Summer of the Redeemers

by Carolyn Haines

  “Let’s go,” Alice said. She grinned. “I’ve been praying that something would happen to take your mind off those Redeemer folks. The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

  Six

  WELL, you girls look like you bathed in sweat and powdered with Kali Oka dust.” Mama Betts took the baby from Alice with a look that spoke her displeasure. “What have you been doing with this child, using her for a kick ball? I’ve never seen the like. Thunderation, her little tummy is tight as a drum with gas, and she smells like she hasn’t been bathed or changed in a week. There should be a law …”

  She took Maebelle V. and walked into the house with her, headed straight for the bathroom and a soapy tub. As soon as she’d passed through the kitchen, Alice and I hit the refrigerator. There was part of a coconut custard pie and some cold milk. We ate out of the pie tin, not even bothering with saucers. Then we moved on to some bread and pimento cheese spread that Mama Betts had made up fresh that morning. She put olives in it, my favorite way. And though I liked it toasted in the oven, I didn’t bother with the niceties. We were too hungry for such.

  “Where were you girls at lunch?” Effie had walked quietly into the kitchen from her study. Her glasses were down her nose, and her hair was curls all standing on end. I could see where she’d been dragging her fingers through her hair as she wrote. Whenever I did that, she fussed at me and said I’d make myself bald. My hair wasn’t as curly as hers, and I wore it in braids.

  “We went for a swim,” I answered around the half of sandwich I’d stuffed in my mouth.

  “I was beginning to think you’d drowned.”

  “We had a little trouble with the bikes on the way home. Somebody moved in the old McInnis place. A woman with horses.” “Horses?”

  Alice looked from me to Effie and back. Before I could answer she jumped in. “Yes, ma’am, she had a big old truck and a trailer filled with horses. They were all crying and screaming when she pulled up at that place.” Alice stopped when I kicked her under the table.

  “They weren’t really screaming. They were just talking.”

  “Forget it, Bekkah.”

  “Forget what?”

  “The idea that you’re going down to the old McInnis place.”

  Effie knew how bad I wanted to ride. I could see how much it scared her to think about it. She’d been dragged once as a young girl and almost killed. She was deathly afraid of horses, and she just didn’t want me around them at all. She didn’t seem to want me to do anything that was new or fun. Even Mama Betts said so when they thought I was asleep.

  “I’d better get the baby and go on home to help Mama with supper.” Alice stood up, picked up her napkin and threw it in the trash. She wasn’t about to mix in the great horse war that was raging between me and Effie. She hurried from the room to the back of the house, where Mama Betts was playing with the baby.

  “I’m telling you right up front: stay away from those horses.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I rolled my crumbs into a little ball and mashed it into the tablecloth.

  “Emily Welford called and said she had some new potatoes and okra if you or Arly would come pick it.”

  “I’ll go as soon as Alice leaves.”

  “Take Emily a jar of the strawberry preserves Mama Betts put up.”

  “Okay. Where’s Arly?” I didn’t mind digging the potatoes, but the okra made my hands itch and burn. I wanted either Arly or his gloves.

  “He’s running an errand for me in Jexville.”

  “In town?” He would be sitting at the drugstore sipping on a fountain Coke and reading a comic book in the Kool air-conditioned store. “How’d he get to town?”

  “I took him right after lunch. We looked for you, but we couldn’t find you.”

  That was it, then. It was my fault that I was walking down Kali Oka in the hot sand with the sun scorching the part on my head while Arly was living it up in town.

  “See you tomorrow.” Alice walked back into the kitchen with a much cleaner and happier baby in her arms. Mama Betts had also supplied her with a fresh bottle of evaporated milk, water and a little sugar. The baby was sucking and gurgling with contentment.

  “Are we still on for swimming?” I made it sound like we’d talked it over.

  Alice looked at me as if I’d turned into a toad. She knew we weren’t going to walk all the way to the end of Kali Oka again. And we didn’t have our bikes.

  “Swimming?”

  “At eleven. The picnic, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah, the picnic.”

  Effie watched us, but she didn’t say anything for a moment. “Maybe Mama Betts will pack a lunch for you.” She turned and left the room.

  “She doesn’t believe us,” Alice hissed. She clamped my shoulder with her hand. “She knows we’re lying.”

  “She thinks it’s the horses.” I knew she did. She thought I’d spent part of the day at the old McInnis place. I knew the look of disappointment on her face at the idea that I hadn’t told her the truth.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Give those boys a chance to redeem their shirts.” I could imagine how the scene would go. It would be sweet revenge to make those boys say uncle. We’d have our bicycles back in a flash, and then I’d tell them where to find their shirts.

  “Be sure you leave Picket at home. They might try to hurt her.”

  Of all the disturbing things I’d ever thought, it had never crossed my mind that someone would hurt Picket to get at me, until today. It had already happened. Alice was right.

  “Meet me in the woods at ten. That should give us a chance to walk a ways down the road and find a good picnic spot.”

  “And those boys will find us, right?”

  “If they’re smart they will.” And if they weren’t, then I’d have to bring Arly into my confidence. Arly, sitting at the drugstore counter. Effie must have given him money to spend, too, ‘cause he’d already gone through his allowance and tried to borrow some from me.

  “See you at ten.” Alice let the screen door slam behind her as she took off for home, humming a little song to the baby in her arms.

  After Alice left I went to Emily’s for the potatoes and okra. There would probably be peas and corn too. She had a daughter my age, Jamey Louise, who hated picking vegetables. Emily always sent her out in the field to help me, but all she ever did was dig her bare toes into the hot dirt and complain.

  Emily and Gustav, her husband, and their three daughters, Jamey Louise being the youngest, lived about a mile down from us on the right side of the road. Gustav, better known as Big Gus, worked as a carpenter at a factory, and he farmed forty acres on the side. Emily, who was nearly six feet tall and had the biggest chest in all of Chickasaw County, put up a lot of vegetables and was always real generous to share with us. We in turn gave her lots of fruit and preserves and pecans from our trees. Daddy didn’t farm, but Mama Betts had a way with fruit and nut trees and berries. When nobody else in the county had pecans, we did. Big old Stuarts and those long papershells with hulls so thin anybody could crack them.

  There was talk that Libby Ruth, the oldest girl, gave Emily a lot of trouble. Libby liked nice things. She liked boys and fast cars, and she liked to laugh. She was homecoming queen last year, and she looked more beautiful than any other girl in school even though she was taller than a lot of the boys. She was always real nice to me, even when a lot of the high school kids were around. She drove the tractor in the field in her two-piece swimsuit and had the best suntan of anyone near Jexville. I thought she should be on television, and I told her so, which made Jamey Louise squinch up her face and pinch me. She said I shouldn’t encourage Libby in that kind of thinking because all she ever did was read magazines and listen to the radio as it was.

  Walking over to Emily’s, I hoped Libby would be at home. There were four Welfords in all, but Buck, the oldest, was long gone, working the oil fields in Texas and making a fortune. Mama Betts said he was the handsomest young man she’d ever seen,
but I hardly remembered him at all. The middle girl, Cora, was pretty too, but she wasn’t as much fun as Libby, or as tall. And Jamey was no fun at all and the runt of the litter. It was like the juices had all been spent on Libby. She had all the best of the looks and a happy way. The others just sort of dribbled along after her, even though Jamey Louise was thought by all the schoolboys to be a real dish and it looked like she was going to take after her mother’s chest. I didn’t bother to go in the house when I got there. I got the shovel from the shed and found a pail and headed toward the long rows of potatoes.

  I liked the way Gus’s shovel felt. The handle was worn smooth, as finely worked as if someone had rubbed it down with sandpaper. Arly’s gloves weren’t in his top dresser drawer, so I was working bare-handed. Gus had taught me the art of “tater diggin’ “ and said I had a natural feel for it. The tip of the shovel was placed about eight inches from the plant and then pushed down with a smooth thrust of the foot. When the dirt was turned, the potatoes were clumped up in it. The smell of the earth was rich, warm and somehow comforting. Even the feel of the sun on my shoulders and back was pleasant. Over toward the house I caught sight of Picket trying to ambush one of Emily’s guineas. Good luck, Picket. Those mean old guineas would turn on her in a second and send her scooting for the safety of the potato patch. As I watched the hen spun around and launched herself at my dog, old leathery chicken claws extended. Picket was in it more for the sport than the kill, and she didn’t have the heart to pursue the game. Tail tucked, she came back out to my side and laid down in the row where I’d just turned the earth up.

  “Mama says to tell you there’s fresh lemonade.”

  Wiping the sweat from my eyes, I looked up to see Jamey Louise standing at the end of the row. She had on a dress and lipstick. A big straw bonnet protected her face.

  “You’d better get you a hat or those freckles are going to get thicker and thicker until you look like a monkey, or one of those Waltman girls.”

  “I like freckles.” I liked Alice’s freckles, but I hated the ones that were across my nose and were slowly growing on my shoulders and arms.

  “Freckles are ugly, and none of the magazines recommend them.”

  “That’s too bad, Jamey Louise.” I stepped down on the shovel and realized too late I was too close to the potato mound. I could feel the blade as it sliced several taters in half. “Why don’t you give me a hand with this, and we can dig some for Emily while we’re at it?”

  “I hate potatoes. They’re nothing but dirt.”

  “What’s wrong with dirt?” I was goading her and we both knew it.

  “One day I’m gonna live in a big house with white columns and a marble dance floor imported from Italy. We’ll never serve potatoes, or butter beans, or peas at my house.”

  Jamey Louise considered herself a tap dancer of great talent. The boys loved to watch her because it looked like some wild animal was loose in her sweater. “What are you going to eat, hamburgers and ice cream?”

  “French qui-sine.” She dared me to comment. “Libby says that President Kennedy and the First Lady have a cook who prepares French qui-sine. Mrs. Kennedy also has a French designer who makes her special clothes. They come all the way from France.”

  “Why would an American president’s wife want clothes that came from France? Seems like she’d want to wear American clothes.” I had a mental picture of a very neat dark-haired woman with this dorky little round hat on top of her puffed-out hair.

  “You have no couth, Rebekah Rich. You’ll never get a boyfriend.” Jamey linked her hands behind her back. “There are some cute boys down at that church, but Libby says they’re a waste of time.”

  Shovel tip in the ground, I stopped and looked at her. This was a new gambit from Jamey Louise. What was she driving at?

  “Libby said the boys from the church don’t have cars or money. She said even if they are cute, they’re a waste. Do you think they’re a waste?”

  “I suspect Libby knows more about boys than I do.” Jamey Louise had rocks in her head if she was interested in boys who would beat on a helpless dog and steal bicycles, but those weren’t facts I felt free to divulge to her.

  “There’s this one boy, tall with dark hair. I saw him this afternoon riding by—”

  “On a bicycle?” I dropped five potatoes in the bucket and determined that I had enough for me and the Welfords for supper. I could move on to the okra.

  “Yeah. It was a girl’s bike, though.”

  “A white Schwinn?” That bicycle was my pride. The idea that those boys might leave it out in the weather tormented me. I’d had it for a year and there wasn’t even a dent on it.

  “Yeah, a white bicycle.”

  “With a deep front basket?”

  “No,” Jamey Louise smiled. “There wasn’t a basket. If that bike had had a basket, it would have looked just like yours.”

  “Are you sure?” My palms felt hot and sweaty, and a stinging sensation started on the top of my scalp. Either I was going to faint or I had been gripped by a fury so powerful that I’d never experienced it before. Had they dared to take my basket off?

  “I’m sure. You think I don’t know a basket on a bike?”

  “What time?”

  “About half an hour ago.”

  So that explained the bonnet, the lipstick and the dress. Jamey Louise was sick, sick, sick, dressing to catch the eye of one of those Redeemer boys. She obviously didn’t think it was a waste of time no matter what Libby said. “Did he say anything?”

  “He asked me if I knew a girl with pigtails and another one with blond hair and freckles. He said they had a baby. Sounds an awful lot like you and Alice and her kid sister.” Jamey’s eyes were small and brown. Hidden under the shade of her hat they had a distinctly pig-like quality.

  I wanted to tell her that he’d stolen my bike and hit my dog with a stick, but the horrendousness of those acts would wash over Jamey like a cloud across the sun. Besides, she’d twist it up and gossip it all over the road. Before I knew what hit me, it would be everywhere that I was consorting with the Redeemers down in the woods. Mama Betts would have my hide.

  “He must have seen us when the buses went by. All those folks looked spooky to me, like zombies all going down the road in a bus to hell.”

  “I’m telling on you for cussing.”

  “Be my guest.” I looked up at her. “Shithead.” That did the trick. She tore out of the field as if I’d thrown roaches on her feet. Emily wouldn’t believe I’d called Jamey a shithead. Emily thought I was the most courteous child she’d ever met.

  I put the shovel back in Gus’s shed and found a sharp garden knife he kept on hand for cutting vegetables. There was a store of paper sacks out there, too, and I got a big one. I’d cut it full and then take the okra and potatoes up to the house to divide with the Welfords. Mama insisted that whenever I picked vegetables, I was always to pick enough for us and for them too. The pleasure of the afternoon was lost, though. I couldn’t shake the image of my bicycle stripped of the basket and God knew what else. I felt more helpless than I’d ever felt in my life. Totally hamstrung. It was at that moment that my decision to go back to the McInnis place crystallized. If I hurried with the okra I’d have time to hurry down there and back before anyone missed me.

  Seven

  THE green Chevy and rusted old trailer were parked at the end of the driveway, just inside the gate. It didn’t look like much of a rig, but I could imagine that it had been all over the world. I’d read about the MacClay and Madison Square Gardens and the Grand Prix. Never in a million years had I dreamed that a little piece of that world might drive down Kali Oka Road. Not until today. All I had to do was walk into the barn to see those horses and the woman who rode them.

  Picket and I stood in the driveway in the shade of the biggest chinaberry tree. The big barn doors were open wide. In the dim light near the front of the barn, a small shape flitted through the shadows. Beside me, Picket tensed. I grabbed a firm hold
on her collar and spoke softly to her. Not all chickens were as savvy as the Welfords’. Whatever was in the barn, I didn’t want Picket chasing it. I didn’t want to have to go in that barn after her. We surely hadn’t been invited.

  For a long time we didn’t move. Deep within the barn something repeatedly stirred, but it wasn’t a sound I was familiar with. As much as it shamed me, that barn still scared me. By all reasons of logic, there were supposed to be horses in there. What if it was something else? I didn’t have to go in there. I could always walk home, picking up the sack of potatoes and okra I’d left by the Welford fence.

  Walk home in defeat, a coward twice in one day!

  I had a mental picture of my bicycle, stripped of its basket and neglected in the sun and rain. I started walking toward the barn. The Redeemer boy had sent me a challenge, and I’d failed to answer him. I would not lose the entire day.

  There was a big iron gate that allowed the truck and trailer to pass into the barnyard, and there was a smaller gate for people. It was latched with a rusty hook on part of an old dog leash. Only that morning there hadn’t been a hook on the gate. I opened it and walked through, still holding tight to Picket’s collar. A yellow streak zipped by the barn door. Cat. Picket tugged against my hold. She liked to chase cats. She’d never hurt anything. Like with the hens, she liked the sport. But I suspected that the cats and chickens didn’t much care for it, even though Addy Adams’ big tabby cat Mr. Tom seemed to take delight in taunting Picket whenever we went over there. Addy said her cat was smarter than most people and that Picket didn’t stand a chance. That cat was something. He’d lead Picket a chase all over the yard and then end up in my arms, purring away, just to get Picket’s goat. He was a special cat, almost like a child to Addy.

  Picket wanted to go after the yellow cat at the barn, but she knew I had a hold of her, so we let the gate bang shut behind us and walked across the red clay barnyard to the open door. It was late afternoon. Later than it should have been. The sun was hovering above the tallest oak tree along the fence row, and it was about four-thirty by my best calculations. I didn’t have time to dally if I wanted to see the horse woman and get home before Mama was really irritated.