Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

by Michael McDowell

  “This could happen to other people, Elinor. We got to find the man who did this and string him up on the nearest tree. Or buy him a ticket on the Hummingbird—or something. Queenie, you think you could recognize the man who came in here tonight?”

  Queenie drew in her breath sharply and held it. With weary eyes she looked around the room and held each person’s gaze for a moment. She swallowed back another sob and then said in a low voice, “Yes. I know the man who did it.”

  “Well, then,” said Leo Benquith, “we ought to get Wiggins over to that dormitory right now and drag that man down to the jail. Soon as you feel—”

  “No!” cried Queenie.

  There was a moment’s silence, then Elinor asked, “Who was it, Queenie?”

  Queenie sat very still and tried to control her shaking. She closed her eyes and then said, “It was Carl. That’s who it was. It was my husband.”

  . . .

  Nothing was to be done, then. Leo and Florida Benquith went home; there wasn’t any danger that the doctor would say anything, for doctors, after all, held many confidences. Both he and Elinor extracted ironbound oaths from Florida that she would say nothing to anyone. Leaving Malcolm and Lucille with the Benquiths, Elinor and Oscar took Queenie home with them. They went very quietly into the house, hoping to escape the eagle notice of Mary-Love next door.

  Upstairs in the bathroom Elinor stripped off Queenie’s clothes and set her in a bathtub filled with hot water and sweet-smelling salts. Queenie sat unmoving as Elinor washed her all over. That night Queenie and Elinor slept together in the large bed in the front room.

  The next morning, as Queenie picked at her breakfast, Elinor sat by the window and cut up all the clothing that Queenie had worn the night before. She made Queenie watch as she tossed the scraps into Roxie’s stove.

  Somehow, Carl Strickland had found Queenie out. Probably it hadn’t been difficult, for the Snyders—Queenie’s family—were nearly all dead, and the ones that weren’t dead were dirt poor. It could only have been logical to look for Queenie in Perdido, where her rich brother-in-law owned a sawmill and forest land that a million birds could nest in. Penniless, indigent, forsaken by what little respectability his wife had afforded him, Carl bummed his way down from Nashville. He had been casually offered employment on the levee. He took it, worked part of one day, and found out the whereabouts of his wife that very evening. He cajoled his way into her house and demanded money and support. Fighting with her when she refused him, he hit her, ravished her, and slipped away into the darkness.

  Early next morning, Oscar drove down to a work site near the town hall where he knew the most inexperienced men had been set to work and without any difficulty found Carl sullenly helping to turn over a wagonload of clay. Carl was tall and thin, with a coarse face that showed in every crease the man’s ill-humor toward the world. Oscar casually called him over and said, “You’re Carl Strickland. I believe I met you at Genevieve’s funeral.”

  The easy tone of his voice made Carl grin, for he knew all of Queenie’s in-laws were rich, and he somehow had it in his mind that they would just as soon assist him as not. “That’s right. I ’member you, too. You’re Mr. Caskey, you’re old James’s nephew, right? Genevieve sure had it easy, living with a man like that. You got as much money as him?”

  Oscar smiled, looked around curiously at the work progressing about them, glanced down at his shoes, then up at Carl again, and said, “Mr. Strickland, I got a little something to say to you...”

  “What?”

  “You better pack your portmanteau and hop on the back of the next conveyance out of this town.”

  Carl’s grin and his expectations winked out quite as suddenly as they had winked on. He said nothing, but there was an unpleasant expression in his eyes.

  “Mr. Strickland,” Oscar continued after an unflinching moment, “I believe you paid a visit to your wife last night.”

  “I did,” said Carl shortly.

  “Queenie complained to me of that visit. I think Queenie would be pleased if you didn’t knock on her door anymore. I think it would suit us all pretty well if you gave up this job—it’s mighty hard work, Mr. Strickland, and that sun is awful hot”—Oscar squinted up into the morning sky—“gave up this job, Mr. Strickland, and went someplace that was cool...and pretty far away.”

  “I cain’t afford to,” said Carl Strickland. “I cain’t afford to go nowhere. Besides, Queenie is my wife. I got a right to be in this town. I got a right to hold down this job. You cain’t just come out here and say—”

  “Mr. Strickland, you have been relieved of your position on this levee. There is nothing to keep you here in Perdido.” Oscar took an envelope from his pocket. “Now, considering your long service with our town in the construction of the levee and the great benefits that have accrued from your labor, Mr. Strickland, the town of Perdido is very proud to present you with seventy-five dollars in U.S. currency.” He stuck the envelope in the pocket of Carl’s shirt. “Also inside you will find a schedule of the trains that are going north from Atmore station and the trains that are going south. The town wasn’t certain in which direction you would be traveling this afternoon, Mr. Strickland.”

  “I ain’t going nowhere.”

  Oscar turned and glanced at the automobile in which he had arrived. As if this were a signal of some sort, a second man, who had been sitting inside fanning himself with the brim of his hat, stepped out of the automobile and wandered over to where Oscar and Carl were standing.

  “Sure is early in the day to be so damn hot,” said the man, nodding to Carl as he spoke.

  “Mr. Wiggins,” said Oscar, “this is Carl Strickland. He is distantly related to us Caskeys by marriage.”

  “How-de-do?” said Aubrey Wiggins, a thin man who sweated and suffered in the sun as much as if he had weighed twice as much as he did.

  Carl returned the nod.

  “Mr. Wiggins is the head of our police force,” explained Oscar. “Mr. Wiggins is gone drive you up to Atmore.”

  Aubrey Wiggins withdrew a yellow kerchief from his back pocket and wiped his brow. “Mr. Strickland, don’t you start worrying, I’m gone make sure I get you there in plenty of time. Which way you gone be going now? Are you going toward Montgomery? Or will you gone be traveling through Mobile? Oscar, my mama was born in Mobile, you know that?”

  “I met your mama once,” replied Oscar. “She was real sweet to me.”

  “I love that woman,” said Aubrey Wiggins, a faraway look momentarily clouding his eye. “Mr. Strickland, you want a ride over to the dormitory? I s’pose you got a few things you want to pack.”

  “I ain’t going nowhere,” said Carl.

  Oscar looked at Carl, then at Aubrey Wiggins. Then, pulling his watch from his pocket, he said, “Good Lord, look at what time it is! Aubrey, I got to be moving along or that mill is gone fall apart without me. Nice seeing you again, Mr. Strickland. You be sure and send me a postcard with a picture of some ice on it, you hear?”

  “I ain’t going nowhere!” Carl shouted after Oscar’s retreating figure. Oscar smiled, got into his car, and waved as he drove off.

  Aubrey Wiggins, who had put up his soaking kerchief, got it out again, and wiped his neck. “Mobile train is at two, Montgomery train is at three. We could make either one of ’em. You got any preference, Mr. Strickland?”

  Chapter 24

  Queenie and James

  Everyone in Perdido found out what happened to Queenie Strickland, even though all those involved in the incident professed to have remained silent. Florida Benquith was suspected of retailing the incident, but she never admitted to her indiscretion. Fortunately, for Queenie’s peace of mind, the matter was laid to rest after a few days’ intense gossip by Queenie’s unwillingness to speak of the unhappy experience at all or even to acknowledge to herself that it had happened. Three or four months later, however, interest in the matter was renewed, for Queenie Strickland’s propensity to roundness of figure increased noticea
bly.

  It was no use for Queenie to deny her pregnancy, or the fact that the impregnation had been highly unwelcome. It was all as generally known as though it had been printed on the front page of the Perdido Standard with a photograph of Queenie, her two children at her side, captioned: “Expectation of a Third.”

  Mary-Love was mortified. This was a blow to the Caskey name, for Queenie was, in everybody’s eyes, under the family’s protection. That a woman related to her in any way should bear a child by the involuntary coupling with a levee-man—even if she had been married to him—was a disgrace to the family. Mary-Love couldn’t be brought to speak to Queenie, and declared that the woman ought to be strapped to her bed for the duration of the pregnancy; Mary-Love shuddered every time she heard that Queenie had been seen on the streets. “That woman is carrying her shame—and our shame—before her!”

  James Caskey was brought down by the news as well. He imagined—rightly—that Mary-Love would construe the misfortune as his fault: for having in the first place married Genevieve Snyder, which brought Queenie to town, who attracted that villain Carl, who…and so forth. This unfortunate business in Queenie’s present made James wonder about Queenie’s past. During the seven years of James’s marriage to Genevieve Snyder, Genevieve had spent a total of at least five of those years in Nashville with her sister. James had of course met Queenie on several occasions, and had once visited her home in Nashville for the purpose of securing Genevieve’s signature on some important papers. He had known that Queenie was married to a man called Carl Strickland; James had met him once and thought him a sullen, unimproved sort of fellow, but respectably dressed and not an obviously vicious type. Here now was that same man, employed as a levee-worker, wearing ragged ill-fitting clothing, and raping his wife. James was very sorry for Queenie, but he could not help wondering how Genevieve could have spent five years in the same house with this terrible man. Genevieve hadn’t been a pleasant sort of woman, it was true, but she had always been well bred. In this respect she was the superior of Queenie, and it was hardly conceivable to James that his wife would have consented to share a home with a brother-in-law who could so easily sink to the level of a migrant worker. There was something wrong with the picture James had always had of Genevieve living quietly and decorously with her sister and her brother-in-law in their white frame house in Nashville. If he had been wrong on this point, then might he not have been mistaken on others as well? It was this sudden uncertainty concerning his wife’s past that sent James over to Elinor’s one afternoon in November to ask her what she knew of Queenie and Carl’s life together in Nashville.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” replied Elinor.

  “Queenie loves you,” said James. “If she would tell anybody then she would tell you.”

  “She hasn’t told anybody then. I don’t know why you need to know anyway, James.” Elinor was a bit curt. “Queenie has had enough trouble, and her trouble isn’t over yet.”

  “Is that man coming back?”

  “No, no,” said Elinor quickly. “Oscar would shoot him. Or Queenie would. Or I would. But she’s going to give birth to that man’s child.”

  “Well, the child is legitimate at least.”

  “He raped her. That won’t be a happy child, James. Now, why do you want to know about Queenie and Carl?”

  James explained why he was uneasy; Elinor seemed mollified. “All right, I see. I really don’t know anything about their life together. Why don’t you go ask Queenie herself? She’ll tell you, just explain everything to her.”

  James reluctantly admitted that he could probably satisfy himself in no other way, although he dreaded to intrude upon his sister-in-law. After her trouble had been revealed to him, James had gone around to all the stores in town and lifted the limits he had placed on Queenie’s spending. He had not talked to her, and suspected that, since she hadn’t taken advantage of this largess, she knew nothing of his little gesture of sympathy.

  Now, from Elinor’s house, he telephoned Queenie, and said in the cheerful coo that his voice always assumed over the telephone: “Hey, Queenie, it’s James. Listen, I’m over at Elinor’s and she told me you weren’t doing anything tonight. You think you could come over to my house and sit for a spell? It’s been so long! No, you bring Lucille and Malcolm over to Elinor’s and they can play quiet with Zaddie. I’m gone send Grace over here too so you and I can talk by ourselves!”

  When he had hung up, he said apologetically, “Elinor, I have just managed to fill up your whole house with children for the entire evening.”

  “It’s all right, James. They may be rambunctious everywhere else, but those children always play quiet here. I don’t know why that is.”

  “They won’t disturb Frances?”

  Elinor laughed. “Don’t you worry. I can’t get them up here on the second floor. They say they’re afraid of this house. They say there’s ghosts and things in the closet, even though this is practically the newest house in town.”

  James looked about him a little uncomfortably and, thanking Elinor again, took his leave.

  . . .

  James hadn’t laid eyes on Queenie recently, and the greatest difference in her seemed not her enlarged belly, but her dazed calmness. It was as if she had been severely chastened, and for what transgression she had no idea at all. At the same time James looked at her through Mary-Love’s eyes. James had a tendency to do this, for Mary-Love represented to him the chief arbiter on matters of morality. In that perspective, Queenie appeared somehow more respectable. They sat together in James’s formal parlor, James in a rocking chair, Queenie in the corner of Elvennia Caskey’s blue sofa. Queenie at first wouldn’t look directly at James, but ceaselessly rubbed the nap of the velvet upholstery first one way and then the other, giving that action total attention with her eyes.

  “James,” she said, “I feel so guilty for not coming over here and thanking you as soon as I found out.”

  “Found out what, Queenie? Sure is good to see you again,” he added parenthetically.

  “Good to see you, too. Found out about my little bills around town. Berta Hamilton showed me everything she had in the place and said I could take away anything I wanted. Everywhere else too. James, down at Mr. Gully’s, I was offered a fleet of automobiles that would have put down the Kaiser.”

  “Queenie, if you want to put down the Kaiser, I’ll buy you those automobiles!”

  Queenie laughed, but the laugh faded quickly enough. “James Caskey,” she said, looking up at him and for the first time catching his eye, “I thought I was gone be happy the day I showed up in Perdido. I thought I was gone be happy for the rest of my life.”

  “Nobody’s happy for the rest of their lives, Queenie.”

  She shook her head. “I guess not. James Caskey, what’d you want to say to me? Why’d you call me up out of the blue?”

  “I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Ask me what?”

  James’s mouth twitched, and he paused. “Ask you about Carl, I guess.”

  “I thought everybody knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “This is Carl Strickland’s baby.” She patted her belly.

  “Of course it’s Carl’s baby,” James assured her. “Carl is your husband. Whose else baby would it be? Queenie, I want to know about you and Carl in Nashville. That’s why I asked you to come over here.”

  “What about us?”

  James shrugged; he didn’t know how to put politely what he wanted to ask.

  “James,” said Queenie after a moment, “Carl Strickland wasn’t around much.”

  “Ah!”

  “Is that what you wanted to know? Carl Strickland drinks, Carl Strickland does a lot of things, Carl Strickland doesn’t have very nice habits, and—praise be to God—he was away most of the time. How you think Lucille and Malcolm would have turned out if I had let their Daddy pick ’em up and talk to ’em all the time? Oh, I know what those children are like, I know they’re not
ever gone be welcome in this house till they can walk through a room and not pick something up and smash it on the floor, but I have done the best I could…”

  “Queenie—”

  “Ohhh!” cried Queenie in an exhalation of breath which produced something between a squeal and a sigh, “Genevieve couldn’t stand him! She couldn’t stand to be around him!—and he couldn’t stand her. When she’d come up there and see me, he’d go away. So when I couldn’t stand to be around Carl Strickland one minute more I’d call up Genevieve and say, ‘Genevieve Snyder, you come up here tomorrow morning.’ James, I ’pologize for that, I ’pologize for keeping your wife away from you—’cause that’s just what I did.”

  Queenie didn’t exactly look as if she were about to cry, but she began smoothing and ruffling up the nap of the upholstery once again.

  “It’s all right, Queenie. I’m glad you told me.” It made him think better of his dead wife, that she had abandoned him and his daughter for reasons that were partially unselfish. His uncertainties, too, were now resolved, but what was left was a little curiosity, so he asked, “Queenie, when Carl would go away, where would he go?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Queenie. “I never asked. But he couldn’t have gone far, because the minute Genevieve walked out the door with her suitcase he was back. Maybe he was living in the house across the street, and just watching us out the window. He was sneaky like that.”

  “What’d he do for work?”

  “He worked for the power company. He cleared land.” Queenie stopped fidgeting with the nap of the sofa and looked up again into James’s eyes. “James, you have been good to me. And here I am sitting on this sofa, just lying to you. I’m not exactly lying, I guess, I’m just making things sound better than they really were. Carl Strickland is no good. He was no good the day I married him, he was no good the day he showed up in this town, and he was no good every day in between. He did do work for the power company—or at least he used to, but he got fired when they found out he was stealing things. I don’t even know what kind of things. And he was in jail—twice. One time for beating up a man about something and one time for cutting a woman’s arm with a razor-knife. See, that’s when Genevieve came to stay with me, when Carl was in jail, ’cause I was afraid to be alone and ’cause I didn’t have any money and that’s how Malcolm and Lucille and me lived, on that money you sent Genevieve every month. And when Carl would get out of jail, then Genevieve would come back here to stay with you.