Summer of the Redeemers

by Carolyn Haines

  “You read one?” I couldn’t believe it.

  “Just one. The one about the girl from the woods who watched all the other children but didn’t join in.”

  “Starla Fern.” That was the character’s name.

  “Right. You remind me of her, in a way. You’re here but not completely.”

  I had the craziest notion to cry. What he said was a compliment, but it made me sad, and I could tell it made him sad too.

  “Let’s go find those two and have some lunch. We can’t take a scrap back or it’ll hurt Mama Betts’ feelings. She’s expecting you boys to eat hearty.”

  Frank followed me back to the trail, and we stumbled around until we found Alice and Mack. Our clumsiness in the woods gave them plenty of time to sit up proper, and they were holding hands when we got there.

  The rest of the time we stayed by the lake all together. We ate until we were so full we had to stretch out in the gentle sun, four stuffed sardines lying side by side.

  When it was time to go, we laughed as we picked up our litter. There was still a hint of sadness between Frank and me. I wondered if I could be more like Alice, more real. She felt everything immediately, just as it happened. With me, it seemed that I had to think about it all too much. Thinking about it made me quiet on the ride home.

  Frank and Mack had a glass of iced tea with Mama Betts and thanked her for the lunch. Frank leaned over and pulled Alice’s hair. “Next time don’t forget the prettiest girl of the lot. I missed Maebelle.” He and Mack got into the truck and drove away.

  “Those are nice boys,” Mama Betts commented to no one in particular. “Mrs. Mapleson, the potter, called. She said she’d give you five dollars if you’d go down to Chalk Gully and excavate some of that blue clay for her. She wants to throw some bowls tomorrow morning.”

  Alice pulled at her bangs. “I’d better go get that baby. Mama’ll be fit to be tied. Maybe if she isn’t too mad, she’ll let me meet you at the clay pit,” she said.

  “Maebelle loves the clay,” I agreed. I was feeling a little guilty for not having taken the baby.

  “As much as I kick about taking care of her, I missed her,” Alice said.

  “Who wouldn’t miss that child?” Mama Betts threw in. She patted Alice’s arm. “Don’t be thinking about young’uns, Alice Waltman. You’ll have plenty of time to have your own. And you’ll be a fine mama when you do.”

  I got my bicycle out of the garage. I hadn’t ridden the bike in a long time, it seemed. It was hard to look at it and not remember Greg and how he’d taken it apart piece by piece.

  “Hope to see you in a few minutes,” Alice said as she picked up her purse and headed home.

  The clay pit wasn’t far behind our house, but it was really closer to the Waltmans. It was on our land, but both Riches and Waltmans had played in it since I could remember. Arly had once dug up the clay for Mrs. Mapleson, but he was too grown now, so the lucrative job had fallen to me. I shared it with Alice whenever I could.

  For five dollars Mrs. Mapleson would want a big hunk of clay. I could probably get about twenty pounds in my bicycle basket. The stuff was dense and heavy. There had been a place near the back of the gully where Alice and I found a rich vein of pure turquoise clay. There was red and yellow clay, too, but it was the blue that was prized by the potters. It had something to do with the texture, Mama Betts said, since they more often than not glazed it with whatever color they wanted anyway.

  I didn’t have a long time to dig up the clay since Cathi was supposed to call at five and I still had to ride down to Nadine’s. I was hoping to get the clay, get home and distract Mama Betts long enough for me to make a blistering trip down to the barn.

  Even though the day was mild, Chalk Gully was hot. The afternoon sun reflected off the packed clay surface, but there were niches and smaller gullies where it was cool. The summer had passed, and Alice and I had not made a trip to pick wild plums or berries. In years past, we’d never have let such a thing happen.

  I parked my bike under a wild willow. Picket was panting and on the alert for rabbits. Covered in blackberry brambles and kudzu, it was a perfect place for the bunnies. The kudzu had flowered with the purple blossoms that were so sweetly scented, the air around them tasted like grape Kool-aid.

  There was an old pond where water had collected from rain. It was filled with frogs and fish. It was a mystery to me and Alice how fish had come to live in an old clay pond, but Arly said the birds stocked it by dropping fish eggs into it. I didn’t believe him for a minute, but it made as much sense as thinking the fish had sprung from the mud.

  The edges of the pond were cracked and dried, and it was slowly evaporating. Unless we got some rain soon, it would be a mud waller and the fish would all die from lack of oxygen. The Judge had explained how that happened in stagnant water.

  The vein of clay I was looking for was at the far end of the gully, up in a little niche where the top was covered with wild plum trees. It made a nice shade, and a good place for the last of the season’s snakes to rest. I checked it out good before I scootched in there and started digging.

  It was work tough on my hands, but there was also a simple satisfaction. All summer I’d been saving every penny and I was almost there. With two dollars and fifty cents, if Alice came to help, or the whole five, I would have almost enough money to buy the boots and coat I wanted. Without Nadine’s trailer I wouldn’t be going to many horse shows. I knew Effie and The Judge wouldn’t go for hauling me and a horse all around the country. Maybe Nadine and I would patch things up and become friends again. Once Cammie was mine, maybe we could ride together.

  It didn’t matter whether I got to show or not, I wanted the riding clothes. And I had to buy the saddle and bridle from Nadine too. If my folks bought the horse, it didn’t seem right to ask them to buy anything else. A thousand dollars. That was a lot of money.

  The clay was a dark teal, beautiful in the sunlight when I’d trenched enough of the red clay and dirt away from it. The vein was about ten inches wide. It seemed to run up about eight feet from the floor of the gully. I’d have a basket full in no time. I dug for a while, and then stopped to listen for Alice. She should have been there by now. She’d have Maebelle, but it didn’t matter. The baby loved the clay. But the fact that Alice hadn’t arrived yet had me worried. Had Mrs. Waltman been so angry that she’d slapped Alice again? It was a distressing thought.

  Up above me Picket rustled in the briars. A high-pitched squeal cut through the air, followed by rapid yips. She was hot on the trail of some cottontail. I grinned and worked my trowel a little deeper into the wall. I was torn between wanting Alice to hurry up and wanting to get all the money for myself.

  After another ten minutes I stopped again. If Alice didn’t come on, I’d have the whole thing done. She’d never take half the money if she didn’t do half the work, and I knew she needed cash as much as I did. She’d been eyeing a pair of loafers at one of the stores in Jexville. She wanted those shoes bad.

  Listening hard for the sound of Alice’s squeaky bike or Maebelle’s laugh, I dug a little more.

  The high-pitched scream that wafted over the gully made me freeze with the trowel lifted. I was ready to plunge the sharp point deep into the clay, but I stopped. I’d never heard a rabbit scream like that. I didn’t know what to do. I scrambled out of the niche and started climbing the wall of clay up to the briars.

  The scream came again, floating on the golden air. It was a human, a grown woman. It came from toward Kali Oka, from the Waltmans’ house.

  The wail rose for the third time, a cry of loss and fury and … I knew then why Alice hadn’t come to the gully. It was Maebelle V. It was an instant, instinctive knowledge that came as sure and thick as the grape smell of the kudzu.

  Something terrible had happened to Maebelle V.

  The clay was forgotten as I got my bicycle. It was rough riding from the gully, but I didn’t have time to worry about tree limbs that clawed at my face or briars that sn
atched at my new stretch jeans.

  The smell of the sweet kudzu mingled with the taste of fear, and my throat spasmed. Maebelle VanCamp. We should have taken her with us. It wouldn’t have hurt to take her to the lake for a picnic, even the boys had said so. We didn’t take her because of me.

  Mama Betts was standing at the screen door, waiting for me.

  “Someone’s stolen the youngest Waltman,” she said, unable to even say Maebelle’s name.

  “Maebelle?” I saw her as she’d been only that morning, sitting on the floor drooling on the wooden thread spools. Her red curls had been tousled about her head, and her smile lopsided and wet. She was a skinny baby, hardly big enough to support her full name.

  Mama Betts talked, something about Effie and Alice, but I didn’t hear her. I was thinking about Maebelle. She had to be around the Waltman house somewhere. They’d just misplaced her. No one would steal a baby.

  “It was ten years ago almost to the day that Evie Baxter was stolen. Everybody on Kali Oka remembers, but nobody wants to. They’ve forgotten that poor baby’s name.”

  I looked at Mama Betts.

  “I knew when those church folks moved on Kali Oka it was going to be trouble,” she said. “I knew it.”

  The Waltman household was in a panic when I dropped the bicycle in the yard. The younger children were out poking in bushes and crawling under the house. They were all calling Maebelle’s name.

  Alice stood in the center of the yard, unmoving. She looked as if she’d been slapped hard. In fact, the print of a hand was still on her left cheek.

  “She has to be around here somewhere,” I said.

  Another ear-piercing scream came from the house. I had the impulse to run in and slap Agatha Waltman as hard as I could, right across the mouth. Now was a fine time for her to decide that she was really worried about her baby. It had been four hours since anyone had seen Maebelle V., not since just after Alice and I left for the lake.

  “Where did you see her last?” I asked Alice. It wouldn’t do any good to ask the others.

  “I gave her to Betty and told her that I was going back to your house. They were sitting on the front porch.”

  “Betty!” I called the Waltman a year younger than Alice. She was a dark-haired girl with clear blue eyes. She hardly ever spoke, but she was a favorite of the teachers at school.

  “Where did you see Maebelle last?”

  “I had her down by the mailbox. I went to get the mail, and we were playing in the sand. Maebelle had found a rock.” She looked nervously around the yard. “Then Sukey came down to talk to me. Somebody was picking her up to take her to the church to practice for that wedding.”

  “And Maebelle?” Alice questioned.

  “I talked with Sukey for a while, and then I went home.”

  “And Maebelle?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Betty said slowly. “She …”

  “Did you leave her at the mailbox?”

  “I thought Sukey had changed her mind and taken her to the church.”

  Alice started down the driveway at a trot. Betty and I fell in beside her, and I whistled to Picket to come along.

  “How far could she get?” I asked. Maebelle V. could crawl, but she had to be around somewhere close by.

  Alice started down the ditches with a silent Betty working the other side of the road. I walked with Alice.

  “She’s around here,” I reassured her. “She couldn’t have gotten far, and if anyone had seen her on the road, they would have stopped and taken her home.”

  That was one good thing about Kali Oka. Everybody knew everybody else. There was no doubt that the redheaded baby girl with the curls and gurgling laugh was Agatha Waltman’s. Or if they didn’t place the child as Agatha’s, they knew she belonged to me and Alice. Someone would have brought her home.

  “She’s probably asleep under some bush,” I told Alice. But the frown didn’t disappear, and after we’d searched the ditches for half a mile in either direction, the tears started.

  “I need to go home,” I told her softly. The Waltmans didn’t have a phone, and it was time to call the sheriff. Maebelle V. wasn’t going to turn up tucked under a shrub asleep.

  “Don’t go,” Alice whispered. She looked at me, tears leaking from her eyes and down her face. “She’s gone, Bekkah. She’s really gone, and I know in my heart she’s not coming back. I feel it.”

  Forty

  KALI Oka Road rumbled like a thundercloud. Cars and trucks churned through the heavy sand, never slowing. When they hit the patches of hard red clay, they slung gravel far behind them. They were strange cars and trucks, driven by solitary men with tractor caps and fatigues. The national guard had been called out to hunt for Maebelle V.

  In the distance there was the baying of the bloodhounds. Six of the state prison’s best dogs had been flown into Jexville to hunt for the baby. Maebelle V. had been missing for twenty-four hours. There wasn’t a trace of her.

  The bloodhounds picked up her scent at the Waltman mailbox, but then they circled and cried, running on top of each other in confusion. Mama Betts said it was as if the angels had picked Maebelle up and disappeared with her into thin air.

  The Judge had driven his new Volvo into town to talk with the district attorney. The honorable Rex T. Ransom had driven over from Pascagoula to personally oversee the search. Effie was disgusted by Ransom’s sudden appearance and the ugly mood that was showing up along the road. Folks on Kali Oka who’d never mentioned the Redeemers had started asking questions about them. Effie said that rumors were simmering up and down the road, and that the delicious odor of terrible tragedy had wafted over to Pascagoula and drawn the district attorney by the nose.

  “He smells publicity,” she said. “He couldn’t care less about the baby. He just wants to be around when the headlines are made. When Ollie Stanford’s trial starts in Meridian Thursday, you can bet Ransom will manage to be there when otherwise he’d send his assistant. Goddamn vulture.”

  Still, Daddy had gone down to tell him everything I’d seen. The Judge didn’t see much use for Rex Ransom, either, but he was the elected authority, Daddy said. He’d reached out to touch Effie’s shoulder and then mine, and said that we’d do anything we could to get Maebelle back.

  Arly was in his room studying for a history test. He was mad because Effie wouldn’t let him tie up the telephone to talk with Rosie, and she wouldn’t let him leave the house.

  Mama Betts and I sat on the swing on the porch and listened to the local radio station. There was a special broadcast with updates on the search for Maebelle V.

  Once Daddy was gone to town, Effie paced back and forth, from the kitchen to the screened door and back into the kitchen.

  “Why don’t you go see if Alice wants to come over here for a while?” Mama Betts said.

  “She won’t. She’s standing at that mailbox like she’s suddenly going to see Maebelle sitting on the ground playing with a rock.” I was talking to Mama Betts, but I was a long, long way from Kali Oka Road. I couldn’t bear the thought of Alice, the look on her face. She’d accepted that Maebelle was dead, and that no amount of hunting would bring her home safely.

  I couldn’t stand that thought. I simply abandoned my body, left it sitting on the porch. I was floating on Cammie’s back. I could feel her muscles bunch and stretch beneath my legs as we galloped down a sandy lane. The pine needles were crisp. The air was clean, and I was free. I didn’t feel anything but the ride. If I stopped or paused or even looked behind me, something terrible would happen. So I concentrated on the sound of her hooves, a rapid four-beat cadence as we ran. Me and Cammie, just ahead of the storm.

  “How could they lose a baby, and who has her now?” Effie asked, stopping in the doorway. She brought me back to the porch with a bone-rattling reality. She didn’t want to talk about the Redeemers, but I could see it in her eyes. She thought they had Maebelle V. That’s why the Judge had rushed into Jexville. He wanted Rex Ransom to do something immediat
ely, to sign search warrants and get a posse of men down there before the baby could be harmed. I’d heard them talking about it, whispering in the still of the night.

  That was the sound I’d missed for the past month of the summer, the sound of angry secrets passing between my parents. The trip to California had banished the hiss of their hot words. They still whispered, but there was no longer the volcanic element of anger. No, this was worse. Now their voices were hushed with fear, with the dread possibility of what had become of a small baby.

  A baby who would be safe today if I hadn’t wanted a picnic without her.

  “Bekkah.” Mama Betts touched my leg. “Honey, I know this is hard on you. Especially hard on Alice. But it wasn’t wrong of you and Alice to want a small piece of time for yourselves. Maebelle V. has a mama and a host of brothers and sisters, all who could watch her as good as you and Alice. This isn’t your fault.”

  “I know.” She was trying, but it didn’t help. It was my fault. Mine more than Alice’s. Alice would have taken her if I hadn’t said not to.

  “Why don’t you go and check on that horse of yours?” Mama Betts suggested.

  “Cammie.” I said her name but didn’t move.

  “Maybe just brush her a bit. It might make both of you feel better.”

  I got up and walked off the porch. Why not go see Cammie? What else could I do? Before I realized what I was doing, I’d walked all the way to the Welfords.

  Jamey Louise came out of the house with a glass of lemonade when she saw me coming down her driveway. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll bet that baby was almost like your sister.”

  “Yeah.” I looked straight at Jamey, noticing her new red sweater and skirt, but I wasn’t there any longer. I was riding through the woods again. The pine scent was wonderful. There wasn’t a trace of kudzu in the air. I was riding in a place where kudzu would never grow.

  “Mama said that if there’s anything she can do … She’s making up a casserole to take to the Waltmans.”

  “That’s nice. They’ll appreciate that.”