Summer of the Redeemers by Carolyn Haines Read Free Book Online Page B

voice shouting commands.
    “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
    W ELL,
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