Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

by Michael McDowell

  Indicative of this new sensitivity in Miriam was the way that she now treated Sister Haskew. During the war, Sister, now in her early fifties, had become what everyone had always said she would turn out to be—a spinster. She forgot, as nearly as it was possible to forget, that she ever had had a husband. Early Haskew had been in California, Michigan, Greece, England, and France. He had sent Sister postcards from each of those places, and Sister—after always glancing at the postmarks—had torn them up, unread. She shuddered as she ripped the cards in two: “I don’t even want to think about that man.”

  “Why don’t you get a divorce?” asked Miriam one morning at breakfast after Ivey had brought in one of the cards. This one had a photograph of the Roman Coliseum on it.

  “Nobody in this family has ever gotten a divorce,” said Sister.

  “You could be the first.”

  Sister looked at Miriam strangely. “What would I get a divorce for? Early’s never done anything to me.”

  “Then why don’t you ever want to see him again?”

  “You shouldn’t ask me that question.”

  “Why not?”

  Sister paused. “Because I don’t know the answer.”

  Miriam picked up the scraps of the postcard, and dropped them one by one onto her plate. She said, “The reason you married Early was to spite Grandmama.”

  Sister nodded.

  “But after Grandmama died, there was no reason to stay married to Early. Early chews tobacco.”

  “He made me feed his dogs out of a nipple-bottle. Twice a night, I had to get up and feed those puppies. It was like having six children all at once. He put a Coke machine on the front porch of our house.” Sister blushed with the memory. “I came home one day and saw that, and I said, ‘If Mama were to come up here and see this, I would have to lay down in the road and die of shame.’”

  “And that’s why, when Grandmama died, you stayed on here. You didn’t stay to keep care of me, you stayed ’cause you didn’t want to go back to Early.”

  “How long have you known this?”

  “I just this minute figured it out,” said Miriam with a little shrug.

  “I loved you, darling, and I did want to take care of you.”

  “I know you did, Sister.”

  “You don’t want me to go back to Early, do you? I know you could get along fine without me, and I know this house really and truly belongs to you, but I don’t want to go back to Chattanooga or wherever it is that man is living now. Miriam, darling, sometimes I sit up in my room at night, and I think, ‘What if Miriam gets married and she moves her husband in here, is she gone throw me out?’ Would you do that, would you throw me out?”

  “Sister, you’re rich, don’t you know that? Grandmama left all her money to you and Oscar. All I got was this house and the safety-deposit boxes. If I threw you out of here, you could go anywhere you wanted to. You could set up housekeeping in the main street of New Orleans if you wanted to. If you wanted to stay in Perdido, you could get the DeBordenave house from James and fix it all up any way you liked it.”

  “That’s not answering my question.”

  Miriam grinned. “I’m not gone get married. I haven’t got time. I’m working every minute of the day and half the night. And even if I did,” she added in a lower voice, “I’d never throw you out.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear!”

  “Are you satisfied?” said Miriam, rising from the table. “Where do you suppose Oscar is? It’s getting late.”

  “Miriam, come hug me!”

  “What for?”

  “For being so sweet!”

  “Oh, Sister, whoever called me sweet before?”

  “Well, I never did—and nobody else did either, within my hearing. But we were all wrong—every one of us.”

  Miriam went over and put her arms briefly about Sister’s neck. Sister reached up and squeezed Miriam’s clenched fists as hard as she could.

  . . .

  All James Caskey’s prayers and all Billy Bronze’s words in the ear of his commanding officer had not been able to keep Danjo Strickland from being transferred away from Eglin Air Base.

  “This is going to kill me,” said James to his nephew when Danjo told him of the orders.

  “It is not,” said Danjo. “By the time I get over there, wherever it is they’re sending me, the war is gone be over.”

  “Who’s gone die first?” demanded James Caskey querulously. “You or me? Are you gone get shot before I die of grief? Or am I gone get laid out in my casket before you get mown down on the battlefield?”

  “Neither one is gone happen,” said Danjo calmly. “That’s why I was trained in radio. They don’t put their radiomen at the front. Or at least most of ’em stay way behind the lines. Besides, look at Germany right now, where are their lines? We’re beating ’em way back, James.”

  James rocked violently on the porch and wouldn’t look up at Danjo, as if somehow all this were his doing.

  “Hey, look at me, James.”

  James looked up but didn’t stop rocking.

  “I don’t want to go,” said Danjo softly. “I don’t want to leave you. Don’t you think I’m gone miss you?”

  “Don’t bother to write,” said James.

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause I’m gone be dead.”

  . . .

  Two days after Danjo was shipped out, Germany surrendered. James was certain that Danjo therefore was being sent to the continued, bloody fighting in the Pacific.

  Billy heard two weeks later that Danjo was in Germany, billeted in a castle on a mountaintop east of Munich. His sole duty was to signal Allied planes a safe path to a nearby landing field.

  A letter confirming this arrived a few days later. Danjo complained of nothing but the boredom and the strict injunction against the fraternizing with the conquered citizenry. The castle had its own cook, its own farm, even its own vineyard. The graf and his two daughters lived in rooms below his. The graf was a nice old man who reminded Danjo of James—except, of course, the graf didn’t speak English and didn’t like Americans—and the two daughters were very pretty and very nice and made his bed for him every morning.

  Billy heard this letter read aloud at the dinner table. He sighed and said, “Let him complain. When I think of the number of men I trained who’re dead now...”

  “He could fall off that mountain,” said James. “That old graf could murder him in his bed!” James had somehow got it into his head that “graf” meant “cobbler,” and he wondered how a shoemaker came into possession of a castle.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to Danjo,” said Queenie sternly. “James, I don’t want you to imagine one single thing more.”

  James was seventy-five. It had been his lifelong quirk to show his age only in fits and starts. He would go along for five, ten, or fifteen years with no perceptible alteration of appearance or demeanor. Then one single event would suddenly pour down those years upon his head in a single moment. Such had been the case when his wife Genevieve had died violently on the Atmore road; he had then been a well-preserved young man suddenly thrust into middle years. The death of his sister-in-law Mary-Love had swept the well-preserved middle-aged man into old age. This departure of Danjo to Europe pitched James Caskey from a sturdy old age into incipient senility.

  James was alone and Queenie was alone, so Queenie gave up her house and moved in with James. She even laughed about the situation to Elinor: “When I came to Perdido twenty-something years ago, I thought to myself, ‘I’ll get a divorce from Carl and then I’ll marry James Caskey. He’s a rich man and his money will make me happy.’ That seemed real simple. Now it’s hard to even think of all the things that have happened over those years. But here I am, moving in with him, and it’s me that’s taking care of him. And you know what’s real funny, Elinor?”

  “What?”

  “That I don’t even think about money anymore.” Queenie let out a little ironic chuckle.

  Two or
three times a week Queenie drove James out to Gavin Pond to visit their daughters. James loved the infant Tommy Lee and held him on his lap for as long as Tommy Lee would allow it. But James couldn’t always remember the boy’s name, and called him variously Danjo, Malcolm, and John Robert. James often seemed to have forgotten all about Danjo, and listened only vacantly to the letters that Queenie read to him. At the end of them, James would always say impatiently, “Queenie, let’s go out to the pond this afternoon. I need a little boy on my lap.”

  “We were there yesterday, James,” Queenie would sometimes have to say.

  “Yesterday?”

  “That’s right. And we cain’t go again today, those girls would get tired of us and put a padlock on that gate.”

  Sometimes at night Queenie would be awakened by the sound of James stumbling through the darkened house. He’d push open the door of her room and stand as Lazarus might have stood, bewildered at the mouth of the tomb. His wide-open eyes saw nothing.

  “Who’s in here?” he’d call into the darkness. “Grace, is that you? Genevieve?”

  “It’s me—Queenie. James, go back to bed.”

  “Where is everybody? Why is the house empty?”

  Chapter 57

  The Flight

  The death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in April, 1945, made a greater impression on Perdido than had the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the other great events of World War II. Roosevelt, after all, had been talked of daily for more than a dozen years. All the church bells in town had rung out for half an hour on D-Day. They rang out twice that long to mourn the death of the president. The German surrender soon afterward made a smaller impression.

  Frances and Billy Bronze had made no definite plans to be wed, but the death of Roosevelt and the end of fighting in Europe made everyone feel, justifiably or not, that the war was over. Discipline at Eglin was more relaxed than ever. Enlisted men wanted only to go to the beach and stretch out their time in Billy’s classes until the day of the Japanese surrender, which surely could not be far off. On the screened porch upstairs one day after lunch, Billy Bronze said to Elinor, “Maybe Frances and I should think about July.”

  “Are you getting out of the service?” asked Elinor.

  “I’ve already started on that. I’ve been in a long time and I think they’ll let me go.”

  Elinor eyed her future son-in-law with humorous mistrust. “You haven’t been changing your mind, have you?”

  “About what, Mrs. Caskey?”

  “About taking my little girl away from me. She’s all I’ve got.”

  Billy laughed. That Elinor Caskey, head of her family, rich, always surrounded with relatives, sought after in the town and known even in Mobile and Pensacola, should declare that her younger daughter was all that she had, seemed ridiculous to Billy.

  “It’s true,” said Elinor seriously. “If you were to take Frances away, it would kill me. And what’s more, it would kill Frances, too.”

  “I don’t believe that,” said Billy. “But I’m not taking her away, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” said Elinor. “There’s plenty of room in this house for all of us.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” returned Billy. “I just hope you and Mr. Caskey are prepared to support a son-in-law for a while. My daddy’s got all the money in the world, but I’m not going to see a crying dime of it before he dies. And it may be some time before I can even find a job.”

  “We’re not worried,” Elinor reassured him. “We’ll let you know when to stop taking advantage of us.”

  . . .

  Billy was released from the Air Corps during the first week in July. All his belongings had been moved into Oscar and Elinor’s house. He and Frances were married late in the month in a simple ceremony in the sweltering heat of Elinor’s living room. No one in Perdido could understand why the Caskeys, rich as they were, never went in for large church weddings, as anyone else in their position assuredly would have done. Elinor Caskey could certainly have afforded a splendid wedding for her daughter, but the whole ceremony and reception probably had cost her less than fifty dollars. Perhaps, Perdido considered, Frances was pregnant. The truth was that the Caskeys were only following their custom. Their weddings were always sudden, hasty, casual affairs. Not one of them would have felt comfortable seeing the bride in a church, with mounds of flowers and rows of bridesmaids. There was also the difficulty of Billy’s father, who had refused to attend, to send congratulations, to speak to any member of the bride’s family over the telephone, or even to contribute five dollars as a wedding gift. At the end of the ceremony, before Billy and Frances had even broken their first wedded embrace, Miriam flung aside her wilting bouquet and cried, “Good Lord! Come on upstairs, Sister, and help me get out of this damned dress. There’s a pin been sticking in my side since two o’clock!”

  Billy and Frances were pleased by the modestness of the wedding. It seemed more in keeping with the tenor of their quiet courtship than anything larger would have been. They honeymooned in New Orleans for a week, and returned directly to Perdido. Although Billy’s possessions were stored in the front room, the couple slept in Frances’s room next to the sleeping porch.

  The Caskeys were satisfied with Frances’s new husband. One day not long after the wedding, Elinor said to Sister and to Queenie, “Do you notice a little bit of difference between Mary-Love and me? Do you notice that my little girl got married, but is not leaving home? Do you see that her husband is perfectly content to live under my roof?”

  Miriam, though she said nothing, was grateful to Billy for not seeking a job at the mill, where her carefully built-up power would have been threatened by the force of his authority as a man.

  With money supplied her by her father, Grace Caskey was able to buy up approximately five thousand acres of farming land around and contiguous to Gavin Pond. Most of it had been fallow since the beginning of the Depression, and some of it was nearly subtropical forest, with alligator ponds and creeks that flowed so smoothly and quietly that they seemed not to flow at all. Grace didn’t want yet to put this land to use, but like all other Caskeys, she felt better just owning it. Now she knew no one would invade her and Lucille’s cherished privacy. Their remoteness was insured.

  Grace lured Luvadia Sapp out to live at Gavin Pond with a promise of unlimited fishing rights. Luvadia brought with her her three-year-old illegitimate son Sammy, fathered by Roxie’s forty-three-year-old son Escue. They lived in the kitchen for six weeks or so until Escue Welles built them a little house of their own, hidden in the cypress grove across the pond and next to the graveyard. Luvadia could see the epitaphs out her kitchen window. Escue decided not to return to Perdido, but to remain with Luvadia and Sammy. He gave up his job at the mill and was hired by Grace as her overseer. Escue knew less about farming than anyone Grace had ever met, but he was a hard worker and Luvadia loved him.

  Grace had cleared out the pecan orchard the spring before, cutting out the oak and pine saplings that had destroyed the symmetry of the grid of massive trees. She had mown the grass short, and cleared out the stream that ran through it. With Lucille she had gone to Miami, Oklahoma, and bought seventy-five heifers. Even Lucille could tell the cows apart, and she kept careful records of their pedigrees, especially after the acquisition of Zato, their prize bull, worth every penny of the eleven thousand dollars that was paid for him. The animals had grazed contentedly among the pecan trees all summer long, but autumn had come now, and Grace was looking forward to the harvest of the nuts.

  One morning late in September 1945, just before dawn, Grace climbed into her pickup truck and took off for Babylon. Luvadia and Escue sat together in the back of the vehicle. Grace drove into the colored section of town and started blowing her horn. Luvadia and Escue stood up on the bed of the truck and shouted, “Pecans! Pecans!”

  Grace drove slowly. Teenage boys and girls flew off their front porches and out of their yards and leaped onto the back of the truck. I
n the houses, unemployed men were roused out of their sleep by their wives, shoved into their clothes, and pushed out the door toward the truck. Mothers climbed up with their babies wrapped in slings around their necks. Grace stopped occasionally for an old decrepit woman to be hoisted up with the rest. When the back of the truck could hold no more, Grace took off down the road toward Gavin Pond.

  At the gate of the pecan orchard, each picker was given a croker sack to fill. Luvadia took all the children too young to work over to her house and set them on the floor with Sammy. The black workers fairly flew at the trees and began picking up all the nuts on the ground. Grace, armed with a large stick, patrolled for snakes and shooed away the curious cows. The two biggest black men went systematically down each row of the orchard, threw their arms about the trunk of each tree—the circumference of which always surpassed the reach of their arms—and shook it until the pecans showered down.

  The pickers worked all morning, forever stooped, never looking up, sometimes singing hymns together, sometimes only humming to themselves, sometimes scolding the children or trading gossip. Lucille and Luvadia brought out innumerable plates of biscuits and cornbread, and one child did nothing but fill jugs of water at the stream that flowed through the orchard.

  They stopped at eleven and went to Luvadia’s house where they were all served ham and black-eyed peas and collard greens. Grace and Lucille themselves dished up and passed out plates. The pecan gatherers agreed, when they returned to their work that afternoon, that no farmers had ever been so kind to them. During the day the workers dragged their croker sacks—either filled or too heavy to work with anymore—up to the porch of the house. There they were weighed by Escue, and tallies kept beside the names of the pickers. At three o’clock Grace totaled the weights and paid out to the pickers at the rate of five cents a pound. Some earned as much as six or seven dollars. Afterward she drove them all back to Babylon. Many fell asleep immediately upon climbing onto the bed of the truck, despite the bumpiness of the ride through the forest. They all hopped out in the center of the colored section of town, and Grace promised that she would be back bright and early the following morning.