Summer of the Redeemers

by Carolyn Haines

  “She’ll go to spite Daddy.” Mama Betts’ plan might work, but I needed The Judge home with me. I had to tell him about the Redeemers, and the babies, and the white dress and scrap of lace I’d hidden away in the old fort Alice and I had built in the woods two years ago.

  “I called Rita out in California. She’s agreed to it. She’ll play along if Effie calls her.”

  “I don’t want to be there when Mama sees it’s The Judge instead of Rita.”

  “Let them have it out in front of strangers. It won’t do for them to be here.” She looked sharply at me. “There’s been enough dissension in this house to last a good long while.”

  “When will they come home?” I felt the beginning of a slow headache. I never had one unless I had the flu, but this one was different. It was dull and slow, letting me know that it was going to get bigger, stronger and meaner as the day went on.

  “I’m hoping they’ll stay gone a while. Effie’s ahead on her book. Walt doesn’t have to be in Hattiesburg until late September.”

  “That’s a month or better.”

  “I see they have taught you something at school.”

  “They can’t be gone a month.”

  Mama Betts put her hands on her hips, the tray of coffee and toast momentarily forgotten.

  “Bekkah, your parents need some time alone. You and Arly can start school without them. I’ll be right here, just like always.”

  “Couldn’t Daddy come here first, before they leave?” If I didn’t talk with him soon, it might be too late. The Redeemers might sell another baby. Or something might happen to Magdeline. Or Selena might come after me to retrieve her dress.

  “It would be better if they left straight from New Orleans.”

  “Left! For where?”

  “Maybe California. Your mother would love to see Rita. It’s been seven years. Effie and Rita used to be best friends, like you and Alice. You were only five when Rita was home the last time, and you know Effie isn’t one to travel.”

  “What makes you think she’ll go now?” Effie didn’t travel. She hated leaving Kali Oka Road.

  “She loves Walt a lot.”

  “Grandma?”

  Mama Betts looked closely at me then. I hardly ever called her that, only when I was very upset.

  “What’s eating at you, Bekkah? You’ve been odd for a day or two now.”

  “Can I call Daddy before he leaves?”

  She picked up the tray. “You can call him in New Orleans tonight. He’s already gone and you have to scat. Effie’s coffee will be cold and I want everything perfect.”

  She disappeared down the hall, coffee cup rattling in the saucer as she carried Effie’s tray. The image brought back a long-ago memory of the time that Effie had been very sick. Dr. McMillan had come to the house every day to check on her, and she was too weak to get out of bed. The doctor had told Daddy out in the front yard that Effie should never try to have another child.

  For weeks Mama Betts had prepared food for Effie and helped her eat it. Not since she’d recovered had I seen a tray of food going down the hallway. It wasn’t a good sight.

  Even though it was early morning, the day wrapped around me like a damp wool blanket. The grass was soaked with dew, and the air wasn’t much drier. August, the month when south Mississippi returned to the tropics. Steam and heat. The possibility of hurricanes. In a few short days school would start.

  Alice was excited. Jamey Louise was torn between desire to show off her tan and new curves to the high school boys we’d see every day and the knowledge that she’d be separated from Greg. At Chickasaw Consolidated grades seven through twelve were housed in one building with three wings. Effie said it looked like a chicken hatchery. She said it was an architectural blight, and that if children learned anything it was a miracle.

  I dreaded school, the changes, the boredom and the confinement. But then I dreaded the idea of spending every day on Kali Oka Road too. This summer I had lost every safe place I knew. As I walked along, kicking the large rocks that showed up in the loose red dirt of Kali Oka, I felt the pull of the Redeemers and Cry Baby Creek. As much as I was afraid, I also wanted to go there. Since The Judge wasn’t coming home right away, what was I going to do? What had happened to Magdeline? Maybe if I could just see her and know that she was okay, I wouldn’t feel so guilty and worried. I had to get Greg alone and ask him a few questions.

  The weathered sign at Nadine’s driveway moaned even though not a leaf or blade of grass moved in a breeze. The air was perfectly still, yet the sign groaned again. The sound sent a shiver down my spine. I was being silly about that dress. But how had it gotten in the loft?

  There was an unearthly stillness about the barn as I walked beneath the chinaberry trees toward the rusty gate. I was a little early for work, but normally Nadine and Greg were already around. There wasn’t a sign that anyone was there. The barn door was cracked open, a violation of the rules that Nadine had imposed. We were either to open or shut the door, not halfway in between.

  The wind whispered through the chinaberry leaves, a feather-light touch. I stopped at the gate, all senses alert. Picket clung to my leg, her ears forward and her mouth open, panting. There wasn’t a sound except the mournful sigh of the sign on its rusty chain.

  Truck and horse trailer were in place. Garbage spilled out the back door of the house and down the steps. I stood in the sunlight-dappled driveway, afraid to go forward. Something was wrong. Something terrible. Something even worse than that bloody dress I’d found.

  I considered for a moment going to get Alice. She could help me tell the story of what we’d seen. But Alice hated Nadine. And there was a good chance Nadine would tell Alice about what we’d seen in the preacherman’s house. I forced my fingers to the latch on the gate and then walked through.

  I heard the tiny rocks scrunch under my feet and the call of a single crow. I saw the bird, big and glossy, sitting on the telephone wire to Nadine’s house. Mama Betts said one crow was a sign of death. I looked for another, but the blue-white sky was empty.

  My hand was on the barn door, and I listened. Inside, there was the sound of faint sobbing. My own breath caught in my throat, a painful knot.

  The door moved beneath my hand, frightening me so that I jumped back. Jamey Louise stepped out of the darkness, pushing me roughly back.

  “Don’t go in there,” she said harshly. She put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me away.

  “What is it?” I looked beyond her shoulder but could see nothing. There was only the sound of broken sobbing.

  “Bekkah, stay out!”

  I looked at her face and saw it was streaked with a dried brown substance. Her blue-and-white-checked sundress, her favorite, was soaked in sticky blood.

  “What?” I was stricken by the sight of so much blood.

  Jamey’s face tightened, but she didn’t cry. “There’s nothing you can do,” she said. “Nadine told me to keep you out.”

  “What is it? Is she hurt?” I felt the hammer of my earlier headache strike home. My knees quivered. “Is someone dead in there?”

  Jamey Louise grabbed my arm and walked me back to Nadine’s house. There was a water hose at the corner, and she turned it on her face and then her body, washing the blood away in pink rivulets that ran down her legs and into her sneakers.

  With the blood gone, her face was pale and her eyes sharp, like a doll’s glassy gaze. She washed her legs over and over again.

  “What happened?” I thought about running home, just leaving without asking any questions. I could go to Alice’s house and help her with Maebelle V. and the other children. We could ask her older sisters about the seventh grade. Alice loved to think about it, to plan what it was going to be like to be with the juniors and seniors in the halls.

  “Cammie is dead.”

  I looked at Jamey Louise. I’d never thought she could be so mean. I really looked at her. Fine golden hairs curled at her forehead in wisps, like baby hair. Her skin was clear tan,
translucent now that the dried blood was washed away and the color had returned. In her clear brown eyes was … pity?

  “Somebody snuck in the barn early this morning and hurt her,” Jamey Louise said. “When Nadine got up, she found her and tried to save her. But she died. Just when you walked up.”

  Jamey’s hand grabbed my arm and her fingers bit into my skin. I wanted to slap her away, to slap her in the face as hard as I could, but I couldn’t lift my hand. In fact, I was falling backward. Only Jamey Louise’s tight grip on my arm kept me from slamming backward. As it was, I sat down on the ground, right in the puddle of water Jamey had made while washing away the blood. Her sundress was soaked and stained beyond repair.

  “There’s nothing to be done,” Jamey said, sitting down beside me.

  I was breathing through my mouth, and I thought of the Fairleys on Wilson Ferry Road. But when I tried to close my mouth I couldn’t breathe. Something was clawing at my throat, working up toward the base of my head.

  “I’ve got to go get Daddy to bring the backhoe,” Jamey said. “Want to walk with me?”

  I looked at her. I heard what she said, but I didn’t understand it. She got up and tugged me up with her.

  “Walk with me,” she said. “Daddy will give us a ride back.”

  “Backhoe?”

  Jamey looked past me. “Yeah. Nadine couldn’t get her out of the stall. We’re going to have to drag her out to the field and bury her.”

  I rejected that information too.

  “The other horses are okay,” Jamey offered. She patted my arm. “Nadine said it was strange that they didn’t make a sound, or she would have heard it. Whoever did it just slipped in and …” She stopped. “Libby and Cora are home this morning. You know Libby has a job at the Kettle, waiting on tables. She made twelve dollars in tips last night. That’s the most any waitress has ever made on a Thursday night.”

  We were walking down the driveway. Picket had taken up with us, and she was sniffing the trunks of the chinaberry trees.

  “Who did this?” I asked Jamey. “Who?”

  “Nadine doesn’t know. She can’t figure it out. Whoever did it was strong. Cammie was, uh, stabbed a lot. We couldn’t find the knife.”

  “Trapped in that stall, she didn’t have a chance.” I said the words before I thought. “Mama Betts said those horses shouldn’t be penned up all the time. She said it wasn’t natural.”

  “If she’d been in the pasture, they could have shot her,” Jamey said. She laced her fingers around my wrist and pulled me along with her. I didn’t resist. I didn’t want to go to the barn, and I didn’t want to go home. At least Jamey knew where she wanted to go.

  We’d left Picket several trees behind, and I looked back for her. The barn door was still open only a little, and Jamey had left the gate to the pasture unlatched. It had swung wide open, hanging slightly askew.

  “The gate.” I stopped. “I’d better close it.”

  Jamey waited while I walked back. Picket was half buried in some undergrowth beneath the big chinaberry tree where Alice and I had once hidden our Coca-Colas. I called to her, but she only wagged her tail, refusing to give up her quest.

  I didn’t want to leave her at the barn. “Picket!” I clapped my hands and the noise was too loud. Still, Picket burrowed away.

  “Come on,” Jamey urged. “Nadine needs me to get back.”

  I went to grab Picket by the collar. Once I got her attention, she’d follow me. I reached deep into the undergrowth, remembering the Cokes and how Greg had found them and drank them. My fingers touched something sleek and polished. It was wood, but it wasn’t a stick. Instead of grabbing Picket, I tugged at the wood. It was heavier than I imagined, and I couldn’t lift it with one hand.

  Picket had inched over to give me room and still dig at whatever had caught her fancy. I pushed the tangle of bushes and weeds back, and my breath caught. Picket had thrown a good bit of dirt on the crucified Jesus from the Redeemer church, but I had no doubt that was what I’d found. Except someone had painted the face black. It looked like spray paint of some kind. Whoever had done it hadn’t taken a lot of pains to be neat either. The spray covered Jesus’s face, part of the crown and some of his neck and chest.

  “Bekkah, get that dog and come on if you’re coming!” Jamey said.

  I grabbed Picket’s collar and pulled her out of the shrubs. “We’re coming.” Once I had her back in the driveway, she gave up and decided to mind me, just like I knew she would.

  “What’d she have, a rabbit?” Jamey asked.

  “Must have been.” I felt like my feet weren’t completely touching the ground.

  “Well, she can chase the chickens at our house. She hasn’t been around this summer, and they’ve all gotten fat and lazy.”

  Jamey was trying harder to be nice to me than she’d ever been. I walked along with nothing to say.

  “Libby said she’d show us all how to use makeup before school started, if you’d like to learn. Just a little mascara and maybe some rouge and lipstick.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Even though we’re seventh graders, it’s going to be high school for all practical purposes. Libby started wearing makeup in the seventh grade, I mean to school. She wore it before that when she could get away with it.”

  “Libby’s always been beautiful.” I felt like someone else was talking. Someone else had taken over my body and was walking it down the road with Jamey Louise babbling about crazy things. And that person was babbling back.

  “Jamey, are you certain it was Cammie?”

  “It was her stall. Blood was everywhere, all over the walls and the horse.” She shrugged. “The ones that are the same color look the same to me. There was so much blood …”

  We were halfway to the Welfords. “Who would do such a thing?” I remembered Mr. Tom and the horror of his death. Someone sick had done it. Someone so sick that they needed to be locked away from society, Mama Betts had said. She had said that if it was someone on Kali Oka Road, they’d do something evil again. She’d warned me that such sickness didn’t go away, that it just boiled and simmered and fermented until it spewed out again in another mean and cruel act.

  Mama Betts thought it was someone from the Redeemers who’d killed Mr. Tom. I’d even thought it was Greg until he’d said he didn’t do it. Was he lying? I didn’t know. I couldn’t seem to think it through.

  “Nadine said she was going to catch whoever had done this, and she was personally going to make them suffer,” Jamey said. “I’d hate to be at Nadine’s mercy. You know there’s the old storage area under the end of the barn. They said old Ratheson McInnis used to chain his slaves down there to punish them. That was so no one else could hear them scream when he tortured them.”

  “Jamey!” I’d never heard any such thing. “That’s crazy.”

  “No, it isn’t. Mama said it was true.”

  “Have you seen the room? Have you been in it?”

  “No. Who has time to explore when Nadine’s cracking the whip? Anyway, all I was saying was that if she could find out who’d done this, she could chain them down in the little room and torture them for days before she finally finished them off. I’ll bet no one would ever find the body.”

  Jamey Louise was only trying to take my mind off what had happened to Cammie, and for a moment it had worked. I wished there was a room beneath the barn, and I wished I could find whoever had hurt Cammie so much. I’d do to them what they had done to her.

  Two tears slipped down my cheek. Jamey saw them and started walking faster. She gave up talking and settled on motion. By the time we turned down the drive to the Welfords’ house, I was crying good, but without making a sound.

  I sat on the steps, and Emily Welford brought me a glass of lemonade while they sent Libby in the truck to find Gus out in the field. He was turning the ground for some fall turnips.

  Condensation dripped off my lemonade glass and hit my shoes at just about the same pace the tears dripped off my chin.
Emily and Jamey and Cora stood over me, but no one said anything. They all thought us Riches were silly about our animals. Horses died, cows went to butcher, and unlucky dogs and cats met death in numerous tragic ways. The Welfords had lost livestock to lightning, stray dogs, poachers, colic, birth, infection, and theft. The death of an animal was insignificant to them. But they were too kind to say anything to me about my unstoppable tears. They just stood over me and waited for Gus to drive up on the tractor.

  He came in a cloud of dust and diesel, hot and sweat-streaked and weathered beyond his years. “Sorry about that horse, Bekkah,” he said as he climbed the steps and took the glass of lemonade Emily held for him. He drank it all in one swallow, the ice clanking back into the bottom of the glass, hardly melted. Emily took it for a refill and they went inside.

  The window was open, and I listened to Jamey tell what had happened. Nadine had gone out to feed and found Cammie down in her stall, hamstrung and with at least thirty knife wounds. She’d bled to death slowly, unable even to struggle to her feet.

  Jamey described the stalls and the barn.

  “Better get after it. In this heat she won’t last long,” Gus said. He came back out the door, patting my head as he went down the steps.

  “He’s gonna go get the chains, so it’ll take him a little while,” Jamey explained. “You want to ride on the tractor with him? I’ll walk.”

  “No. You ride. I have Picket.” I wanted to be alone.

  “Why don’t you go home?” Emily suggested. She’d come out on the porch again, sliding out of the screen so silently I hadn’t even heard her. “Go home and see if Effie won’t take you to the river for a swim. It’s the last week before school. You might not get another chance.”

  “Maybe I will.” The tears were still dripping slowly off my face, but it wasn’t like I was really crying.

  “Bekkah, honey, she still has eight other horses. It isn’t the end of the world,” Emily said. “Maybe next summer, if you ride as good as Jamey says you do, maybe Effie and Walt will get you your very own horse.”