Summer of the Redeemers by Carolyn Haines Page B

have any of those big juicy plums?”
    “We’ll stop and ask. Brenda won’t mind giving us enough for one batch of jelly.”
    “Jelly my foot, I want some to eat.” We were past the old McInnis place, and my spirits sank. This would be another day when I didn’t get to see Cammie.
    “You haven’t had much to say about your bicycle.”
    Mama Betts’ statement made me misstep in the loose sand of the road. “What’s there to say? Arly fixed it.”
    “The Bekkah Rich I know would be fuming all over the placewanting to get even with whoever did such a thing … unless she knew who’d done it and was feeling guilty.”
    “When I figure it all out, I’ll get even.” I picked up a big white rock and threw it down the road.
    “Things are changing, Bekkah. You know it as well as I.”
    Beneath the floppy hat Mama Betts’ face was shadowed, but there was no denying the sadness along her mouth.
    “Not really. Every summer we pick plums and make jelly. It’s the same as it’s been every year.”
    “Child, child.” There was amusement in her voice. “I can remember days when cars hadn’t been thought of. When your grandfather and I first moved here to Kali Oka, I was seventeen. We hauled water from the little spring in the woods until we could get a well put down. I’ve seen a lot of what folks call progress, and when I was younger, I thought that some of it was good.”
    “You’d rather haul water in buckets than turn a faucet on?”
    “Not on your life. The point is, things change. There’s no helping it, and even if we could all go backward, nobody would vote to do it. But now things are moving too fast.”
    Nothing in my life had moved an inch. The past three days had been a slow, twisting eternity. “You’re just being silly, Mama Betts. What do you mean?”
    “Have you ever noticed how chickens will hear a noise and go to squawking and running all over the yard? They don’t even know what the noise is, but they go to pieces, feathers flying everywhere, and sometimes they even trample their own chicks.”
    We didn’t keep chickens, but I’d seen it happen at the Welfords’. “Chickens aren’t real smart.”
    “Neither are people. Chickens and people have a lot in common sometimes. People hear a rumor and go to running and squawking, and before they know what’s happened, they’ve hurt someone. Maybe even someone of their own.” She took a breath. “Television and radio give people too much news. Folks don’t have time to digest it slowly. They just hear it and react.”
    “But you like television.” Arly and I didn’t watch much TV, but we loved some of the shows. Even Mama Betts was hooked on
The Edge of Night.
Every afternoon at three-thirty, just when the bus pulled up at the house during school days, I’d hear the
Edge of Night
music.
    The big star was Mike Carr, a lawyer. He always did the right thing.
    “At times. Bekkah, there are two things I have to tell you. One won’t make much difference, not to you and not today. Later on you’ll understand how much this summer changed your life.”
    A knot of apprehension twisted up in my gut. Was it something about the horses or the Redeemers?
    “There’s a Negro in prison in Jexville. There’s trouble brewing about him.”
    “Yeah, he shot a white man.” I wasn’t deaf as a post. I’d heard Effie and The Judge batting it back and forth on the phone. They were very troubled, but I didn’t know why. “We don’t know anybody involved in it. Why is Effie so worried?”
    “Well, baby girl, your mama and daddy believe that Negro should get a fair trial. There are those who think he should be sent to the gas chamber.”
    “What would it hurt to give him a trial? He was only killing the man who killed his brother.”
    “Sounds simple to you, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t. Just listen to me when I tell you that times are changing. Folks are on the telephone gossiping back and forth. News gets twisted and changed. Folks get to