Summer of the Redeemers

by Carolyn Haines

  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 gram
mar 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.”

  He shrugged. “Okay.”

  We eased back into the cedars, followed their line to the end of the fence and made our way to his truck. We were only a few minutes from Jexville, and we made the trip without talking. I was thinking about Nadine.

  I made Frank stay in the truck just in case I got caught. There was no point in dragging him into it. The sheriff’s office was empty, as I’d expected. Everyone was at the funeral. The key to the jail was hanging on the nail beside the back door, and I had it in a few seconds. The jail yard was freshly raked, and I was across it in no time. I opened the door to the jail and stepped inside.

  Nadine was the only prisoner. She was on the bottom floor in the last cell on the right. There were no provisions for women in the Chickasaw County jail, so it was a good thing she was the only prisoner.

  She was sitting on her cot, waiting for me. The light from the barred windows cut across her face, leaving only her eyes revealed. They were a golden brown, alert.

  “I wondered when you’d come,” she said.

  “The horses are okay. Gus’s going to take care of them until we can find owners.”

  She waved her hand. “I’m done with them. They shit too much.”

  I put my fingers on the bars and felt the cool steel. Nadine was wearing an old T-shirt with a hole in the right shoulder and a pair of riding pants, knee-high socks and sneakers. Her hair was tangled and uncombed. There was a smudge of dirt on her right cheek and a cut on her forehead. Her wrists were badly bruised from the handcuffs. They said she’d struggled when they’d taken her down.

  “Why, Nadine?” I tightened my grip on the bar.

  “Why what?” She gave me that cagey smile, like she knew something really interesting that I didn’t know.

  “Would you rather I call you Dianne? Dianne Salter.” I meant it to be mean, but she only grinned wider.

  “Call me what you like.”

  “Why did you come to Kali Oka Road?”

  “The Redeemers took my baby. I’ve been following them ever since, on and off now for four years. They had to be punished. You understand that, Bekkah, bad people have to be punished.”

  “That’s a lie and you know it. Damn you! They’re going to dig up that little dead baby in Beulah. They’ll find her just where you buried her. You murdered your own baby and buried her in that trailer court.”

  Nadine looked out the window. “Maybe. I guess only time will tell.”

  If the bars hadn’t been between us, I would have killed her myself. “Don’t you want to know about Greg?” I wanted to bait her, to tell her that he was going to have a wonderful life while she rotted in prison. I wanted her to know that all of us would be happy one day, that we’d get over what she’d done. But I didn’t believe it enough to say it. There was no getting over Maebelle.

  “I don’t care what happens to Greg. It’s insignificant to me. But if you do see him, tell him we were successful.”

  “Successful?” Surely not in killing Maebelle. Was she implying that she and Greg had planned it?

  “I’m pregnant.” She smiled. “They won’t execute a pregnant woman, and I doubt the state of Mississippi will kill a mother. At least not for a while.”

  “They’ll never let you keep a baby. Not in prison.” I backed away from the cell.

  “I could ask that your family adopt it.” Nadine grinned her fox grin. She was tormenting me. I didn’t know whether to believe she was pregnant or not.

  “I hope there is a hell, and I hope you burn there forever.” I meant that. Every word of it. It had been stupid of me to come to the jail. Whatever I’d expected to find out, Frank was right. She was never going to tell me anything worth knowing.

  “You want to know why I killed her, don’t you?”

  Her question startled me. I’d backed clear across the aisle so that my back was touching the other cell bars. “Why did you?” That was exactly what I’d come to ask. Nad
ine always knew the questions.

  “She wouldn’t stop crying.”

  “Maebelle never cried. Not really.”

  “I guess maybe she was hungry.” Nadine shrugged. “I thought I really wanted her until I had her. Then she was too much trouble. She wouldn’t shut up.”

  Nadine looked at me and laughed at the horror that was on my face.

  “It wasn’t Maebelle I really wanted, although from the first minute I saw her I was planning how to get her. It was you, Bekkah. You and Greg and Jamey Louise. Even cautious little Alice, who tried so desperately to avoid me. And I had you all. For the best part of a summer, you were all mine.” She lifted her chin so that the sunlight struck fully across her face. “And I still have you, Bekkah. Oh, yes, I’ve collected the best of each of you.”

  I turned and ran as hard as I could. I threw the key to the jail door on the ground. I didn’t care if they ever got Nadine out of there. I didn’t care if she starved.

  Frank cranked the motor as soon as I’d slammed the door.

  “Where to?” he asked. He cut a look at me but didn’t comment further.

  “Home,” I whispered. “Kali Oka Road.”

  When Frank failed to move the truck, I looked up. The Judge was standing at the truck window. I should have known that he would see me leave the graveside. He was standing on the curb, waiting for me.

  “I guess I’d better ride home with Daddy,” I said. I reached across the seat and touched Frank’s arm. “Thanks.” Before he had a chance to be a gentleman, I opened the door and got out.

  “Effie’s worried about you,” The Judge said as he nodded toward the new black Volvo that was parked on the south side of the courthouse square. “We’d better be getting home. Alice is going to spend a few days with us.”

  I got in the front seat before I asked him. “Does she hate me?”

  “Alice?” He shook his head. “No, Bekkah, she doesn’t. She doesn’t even hate herself. Nobody could have loved that child more than Alice did.”