Summer of the Redeemers

by Carolyn Haines

  The Judge and Effie talked about Parchman too. They said it needed to be reformed. Just recently they had said that Ollie Stanford was headed for Parchman, and he wouldn’t be there a week before he’d commit suicide by jumping out of his top bunk with his belt wrapped around his neck and hooked to the bunk bed. The Judge said that type of suicide was a favorite of the Parchman guards. The way he said it, everyone at the dinner table knew Ollie wouldn’t hang voluntarily. It would be a “legal lynching.”

  No matter how I turned my thoughts, they always seemed to lurch back toward something gruesome or violent or both. I guess I knew what was waiting for me. Before I woke Alice, I had to look down in Cry Baby Creek. No matter what was there, I had to look.

  My mind conjured up terrifying images, and I fought against them with logic There wouldn’t be anything there. Ghosts didn’t leave evidence, at least none that could be picked up or touched. Now that daylight was practically a fact, all traces of what we’d seen and heard the night before would be gone. All I had to do was look, and then it could all be over. I’d wake Alice and we’d go home.

  My footsteps echoed hollowly on the wooden bridge, and just above the creek I stopped. When I looked down, I wasn’t surprised to see the white lace of the christening gown floating in the creek. It was snagged on the root of a tree not three feet from the bridge. I didn’t even take off my shoes when I slid down the bank and waded out into the shallow water to retrieve it. My legs were rubbery, and I fell once, sending cold water up to my crotch. I barely felt it, my mind was so set on getting that tatter of lace. When I reached out for it, I expected to look up and see Selena on the bank, or the little baby floating downstream from me, blue with cold and eyes rolled back in its head. But there wasn’t anything. I touched the lace to make sure that it was real, and then I took it from the snag. It was very old, fragile in my hands. It felt like cobwebs.

  On the bank there wasn’t a sign of another human life—and no footprints except for my own. When I got out of the creek I went to the grave Alice and I had tried to dig. Working quickly, I smoothed it over and replaced the sod as best I could. I wanted everything done before I woke Alice. We had to get home. The sun was a third up on the horizon, and if we weren’t in bed before everyone got up, we’d be in serious trouble. To sneak out was one thing. To stay out all night was a crime that deserved punishment—as Arly had found out only a few weeks ago.

  I didn’t think that spending the night in fear at the Blood of the Redeemers Church would deserve the same punishment as spending the night in the backseat of a car with a snoring Rosie Carpenter, but I didn’t want to press the issue. Maybe what I’d done was worse.

  I showed Alice the lace clinging to a bit of torn gown when I woke her. She burst into tears.

  “We could have saved that baby,” she said.

  “There wasn’t anything we could do.” But the christening gown belied my denial. I wasn’t certain what to think about it. Sure, different folks, mostly teenagers, said they heard the baby crying in the creek. That was the legend. But what about the gown? No one had ever come back with evidence of the dead baby’s ghost. And no one had ever reported seeing the mother, all bloody and anguished, pleading for help to save her child. Maybe if we had gone into the night we might have saved that little baby. But that was stupid. Evie Baxter was dead and buried in the churchyard cemetery.

  “Hey,” Alice nudged my arm. “You okay?”

  I nodded. The gown was so thin that it was already drying in my hands. It wouldn’t have given much protection to a newborn in October, not even on dry land. “Let’s get home.”

  Alice ran across the bridge, the shovel in her hand. She was mounted on her bike and pointed toward home before I could even pick mine up out of the dirt.

  “What about the grave?” she asked.

  “There wasn’t anything there. Even if there was, we were digging in the wrong spot.”

  “How do you know?”

  “There were five other graves. Or at least the ground had been turned. The place we were digging, the sod had just been lifted up. It looked like the right place, but it wasn’t.”

  Alice looked back over her shoulder at the cemetery. She stared like she was hoping an answer would appear. “Are you sure?”

  “If someone had dug there before us, the root would have been chopped already.” It was true. The question was why had someone made all of those pretend graves. And when?

  She nodded. “I thought about that.” She lifted her weight up on the right pedal and started home. We rode so fast there was no time to talk. When we got to the woods behind my house, breathless and sweating, the sun had inched into the sky.

  “Come over this afternoon,” I whispered.

  “Okay,” Alice answered as she disappeared down the trail to her house. I ran toward home, praying I could make it inside and duck under the sheets before Mama Betts got up to make breakfast.

  I left my wet sneakers on the front porch and tiptoed barefoot back to my room. I’d just closed the door when I heard Mama Betts come out of her bedroom and shut the bathroom door. There was the sound of the toilet flushing and the tap running.

  Without bothering with pajamas I tossed my clothes in a corner and slipped beneath the cool sheet. My own bed had never felt better.

  I looked around my room, taking in the shelves of books and the glass figures of horses that I’d collected for as long as I could remember.

  The large gray Percheron The Judge had bought for me on a trip to his relatives in upstate New York was the last thing I remembered seeing.

  “Bekkah Rich.”

  I heard my name from a long distance. There was a lot of warm, soft cotton between me and my name, and I wrapped myself tighter away from the noise.

  “Bekkah! It’s nine o’clock. That Mrs. Andrews is sitting out in the yard in that old rusty truck with the motor running. She says you’re late for work.”

  Reality and panic hit about the same time. I sat bolt upright in bed to find Mama Betts standing beside me, arms akimbo. I could read a lot of things in her expression, but it all boiled down to disapproval. The list of my sins was long—I’d slept way into the morning; Nadine was in the yard; she hadn’t gotten out of the truck but had probably blown the horn; she was waiting for me.

  I started to throw back the covers, then remembered that I was naked as a jay bird. “Okay, I’m awake.” I said. “Please tell Nadine that I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “At least you know how to say please,” Mama Betts said as she left the room. At the doorway she turned around to face me. “This afternoon I want to talk with you about your shoes.”

  “My shoes?”

  “Indeed. How did they manage to get sopping wet sitting on the porch all night?”

  “Damn!” I whispered as soon as she closed the door. Before I could get into any more trouble, I picked up my dirty clothes and bundled them into a knot. I stuffed them under the mattress as I made my bed, found some clean shorts and a blouse and grabbed another pair of sneakers. If I’d had a bit of sense I would have hidden those shoes. Mama Betts swept the porch every morning. I’d been so tired that I hadn’t even stopped to consider that she would find them—and think it strange that they were wet.

  I was about to race through the kitchen and out the door when Mama Betts stopped me. “Here.” She handed me a brown paper sack. “Take something to eat. You haven’t even had any breakfast.”

  “Thanks.” I kissed her cheek, breathing in the smell of lemon and vanilla. The sunlight through the kitchen window made her white hair silvery. Even when she was mad at me she couldn’t stand the thought that I might be hungry.

  “I put enough in there for you to share. You know it’s rude to eat in front of others.”

  “Thanks, Mama Betts.” I kissed her again, meaning it even more. Mama Betts didn’t like Nadine a bit, but she would send her food so I could have some. “I’ll be home soon.”

  “Emily Welford called this morning and asked t
hat you stop by to see her on your way home.”

  I balked. It was as if my feet refused to step forward, and I almost crashed into the kitchen table. “Why?”

  “She didn’t say. But you used to like to stop by and visit Emily and Gus.”

  Out the kitchen window I could see Nadine sitting in the truck with the engine idling. Ugly black smoke chugged out of the muffler. “That was before the jail.” That day in Jexville had soured me on the Welfords. They’d said things about Effie that couldn’t be taken back. I knew Emily Welford had been afraid. Afraid for Effie, and afraid of what she was doing. Like most of the other mamas on Kali Oka and around Chickasaw County, Emily left those kinds of issues to the men folks. And especially Mama going down to a jail cell with a Negro man. It was a shocking thing to Emily. But Effie had been in trouble.

  “Emily wrote your mother a letter. She was afraid for you, Bekkah. She knows how headstrong you can be, and how much trouble you can get into. She did her best.”

  “Maybe you think so. If it had been left up to Mrs. Welford, Effie could have been hurt and bleeding to death. None of those people would do a damn thing to help.”

  “Rebekah Rich! I won’t have a child cursing in my home.”

  I bolted out the door, letting the screen shut behind me. I was angry with Emily Welford, that was true. But I was also leery of talking with her. She was going to ask me questions about Jamey, and I didn’t want to answer them. Most of all, I didn’t want to lie.

  “You look like you’ve been rode hard and put away wet,” Nadine said as I climbed into the cab.

  “The day just got off on the wrong foot.”

  “Looks like you didn’t get much sleep.”

  “Not much.” I stared out the truck window as Nadine drove.

  “Looks like maybe you’ve discovered the pleasures of the flesh,” Nadine said. She was grinning to herself as she drove the old pickup with no attempt to avoid the washboard ruts.

  I knew she was talking about fornicating, because she was always teasing Greg about sampling the pleasure of the flesh in regard to Jamey Louise. The idea of spending the night doing that was so far removed from what I’d been doing that I wanted to blast her with a scorching reply. “I’m not so simple-minded I have to fuck some boy to entertain myself,” I snapped. “I’m not Jamey Louise.”

  “Boy-ee!” Nadine slammed the steering wheel with the butt of her hand. “Only guilt will give a girl a reaction like that. Was he good, Bekkah? Did he make your bottom wink?”

  The lack of sleep and the horror of the whole night made me suddenly too tired to argue. “Have it your way, Nadine. I screwed my brains out.” I’d heard that one from Arly talking on the phone to one of his buddies. They lied all the time about what they did, and I knew for a fact Arly didn’t have any brains, so he couldn’t have ever screwed them out.

  “Looks like you won’t be fit to work or ride today,” Nadine said, her foxy eyes bright with amusement. “Nope, I guess you rode a new stallion last night.”

  “Right,” I answered. The day was already hot. Too hot. Black specks floated on the edge of my vision. I let out a startled cry as Nadine drove past the driveway to the old McInnis place. “Hey! Where are we going?”

  “You got me so interested in that Cry Baby Creek, I thought we’d drive down there and take a look. You aren’t worth a hoot in hell for working. Maybe we’ll just have ourselves a little adventure. Go ghost hunting.”

  My stomach clutched. I was glad I hadn’t eaten any of the breakfast Mama Betts had made.

  “You haven’t seen any of those Redeemers coming home yet, have you?” Nadine asked.

  I shook my head no. I remembered the scrap of lace in the pocket of my shorts. I could only pray Mama Betts wouldn’t decide to change the linens on my bed and find my dirty clothes. I was in enough hot water already. And I didn’t want to go back to Cry Baby Creek.

  “Something wrong?” Nadine asked, slowing the truck slightly.

  “Couldn’t we just go to the barn? I have a lot of work to do today, and Mama Betts has some chores for me this afternoon when I get home. She told me not to be late.”

  “Jamey Louise volunteered to do all your chores for you.” Nadine hit the gas pedal again. “Wasn’t that sweet?”

  “Hah! Jamey wouldn’t give me the time of day.”

  “Let’s just say that I convinced her she wanted to clean your stalls.”

  “I’m surprised she showed up for work at all since Greg’s out of town.” The truck rattled down the road. It hadn’t rained in over two weeks, and the red dust blew out behind us in a thick cloud. “Her mama wants me to come talk to her this afternoon.”

  “What are you going to tell Mrs. Welford?” Nadine cast a quick look at me.

  I couldn’t read her expression, but she knew that Emily Welford was going to ask me about what went on at Nadine’s barn. Jamey didn’t earn enough money to warrant working so hard. Over the course of the summer her arms had developed muscle and her legs were stronger. For the first time in her life she was working, and she was there everyday.

  What was I going to say? “She knows that Jamey doesn’t care enough about horses to work just to be around them.”

  “It took her all summer to figure that out?”

  “Maybe she’s not the smartest critter upright and walking.”

  Nadine laughed. “Is it your mama or grandmama who says such things about people?”

  “Both.” It was true. When the tongues started wagging around the dinner table, sometimes the comments got sharp. Nobody in our family, not even The Judge, had much tolerance for stupidity. Or mediocrity. Effie was always telling me that there were two things any person could accomplish—mediocrity and marriage. She said even badness took a little more imagination. I started to tell all of this to Nadine, but then I remembered she had three marriages under her belt. She might think I was drawing some kind of comparison.

  “So, what are you going to tell her?”

  “That … we work real hard and don’t have a lot of time to talk.”

  Nadine grinned. “Will that satisfy her?”

  “I’m hoping. At least until I get off the property.”

  Nadine pulled the truck over in the deep sand by the side of the road. One more curve and the bridge over Cry Baby Creek would be in sight.

  “Why don’t we ride the horses down here tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Can we?” The idea was the best I’d ever heard. Sometimes I dreamed about riding down the road or through the woods. I could feel the flickering pattern of sunlight and shade on my skin during the dream. I could smell the pines and the cleanness of the sun-charged air. But I’d never dared to hope that Nadine would actually let me ride Cammie down the road. She didn’t like trail riding, as she called it. She said it ruined a horse’s concentration for ring work.

  “Tomorrow, if it doesn’t rain.”

  I automatically looked up at a sky that heat had almost burned the blue out of. Not much chance of rain. Relief was a physical sensation. “Then let’s get back to the barn. I really have a lot to do.” Just being that close to Cry Baby Creek made me antsy.

  “We’ll ride here tomorrow.” Nadine slipped the keys from the ignition. “Today we’re going to look for that ghost you’re always talking about. That little baby that was murdered by the preacherman. We won’t have another chance, Bekkah. The Redeemers are bound to be back in a day or two.”

  “I don’t know …” I did know, and what I knew was that I didn’t want to set foot on the property again. I wanted to go home, to be with Mama and Mama Betts.

  “You’re not afraid, are you?” Nadine asked. “You look a little pale, Bekkah.” She laughed and focused her bright eyes on me, taking in every detail. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I really want to go home.”

  “Jamey Louise said you’d back out at the last minute.” Nadine jumped the keys in her hand a few times. “She said you had always been a baby, afraid of the dark. She
said you were yellow through and through. I guess we can just drive back to the barn and tell her she was right.”

  “Let’s go,” I said, not looking in Nadine’s eyes for fear she’d see that I was afraid.

  We got out of the truck and started toward the creek. “What do you think you’re going to see?” I asked. Nadine had never shown enough interest to drive down to the creek before.

  “Well, since the Redeemers are gone, I thought maybe we’d explore.”

  “You mean go inside the church?” “Haven’t you ever done it before?”

  “When it was abandoned, Arly and I used to come down here. And Alice too. But nobody was living here then.” Reluctance tinged my voice. It didn’t seem right to go on someone else’s property when they weren’t home. The night before, Alice and I hadn’t had a choice. But we’d stayed just in the sanctuary, and we hadn’t touched a thing. We weren’t poking around in the Redeemers’ private things. Nadine worried me. She hadn’t been raised exactly the same way Alice and I had.

  “Jamey Louise said you’d be too afraid to go inside. She said you were scared of my barn.”

  “I am not.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  Nadine didn’t give me a chance to say no. She started toward the creek and marched right over the bridge. She didn’t even stop to look or listen before she pushed open the door of the sanctuary and went in. The door closed behind her while I stood on the bridge and watched. I had a powerful urge to walk home. Whatever Nadine was doing in that church, I didn’t want to know. She had an edge to her, something just a little bit wild. I’d sensed it before, but never to the point where it bothered me like this. Sometimes when I was riding Cammie I felt that she was putting the jumps high because I might not be able to make it. The risk excited her. It excited me, too, but it also was a little frightening. I felt the same way now, but it was worse. I wasn’t sure what Nadine was capable of doing.

  Standing on the bridge wasn’t going to solve anything. I went after her. Maybe when she saw there wasn’t anything interesting in the church she’d leave.