Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

by Michael McDowell

  Life in Perdido changed quickly. There was now full employment, and the mill ached for more workers. Many of the women in town found employment building Liberty ships at the shipyards in Pensacola and Mobile. Every morning at six o’clock, two buses left from the town hall filled with excited Perdido wives who never had held jobs. There was intense activity wholly unprecedented in this quiet corner of rural Alabama. So much money came in from the defense contracts that Oscar saw fit to raise salaries across the board twice in the first six months of the war. The workers shared their newfound income with Perdido. Stores that had closed at the beginning of the Depression opened again and instantly thrived.

  Even Baptist Bottom saw improvement. Black men worked at the mill or had joined the army. Black women took over the running of white households where husband and wife were both off working. Black girls as young as thirteen were pressed into responsible service.

  From the beginning, Oscar made money. He had not anticipated that prosperity would be dependent upon the declaration of war, but nevertheless the Caskey mills were prepared, and in that readiness there was considerable profit.

  Sister and James no longer had to come to Oscar for pin money. With increasing frequency, Oscar presented his uncle and his sister with checks for several hundred dollars. Later he was giving them several thousands. James and Sister stared at the drafts, and endorsed them with surprised and shaky hands.

  “Oscar,” said Sister at dinner one evening, “when I was little, and then when I was living with Early, I didn’t know much about the mill. Nobody would ever tell me a thing. But we never made money like this, did we? Mama had it piled up and stashed away, I know, but it never came in this quick and easy, did it? Every time I turn around you are handing me a check.”

  James replied to Sister, “No, it never came this easy or this fast. And it’s not just the war either. It’s what Oscar did before the war. Oscar, did you know all this was gone happen?”

  “Sort of,” said Oscar with a little discomfort. “I knew something was gone happen. Actually, the one to thank is Elinor.”

  Elinor nodded a small acknowledgement of her husband’s praise.

  “What’d you do?” asked Sister.

  “Elinor was always at me to expand the plant, to get things set up right, even when I was reaching into capital to do it. It took something for me to get over that—you know how Mama was about people using their capital. Expand, improve, build up, get new equipment, buy more land—Elinor just harped and harped on me about it.”

  Sister and James turned to Elinor. “Then you knew about the war.”

  “No,” said Elinor, as if she really didn’t mean it. “I just knew what was right for Oscar and the mill.”

  “We are getting rich, I’m telling y’all that right now,” Oscar went on. “And what’s making us rich is that we have all that land. Every time five acres came up for sale Elinor was on to me about it. She’d say, ‘Oscar, go get it.’ And I’d do it, just to shut her up. You know, there’s those mills up in Atmore and Brewton, and if they had the trees they could get the contracts like I do. But they don’t have the trees, and every time an order comes in they got to go pretty far afield, they got to go looking for timber. In the last ten years they’ve been cutting back, they even sold some of their land to me, and now they’re being brought up short. They all thought I was crazy to sink money into land.”

  “I thought you were crazy, too,” admitted James.

  “Yes,” nodded Sister. “But you and Elinor proved James and me wrong, thank goodness. There have been times when I wasn’t sure I was gone be able to pay Miriam’s schooling.”

  “Good Lord, Sister,” said James, “in another couple of months, we’re gone have enough money to buy that whole damn college...”

  . . .

  Queenie Strickland’s friendship with Dollie Faye Crawford had been sincere; she had not sought it only in order to assure favorable testimony when Malcolm’s case came to trial. After Malcolm had gone away to join the army, Queenie’s visits to the country store continued, and Queenie began shopping there, as did James and Elinor. It was an unheard of thing for the richest family in town to stock its pantry out of a ramshackle little place out in the country, but the Caskeys didn’t care for Perdido’s opinion. The family wanted to continue to make up for the shock Dollie Faye had suffered when confronted by Malcolm Strickland and Travis Gann with shotguns.

  As a result of this new and somewhat extraordinary clientele, Dollie Faye stocked better merchandise. With money from James Caskey, she built a smokehouse out in back; she soon added a slaughterhouse, and got the son of a neighboring farmer to preside over its operations. Other Perdido residents made the trek out to the store on the Bay Minette road when it became known that Mrs. Crawford supplied the best bacon and pork in the county. Elinor lent Dollie Faye a thousand dollars. Oscar sent over four carpenters for a week’s work making improvements on the store.

  Dollie Faye was aware that the Caskeys were the source of her newfound prosperity, and she made sure, despite rationing, that they never suffered. She made surreptitious telephone calls each time a hog was about to be slaughtered, and Queenie or Elinor or Sister was out at the store in time to hear the pig squealing. Sugar was so plentiful for the Caskeys that Elinor continued to make her fruitcakes. Sugar, in any case, would have been no problem, for Ivey and Zaddie and Luvadia had as much cane sugar as they wanted from their mother’s farm out beyond the Old Federal Road. Dollie Faye had trouble only with shoes and with tires. Oscar could usually manage the latter with his newly formed connections with the military, and occasionally, in the company of a colonel or two, he was allowed to make purchases at the military provision stores on the Eglin base, and bought shoes there.

  When the war began, Early Haskew was hired by the War Department as a civilian engineer. He was given a substantial salary and immediately sent to Washington. He telephoned Sister to tell her this news. She was genuinely happy for Early. She had been separated from her husband for so long that she now thought of him like an old friend. The news of an old friend obtaining a lucrative and important position pleased her. She was also happy that the transfer was taking Early just that much farther away. In his official capacity, he got hold of extra ration coupons, stuck them in envelopes and mailed them to Sister. The Caskeys were well provided for in this time that proved difficult and tragic for so many.

  In fact, Perdido as a whole suffered less than many parts of the country. The town was scarcely out of the Depression yet, and many of the boys who went off to the army did so with a willingness exceeding duty to country. Sustenance and shelter and pocket money were surer things in a uniform in Michigan than they were in a falling-down forest shack in rural Baldwin County. Much of the land around Perdido was Caskey forest, but there were small farmers here and there, some black, some Indian, some impoverished white—people who resented governmental attempts to regulate any part of their lives. Their animals were slaughtered in private, their crops gathered in the first hours of the morning before agents were likely to be out on the road. In answering those agents’ questions, the farmers would protest that bad weather, insects, and marauding animals had decimated their crops. Their dirt-streaked children sold vegetables out of mule wagons driven slowly along the residential streets of Perdido. Out of sight in a closed box were slabs of bacon, beef steaks wrapped in brown paper, and chickens with wrung necks.

  The Caskeys feared that, because of the curtailment of gasoline to civilians, Miriam and Frances would have to move into the dormitories of Sacred Heart. The family pooled their allotments of coupons so that, with care, the two daughters might finish out at least the remainder of the semester. Miriam would then graduate, and the question become moot for her; but Frances, returning to school the following autumn, would have to resign herself to leaving her home.

  One chilly morning early in March, half an hour before the sun had risen, Miriam and Frances were driving out of Perdido, on their way to seven-thirty cla
sses. As they neared Crawford’s store, Miriam said, “Frances, isn’t that Miz Crawford standing out in front of her store with a lantern?” Frances roused herself from her usual reverie, peered ahead, and replied, “Sure is. Slow down.”

  In the darkness, Miriam pulled up in the red clay drive of the store.

  “Hey, Miz Crawford,” said Frances, “is there something wrong?”

  “No, ma’am,” replied Dollie Faye. “I just thought you might be low on gas this morning.”

  “We can get to Mobile and back,” said Miriam. “And I didn’t bring any coupons.”

  “Let me fill it up for you,” said Dollie Faye, taking the nozzle from the pump. “You can give me the coupon some other time.”

  “Hey, Mr. Crawford,” said Frances, waving at Dial. The old man slumped up off the bench and came forward with a wet rag to wipe off the windshield.

  Dial Crawford stared at her and mumbled incoherently.

  “Sir?” asked Frances, not understanding a word he said.

  “Don’t mind him,” called Dollie Faye from the back of the car. “You be quiet, Dial!”

  The man continued to murmur and stare at Frances all the while he wiped the windshield. Something about him frightened Frances, and she drew her sweater closer about her shoulders.

  After filling the tank, Dollie Faye came around and said, “I’ll put it on Sister’s bill.”

  “Thank you, Miz Crawford,” said Miriam politely. “I’ll drop the coupons by tomorrow.”

  “Well,” said Dollie Faye, with some significance, “don’t worry about it. You two girls save your brains for school. I know how hard you’re working down there, and it makes your family so happy. Listen, you need any gas, you stop by here on your way down in the morning. Just knock on my window there”—she pointed behind her—“and I’ll get up and give it to you.” She looked up and down the road. It was dark, and no car had passed since Miriam had pulled up. “There’s never anybody out this early...”

  Miriam said, “Miz Crawford, you just got yourself a pair of wings in heaven.”

  With a full tank of gas, Miriam and Frances drove off through the darkness toward Mobile.

  . . .

  With Dollie Faye’s undercover assistance, Miriam and Frances finished their year at Sacred Heart. Miriam graduated second in her class, and the Caskeys were all there to see her accept her diploma. Miriam did not hesitate to declare herself relieved that it was all over and done with now. Back in Perdido, no one dared ask her the question, What will you do now? And characteristically, Miriam did not immediately reveal her intentions. Instead, the day after graduation she appeared at breakfast at her parents’ house and said to her father, “Well, Oscar, since I’m not going to Mobile today, I might as well go over to the mill and help you out.”

  “Lord, Miriam, I wish you would. I sure could use some help. Every day it seems like I’m getting further and further behind in everything.”

  Father and daughter drove off together, came home at noon together, went back to the mill together right after second glasses of iced tea, and collapsed on the front porch together at five-thirty. “Miriam,” her father said with a shaking of his head, “you went through that work like nobody’s business. I never saw anything like it. You’ve set me up for a week.”

  “I’ll go again tomorrow if you want me,” said Miriam offhandedly. “I don’t have anything else to do yet.”

  “I wish you would,” returned Oscar quickly. He had not dared ask her directly.

  After that, Miriam went to the mill every day. She kept the same hours as her father. Oscar had a hole knocked in one wall of his office in order to double the space. Miriam got her own desk and filing cabinets, and found a high school girl to do her typing. A month later, Oscar came to her office, and handed her a paycheck.

  “Oscar,” she said, looking at the draft, “why are you wanting to pay me for this work? I’m doing it for fun.”

  “I cain’t help it, Miriam. I was feeling so guilty about you working your head off like you’re doing, I have to do it to ease my conscience.”

  She looked at the check. “Then I guess I really am working for you.”

  “That’s right. I don’t think I could do without you now.”

  “I don’t think you could either,” she confirmed. She handed her father the check across the desk. “So this isn’t enough money. Raise my salary.”

  He shook his head, sighed, and wandered off to the accounting office. Miriam got her raise.

  “What are you gone do with all that money, darling?” Sister asked her one evening at Elinor’s.

  “None of your business,” returned Miriam. Only Miriam could have said that without true insolence.

  “Are you gone give me some to help run the house?”

  Miriam laughed. “Sister, you are rich as Croesus right now. Are you gone give me some rent for living over there in the house that belongs to me?”

  “No,” returned Sister, “I am not. You don’t have any idea how much time and energy I put in to keeping that house going.”

  “Then we’re even,” retorted Miriam. She looked around the porch at her family, the members of which were reading, playing checkers, or rocking in swings and gliders in the warm evening breezes. “I’m investing my money,” Miriam said.

  “In what?” asked Frances, looking up.

  “Diamonds,” returned Miriam. “I got me another safety-deposit box, and I’m gone fill it up...”

  The family concluded that Miriam would always be Mary-Love’s little girl, no matter how long the old woman had been dead.

  Chapter 50

  Billy Bronze

  Every Saturday and Sunday throughout the duration of the war, Perdido was flooded with soldiers on leave from Eglin Air Base. Some of these men wanted to attend church and others wanted to find a local girl to take to the dance hall built on stilts out over Lake Pinchona. These soldiers were eagerly taken in by Perdido families, given massive plates of fish on Saturday night, hams and racks of ribs on Sunday after church, and entertained on the front porch afterward. The servicemen were admitted free to the Ritz Theater and lent automobiles for drives to the lake. In return, the people of Perdido got extra ration coupons, smuggled tires, and food no longer available in the stores. Perdido remembered how the town had been changed by the influx of levee workers back in ’22, and this wasn’t all that different, except that the men were in uniform, came from all parts of the country, and were—thank God!—much more polite.

  At the end of every Sunday church service, the congregation sang all four verses of “God Bless America” from an insert glued in the front of their hymnals. During this patriotic song, Elinor always looked about at the congregation, and would pick out the three or four or five soldiers she would ask home that day. During the postlude she would point out her choices to Queenie and Sister, and all three would hurry off to capture the men before anyone else got to them. For soldiers, Zaddie, Ivey, and Roxie fixed dinner and supper. Alone, the Caskeys had always got by with just dinner. Every Sunday, Elinor’s dining room was crowded with family and the visitors in uniform. Some of the men from Eglin came only once, but most returned two or three times. Those particularly favored by the family visited the Caskeys at every conceivable opportunity. The family had never been so social or garrulous. There was always an Air Corps man worrying the cooks in the kitchen, sitting with Elinor on the porch upstairs, or waiting on the front steps for Frances and Miriam to return from Mobile late in the afternoon.

  Occasionally colored servicemen came and lounged on the lattice or in the back yard, much to the delight of Zaddie and Luvadia.

  Sometimes, at meals, their numbers were so large that the dining room would not hold them, and the food was served on a buffet set out on the upstairs porch. They flirted with Sister, who was older than the mothers of most of them; they treated James and Oscar with deference. They were in awe of Elinor, and studiously polite around Frances and Miriam and Lucille as if to show the complete innoc
ence of their intentions. They tried to take Danjo hunting, and they challenged Grace to increasingly more strenuous bouts of athletic prowess.

  Most of these uniformed visitors were never around long enough to form really intimate ties with the family. After a certain amount of training they were shipped out to Europe or the South Pacific. The Caskeys received a postcard or two, sometimes censored, but soon communication usually ceased.

  The single exception to this transience on the part of Elinor’s multitude of guests was a corporal from the North Carolina mountains. His name was Billy Bronze. He was an instructor in radio mechanics and permanently stationed at Eglin for the training of recent enlistees. He was strikingly handsome, with dark-blond hair, gray eyes, and a jaw blue-shadowed with beard. His manner was reserved but self-assured. He was twenty-seven, and since most of Elinor’s guests were no more than nineteen or twenty, he seemed mature in comparison. He once put a stop to some rowdiness in the back yard between white and colored soldiers and for his welcome intervention he was remembered and particularly asked back again. He came the next day, and the day after that. One weekend, he was asked to stay in one of the guest rooms if his leave and commanding officer permitted. He did so the following Saturday night. Elinor came to rely on Corporal Bronze to keep all the boys in order, to weed out troublemakers, and to recommend those lonely men at Eglin who were most likely to benefit from the Caskeys’ hospitality.

  Billy, in most circumstances, was straightforward and friendly; with Frances, however, he seemed shy. Despite this shyness, and Frances’s natural diffidence, they sought each other’s company. And there were many opportunities for them to be together. Billy came to Perdido at least two evenings a week and sometimes more often. He spent every other weekend there, sleeping in the front room. In a house bustling with family, servants, and guests, however, the two young people rarely found themselves alone.