It wasn’t exactly the future I wanted to see for myself.

I cleaned the two close-contact saddles and was working on the saddle I used to jump when I thought of the crucifix. My fingers ached from working under the leather. I was determined to do the best cleaning job Nadine had ever seen. Looking for the crucifix would give me a break. I got up from the cement block and walked through the barn. The old wood shifted, making the loft creak. It was an eerie sound that brought the memory of Greg nearly dead, Selena’s bloody dress and the ghost of Sidney Miller back to me in a rush. Without the horses snuffling companionably in their stalls, the barn was an altogether different place.

The sun was bright outside the door, and I stepped into it, forcing my mind away from the frightening flights of fancy. I’d tried not to think about Frank Taylor. What had he seen, if anything? Maybe he just didn’t want to kiss me and had taken me down to the creek to get back at Arly more than anything else. It wasn’t an idea that made me feel exactly special, but I poked around at it anyway. It was distinctly possible. I’d agreed to sit with Frank to get at Arly; why wouldn’t Frank do the same thing using me? It stung a little, but it was worth considering.

I crawled up in the weeds and shrubs that had grown thick around the chinaberry trees in a considerably lower state of mind than when I’d walked out of the barn. I searched the shrubs and weeds, once casually, and a second time with greater care. The crucifix was gone. I broadened my search, going from tree to tree. I searched the whole line and found nothing. It was gone.

Greg was in no condition to move it. As far as I knew, we were the only two people who knew where it was. Except for Nadine. He’d probably told her. Nadine was extremely strong for a woman, but I didn’t know if she could move the crucifix far. It was so awkward. Maybe she could have dragged it. I checked the driveway. There was no sign that something heavy had been pulled along in the dirt.

I walked around the house to the window that would have been Nadine’s bedroom. I tapped on the pane, hoping that if Greg was awake he’d call out to me. I tapped again. The window was shut tight, and it was still hot. The weatherman had promised a kiss of autumn during the next week, but it hadn’t arrived yet. Not by a long shot. If Greg was in that room he was either dead or extremely sick.

“Greg?” I tapped the window. What if the Redeemers had come down here in the dead of night and killed Greg and Nadine? What if they were lying in there, in the heat, in a pool of blood? What if they’d found the crucifix, or tortured Greg until he told them where it was, and then took it off to hide the evidence? I crept back around the house, dodging from bush to bush, until I was in the line of chinaberry trees. I climbed into the top of the highest one. It wasn’t a great place to be caught, but it gave me the vantage of a lookout. I scouted down the road as far as I could see. Nothing. The horses were grazing happily in the pasture, and Picket lounged in the door of the barn. There was no sign of any of Nadine’s cats. They’d simply vanished, one by one. She’d told me they were half wild, a mixture of strays she’d taken in. They were probably in the woods, hunting.

Except for the silence of the house, everything seemed normal. Except for Greg and Nadine’s absence, everything seemed perfectly fine. The Spooners’ new car was coming down the road, and I thought about running out and flagging them down for help. They’d walk in Nadine’s house with me and look for—I wouldn’t imagine the bodies. It would make a lot of trouble for Nadine if Greg was okay and he was caught in her bed with all of that trash in the house. There wasn’t
anything wrong with what was going on. Not a thing. But I knew enough about the way people thought to know it would look bad. If I brought any strangers into this, it would change things forever.

Slowly I climbed down from the tree. I had to go in there. To look. To see if everything was okay or if my wild imagination had taken over. Surely it was all okay. Greg was … I couldn’t begin to figure it out. The best thing was to look and then think up a plan.

The door was unlocked. I slipped into the kitchen, ignoring the disarray. I tiptoed down the narrow hallway. Nadine’s door was closed. It took every bit of courage I had to knock softly, so softly.

“Greg?”

Outside the house the old sign creaked on the rusty chains. It was the sound that I clearly remembered. It had started my friendship with Nadine. It had given me the wonderful summer of horses and jumping. And Caesar. And Greg.

I turned the knob and opened the door. The room was an oven, hot and stifling. The windows were closed tight and shades and curtains drawn. There was no light in the room, but the one from the hall filtered in. There was a withered form in the bed, a misshapen twist of legs and arms and torso covered by a sheet.

“Greg?” I couldn’t stand it. I knew by the stillness that he was dead.

I was afraid to leave the doorway, afraid to turn and run, afraid to breathe or think. I had to be sure, though. There was no blood. He looked as if he’d been broken in many places. But there was no blood.

I stepped to the edge of the bed. My fingers closed on the sheet and I drew it back. There was a wad of pillows and blankets twisted and knotted. The bed was empty.

More than anything in the world I wanted to hear The Judge’s voice. I tried to imagine what he would say to me. He’d be calm, and he’d tell me,
Bekkah, you let that imagination get the upper hand again. A good reporter observes before jumping to conclusions. Imagination is a magical thing, but there’s always a price involved. Think, girl. Think. You’re okay. It’s Saturday morning, almost noon. Mama Betts packed you a good lunch, and it’s waiting out in the barn. You’ve got to finish that saddle and get those horses back in their stalls. Now come on, don’t panic. No sense in behaving like a fool.

His voice calmed me, made me draw a breath. I felt the bed with
my palms, just to be sure. I no longer believed my eyes. When I backed out of the room, I remembered to close the door. I walked through the rest of the house.

It was empty. No bodies, alive or dead.

I was standing in the kitchen, looking at but not seeing the cans and boxes and packages stacked on the table. There was a tablecloth beneath the mess, but I couldn’t be certain if it was a floral pattern or not. There was too much stuff. Nadine didn’t seem like the kind of person who would have a tablecloth. I was bemused by that idea, thinking of going over and looking at it closer.