Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

by Michael McDowell

  “No!” shouted the principal. “I haven’t got time for foolishness.”

  Queenie Strickland’s automobile was not in front of her house. Inside, Lucille told the sheriff that Malcolm and Travis Gann had taken the car out about an hour before, but hadn’t said where they were going.

  “Old Travis,” said Sheriff Key, “he works at the mill, don’t he?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Lucille. “And he just stinks of that old creosote. I don’t let him come near me! You want to see one of them, Sheriff?”

  “I want to see ’em both.”

  “You want me to give ’em a message?”

  “I want to sit on your front porch and wait for ’em to come home is what I want. What’s your name?”

  “Lucille.”

  “Lucille,” said the sheriff, “you got some iced tea? I sure am hot.”

  Chapter 45

  Dollie Faye

  Malcolm Strickland and Travis Gann were arrested that evening by Charley Key, charged with armed robbery, and thrown into the five-cell lockup in the Perdido town hall. Queenie and James appeared there about ten minutes after the doors had been slammed shut on the two men.

  Malcolm sat sullenly on a bench against the outside wall, shading his eyes from the harsh glare of the single electric bulb dangling from the ceiling. “Don’t say it, Ma.”

  “Say what?” demanded Queenie. “That you’re no good? That you’ve finally done it this time? Well, I will say it. You’re no good, Malcolm Strickland. You certainly have done it this time. And you, Travis Gann,” she turned to the smirking man sprawled in another corner of the cell, “you put my boy up to this.”

  “Lord, Miz Strickland,” drawled Travis, his creosote stench filling the cell, “I couldn’t have talked Malcolm into doing anything he didn’t want to do.”

  “Mama, Uncle James, are you gone get me out, or are you just gone stand there and preach?”

  Queenie wouldn’t reply.

  “We’re gone get you out,” said James softly.

  “Good,” said Malcolm. Both men rose.

  “Not you, Mr. Gann,” said James Caskey.

  “Aw, hey...” he protested. “I don’t have no rich relatives to pay my bail.”

  “Then you’ll just have to stay in here and rot,” said Queenie. “Malcolm, are you gone promise me before you get out of here?”

  “Promise you what, Mama?” asked Malcolm apprehensively.

  “That you are never gone have anything more to do with this man in your entire life?”

  Travis Gann grinned.

  “Sure. Mama, you know how much we got?” Malcolm said ruefully, glancing at Travis. “We got twenty-three dollars.”

  James shook his head. “It’s costing me a hundred to get you out of here.”

  Charley Key appeared with the keys of the cell in his hand.

  “Mama,” said Malcolm in a low voice, reaching for his mother through the bars, “am I gone go to jail?”

  “Where do you belong?” she returned tartly. “You belong in jail for putting James and me through this shame.”

  “Evening, James,” said the sheriff. “Evening, Miz Strickland. You got a lousy excuse for a son here.”

  “I was just telling him that, Sheriff,” said Queenie. “But he’s not as bad as his friend there.”

  “Your mama’s got a tongue,” remarked Travis Gann, as Malcolm was being let out of the cell. “Miz Strickland, you ought to watch that tongue of yours. Someday somebody might come up to you and tear it out of your head and wrap it around your neck and choke you to death with it. And who’d get you out of jail then, Malcolm?”

  “Watch out, Travis,” murmured the sheriff. “Don’t go threatening people now. Somebody might start to take you serious, and lift your chin with a rifle barrel. Lift it right through the top of your damned head.”

  Queenie pulled Malcolm a few feet along the corridor out of Travis Gann’s sight—but not out of range of his laughter. “Let’s go,” she said to James.

  James was in front of another cell, chatting with two former mill employees; they had been hired by James thirty years before. They were in jail for brawling. “Hey,” he was saying, “you two are too old to be fighting over a woman. And you’re too poor to be fighting over money. What was it?”

  “Plain old hard times,” replied the one.

  “Nothing else to do,” returned the other.

  Outside, James paid both men’s bail.

  . . .

  Out on the Bay Minette road, in the house in back of Crawford’s store, Dollie Faye Crawford had taken to her bed. She was surrounded by neighbors and relatives who had flocked to her in the time of her distress. It was universally judged that she had almost had a stroke. Her blood pressure, as a result of the terrifying incident, was dangerously high. Her husband Dial rocked peaceably in a corner of the room out of everyone’s way.

  The store was shut, but friends and relatives bearing gifts of food and consolation out of Bibles marked with scraps of paper knocked on the side door of the house. They were admitted by a faded little girl who had been given a pocketful of cookies from one of the jars on the counter of the store in payment for the task. At around eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, the day after the robbery, everyone had gone off to church, and Dollie Faye and Dial were left alone. There was a timid knock at the door, and the little girl opened it.

  “Who is it?” called Dollie Faye weakly. “Who’s not going to church this morning?”

  Into the room walked two visitors the likes of which Dollie Faye and Dial Crawford weren’t accustomed to—town people, moneyed people; people whose clothes were new, store-bought, and neither dusty nor faded.

  “Yes, ma’am, yes, sir, what can I do for you?” said Dollie Faye, attempting to rise from the bed.

  “Don’t you dare get out of that bed, Miz Crawford!” cried Queenie.

  “Miz Crawford,” said James, “you probably don’t know us from Adam and his little sister, but Queenie and I have come to apologize and make amends.”

  “For what?” said Dollie Faye, still trying to get out of bed. Queenie went around and put a stop to that.

  “It was my boy,” said Queenie in a low doleful voice, “who pointed a gun at your head yesterday!”

  Dollie Faye fell back against the pillow in surprise.

  “Your boy!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said James.

  “He is no good,” said Queenie. “I could kill him for scaring you like he did.”

  “Your boy smell of creosote?”

  “No, ma’am,” said James. “That was the other boy. That was Travis Gann. He is no good.”

  Dollie Faye, who seemed to have recovered slightly, turned to Queenie and said, “Your boy wasn’t the one who said he was gone kill me. It was the other one—the one who smelled like creosote. Your boy didn’t want to be there. I could see it in his face. He was ’bout scared as I was.”

  “I’d like to scare him,” said Queenie vehemently. She took a chair beside the bed, and leaned forward confidingly. “I’m gone tell you something, Miz Crawford,” she said in a low voice. “My boy Malcolm takes after his daddy. His daddy was in the pen, more than once, though I am ashamed to have to say it. The best thing I can say about Malcolm’s daddy is that he has been dead for the last five years.”

  “Now Miz Crawford,” James said, glancing at Dial and seeing instinctively that he was not to be an active part of any of this business, “we have brought you some money to make up for what those boys took.”

  “I nearly forgot, I was so busy apologizing!” cried Queenie, and opened her purse. She handed ten twenty-dollar bills to Dollie Faye.

  Dollie Faye cried, “This is so much! I only had twenty dollars in the register yesterday. What’d they do with all them pennies, anyway?”

  “Spent ’em at the track,” said Queenie with a vigorous nodding of her head. “Every damn one! Oh, ’scuse me, Miz Crawford. I didn’t walk in this house with the intention of swearing in your face.
”

  “Y’all call me Dollie Faye.”

  “Dollie Faye,” said James, “Queenie and I want to know what we can do for you.”

  “Not a thing more, thank you,” replied Dollie Faye hastily. “I am taken care of. People have been real good. And you have given me too much money.”

  “When are you gone be able to get out of this bed?” asked Queenie.

  “Doctor says I ought to be here a week. See, I’ve got pressure trouble. Mama died of it. But I’m gone be all right. I got to be all right, ’cause I got to get up and run that store. Dial—that’s my husband over there in the corner—don’t even know how to run the register. And don’t know much about stock neither, when it comes down to it. Sometimes I let him wash off windshields, but not much more than that. Used to have a boy to pump gas, but he run off somewheres...”

  “You’re not gone get out of that bed,” said James Caskey sternly.

  “I wish I could stay in it,” said Dollie Faye, “but there’s people ’round here depend on me and this store.”

  “I’m gone run it,” said Queenie, squeezing Dollie Faye’s hand.

  “You?!”

  “I used to work in the Ben Franklin up in Nashville, the big store they had up there. I know how to work a register.”

  “Queenie’s real quick,” James assured her.

  “But you cain’t just up and run my store for me!”

  “I know why you’re refusing,” said Queenie in a low earnest voice. “It’s ’cause you don’t want the mother of the boy that put a gun to your head hanging around. You don’t want to have to look in her suffering face.”

  “No! It’s just that it’s so much trouble out here. There’s always somebody wanting something special that only I know anything about, and—”

  “Cain’t I step back in here and ask you things?”

  “I guess you could...”

  “It’s settled then,” said Queenie firmly.

  “You cain’t pump gas,” objected Dollie Faye.

  “My boy can,” whispered Queenie, leaning forward. “See, I’m gone make him quit his job at the mill. He wasn’t any good at it anyway, and I don’t want him hanging around with those men—he might find himself another Travis Gann. I’m gone bring him out here and make him work off what he stole from you. But you’re not even gone see him, I’m not gone let him step foot in this store. Just looking at him might send your pressure up. I saw that little bench out in front, and he’s gone sit out there all day long pumping gas, and if Mr. Crawford’s weary of washing windshields, then let him take his ease, ’cause Malcolm will do it for him.”

  . . .

  On the following day, the Crawford’s store was opened again, and Queenie Strickland had installed herself behind the counter in her second-best dress. Malcolm was out front pumping gas as instructed. James was there too, and he sat and visited with Dollie Faye, every now and then addressing a remark to Dial Crawford, who nodded sagely and kept rocking. At noontime and with Dollie Faye’s permission, a very red-faced Malcolm was ushered inside and made a stammering apology. Dollie Faye said, “What you did was wrong, and you near about broke your sweet mama’s heart. But I forgive you, Malcolm, for her sake and for your own.”

  For the next two weeks Queenie presided over the store; Malcolm went on pumping gas, and James continued to sit beside Dollie Faye’s bed. Even when Dollie Faye had recovered and resumed her place behind the counter, Queenie and James were not much less assiduous in their attendance on her, and Malcolm kept his place at the pumps. Malcolm’s trial was scheduled for the first Wednesday in November, the day after the elections. Queenie drove Dollie Faye to the Bay Minette courthouse and sat with her in the courtroom all the morning long. There were two murders to be tried before the armed robberies came up and the two women observed the proceedings with interest.

  Malcolm and Travis were tried together. Dollie Faye testified to the events of that September Saturday. Travis Gann had threatened to blow her head off, he had raised his gun and taken aim, he had carried the money off himself. Obviously ill at ease during the robbery, Malcolm Strickland had cautioned against violence. Dollie Faye was convinced that he had been roped into the whole business completely against his will. She testified that she believed that Malcolm would have come to her rescue had Travis actually attempted to kill her. Moreover, since the crime, Malcolm had more than made up the money that had been taken from her by assisting with the running of the store. Everybody in the courtroom had seen him pumping gas, changing oil, and washing windshields. Dollie Faye had nothing but good to say about Malcolm Strickland and his mother and his uncle, who had been good to her like good Christians ought to be.

  After Dollie Faye’s testimony Malcolm Strickland was let off with a reprimand, while Travis Gann was sentenced to five years in the Atmore penitentiary.

  At the defendants’ table, the two young men looked at each other.

  “I guess,” said Malcolm, “it looks like I’m out and you’re in.”

  “I guess,” said Travis Gann with a grin that Malcolm did not expect.

  “Hey,” said Malcolm, “five years—that’s a long time. I’m sorry...”

  “Don’t be sorry,” said Travis, still with the grin. “They’re sending me to Atmore. You know how hard it is to get out of Atmore?”

  Malcolm shook his head, grateful that because of the court decision he had no use for such information.

  “Getting out of Atmore,” said Travis, “is like climbing over a rotten log in some old farmer’s pasture, that’s what getting out of Atmore is like.”

  “You ought to wait till you get in there, before you start thinking about getting out,” warned Malcolm.

  “No, not me. I’m already thinking about what I’m gone be doing once I’m free.”

  The senseless grin seemed to be frozen on Travis’s face and it was beginning to make Malcolm uneasy. Queenie and Dollie Faye were beckoning to him. Malcolm turned back to Travis and asked: “What you gone do, Travis?”

  “I’m gone teach some people a lesson, that’s what I’m gone do.”

  “Who you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about people walking around free that ought to be in jail with their friends, that’s the first kind I’m talking about.” Just in case Malcolm had not understood this, Travis Gann punctuated the statement by poking a finger against Malcolm’s chest.

  “And I’m talking about an old lady who don’t mind seeing her boy’s best friend get himself in real trouble. An old lady,” Travis went on with greater specificity, “who had just as soon see me rot in jail as not.” Travis turned his grin toward Queenie and called out, “Hey, Miz Strickland, you better come get your boy here ’fore I get him in any more trouble.”

  At this, Queenie marched over and took Malcolm’s arm. She said, “Travis Gann, you got what you deserved. I’m not a bit sorry for you.”

  “I know that,” Travis said, still grinning. “I know it very well. But maybe someday you will be. Sorry, I mean.”

  Queenie took Malcolm out of the courtroom. Travis Gann was returned to his cell to await transfer to Atmore. Two more defendants took the young men’s place at the table, and Alabama law and justice continued.

  That afternoon, sick of pumping gas and even sicker of his enforced penitence, Malcolm Strickland stole his mother’s car, drove to Mobile, and joined the army. He did not think it necessary to tell his mother of Travis Gann’s thinly veiled threats. It couldn’t be that easy to escape from Atmore.

  Chapter 46

  Sacred Heart

  After Miriam’s departure for college, Sister remained aloof from her brother Oscar and his wife. But one evening in November, Sister sat in her dining room alone, eating leftovers and gazing out the window at Oscar’s house next door. She could see her brother and his family having supper in their dining room. Frances was talking, and Oscar and Elinor were laughing at whatever it was their daughter was saying. Sister could even faintly hear their voices. She had a sudden rev
elation. She ran out and across the sandy yard, then called up toward the dining room window, “Hey, Oscar! Elinor!”

  Elinor came to the window, and peered out into the evening gloom. “Sister?”

  “Can I come in for a few minutes?”

  “Of course you can. Come on in.” Elinor went into the front hallway.

  “Elinor,” said Sister as she stepped inside the house, “I want to apologize. I cain’t imagine what I was thinking of.”

  “Thinking of when?”

  Oscar appeared in the dining room doorway with his crushed napkin in his hand and his mouth still full of food. “Hey, Sister, how you?”

  “Oscar, you know how I am. I’m as lonesome over there as an old rail fence stretching off into nowhere.”

  “Then why haven’t you come to see us before?”

  Sister went into the dining room, sat at the table, and accepted the cup of coffee that Zaddie brought to her. “I don’t know where my head could have been,” said Sister.

  “Sister, what are you talking about?” said Oscar.

  “The reason I haven’t come to visit was because of Mama and Miriam. Neither one of ’em ever came here any more than they absolutely had to.”

  Oscar and Elinor nodded in silent assent.

  “But Mama’s dead and Miriam’s gone off to school, and I was sitting there all alone, seeing your lights over here, thinking, ‘Well, I cain’t go over there, Mama’d kill me or Miriam wouldn’t speak to me.’ Then all of a sudden I realized how foolish I was being, so here I am.”

  Oscar laughed. “Sister, those two had you trained.”

  “They sure did!”

  “I hope you’re going to come over and see us all the time, now,” said Elinor.

  “I sure would like to,” sighed Sister. “And maybe I will.”

  “What’s going to stop you?” asked Elinor.

  “Who knows?” said Sister darkly. “That’s the problem with this family—you cain’t count on anything staying the same for long.”