Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

by Michael McDowell

“Elinor,” said her husband, “you know who you sound like? You sound just like Mama when you and I wanted to get married. She didn’t want us to go off—and you know what kind of trouble that caused.”

  “Oscar, I am nothing in the world like Mary-Love, and I don’t appreciate your saying I am.”

  “Miz Caskey,” said Billy, “Frances and I aren’t going anywhere. One big reason I’m marrying her in the first place is so that I can stay on here with you and Oscar.”

  Elinor nodded her approval of this sentiment, and Oscar looked pleased.

  They sat on the upstairs porch until suppertime, talking over plans for the couple’s future. One by one the other Caskeys wandered over and received the news with only slightly varying degrees of enthusiasm.

  Sister’s congratulations were effusive for her niece, though strangely commingled with some dismal predictions for the marriage itself. “Are you sure you know what you’re getting into? I’ll bet you don’t. I’ll bet you discover on the inside of six months that it was all a big mistake.” Everyone—including Frances and Billy—understood that Sister was talking about her own marriage more than anything else, and so accepted the comments in good part.

  “What about your daddy?” asked Queenie Strickland, who always found the one question no one else had thought of.

  “Why, yes,” said Elinor, “you think he’ll come down for the wedding?”

  Billy shook his head doubtfully. “No, ma’am, I don’t believe he will.”

  “You don’t think he’d approve of your marrying our little gitchee-gumee?” asked Oscar gleefully.

  “Daddy, I wish you wouldn’t call me that. I’m twenty-one years old. I’m not a baby, and you don’t read me poems out of books anymore.”

  “My father,” said Billy, “is pretty much bound to object to anything I do.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Sister sympathetically, recalling the similar aspects of her childhood.

  “Is that going to stop you?” asked Elinor. “He could disinherit you.”

  “He could, but I don’t think he’d do that. Even if he did, it wouldn’t stop me.”

  Frances looked around the porch with pride, as if to say, Look what this man would do for me...

  “You want me to call him up and speak to him?” asked Elinor. “I don’t mind explaining things to him.”

  Billy shook his head. “Better let me do that. He’s not going to like it—and there’s no reason for you to have to listen to what he’s going to say.”

  “I don’t know why some people don’t just up and die,” said Queenie pointedly. “It would sure make some other people real happy.”

  “Queenie,” said James, “you are talking about Billy’s daddy!”

  “That’s all right, Mr. James,” said Billy. “Mrs. Strickland’s not saying any worse than I’ve said once or twice in my life.”

  “How children survive their parents,” sighed Sister, “is a thing I will never understand.”

  Miriam, who through all this had sat on the glider reading the afternoon Mobile paper in the fading sunlight, folded the paper, dropped it on the floor, and said, “When is the wedding? If I’m supposed to be in it, then somebody tell me now so that I can get Sister to start thinking about getting me a dress and shoes and whatever else it takes.”

  “Miriam,” cried Sister, “you’re not supposed to ask somebody if you’re going to be in their wedding, they’re supposed to ask you!”

  “Miriam, would you be my maid of honor?” asked Frances timidly, glancing at her mother for approval.

  Elinor nodded.

  “If you want me to,” said Miriam. “If you don’t want me to, Frances, then say so and ask somebody else. It’s not going to hurt my feelings.”

  “No,” said Frances. “I want you. You’re my sister.”

  “All right, then,” said Miriam. “It’s settled. Sister, are you gone see about getting me a dress or something to wear?”

  “Well, of course I will, darling, but it’s not as easy as that. First we’ve got to find out what the bride is going to wear. These things take a lot of time.”

  Miriam appeared to take the news of her sister’s engagement with equanimity, if not actual indifference. “When is this thing going to be?” she asked.

  “We don’t know,” said Billy. “At least not until after Frances finishes Sacred Heart. We may even wait till the end of the war.”

  “Who knows when that’s going to be,” snorted James. “When they’ve taken away all our boys, I guess.”

  “I guess,” said Billy.

  “You better not wait till the end of the war,” said Elinor. “James is right. Who knows how long it might go on?”

  Zaddie appeared in the doorway to announce supper. There was general movement as everyone got up out of swing, chair, and glider.

  “Get married in the summer,” said Queenie, walking toward the door.

  “Not in August,” said Sister, following along. “Everybody in the church will melt. And do you know what happens to flowers in a church in August? Only thing worse than to get married in August is to die in August. Mama died in August, and we had to do everything but pack her in ice.”

  They all headed down the stairs toward the dining room. Frances hung back, and remained behind until she and Miriam were alone on the porch.

  “Are you happy for me?” she asked her sister diffidently.

  “Of course,” snapped Miriam. “Though why Billy would consent to stay in this house with Elinor is a thing I will never understand.”

  “Billy loves Mama!”

  “Then he’s a fool,” said Miriam with a decisive nod. She peered at her sister, Frances, whose looks were suddenly downcast. “But if he loves you,” said Miriam, softening, “then it doesn’t matter one little bit whether he’s a fool or not.”

  Frances looked up with a smile.

  “Everything’s gone be cold if we don’t go down,” said Miriam, and marched toward the door. As the sisters were going down the stairs, Miriam turned and spoke over her shoulder. “I don’t know why you two didn’t do what everybody else in this family has always done—just run off and get married. You better tell me right away what you want for a wedding present, ’cause I tell you, I am so busy at the mill I’m not gone have any time to go out shopping for it.”

  Chapter 52

  Lake Pinchona

  During the war, Queenie was taken care of by the Caskeys more than ever. She didn’t have a job, and wanted no position but that of companion to James. James supplied her with money. Sister and Elinor gave her ration coupons. She never cooked because the Caskey tables were always open to her and to Lucille. Queenie was a bit of a poor relation, and she made herself useful in the ways that poor relations had always employed themselves: as fill-in companion, as runner of small errands, as listening post, and sometimes even as whipping boy. She had become, since the death of her husband Carl, a clear-sighted woman who didn’t bemoan her inferior circumstances. She did not resent the kindnesses that were done her, and she ignored the unconscious slights she occasionally perceived in the behavior of the Caskeys toward her and her children.

  Queenie might have demanded more, had it not been for the problem of her offspring. Danjo belonged completely to James Caskey. No one would have interfered if she had claimed her rights as the boy’s mother, except for the fact that Carl had fairly traded Danjo to James in exchange for a new automobile. This had been almost fifteen years before, but Queenie still had that car, though it now sat in her driveway, empty of gas. In commerce with James’s house, Queenie saw her son frequently, but there was no more real parental love between them than there was between Elinor and Miriam. Queenie was like a distant aunt to Danjo. Sometimes Queenie sighed over this, not because she missed Danjo or regretted the bargain, but only because, of the three children she had borne, Danjo had turned out best. She often wished that either Malcolm or Lucille instead of Danjo had been the object of Carl and James’s transaction.

  Of her eldes
t, she heard little. Malcolm had trained at Camp Blanding, had been stationed at Fort Dix in New Jersey, and had reenlisted and been transferred to somewhere in Texas. He had been promoted twice and liked army life. Everybody who had known Malcolm said blandly to Queenie, “The discipline will probably do that boy a lot of good. It’s probably just what he needed.” Such criticism stung. Queenie suspected she had not been cut out for motherhood. Where her son spent his furloughs Queenie had no idea. She wondered whether she would ever see him again. With all the fighting in Europe and the Pacific, it seemed inevitable that Malcolm would soon be sent over. He wrote infrequently, and Queenie read every brief letter carefully, always with the thought in her head that it might prove to be his last communication.

  Lucille was turning out no better than Malcolm. Behind the candy counter at the Ben Franklin, Lucille flirted with every soldier who walked into the store. She had also taken an evening job, waiting on tables out at Lake Pinchona. Queenie had not been in favor of this, but she could not refuse the girl the opportunity to make some extra money.

  Lucille had a stack of photographs of Air Corps men tied with a yellow string in the top drawer of her dresser. Queenie had found it one day while searching for a button. On the weekend, Lucille spent all day and all evening out at the lake, where there were at least three military men for every local girl. Only once did Queenie venture to remonstrate, saying, “Darling, these aren’t Perdido boys who are coming in from Eglin.”

  “Mama,” said Lucille in her peeved, whining voice, “is that supposed to convey some meaning to me?”

  “It just means that they didn’t grow up with you. They don’t know how sweet and innocent most Perdido girls are, and sometime one of them might try to go too far.”

  Lucille eyed her mother suspiciously. “Nobody’s gone go too far with me, Ma. I don’t even know why you’d want to say something like that to me. I’m just embarrassed to hear it spoke!”

  Queenie said no more. In her unhappy heart, she knew for a certainty that her daughter had gone too far with one of the men from Eglin.

  . . .

  Lake Pinchona was a seven-mile drive from Perdido. The fifty-acre lake was irregular in shape, with many narrow fingers of forested land jutting out into the water and many secluded tongues of water lapping into the surrounding forest of pine, cedar, and cypress. On the western side of the lake was a pasture with a herd of Holstein cows. The grass on which those cows grazed was the thickest, greenest grass anyone in Perdido had ever seen. The colors of that grass, the water of the lake, and the skies that arched over the whole scene were like the colors in a paint box, mysterious and impossibly rich. The water of the lake was bright blue, and its fringes were thick with water lilies. Brave men unafraid of the alligators in the lake took their nervous girlfriends for rides in small boats. The alligators were so well fed by children dropping bread out of the windows of the dance hall, however, that there was little danger to those who ventured out onto the water.

  Built next to a large picnic area beneath a grove of immense cedars, the dance hall was large, rectangular, and constructed entirely out over the water, with a gangway providing access from the land. A kitchen and a small screened-in dining room ran along one side, but most of the space was the dance area itself. It had a dark wooden floor, a shadowy vaulted ceiling, and a bench running around three sides beneath an uninterrupted line of windows. The place always seemed dim, not only because of the dark wood but because of the contrast of the bright light coming in through the windows and the front door. Outside, on the other side of the picnic area, were a concession stand, two small bathhouses, and a large swimming pool.

  The lake was immensely popular during the war. It was close enough to Eglin to make returning to the base late at night no great difficulty. It attracted girls from Perdido, Bay Minette, Brewton, Atmore, Fairhope, Vaughn, Daphne, and even Mobile. Dancing began at five o’clock and ended at midnight. On weekends a band was hired, and a dollar admission fee charged. The place was run by a middle-aged couple, but they were so busy in the kitchen with hamburgers and hot dogs that they had little time to spend supervising those who came to the lake. Prudish folk in the surrounding towns began to whisper about what went on at Lake Pinchona, but the more sophisticated held that the dance floor of Lake Pinchona was a better place for the daughters of Baldwin and Escambia counties than the back seat of an automobile.

  . . .

  Lucille waited tables—often quite ineptly—in the small dining room off the dance floor from six until nine every evening. She was the only waitress, and she sometimes gathered as much as four or five dollars in tips from the servicemen. When her shift was over, she hurried out to the darkened bathhouse and changed from her white uniform into a more becoming dress. Her favorite moment of the entire day was her reentrance into the dance hall, the hairnet and the shapeless white dress and apron of her waitress’s uniform cast aside; her face was scrubbed, her hair brushed, her dress freshly pressed and still smelling of the sun it had been dried in that morning. All the Air Corps men flocked around her and said things like, “Are you sure you’re the same girl who dropped the French fries and poured that coffee in my lap?” Lucille always laughed gaily, and returned, “That sure wasn’t me, that was my twin sister!”

  She danced with anyone who asked her. With the one she liked best during the course of the evening, she would sit pertly on the bench that ran around the room. She and that serviceman would turn and gaze out the windows at the moon and the stars and the shimmering water of the lake, with its ring of water lilies whitely glowing on their black pads. The dance hall was noisy and bright, but Lucille and the Air Corps man, feeling themselves more part of the dark, quiet night, would turn and look at each other and smile. At this juncture, Lucille would invariably ask in her coyest voice, “What’s your name?”

  Month succeeded month at Lake Pinchona, but Lucille never grew weary of her evening ritual. Her mother didn’t see how she could keep it up: all day on her feet behind the candy counter at the Ben Franklin, waiting tables in the early evening, and then dancing until eleven or twelve. But Lucille didn’t feel fatigue. “It’s my war effort,” she said airily.

  An abnormally mild winter was followed by an unusually warm spring, and the lake opened for business several weeks early. Now the crowds were even heavier than the year before, and the kitchen hours were lengthened from six until ten. Lucille was still the only girl on the floor, but there weren’t any more dropped plates of French fries or spilled cups of coffee. Her work was all done by rote. Her actions as much as her smile were distant and absent from her thoughts. Every minute she looked forward to that magic moment when she reentered the dance hall, transformed. She played over in her mind what compliments she had received in the past, and hoped that tonight one of the servicemen would say something she had never heard before. She glanced over the crowd, and wondered which one she would choose for her special partner tonight. She never decided beforehand and left the question to fate. Somehow the idea had caught in Lucille’s head that every night’s crowd at Lake Pinchona was different from that of the previous evening or the crowd of a week ago. She maintained this belief even though she remembered many faces from previous times. She held to this transparent fiction because she liked to imagine that her reappearance every night induced unparalleled wonder in the military men who witnessed her metamorphosis.

  . . .

  Elinor once spoke in confidence to Billy Bronze, saying, “Queenie is worried about Lucille, and just between you and me, Billy, she has reason to be. If you wouldn’t mind, I wish you would take Frances—and Miriam if she wants to go—out to the lake once in a while and just keep an eye on Lucille. She’s going to do pretty much whatever she wants to, I know that. But it would make Queenie feel better to have somebody watching out for her a little bit.”

  Thus, Billy and Frances, and even sometimes Miriam, went out to Lake Pinchona in the evening and danced. They waved to Lucille when they came in, ordered Cokes from
her, smiled when she made her by now famous reentrance, and reminded her that Queenie worried when she stayed out after midnight.

  Frances and Billy, without Miriam, were at the dance hall at Lake Pinchona one Saturday night shortly after their engagement. They had eaten supper with Elinor and Oscar, and afterward they had driven out to the lake. They walked hand in hand together beneath the cedars, then stood at the edge of the lake and stared at the dark water beneath the wide lily pads. On every side of them cicadas, chanting in unison, made it seem that every tree and bush sang.

  At ten o’clock they went into the dance hall. The kitchen was just closing, so that the rattle of the dishes and talk of diners shouldn’t intrude upon the dancers during the later, more intimate hours of the evening.

  They stepped into the screened-in dining room just as Lucille was ushering the last reluctant customer out and latching the door behind him. It had been a busy evening, and Lucille looked frazzled and distracted. “I’ve got weary bones,” she confided to Frances.

  “Then maybe you should just go straight on home,” suggested Frances.

  Lucille stared at her cousin in disbelief. “It’s Saturday night!” she cried, as if that explained everything.

  Frances and Billy wandered off to speak to a couple of men from Eglin with whom they were acquainted. As undistracted and private in the empty dining room as a fish in its aquarium, Lucille wiped the tables clean, set up for the following evening, counted her tips, and as she was taking off her apron, winked at the black dishwasher. She made a little show of going out through the kitchen door, saying loud good-nights to the owner’s wife, who was wiping off the stove, and to the owner himself, who was taking admissions at the door. She skipped out into the night, her shoes beating a brief hollow tattoo on the wooden gangway.

  Everyone in the dance hall knew that Lucille would return within a quarter hour. If Lucille had not been as pretty as she was, the little burletta played out nightly would have seemed ridiculous. The band continued to play, but fewer people danced. All the men wanted to see Lucille’s entrance. The girls whispered among themselves that the reason Lucille worked at all, when she had such rich relatives, was so that she could buy those tacky little dresses that she put on in the bathhouse every night.