Summer of the Redeemers

by Carolyn Haines

  He walked out the crack I’d left in the door, and then suddenly slammed it completely shut behind him. The angle of light from the door disappeared. I was alone in the dark old barn.

  Eleven

  THE scene I’d anticipated with Mama Betts over the shirts never happened. When I got home, Effie was crying in her room. The noises she made were soft, like a fall rain, but they also had the sound of winter in them, as if they’d never stop. It was not the tears of anger or frustration that came with trouble with her books. Those tears were hot and stormy. Electric tears that burst into angry exclamations and arguments on the telephone. These were the worst tears, the one that meant Effie was badly injured and grieving. She and Daddy had been fighting again, and this time over the telephone.

  “There’s a bag with some sandwiches. Take them over to Alice’s and have a picnic,” Mama Betts said as soon as I entered the kitchen. She was making a pot of coffee, and her hands trembled.

  “Is Daddy coming home now?” I needed him, and I knew that he wasn’t.

  “Rebekah Brighton Rich, take those sandwiches and get out of this kitchen.”

  Though her back was turned to me, I knew she was crying. Mama Betts hardly ever cried. She said she’d expended all her tears raising her children and she had none left except for extreme emergencies.

  “Is Daddy sick?” A long-suppressed fear rose up and turned my gut to liquid. Three years before there had been whispering, telephone calls, trips to the doctor, and finally the hospital where Daddy was forced to stay for weeks while they made test after test. He’d been very sick, and no one would tell me or Arly what was wrong.

  There was a morning, with the sun streaming in the blinds of the hospital room in Hattiesburg, when he’d lain in bed, eyes closed, his breathing hard and slow. Effie had gone for some coffee, and I was watching him sleep. I hadn’t been allowed to see him for two weeks, and I wouldn’t leave. If I could stay with him, I could make him better. There was a drip in his arm, and his hand was cool on the sheet. I woke him. I knew that if I didn’t wake him up and take him home, he might never come home again.

  He said he was just tired and needed to rest, for me not to worry. He went back to sleep, and Effie came back into the room and took me home. In a few weeks he did come home, and the rest of that fall he stayed home and wrote, like Effie. He wasn’t completely well, but he was getting better. In the winter he went back to work, and nothing more was said about his sickness. But the mantel in their bedroom was filled with tiny pill bottles that we were told never to touch. He took medicine in the morning and when he came home from work, and he took it to work with him so he could take it at lunch.

  Mama Betts put her hand on my shoulder and pulled me into a hug. “Your daddy’s fine, Bekkah. He’s just fine.”

  “Is he coming home?” He had to be. Something was terribly wrong and I knew it. “When is he coming home?” I spoke into the fabric of her dress. She smelled of sugar cookies and lemon.

  “Not for a while.”

  My heart twisted so painfully I thought I might cry out. He wasn’t coming home any time soon. Something was wrong. They’d been arguing, Daddy and Effie, and it had gotten bad.

  “How would you like to go up and visit your father?”

  “To Missouri?” That question put a gentle brake on my fears. I wanted to see him more than anything.

  “It isn’t that far. You could take a bus. Or maybe even fly there.” She was thinking out loud, weighing the possibilities of travel.

  “Could I?” And in that same instant: “Effie won’t let me. She won’t even let me go to the beach.”

  “This time she might not have as much say as she’d like.”

  Mama Betts was finished crying. She had a plan, a goal. She patted my back. “Take those sandwiches and go play with Alice for a few hours. Let me talk with Effie. I’m beginning to see where a little trip for you might be good for the whole family.”

  “And Arly?” He’d burn with jealousy if I got to go see Daddy. Especially if I got to fly.

  “I’m not so sure about Arly. It might be better if you and The Judge had some time together alone. You’re very much like him, Bekkah. Perhaps the two of you can work out … the details.” She smiled and lifted a weight off my heart.

  Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Daddy and Effie fought. They had since I could remember. There were arguments at the supper table about events so far removed from Kali Oka that Arly and I never even noticed who said what. Many times they agreed in what they called principle, but they had different ideas about how to go about changing things. Some of this talk was about Negroes. Some about poverty. Some about Europe or Mexico or other faraway places that were only names on a map. These arguments were part of the rhythm of Kali Oka Road. They were part of the smell of cornbread baking in the oven and the pop and sizzle of chicken frying. “Pass the mashed potatoes” would be spoken in the middle of a long speech on the brutality of immigration laws. It was the fights that went on behind the bedroom door that were the bad ones.

  Sometimes at night, no matter how much I didn’t want to hear, there would be words that crept over the transom and into my room, dancing and pointing at me. One word they threw back and forth at each other was opportunity. Another was control. Dependency. Agreement. Promises. And my name. Bekkah. They argued about me. And Mama Betts.

  Arly, stuffed full of supper and dreams of the girls he was going to kiss, would sleep like a log in his room. Or at least he never admitted that he heard any of the fights. Maybe he didn’t because I never heard his name batted back and forth like a shuttlecock.

  “Now take these sandwiches, and you and Alice have some fun. Just keep an eye on that baby. I wonder Mrs. Waltman allows the two of you to go off with that infant.”

  Mama Betts was pressing me out the door. The sack she’d handed me was filled with sandwiches and cookies and wedges of cheese and small bags of potato chips.

  “She doesn’t even think about it. Alice says that since she’s got another cake in the oven, she doesn’t have time to worry about the one that’s already baked.”

  “Rebekah!” Mama Betts’ arms went automatically to her hips, the stance of shock and disapproval. “Well, Alice said it, not me.”

  “And don’t think that I’ve forgotten about those shirts, young lady.

  We’ll attend to them later.”

  “I ran into Greg, and he wanted them right then, so I gave them all to him. I told him we were going to wash and iron them and bring them back,” I hurried on, because I knew she’d be angry that I’d gone against her plans, “but he wanted them right away. He said he wouldn’t go home without them.”

  Behind her glasses, Mama Betts blinked twice. “Well, maybe it’s for the best. The incident is over. You and Alice have the bikes back, and the boys have their shirts. And if you’re up in Missouri, I won’t have to worry about what the two of you are getting into with the church people.”

  “Since they were their shirts, I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Where did you run into that boy?”

  “I didn’t go on the church property, if that’s what your asking.” The bitter evidence of the lashes across the boy’s back almost made me flinch. I saw him again, chest glistening with sweat and then the sight of his back. I wanted to tell Mama Betts, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t right that I’d seen the boy without his shirt in the barn. There had been something wrong about it, something I couldn’t even begin to put my finger on. I just knew that I couldn’t talk about it.

  “Rebekah, I’m an old woman. I grew up in the days before cars and televisions.”

  She was staring at me, and I had no idea where she was going. I shifted my weight from foot to foot. Mama Betts was up to something, circling all around me with words to set the trap firm.

  “From the time when I was a little girl, there’s a smell I remember. When I hugged you up close, that old familiar smell came back to me.”

  The horse blankets soaked in
sweat!

  “I’m not telling you your business, but if it were me, I’d get some fresh shorts and a blouse, and I’d take a bar of soap and go for a dunk down at the spring on the way to Alice’s house.”

  “Thanks, Mama Betts.” I started back to my room.

  “What were you doing in the McInnis barn?”

  “I took the blankets off the horses. They were sweating and Na—Mrs. Andrews was gone.”

  “Blankets on horses in June?”

  I shrugged. It didn’t make sense to me either. “She’d gone to get the rest of her horses, I think. Maybe she forgot to take them off.”

  “I know a little about horses. Blankets in June is asking for pneumonia. Why, the nights are hot already. Too hot for a sheet, even for an old body like mine with no hair and thin blood. That woman must not have good sense, or she must be a Yankee.”

  I nodded. The horses had been slick with sweat, but surely Nadine knew what she was doing. After all, she had nine horses and knew how to ride them. “Maybe it’s because they’re special show horses.”

  “Harrumph,” Mama Betts snorted. “Even fancy horses sweat and get sick when they’re not cared for properly. I’ve been around stock, fancy and plain. And another thing, Rebekah, I don’t approve of you sneaking around behind your mother’s back with those horses. Don’t go back there until you have her permission.”

  “I didn’t ride them. I only took the blankets off.”

  “No matter. Effie has to say yes before you go back.” She paused. “Do I have your word?”

  “Mama Betts …”

  “No dancing around, Bekkah. I want your word.”

  It wasn’t fair. “She’s offered to let me work there for lessons. Daddy said that I—”

  “Your father isn’t here. Effie is, and she’s the one who worries about you.”

  “She doesn’t worry about Arly the same way!” Arly was always going and doing just as he pleased. He played sports and ran around town and got to go camping with his friends and on trips to Jackson and Mobile … and to the beach.

  “Your word, Rebekah.”

  Mama Betts’ patience was wearing thin. “Okay.” I whispered it because I knew it was a lie. Probably the first intentional lie I’d ever told. But I was going to see Cammie and the other horses. No matter what the cost. No matter how big the lie.

  “When you get back from Missouri, we’ll talk about those horses. It might be a good idea for you to take lessons. Maybe it wouldn’t worry Effie so much if she thought you’d learn how to ride safely.”

  “It isn’t just the horses and you know it. It’s everything. Mama won’t let me do anything! She’s always afraid I’ll get hurt, but the truth is she doesn’t want me to do anything at all except stay right here!” The tears were burning my eyes and throat.

  “Your mother loves you too much, child.”

  “Yeah, well, that sounds good, but it feels awful.” I took the sack and hurried out the door before I started to cry. It was a matter of pride. I didn’t cry in front of anyone, except maybe Alice and Picket.

  By the time I got to the Waltmans’, I’d calmed down. Alice and I enjoyed the lunch. We tempted fate and gave Maebelle V. a taste of pimento cheese. She seemed to like it as much as we did, but Alice was cautious. She only let the baby have a taste. Picket liked it, too, as well as the chicken salad and the peanut butter cookies that Mama Betts had baked the night before. While we lazed in the shade near the spring, I brought Alice up to date with the Redeemer boys and Nadine, and my forthcoming trip to Missouri. I tried not to sound too excited, ‘cause Alice had never been farther away than Jexville.

  During the summers when Daddy wasn’t working away, we had always taken vacations to places like the Grand Canyon and the Rocky Mountains or Rock City in Tennessee. Daddy liked to travel, and he thought it was good for me and Arly to see the country. He said we could better appreciate the diversity of the people and their beliefs if we saw it firsthand.

  Whenever we went away, it always took about a week for me and Alice to get back to the place where we’d left off. She acted as if she expected me to change while we were on vacation. I tried not to brag too much about what we’d seen and done. Once Effie asked Mrs. Waltman if Alice could go with us to Florida for a vacation at the beach. Mrs. Waltman said Alice had too many chores at home to be gallivanting all over the country, so Alice didn’t get to go. A lot of the fun of that vacation was gone because the whole time I missed Alice so much.

  When I told her about Missouri, she got kind of quiet. I told her something was wrong with Mama and Daddy, that they’d been fighting on the telephone.

  “How come your Daddy stays gone so much?” Alice was changing Maebelle V.

  “His work. Lots of people’s daddies are gone to work all the time.”

  “Not like yours. They go and come back every two weeks if they work offshore. Yours is gone for months and months.”

  “It’s because he works at universities and for magazines. Sometimes he has to go for long jobs.” She was hitting at something that had only begun to bother me.

  “Then why don’t you and your mama and Arly go with him? Your mama could write her books anywhere, couldn’t she?”

  That was the crux of it, and part of the fragmented arguments I heard through my bedroom transom. Daddy wanted us with him, but Effie wouldn’t go. It didn’t make sense to me, except that I wasn’t all that keen on leaving Kali Oka Road to go someplace where I wouldn’t have Alice or any of the other people I knew. Still, we could have been with Daddy, and that would have made a difference.

  “Mama doesn’t want to go, I guess. She has deadlines and things, and she says she can’t concentrate anywhere but in her study. She says she doesn’t have to worry about me and Arly when we’re on Kali Oka. She says the road is the safest place in the world.”

  Alice put in the last pin and righted Maebelle V. up on her shoulder. “I see,” she said, and I knew that she did. Effie didn’t want to go.

  “What about those Redeemer boys while you’re gone to Missouri?”

  I’d thought about this on the way over to Alice’s house. “I’d stay clear of them.” I also had a favor to ask. “Would you keep an eye on Picket? I mean go and get her and take her for a walk back here in the woods, away from the road?”

  “You think that Greg boy might hurt her, don’t you?”

  I nodded. “Someone killed Mr. Tom with a rock. Mama Betts thinks it was the Redeemer boys because of the shirts. And that stupid Jamey Louise told Greg all about me and you.”

  “I’d like to fill her mouth with chicken shit.” Alice was holding Maebelle V. in a standing position. The baby was making struggling movements, as if she really wanted to try to walk. She was getting stronger and stronger by the day.

  “Fill it full and then tape it shut,” I added. Jamey Louise had been a big-mouth from the first day in school. “Want to go pay her a visit?” Mama Betts had told me to stay away from the house for at least three hours. I had time to kill, and I didn’t want to go in Alice’s. That house was in constant motion with a pitch of noise that would drive anyone crazy. There weren’t enough chairs to sit on, and the house was in steady decline. The floors tilted in all directions, and there were places where they’d rotted through because of leaky pipes or something. It didn’t seem to bother Mrs. Waltman. Alice had said one time that pregnancy produced some type of chemical or hormone, as she called it, that made women oblivious to what happened around them. She said her mother was a drug addict for that hormone, and that once she had a cake in the oven, she forgot there were holes in the floor.

  “Naw, I don’t want to see Jamey Louise. If we get in a fight with her, she’ll end up telling on us and I’ll get in trouble.”

  Alice was right. Jamey Louise was a big-mouth and a tattletale. She didn’t have a single redeeming quality.

  “If your daddy asked you to stay with him, would you?”

  Alice’s question was a lance in my heart. “That would mean he wasn
’t ever coming home. That he and Mama wouldn’t be married anymore.”

  “People get divorced.”

  Other people, but not my parents. Effie was hot-tempered, everyone knew that and gave her plenty of room. But Daddy wouldn’t just stop coming home altogether. It wasn’t possible.

  “Hey!” Alice punched my arm lightly. “I didn’t mean it. It was a stupid question. I was just wondering if you had the chance, would you live somewhere different?”

  “I could never leave Kali Oka Road. I expect I’ll die here, just like Mama Betts is going to do.” There were plenty of places to visit and see, but I wouldn’t want to live anywhere but where I was.

  “I’d move to Paris.”

  Alice was looking at Maebelle, but she wasn’t seeing her. She was seeing a picture of a slender blond woman in a chic red dress and hat walking a poodle on a leash and going down a street with little cafés with umbrellas. The men at the cafés were watching the woman walk her dog. I knew this because the picture was hanging in our house, and Alice looked at it all the time. The Eiffel Tower was in the background. Alice loved that picture and she wanted to be the woman in it.

  “What would you do in Paris?” I’d never thought to ask her. Where was the woman going with the dog?

  “I’d be a model for painters or for fashion photographers.”

  Would they have a model with freckles? I knew better than to ask the question, but I thought about it. Alice had beautiful blue eyes and pretty hair. She was skinny enough too. But I’d never seen a model with freckles.

  “You’d make a lot of money. Maybe when you got tired of standing still in front of the cameras or the artist, you’d become a movie star.”

  “Maybe.” She closed her eyes and smiled.

  More than anything, in that second I wanted to give her Paris. Now. While she really wanted it, before she got older and quit wanting it.

  “And what about you, Bekkah? What would you do?”

  “If I could do anything right this minute, I’d go down to the McInnis barn and learn to ride. Then I’d take Cammie, and we’d go around the world jumping and winning every show.”