Summer of the Redeemers Read Online Free Page B

been drained of all vital juices. Sucked dry. “Until they got the gun.”
    “You were right; they’re zombies.” Alice hefted the baby to hershoulder. “We’d better get back. Mama’ll be lookin’ for me to help with supper.”
    I could see she’d abandoned the plan to eat with us. It had been too close a call. We needed some time to think about it. “Maybe we can go for a swim tomorrow.”
    Alice shot me a quick look. “Not at Cry Baby Creek.”
    “Why not?”
    “You just want to go and spy on those Redeemers. You don’t care a fig about swimmin’.” Her freckles were startling across her white, white skin. “After today you’d go back there? You don’t have a lick of sense, Bekkah Rich.”
    “Sure, I want to go swimmin’, and I want to look around the church a little more. If we hadn’t had Maebelle—”
    “And your dog! Chances are I’ll have her tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, until school lets back in.”
    Complaining that it wasn’t fair didn’t do a bit of good. Alice didn’t like it any better than I did. Still, part of my dissatisfaction with Kali Oka Road had more to do with Alice being pressed into child labor than with anything else. I missed my friend and the time we once had together.
    “Maybe Julie Ann will keep her.”
    “Yeah.” Alice put her back in my basket and signaled to go. She didn’t have to say that Julie Ann would never keep the baby. Julie was two years older than Alice, but she was the special child. Asthma had weakened her lungs, and she couldn’t do any of the chores. If any new clothes were purchased, they were for Julie and handed down to the other children. Those above Julie in age got even more work and less attention. In the Waltman household, Julie was the watershed. She was the best embroiderer in the state too. That’s all she did, pull those pretty threads through that hoop of cloth until she’d made a picture.
    At the cut through in the woods, Alice left her bike and took the baby. I rode on to the house, back in less than the hour Mama had given me.
    “How were the church folks?” Mama Betts asked as I pushed open the screen. She was standing in the doorway, concealed in shadow.
    “Spooky.” There was no point lying, exactly. “They acted lost.”
    “Stay away from those folks, Bekkah. Nothing good will come of them.”
    “I’m only lookin’ at ‘em. There’s no harm in doing that.”
    “And when they go to talk to you, what are you going to do then? Act mute?”
    “They won’t talk to me. They don’t want any of us around there.”
    “Did they run you off?”
    Mama Betts was too smart. She had a way of tricking all the details out of you just the way she squeezed a lemon for her pies until even the rind was dry. “Not exactly.” If she found out about Picket and the gun, I’d be in really big trouble.
    “But they weren’t too happy to see you, were they?”
    “Not really.”
    She laughed. “Effie called your dad and told him all about it. He said to keep you away from them, that you’d be joining up like it was the circus.”
    “Will Daddy call back?” I hated it when Mama called him and I wasn’t home. It made me feel like I’d been cheated out of a treat.
    “Tonight. Just to talk with you.”
    “And Arly?”
    “And Arly.”
    “Where is he anyway?” I hadn’t seen him all day. “Does he know about the Redeemers?”
    “He knows. He was all for running down the road to look for you.”
    “He couldn’t have made it worse than Maebelle V., whining and crying.”
    “You took that baby?”
    Her tone of voice made me realize how critically I’d messed up. “We only rode down there and back. The baby likes bicycle rides.”
    “You’re going to give that child brain damage. I know Mrs. Waltman has more than she can manage, and pregnant again, I hear, but it seems like she wouldn’t allow—”
    “Alice takes care of the baby. Mrs. Waltman has other things on her mind.”
    Mama Betts raised her hands to