Summer of the Redeemers (46 page)

“There’s four pies. I could use the help,” Effie answered her.

I didn’t wait to watch what happened between them. I couldn’t understand how all of a sudden they were talking all civilized and working together. Effie had even talked to Cathi about covering Ollie
Stanford’s trial and how having a real reporter there might help him get a fair shake. It didn’t make sense, and I didn’t have time to gnaw on it. Cammie and I trotted through the woods to Nadine’s.

Even though the afternoon was breezeless, the old sign moaned on its rusty chains. Cammie hadn’t been nervous since I’d taken her away, but she crab-stepped down the driveway toward the barn. The crowded limbs of the chinaberry trees must have made her feel confined.

From halfway down the drive I could see the barn door was pulled shut.

The stench of the garbage was worse, even though the days had cooled considerably. The gruesome pile against the steps didn’t seem much bigger, just ranker. Nadine’s truck and trailer were parked in the barnyard, but there wasn’t a sign of life. I missed the darting shadows of the cats. It was strange how they’d all run away. Even wild cats usually stayed in a barn if they were fed.

“Nadine!” I called as loud as I could. I didn’t want to get off Cammie, and I didn’t want to go into the barn. If she and Greg were up to anything, I wanted to warn them that I was on the property.

“Nadine!”

Silence answered me back.

“Easy, girl.” Cammie was shifting and sidling under me. Her ears perked forward and her nostrils flared as the door of the barn opened a crack. No one came out, and no one said anything.

All of the flesh on my arms and back rearranged itself. I got off Cammie and against all of the rules tied her to the fence. I didn’t want her inside the barnyard, and I didn’t have a halter. I had to use the bridle and hope she wouldn’t pull and break the leather.

The gate creaked under my hand, and I left it hanging on one hinge. I wanted all the paths cleared for my getaway.

“Nadine?” I walked across the yard.

There wasn’t the sound of anything. Nothing. I stopped at the barn door. The interior was black, and at last I heard the snuffling of the horses. I let go of a sigh.

“Greg?”

His name echoed around the big old barn, not stopping anywhere.

“Greg? Are you in here?”

“Get out of here.”

It was Greg’s voice, but it scared the hell out of me. He sounded
like a disembodied spirit. I hadn’t really expected to hear him. In my mind, he was down at those buses helping the Redeemers pack.

“Greg, somebody’s stolen Maebelle V.”

“Bekkah, get out of here now. This isn’t any place for you. Just get on your horse and get on home.”

I couldn’t see him in the barn. The light was bad, and he was deliberately hiding from me.

“Greg, the Redeemers have taken Maebelle V. If someone doesn’t do something, there’s going to be trouble. Half the men in town are in the national guard, and they’re all out in the woods hunting for that baby. When they find those church people have her, all hell’s going to break loose.”

“The Redeemers don’t have no baby.”

He spoke with such conviction, as if he knew where Maebelle was. “Then where is she?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know for certain, but I know the Redeemers don’t have her. They don’t steal babies. They didn’t steal me or anyone else. Folks give them babies sometimes, babies from unwed mothers and from families where children aren’t wanted. We take them in and give them to people in the church who want a child.”

“Nadine found evidence. She found records of babies being sold by Rev. Marcus.”

Greg mumbled a curse word under his breath. “Nadine found what she wanted to find, Bekkah. Can’t you see that?”

I wasn’t following him, and I was annoyed that I couldn’t see him. He was up in the loft, I thought. “What are you getting at?” I stepped farther into the barn, my eyes trying to penetrate the darkness.

“Take you, for instance. Nadine saw you as someone to buy a horse. Right from the beginning she meant to sell Cammie to you, a horse, by the way, that she got from a man up near Jackson. Cleaned out his stables for him, after she’d—”

“What are you saying?”

“That Cammie isn’t any fancy show horse. She’s just a horse. Nadine told me she met this man, rode his horses for a while.” Greg laughed and it was bitter. “Rode him, I suspect, and managed to get his horses from him.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know. I came back here to wait for her. As soon as I figure
out what to do with these horses, I’m going to leave myself. I just didn’t want to go off without making some kind of arrangements.”

I was still struggling with the news about the horses and what it might mean. I didn’t believe Greg. Not right off. There was no telling why Nadine had concocted such a story, but just because she’d told him didn’t make it true. Nadine had a habit of lying, especially if she thought it was going to shock someone.

“I don’t care about the horses or where they came from. Greg, we’ve got to find that baby. Maebelle V.’s been gone more than twenty-four hours now.”

“Nadine quit feeding the horses at the first of the week. That’s why I’m still here. She said she’d had enough of them. Charlie and Earnest are dead. I found them Tuesday. Poisoned. Just like she’d done the dogs. And more than likely the cats too.”

“Greg, get down here and talk to me. I don’t know why you’re saying all of this. I saw you and Nadine. I saw you in the loft. I know what you’re doing together.” The words rushed out in clumps. “If you don’t help me find that baby, I’m going to tell everyone.”

“Go ahead. I don’t give a damn anymore.”

His body was a blur as he swung down from the ladder at the end of the barn and landed on his feet in the center of the aisle.

“I’d rather go to jail than go back with the Redeemers or stay here with her. John Singer, that crazy old bastard, was righter than he ever knew when he said she’d steal my soul and send me to hell I’ve been living here all this week, watching her, wondering what she was gonna do next. Knowing I couldn’t stop her.” He came down the aisle toward me, walking slow, catlike. “She’s hinted that she was the one who killed Caesar. That his foot was bad and wasn’t getting better fast enough. She was tired of taking care of him. She said he was a summer horse, good for only a season.”

Greg was panting. His breath was a harsh rasp. He kept coming toward me, and I had never been so afraid of anyone in my life. A shaft of sunlight from one of the stall windows caught his face, and his eyes glittered like narrow slits of some hard stone.

“You ran out on me, Bekkah. You left me here by myself with her. My back was a mess.” In the shaft of light he turned slowly. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and the scabs that still crisscrossed his back were black and ugly. The tissue around it was red welts, white at the edges.

“Nadine saved my life,” he continued, turning back around to face me. “I owe her something for that, don’t I? She said she wanted a baby. She said I could give it to her. A little Redeemer baby to make up for everything she’d lost.”

Even though he was standing still, he was panting hard, like he’d run a long way.

“Greg, nobody will hurt you. Just tell us where the baby is and we’ll get her. Then we’ll find a place for you to be safe. Mama Betts wanted to ask you to stay at our house. Arly even said he’d share his room.”

Tears ran down my chin and neck, tickling my chest as they slipped away to soak into my bra. Where in the hell was Nadine? She couldn’t be far, her truck was in the yard.

“You have no idea what it’s been like here,” he said. “No idea,” he whispered.

“Jamey Louise wanted to come down here and talk with you, but I told her it wasn’t a good idea. Maybe I was wrong. She said she had some things to tell you—”

“Jamey doesn’t exist.” He waved his hand in the air. “This whole summer was a lie, Bekkah. All of it. It’s like spider’s silk. You don’t see the web. You just walk into it, and it has you.”

“My folks are waiting for me to come back. I wanted to ask Nadine something, but it can wait. You want to come back with me?” I had to get out of the barn.

“On that horse?” He laughed. “All this summer I’ve been here, and nobody thought to teach me to ride.”

“We can walk her home, Greg. We don’t have to ride.” I inched toward the door. Greg came forward, stepping out of the light so I couldn’t see him clearly anymore.

“Are you crying?” he asked suddenly.

“I’m worried about that baby. Maebelle V. is like my own sister. I keep thinking she may be hungry or scared. She’ll be crying for Alice to take care of her.”

“Are you trying to leave?”

“Greg, my parents are waiting for me.” He frightened me. I wanted to beg him to let me go, but I knew that would be the wrong thing. I wasn’t his prisoner unless I admitted that I was. “I have to go now. You can come with me if you want to, but I have to go.”

I sidestepped to the door. My hand was on it when he lunged at
me, knocking me down and to the side. My head slammed against the edge of the door, and Greg pulled it back with a half-strangled cry.

Sunlight poured into the barn. Greg ran to the other end and threw open that door, flooding the barn with light. I sat up, dazed but not really hurt. A whirlwind of frantic activity, Greg ran to the first stall and slammed open the latch and door.

“Run!” he cried. “Run! Don’t stay here or you’ll die!”

Bacchus bolted out of his stall, followed by all the rest of the horses. They thundered out of the barn, sending dirt flying. I noticed that their coats were matted and covered in filth.

“I can go now,” he said. “But we have to come back and do something with them later. We can’t leave them here. They’re innocent.”

He walked toward me, his thin body shaking. I managed to crawl to my feet. The blow to my head hadn’t hurt me, but the fear had made my knees rubbery. I looked back at him, but my eyes traveled beyond, into the interior of the old barn.

At first I didn’t believe it. I had to be imagining it. Greg saw the expression on my face, and he looked behind him quickly, as if he expected some demon to rush out of one of the stalls.

“Holy Christ,” he muttered. He almost dropped to his knees, but he stopped himself.

“Greg.” I whispered his name because I didn’t know what else to say.

Hanging above Cammie’s old stall was the crucifix with the blackened Jesus. The sunlight from the open doors caught it full, giving Jesus a purely satanic look as his blacked eyes turned to heaven, devoid of all expression.

There was something else dangling from the right side of the cross, material of some sort. I walked forward to look at it, and before I got much closer I knew what it was.

“Oh, no,” I whispered. “No.”

Greg stood in the doorway while I ran to the crucifix. I had to get the ladder from the end of the barn, but I finally got it and climbed to the top.

I knew the bib. It was one that had been handed down through several different Waltmans. It was Maebelle V.’s bib.

Forty-one

T
HEY
found her in the creek, about two miles from the church.

The full skirt of the old christening gown had hung in the roots of a willow tree. The coroner said she was dead before she was put in the water, and that was a blessing, Mama Betts said.

They didn’t want me to hear, but I eavesdropped after they’d given me a sleeping pill and some warm milk. They thought I was asleep in the clean, safe sheets of my bed, but I wasn’t. I was sitting on the floor, listening at the crack under the door.

They said Maebelle’s neck had been broken. That death had been fast. They spoke as if it were a television show they were talking about, and I knew it was because they didn’t believe it had really happened. Not on Kali Oka Road.

Maybe Greg and I were the only people who believed it was real, because we should have seen it coming. We had all summer long to look at it. Somehow we’d managed to avoid seeing.

Effie told me they’d caught Nadine. When Joe Wickham and the posse had gone down to stop the Redeemers, they’d been just in time to see Nadine run out of the woods. It had taken four grown men to subdue her, and they’d been none too gentle. Nadine was wearing a blood-soaked dress and carrying a large hunting knife. The dress was old and white, and the blood wasn’t fresh. I figured it was the same one she’d been wearing when she pretended to be the ghost of Selena to scare me and Alice. At the edge of the woods they found a cheap wig with long dark hair. I wondered if that was when she’d decided to steal Maebelle V., when I told her the legend of Cry Baby Creek.

Nadine had been following me for a long, long time. All summer, in fact. She knew about the spring by the house, the secret fort where Alice and I played, about everything. I had no doubt that she’d seen me petting Mr. Tom and decided to kill him. She’d touched my entire life. It would never be clean again.

Cathi had taken me aside and told me that she’d finally found evidence of Nadine in the Delta, but it wasn’t Nadine. It was Dianne Salter. Nadine-Dianne. The exact same letters. A very clever woman, Cathi said.

The Beulah police were looking for a dead baby in the woods behind the trailer court where she’d lived. According to hospital records, she’d delivered a healthy baby girl on October 22, 1959. After the first week or two, no one had seen the baby, and Dianne Salter had accused the Redeemers of stealing her child. Dianne Salter had leveled some damning accusations wrapped in a web of lies. And Nadine Andrews had brought those lies to Kali Oka Road.

There had been no parents killed in an automobile wreck. There were no marriages. There was no grand home in Cleveland with maids and antique furniture. There was no Nadine.

The woman I’d talked to everyday for most of the summer did not exist.

Cathi stroked Picket’s fur and told me that I was to put everything behind me and try not to think about it. She said that time would make the hurting fade.

Mama Betts ran my bath water and put out clean pajamas for me along with a cup of cocoa. She kissed the top of my head, and I felt her tears soak into my hair. Neither of us spoke. Maebelle was too much with us to talk. She had indeed loved that little redheaded child, and she grieved for her in bitter silence.

When I was clean, Effie gave me the medicine and put me to bed. In the still October night while crickets chorused outside the window and the whippoorwill sang, Effie held me for a long, long time and let me cry until the tears slacked of their own accord. Then The Judge came in. When I tried to talk, he shushed me and said that it would keep for a while, that the worst was over and that the best thing I could do was sleep and forget. He found an old storybook that I’d loved as a child and read to me until I closed my eyes and made my breathing slow and steady.

Listening at the crack in the door, I knew I would never forget what had happened. Never. No one on Kali Oka Road would ever forget. And it wasn’t over. The voices out on the porch continued.

“I sunk a line into a small cluster of Salters from near Hushpuckena who’ve heard of a Salter woman who’d gotten herself pregnant by a rich man. She was a stable hand at his barn, but she disappeared from Hushpuckena. Gossip is that he ran her out of town,” Cathi was saying.

“No one will admit to being a close relative, and no one wants to come down here and help her out. It’s sort of sad, sort of tragic,” Cathi continued. “They’re still looking for the baby up at Beulah.”

I imagined the men of Beulah with their spades digging around for the little dead baby. Where had Nadine buried this one? How many more were there that we didn’t know about?

“Some of these questions will never be answered,” Mama Betts said.

“I pray that innocent child didn’t suffer.”

“How long are they going to hold Dianne Salter in the county jail?” Effie asked. “Until Rex Ransom can stage a theatrical hearing? Or until maybe he can stir up a riot and stand on the courthouse steps and quell it like the hero he wants to be?”

“Easy, Effie,” The Judge said, and I heard his chair scrape out as he got up and went to Mama. I knew he was putting his hands on her shoulders and giving them a light massage. That’s what he always did when she started getting too angry.

So Nadine was still at the county jail. She’d be taken to Parchman soon. There were psychiatrists up there, and they’d have a go at her.

“How’s Greg? Will they keep him in the hospital?” Cathi asked.

“He was in shock and badly malnourished.” Effie laughed, but there was no humor in it. “He’s more worried about those horses. Gus and Walt rounded them up, and Gus’s feeding them. Greg made them promise. He’s a lot like Bekkah in that regard.”

“Speaking of Bekkah, what about that horse of hers?” Cathi asked.

“Cammie’s part of the family,” Mama Betts said. “With everything else that child lost this summer, you can’t think of taking away her horse.”

“Of course not,” The Judge said, exasperated a tiny bit.

Tears were leaking out of my eyes again. I hadn’t been able to really stop since Greg and I had run back to the house with Maebelle’s bib in my hand.

“The Redeemers managed to get out of town before anyone hurt them, didn’t they?” Mama Betts asked.

“Some rocks were thrown, but no one was injured. Rev. Marcus said they would go somewhere else, try again. I urged him to become a part of the community wherever he went.” Daddy sighed. “He wasn’t impressed with my counsel. He said he’d be in touch, to see when Greg would be ready to rejoin them, as if he had no other place to go.”

“He doesn’t,” Effie said.

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow, after the funeral,” Daddy said.

They were going to ask him to live with us. I didn’t have any feelings about it one way or another. In fact, I didn’t think I’d ever feel about anything again.

“What about Bekkah?” Effie asked.

For a moment no one answered, and then Mama Betts’ voice was as soft and worn as her skin. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, and I fell asleep with my face pressed against the crack of the door, soothed by the whisper of their voices.

Everyone on Kali Oka Road was going to the funeral. Even Mr. Waltman had turned up, his face pulled and sagging toward a big nose that I didn’t remember. No matter how closely I looked at him, I couldn’t see a shred of Alice. Or Maebelle. I’d gone over to Alice’s before the funeral to get her to ride with us. Mr. Waltman was sitting on the front porch in his good suit with his shoes off. He was clipping his toenails. I’d never seen any nails so thick and horny-looking. They flew from the snippers like deadly weapons.

Alice didn’t argue when I told her to come with me, and Mrs. Waltman didn’t try to stop her. Agatha Waltman was struggling to get her belly into a dress that someone had sent over for her to wear. No one had to tell me or Alice that since Maebelle V. was dead, Mrs. Waltman didn’t care what Alice did.

The service was an ordeal. I sat on the family pew with Alice, and Effie and Mama Betts were just behind us. The Judge was a pallbearer, and Cathi Cummings had gone back to Mobile. Her series of stories on the Redeemers and Dianne Salter had created a stir in the world of newspapers.

Little tidbits of additional facts were floating down to Mobile from all over the state of Mississippi. Cathi had interviewed grammar school
friends of Dianne who said even as a little girl she’d collected dolls and ribbons. One was never enough, and once she had as many as she wanted, she destroyed them all.

Her folks were found in Memphis, saying they hadn’t talked to her in years. Not since she’d gotten pregnant and run away. They wanted no part of her now and refused to come down and visit her in jail even if the newspaper paid the cost of their travels. They said thanks but no thanks.

As far as the Redeemers went, they were being investigated by the feds. There were several different groups, all loosely connected. And there were homes in Texas and Hattiesburg where unwed girls had their babies. Cathi’s newspaper stories had revealed a large network. No formal charges had been made yet, though. As far as anyone knew, Magdeline was still with them. When the buses had been stopped by Joe Wickham, everyone on them had been given a chance to leave, but no one had. Joe had no reason to hold them, so he’d let them go. They’d disappeared down the blacktop in one final blast of Kali Oka dust that soon settled and left nothing behind at all.

Mostly, to get through the funeral, I thought about Cammie and the ride through the clean pine woods. That way I sort of hovered above all the singing and crying and Alice sitting like a stone beside me, unable to react in any way.

I was relieved to see Mack Sumrall at the graveside. He took Alice by the arm, and I had a moment to back off by myself.

It was another golden October day. A Tuesday. Most of the school was at the funeral. There was a Waltman in almost every grade. Mack said that classes had been dismissed for two hours so that everyone who wanted could attend.

Maebelle V. was being put to rest beside another brother, a stillborn infant who’d never even been given a name. Baby Waltman, November 3, 1957, was the only inscription on the little tombstone. Maebelle would have one that showed just one year of life. Just her name and the dates.

I went to stand beside a line of cedars along the fence of the small cemetery. So many people had come, spilling out from around the red mouth of the grave like a flock of crows. I backed into the spicy shade of the cedars and watched.

“Are you okay?”

I didn’t turn around. It was Frank Taylor behind me. I was glad he’d come to the funeral.

“I’m fine.” It was the biggest lie I’d ever told. But what else was there to say? “I want to die”? Or maybe, “This is my fault”?

“And Alice?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell right now.”

“Is there anything I can do?” He touched my shoulder, and I thought I would cry. Then I thought of something that only Frank would do for me.

“Take me to the jail.”

“Why?” He stepped closer behind me. I could smell his aftershave even though I hadn’t turned around to face him. “I want to see Nadine.”

“Dianne,” he corrected with some anger. “Her name is Dianne Salter.”

“I want to see her.”

He put both hands on my shoulders and tried to turn me, but I made myself rigid.

“Maybe that isn’t such a good idea.”

“I need to see her,” I said.

“If your parents say it’s okay.” He wasn’t going to argue, but he wasn’t going to do it either.

“You know they won’t let me. There’s something I have to ask her, Frank. I have to know. No one else will take me. If you don’t, they’ll take her away and I’ll never find out.”

“Even if you ask her, you won’t find out the truth. She’s a liar, Bekkah. Can’t you see that! After everything she’s done, don’t you see that she won’t tell you the truth about anything?”

“She will about this.” I tore my eyes away from the sight of the black dresses and the black suits. It was a slightly different version of the Redeemers. That made me shudder.

“Bekkah?”

I looked up at him, and I made sure I wasn’t about to cry. “I want to talk to her for ten minutes. No more. I know how to get into the jail without being seen. You can wait for me in the truck. All you have to do is drive me there.”