“You look like dog poo that someone set on fire and stomped,” she said, leaning on her manure rake. Her head was tied in a bandanna, and there wasn’t a scrap of makeup on her face. During the summer she’d lost the little bit of baby fat she’d started with, and her body was lean and better-looking than it had ever been. Maybe that was why Jamey Louise worked more willingly than she ever had before. She also said that her cup size had increased from a B to a C. And she’d turned thirteen.
Nadine had disappeared into her house and didn’t come back out. I gave Jamey the breakfast Mama Betts had packed, and she settled down in the shade of the barn to eat the bacon biscuits with homemade scuppernong jelly. Even Jamey was smart enough to realize Mama Betts made the best biscuits in the world.
I went to the back door and knocked real hard, but there wasn’t a sound inside. Nadine’s dogs never barked. I couldn’t imagine how she kept them so quiet. Picket would have torn the screen down trying to get at someone at our back door.
I knocked again and stepped back away from the house. It stank. Mama Betts was right that Nadine didn’t keep a clean house. The trash piles had grown and grown over the summer. Kali Oka Road didn’t have garbage pickup like Jexville had, but Nadine owned a truck and she could have taken her garbage to the dump. But she didn’t.
It smelled like something had died in the kitchen, and I backed up a few more steps. I sure hoped she didn’t ask me and Jamey to clean up the garbage mess. Shoveling horse manure wasn’t bad. The smell coming from Nadine’s house was enough to gag a maggot, as Arly was always saying.
On the third try, when Nadine never came to the door, I gave up and started walking home. It seemed like it took forever to make the short walk, especially when I got close to the Welford place.
Mrs. Emily Welford was the last person I wanted to see, so I just kept walking toward the house until I passed under the grancy gray-beard tree and slipped into the old swing The Judge had made for me in one of the oak trees. Arly and I hadn’t played parachuter a single time this summer. It was a game where we’d swing as high as we could and then jump out when the swing was at its highest point. We’d mark where we landed. The farthest parachuter won the game.
I smelled the delicious lemony scent of Mama Betts before I heard her.
“Bekkah, are you sick?”
“Maybe a little.” I was. My head ached and my stomach jumped and twisted. “Maybe I’m just tired.”
“Where were you last night?”
“Alice and I went down to Cry Baby Creek.” The urge to confess was almost more than I could bear, but I couldn’t. “We were looking for the baby.”
“Come in the house and I’ll make you some soup. You look positively gray, child. You don’t have a bit of color.”
I followed Mama Betts like a puppy. “Where’s Effie?”
“Your father’s coming home. She went to the airport to get him.”
“Daddy’s coming home? For good?” It was too much to hope for. But even The Judge couldn’t fix what Nadine and I had discovered.
“For the weekend.” Mama Betts gave me a look that took in a lot of territory.
“And Arly? Where’s he?”
“He’s working over at Arnett’s Nursery this afternoon.”
No one would be home but me and Mama Betts. “Can I have my soup on the sofa and watch The Edge of Night with you?”
She stopped walking and turned around to look at me. “Of course. You must be feeling mighty bad.”
I nodded. “I am.”
“Are you sick or guilty?” she asked, her blue eyes watching.
“Both.”
“Then you have some soup and a nap first, and then we’ll talk.”
At last the tears came. They filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks, but I never made a sound.
“Whatever you’ve done, Bekkah, it couldn’t be that bad.”
No matter what I’d done, Mama Betts would never think the worst of me. “I think I’m going to be sick,” I whispered.
“Sick in body or sick in spirit?”
“I can’t tell.” I got a grip on my tears and fought them back. What would I tell my grandmother, if I could? That I’d been digging in graves in a church cemetery? That I’d broken into a church and torn up a preacher’s bedroom with Nadine? That I thought maybe the Redeemers were selling babies because Nadine said so? And I wasn’t even sure of that because she’d told me not to tell anyone or we could go to prison. Surely Nadine would have to call the police if it were true. Mama Betts’ hand on my forehead brushed back my hot hair. She lifted my chin and stared down at me through her thick glasses.
“No matter what it is, I’ll still love you, and Effie and Walt, too. Now stop crying in this heat or you’ll make yourself throw up.”
I wiped the tears off my face with the back of my hand. I felt her arm around me, pulling me up against her stomach and bosom. The lemony smell was stronger than usual.
“I made your daddy a lemon pie,” she said. “Just the way he likes them with meringue four inches high. That’ll put him in a good mood.” She hugged me to her side as we walked across the lawn. “I think Effie and Walt have been neglecting you lately. You’ve been so busy at that barn we haven’t gone swimming or made ice cream. Maybe we should do that.”
I was afraid if I tried to talk I’d start crying again, so I nodded.
“Let’s do that tomorrow. We’ll all go to the Escatawpa River, where it’s really deep enough to swim. We’ll take a picnic and that old hand-crank ice cream machine, and we’ll have us a time. Does that sound good?”
In the back of my mind I remembered Nadine’s promise to take Cammie for a ride down the road. It didn’t matter. I wanted to be with Mama Betts and Effie. I wanted The Judge to show me how to do the different strokes in the medley races. I even wanted to see Arly.
“That sounds great.” My voice was shaky, but it held.
“Can you get off work?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s settled. I’m declaring tomorrow a holiday. Nobody works, not even you or Arly. It’s going to be a family day like we haven’t had in too long. Maybe after The Edge of Night you can help me peel some potatoes for a salad. And I’ll fry up some chicken. I’ll even make another batch of biscuits and some baked beans.”
“Can Alice come?”
“The child’s practically family. Of course she can.”
Twenty-two
I STAYED away from Nadine’s for the next three days. Mama Betts and I had our picnic, with Effie, The Judge, Arly, Alice, and Maebelle V. Effie and Mama Betts took care of the baby so Alice and I could swim. Arly did his best to pester us to death, but we were having such a good time, we wouldn’t let him ruin it. I kept looking for a chance to talk with The Judge, but there was never a moment when we could slip away privately without making it obvious. He and Effie were thick as thieves.
I was afraid, too, of what I’d done and what I hadn’t done. Daddy was only home for a few days, and then he would be gone. I knew the bitter disappointment he would feel, and I didn’t want to tell him when he was going away. Truth was, I didn’t know how to tell him. So for that short trip to the river, I let myself pretend that nothing had changed on Kali Oka Road.
The Escatawpa is one of the prettiest rivers in our part of the state. Alabama and Mississippi argue about who owns it—until it’s time to improve the bridge. Then nobody wants it and the narrow, deadly bridge on Bloody Highway 98 never gets repaired. But we were upriver from the bridge, and we weren’t concerned about political problems. We had cold water, hot sun and good food.
Neither Mama Betts nor Effie questioned me about not going to Nadine’s. And Nadine didn’t come up to the house, truck motor burping black smoke, saying I was late for work.
I helped Mama Betts in the kitchen and with her plants. When it got too hot to be outside, I lay on the sofa with my head in Effie’s lap and read. It was like I’d gone back to being a really young child. Nobody seemed to care that I�
��d abandoned growing up, least of all me. If I wasn’t old enough to understand what I’d seen at the end of Kali Oka Road, then I didn’t have to tell about it. I could try to forget.
The Judge went back to Missouri, relieving me of opportunity to tell, and Alice and I played until night put an end to our visibility. We swung in the swing and hunted doodle bugs and even played Movie Star Hopscotch and jump rope. Maebelle V. would crawl around, eating grass and bugs. None of it seemed to hurt her, and she laughed about it all. We played at badminton until the baby crawled into the middle of our imaginary court. Then we’d stop and tickle her until she slobbered all over herself. Mama Betts would come out in the yard and rescue her when she thought we’d gotten too rough.
I hadn’t told Alice yet about my trip to the church with Nadine. It was so ugly and frightening, I didn’t want her to have to know about it. If I could have wiped it from my brain, I would have. And I tried. But my efforts to close my mind to what I’d experienced weren’t working. I couldn’t get the picture of that room with the table and doctor’s tools out of my head. It got all mixed up with the crucified Jesus in my dreams. If I told Alice, it would only make her feel bad too. As it was, she didn’t say anything about Cry Baby Creek, the Redeemers or the ghost we’d seen. We were both trying not to remember certain things.
The Redeemers had been gone for four nights, and there was no sign that they were coming back. Maybe they’d moved on. Maybe they wouldn’t be back to Kali Oka Road. I kept my fingers crossed and prayed that such was the case.
It was Wednesday when the old buses came rumbling by in dust even thicker than when they’d first arrived. Alice and I were sucking on lemons that we’d sprinkled with grape Kool-aid and sugar. Mama Betts said the lemons would eat the enamel off our teeth, but she let us have them anyway.
“I wonder if they know they live in a haunted church?” Alice asked. She picked Maebelle V. out of a clump of wild onions and instinctively pulled her to her chest. Happily unaware that she now stank to high heaven, Maebelle grinned, showing off the nub of her first tooth.
“I don’t think they care.” The buses churned down the road. My stomach churned a bit itself. I’d really begun to hope they were gone. I’d prayed harder than I’d ever prayed before.
“Well, they can come back as long as they stay down at the end of the road.” Alice rocked the baby on her hip. “We don’t have to associate with them. Let Jamey Louise have all of them she wants.”
I didn’t say anything, but I knew I’d be going back to the barn the next morning. Greg would be at work. I had to see how Nadine treated him.
“Want to go to the spring and take a bath?” Alice held up Maebelle V. to display the purple Kool-aid drool that had covered her little chest. We’d taken her shirt off to avoid ruining it.
“Sure. I’ll bet Picket would like that too.” I whistled up my dog, and we all set off for the woods and a bath in the spring.
The next morning I got up early and got ready to go to work at the barn. Mama Betts didn’t say anything, she just handed me my breakfast and then started making sandwiches for a lunch.
“Soon your daddy will be home for good, except for the days he has to go to Hattiesburg to teach. That’ll be a good thing, won’t it?”
“I’ll be glad,” I said, wondering what she was getting at.
“When Walt gets home, maybe the two of you can have some time to talk.”
“Maybe.” I jiggled the brown paper sack with my lunch. “I’d better go.”
“Bekkah, we never did talk about those wet shoes of yours. I sort of drew a parallel between those shoes and your sudden desire to hang around the house. Maybe you’ll tell Walt what you saw down at Cry Baby Creek in the dead of night.”
“Maybe,” I answered, but this one had a definite hesitation in it.
“Think on it,” she said. “Since you can’t tell me or Effie, maybe you can tell your daddy.”
“Maybe there’s nothing to tell.”
“Maybe cows can fly.” She turned her blue gaze away from the stove long enough to look at me.
I swallowed twice. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“Be careful,” Mama Betts said as she kissed the top of my head. “Your mama and I are going to Mobile today to do some school shopping. Is there anything you want?”
“Notebooks. Pencils.” Damn! I wanted to go too. “Is Arly going?”
“He needs some shoes and shirts and a couple of pairs of new jeans. He said he wanted to go. He doesn’t want those jeans that bag in the butt.” She was laughing at him.
“I need socks and …” I’d escaped the trip to the Dale Shop for a bra only because Effie had gotten busy with another book. This shopping trip would surely remind her. And Alice said she was going to start wearing stockings to school. She said she was grown up enough, and she had her older sister’s garter belt and some old hose. I’d looked at the contraption, and it didn’t seem worth the effort. Just to be on the safe side, we’d both agreed to take a razor from our houses and to meet at the spring and shave our legs the day before school started. Alice said nobody went to seventh grade with hairy legs, and I’d noticed Jamey Louise was already shaving hers.
“Socks and what else?” Mama Betts waited expectantly.
“Can we wear shorts in seventh grade?”
“No.”
“Jeans?”
“Not girls.”
“We have to wear dresses?” This was worse than I expected.
“That’s my understanding. Mrs. Welford said she’d bought Jamey Louise several on sale. I think they should let you girls wear shorts. It’s still hot as blue blazes at the end of August. If we see any little summer shifts, we’ll get a couple for you. Something cottony and cool.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I hated stupid dresses. I could just imagine Jamey Louise brimming over with excitement. She loved dresses. She said they made her feel feminine. Dresses, talcum powder and Evening in Paris. And Greg kissing her lips and trying to feel her up.
It took me longer than usual to walk to Nadine’s, but I was starting out nearly an hour early. When I got there I was surprised to see Greg off down in the back of the field digging. The red clay earth and the shovel sent a chill over me, but I walked down that way to talk a minute before Jamey Louise arrived. Jamey acted like she owned Greg. Whenever he tried to talk to me, she’d order him to get back to work and to stay busy. I’d started teasing him behind her back about being henpecked and not even married. To my surprise, he seemed to like being tormented in that way.
“How was Hattiesburg?” I asked as I was walking up.
Greg kicked dirt over something beside the hole. It was a blue towel with holes in it. There was something brown underneath it.
“Fine. Nadine said Cammie’s stall had ants in it. She wants it taken down to the dirt so I can put in some lime. Good thing you came early. You’d better get busy.”
I looked at the towel. “What are you doing?”
“Something Nadine asked me to do. You’d better get to the barn.” Something smelled terrible. As I was watching a big blowfly landed on the towel. Iridescent green, it shimmered in the sun. Then I noticed the brown paw half covered with dirt.
“What happened to the dog?”
Greg shrugged. “Nadine said it died. She asked me to bury it.”
Greg’s chest and back were covered with sweat. He worked without a shirt and his body was baked brown. The scars from his beating had slowly faded beneath his tan, but I could still imagine them.
“What did it die from?” Those dogs stayed in the house. It wasn’t like it’d gotten run over or anything.
“She didn’t say, Bekkah. She just asked me to bury it. That’s what I’m doing. Now you’d better get to work. She wanted me to do this before you got here or she and Jamey got back. When the other two died, she said it would upset you if you found out.”
“The other two? Two more of her dogs have died?” My voice rose. “When?”
�
��I guess it was about three weeks ago.”
“Is somebody putting out poison?” I couldn’t believe it, but I looked around for Picket. If someone was putting out arsenic to kill strays, I didn’t want my dog getting any of it.
“They died in the house.” Greg looked at me with a sharp, hungry stare. “They hadn’t been outside at all. And they’d been dead a while before she asked me to bury them.”
I started to tell him what a liar he was, but I didn’t. Something in the way he watched me made me hold back. “Dead for how long?” Not even Nadine with her total lack of cleanliness could live in a house with a dead animal.
“Maybe a week.”
“In this heat, they’d a had maggots all over them.”
Greg wiped his lip on the back of his hand. “They did. Right in her living room behind the sofa. Looked like they bled some from the mouth.”
I had the craziest notion he wasn’t lying, but he had to be. His blue eyes watched me without flinching. He could lie as good as Nadine. Then I caught it. They had gotten together and made up a story to horrify me. They knew how much I loved Picket, so they’d concocted this gruesome story just to make me sick.
“Well, you’d better bury that one before the maggots hatch and carry you off,” I said, turning to walk back to the barn. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of letting them see that it bothered me to realize Nadine’s dog was dead. No matter how or when it died.
“You’re pretty tough, aren’t you, Bekkah?” Greg called softly. “I wonder what it would take to make you cry.”
“That’s one thing you’ll never find out.” I threw the words over my shoulder, then thought better of them. I didn’t really want to challenge Greg. His life was worse than anything I could make up. I turned back around, and he was still leaning on his shovel, watching me.
“People being cruel to other people, or animals. That would make me cry,” I said. “I’m not as tough as you think.”
He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “You like to do the unexpected, don’t you? But one thing about you, Bekkah Rich, you don’t lie.” He dug a shovelful of dirt, then leaned on the handle. “You can’t even imagine what real cruelty can be like.” He stepped down on the shovel and started digging.
Summer of the Redeemers Page 21
