Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

by Michael McDowell

  “I need to speak to you and Grace.”

  “Grace and Escue are out in the corn. Let me go call her. Here, take Tommy Lee inside. There’s a pitcher of iced tea in the refrigerator.”

  “Is it sweet?” asked Miriam, grabbing Tommy Lee’s hand and dragging him up the steps of the porch.

  “Yes, but I’ll make some for you that isn’t.”

  In a few minutes, the three women were seated around the dining room table. Tommy Lee was on Grace’s lap. Grace was deeply sunburned from all the time she spent out in the fields. Her hair had turned a streaked, golden blond. In contrast, Lucille’s face was pale, for she never went without a broad-brimmed straw hat. She had lost her pastiness, however, and was as plump now as Queenie had been when she first arrived in Perdido. Her arms were red and freckled, and she was fearsomely proud of her calloused hands, for they showed her family how hard she worked for love of Grace and Gavin Pond Farm. An oscillating fan on highest speed was set on another chair.

  Grace and Lucille looked expectantly at Miriam. Miriam had never visited on a weekday afternoon before. She had placed a clipboard of papers before her, and she took a fountain pen out of her dress pocket; she wasted no time in getting to the point.

  “This is about that old swampland south of here.”

  “What about it?” said Grace warily.

  “First thing is,” said Miriam, “we are buying more. I just found another parcel next to what we already have, about eighteen hundred acres. So I’ve bought it, and I need your signatures.”

  “Miriam, Lucille and I don’t have any money for more land! We’re strapped as it is.”

  “Queenie is lending you the money,” said Miriam firmly. “And that’s this paper.” She set out a second paper, and unscrewed the cap of the pen.

  “Well, now,” said Grace slowly, “nobody likes property better than me, but Miriam, are you sure we need it? I mean it’s just swamp, right? Nothing but mosquitoes and alligators and quicksand, right? How much did you have to pay?”

  “Eighty dollars an acre,” answered Miriam.

  “Lord, God!” cried Grace, and the exertion of her surprise lifted Tommy Lee right off her lap and dropped him into Lucille’s. “I could get me Black Belt soil for eighty dollars an acre. What in the world are you thinking of, paying that kind of money?”

  Miriam sighed. “Grace, just sign. You’re not out one penny. You know and I know you’re never gone have to pay Queenie back. You and Lucille get one-fourth title to that property, Elinor and Oscar get one-fourth, Frances and Billy get one-fourth, and I get one-fourth. Just sign,” she repeated, holding out the pen.

  “I don’t understand this one single bit,” Grace murmured as she signed both documents. Lucille handed Tommy Lee back and took the pen in turn.

  “Anything else?” asked Grace. “From the look of that stack of papers, we could be here all afternoon.”

  “Just one other,” said Miriam, taking out a single page from the bottom.

  Grace took it and looked it over. “I don’t understand this.”

  “That’s ’cause you cain’t read it,” said Lucille. “Grace cain’t read a thing without her reading glasses. She won’t wear ’em.”

  “I see just fine out in the fields,” said Grace, signing the document. “I hope you’re not tricking us, Miriam.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Miriam, placing the page in front of Lucille.

  “How’s Frances?” Lucille asked.

  “Big as a house,” said Miriam.

  “What is this paper?” asked Grace.

  “Permission to drill,” replied Miriam, clipping it back to the board.

  “What the hell does that mean?” demanded Grace.

  Miriam stood up. “That means,” she said, “that there is oil under all that swampland.”

  “Lord!” cried Lucille, putting down Tommy Lee. “You are joking, Miriam!”

  “I am not. I am going to Houston in a couple of weeks and talk to some people.”

  “You mean,” said Grace, “that you just got me to sign a paper I couldn’t even read that says some old oil company can bring in their men and their machinery and their I-don’t-know-what-all and tear up our property? Is that what I just signed? Where are my reading glasses?”

  “That’s right,” said Miriam, heading toward the door.

  “They’re all gone sink in the quicksand,” said Lucille in consolation.

  “Lord, Grace,” said Miriam, with her hand on the doorknob, “they’re not gone bother you.”

  “They’ll be here!”

  “Two miles away, you’re not even gone hear ’em.”

  “How you know there’s oil down there?” asked Lucille. “You send somebody swimming down to the bottom of that old swamp?”

  “Elinor said so,” Miriam said as she walked out the door.

  Grace and Lucille stood together in the doorway, watching Miriam get back into her car. “Don’t you bring any more papers out here to me,” cried Grace, “’cause I’m gone tear ’em up in your face!”

  Miriam switched on the ignition, turned the car around, and called out the window, “Lucille, nine months from now, you are gone be sewing dresses out of one-hundred-dollar bills!”

  Chapter 63

  Twins

  Late one morning before anyone had come home for dinner, Frances and Elinor sat on the screened porch. The day was already hot, and the kudzu leaves on the levee were wilted. Frances sat close to the edge of the porch to catch the rare gusts of air that wafted across the yard. Her mother rocked slowly on the glider, taking in the hem of an old skirt for Zaddie.

  Frances was in great discomfort. Her frame was not large, and the distension of her pregnant stomach was enormous. More than anything, she longed for her old sense of balance, for a feeling of walking upright again. Now she could move across the room only with difficulty, if not actual pain.

  “Mama,” sighed Frances, “I didn’t know it was gone be like this. Right now, I feel like I don’t want to move until I go into labor.”

  “I know it’s hard, darling, but you’ve got to get up and move around. You’ve got to get a little exercise, for the sake of your children.”

  “Children?” repeated Frances in astonishment.

  Elinor looked up as if she had spoken inadvertently. “Yes,” she said after a moment, “twins. Sweetheart, why in the world do you think you’re so big?”

  “Mama, how do you know for sure?”

  “I know,” said Elinor, “because I was a twin, too.”

  “You told me you had a sister, but you never told me—”

  “Nerita and I were twins, that’s right. But we were even more different than you and Miriam.”

  “All right, but how do you know I’m gone have twins?”

  Elinor didn’t answer at first. “Frances,” she then said softly, “come over here and sit beside me on the glider.”

  With some careful maneuvering Frances did so. Elinor continued to rock the glider with her foot, slowly and rhythmically. Frances started to speak, but Elinor said, “Shhh! Close your eyes, darling.”

  Frances obeyed.

  “Block out the light. Block out the sun and the heat. Listen to me and what I say and don’t think of anything else.”

  Elinor spoke in a low, soft voice as she methodically stitched in the new hem on the skirt in her lap. “Frances darling, you hear me speaking to you and you hear my voice. You feel that little breeze on the back of your neck and you know that breeze blew over the Perdido because you can smell the river in that air. You smell that water and you know where that breeze came from. You know what trees and what branches it blew through. You smell those water oaks. Water oaks have a different smell from all other trees and even from each other. Water oaks even have names the way you and I have names, only we can’t say them aloud. When the wind blows through a water oak the water oak speaks its name. You hear those names?”

  Frances nodded slowly.

  “You keep your eyes closed and
it’s black behind there, it’s black inside your whole body and there’s Frances right inside her own body and no light will ever get in and it’s like being at the bottom of the river with no light reaching you through the muddy water. But oh Lord, Frances. You can see what there is to see in there. You can go anywhere you want in that darkness, just like you could swim anywhere on the bottom of the river if you wanted to. You try it. See, you’re not on the bottom after all. You can dive down deeper, so do it. Now go even deeper. You can see where you’re going even though there’s no light. Go all the way down. See how easy it is? Oh, Frances, you know what you’re looking for. You’re looking for two little babies, two little babies that are all yours. I remember, Frances, I remember going down to the bottom once and seeing you, and I thought, ‘Oh, this little girl is precious. I’m going to love this little girl like nobody’s business,’ and you know what? Your eyes were open, and you looked back at me and your mouth opened, and you said, ‘Hey, Mama,’ and I said, ‘Hey, little girl’ because you didn’t have a name yet. You...”

  Elinor broke off. Beside her, Frances’s body was rigid, her eyelids were quivering, and her mouth twitched. Elinor heard a car pull up in front of the house. By its sound she knew it to be Oscar’s. She went on speaking to her daughter in a voice that was much lower, quicker, and more urgent.

  “See, Frances, two babies, just like I told you. See, they’re just fine, both of them, so swim back on up to the top. Say goodbye to your babies—don’t touch them—and turn around and swim back up. Go right back up to your eyelids. You’ll be able to find them; they’re little cracks of sunlight. Swim straight up. Hurry, darling. When you get back up there, turn around just one more time and sit down slowly and get yourself comfortable again, and now, Frances, open your eyes.”

  Downstairs, the screen door slammed, and the hallway was filled with the voices of Elinor’s husband and eldest daughter.

  Frances’s eyes were open and she was trembling. “Mama—” she whispered.

  “Shhh!”

  Oscar was coming up the stairs.

  “Mama!” cried Frances peremptorily.

  Elinor turned to her daughter. “Twins?”

  “There were two of them,” answered Frances evasively.

  “Two girls? Like Nerita and me?”

  “One of them was a girl,” said Frances, still trembling.

  “And one was a boy?” asked her mother.

  Oscar appeared smiling in the door. “That baby hasn’t come yet?” he laughed. “Frances, I am getting anxious for my first grandchild. You ought to hurry it up.”

  “And one was a boy?” whispered Elinor anxiously in her daughter’s ear.

  “One of them was a girl,” Frances repeated, and awkwardly raised herself from the glider.

  . . .

  Frances was silent during the noontime meal that day and excused herself before anyone else was finished. She retreated to her room. Billy started to get up and follow her, but putting aside her napkin, Elinor said, “No. You stay here, let me see about her.”

  Frances lay on the bed atop the covers, dry-eyed and motionless. All the shades in the room were drawn, and it was stifling hot.

  “Let me turn on the fan,” said Elinor as she entered.

  She crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. She took Frances’s limp, sweating hand in her own.

  “Mama,” said Frances, “when the time comes...” She choked back a sob.

  Elinor nodded. “When the time comes for you to have your babies...”

  “...I want you there, and nobody else. Nobody else in the whole house. Send Billy and Daddy away. Send Zaddie out on an errand.”

  “I’ll need some help, darling. Zaddie can help me.”

  “No, I—”

  “There’s nothing,” said Elinor slowly, “that Zaddie hasn’t seen and doesn’t know about. Do you understand what I’m saying? There’s nothing that Zaddie wouldn’t do for me and you. That’s been true ever since Zaddie was a little tiny girl and used to rake the yards for Mary-Love.”

  Elinor continued to hold her daughter’s hand.

  “Mama,” whispered Frances, weeping now, “you know what I saw?”

  Elinor nodded. “I know now. I know why you’re upset.”

  “Shouldn’t I be!”

  Elinor smiled. “It’s just like Nerita and me. Those two babies are going to be as different as night and day, as different as air and water, as different as life and death.”

  “But what will I do—”

  “I’ll show you what to do, darling, there’s nothing to worry about. All I have to do is think of a way to get Oscar and Billy out of the house when the time comes.”

  . . .

  Frances’s belly continued to swell, to the point that even Billy and Oscar wondered whether she was carrying more than just one child. Frances was depressed, and asked that her husband sleep in the front room; she was too uncomfortable, she said, sharing a bed at this time. Billy complied without a murmur.

  At the beginning of July, Frances began to press her mother to have Oscar and Billy leave the house. When she gave birth, she wanted to make sure that she was alone.

  One morning after breakfast, the moment that Oscar and Billy had walked out of the door on their way to work, Frances said to her mother: “One week.”

  “You know for sure?” Elinor asked, pleased.

  “Yes,” replied Frances. “One week for sure.”

  “Frances, it’s going to be hard to get Oscar and Billy out of the house. Billy is going to want to stay here with you. Wouldn’t it make more sense for you and Zaddie and me to go off somewhere for a few days?”

  Frances looked at her mother strangely. “No,” she said, with a touch of surprise in her voice. “Mama, you know we have to be near the river.”

  Elinor smiled, as if her suggestion had been a kind of test and Frances had given the right answer.

  “Sweetheart,” said Elinor, “you’re changing, you know that?”

  Frances nodded. Her smile was rueful. “I know things I didn’t use to know.”

  “It’s difficult for you...”

  “Yes, ma’am,” agreed Frances. “But I don’t have any choice, do I?”

  Elinor shook her head no. “What do you feel?” asked her mother curiously.

  Frances sat back in her chair, and thought about this for a few moments, then replied carefully, “I feel different. I understand things I never used to understand. I see things I never saw before. Hear things I never heard before. The water oaks do have names, and I know what they are. I can sit here in this chair and feel that breeze through the screen and I know where it’s been. I couldn’t put it down on paper, but I know. I feel like there are changes in my body, and I think it’s something more than having a baby. They say all women’s systems change when they get pregnant, but this is something more than that. There’s something different about the way I move, about the way things feel when I pick them up. I’m not sure what it is. Mama, am I really changing?”

  “We all change. Even you. Even me.”

  “Yes, but Mama, I feel—and this is going to sound crazy—I feel like I’m getting younger. And that’s not what you’re supposed to feel when you’re having babies for the first time. You’re supposed to feel like you’re growing up.”

  “You don’t feel younger, you just feel happier, that’s all.”

  Frances shook her head, and then asked thoughtfully, “How old are you?”

  Elinor smiled, “I have never answered that question. Not for anybody. How old do you think I am?”

  “Well, I think you’re Daddy’s age. And Daddy’s fifty-three.”

  “Is that how old I look?”

  “You look like you could be fifty-three,” said Frances. “I mean, you’re beautiful, Mama, but you look like you could be fifty-three. What year were you born? Are you older than Daddy or younger?”

  “I don’t know. I lost my birth certificate in the flood of 1919.”

  “Bu
t you must know how old you are.”

  “Well, darling, some people say you shouldn’t measure your age by how many birthdays you’ve had, but by how young you feel. And even though I’m about to have my first grandchildren, I feel very young. And you, too, you said it—you feel like you’re getting younger, and I’m sure you are.”

  As Elinor called Zaddie in for more coffee, Frances considered this. “Mama,” she asked, when Zaddie had gone back to the kitchen, “how long would I live if I lived in the water, all the time I mean?”

  “Shhh!” said Elinor, with a toss of her head indicating the kitchen door.

  “I thought you said Zaddie knew all our secrets.”

  “Zaddie knows some secrets, darling, but we are not a parade with banners. And you shouldn’t be asking me questions like this, not...”

  “Not what?”

  “Not at breakfast.”

  “Oh,” laughed Frances. “I’m just supposing. Now just suppose I lived at the bottom of some old river somewhere, I wonder how long I’d live. I wonder if I’d live longer than people living on the land.”

  Elinor appeared uncomfortable; she toyed with her cup, turning it slowly around in its saucer.

  “You might,” she said hesitantly.

  “And twenty-five years old on the land is all grown-up, but maybe twenty-five years old under the water, at the bottom of some river, is not that old. Maybe there twenty-five is still just a little girl.”

  “It might be,” said Elinor.

  “And maybe,” Frances went on, more seriously, “and maybe if a twenty-five-year-old woman on the land were always thinking about the bottom of the river, and dreaming about it and seeing it when she closed her eyes and hearing it when she put her hands over her ears, maybe then she would start to feel younger.”

  “She might,” said Elinor.

  “And what if—oh—” Frances broke off with a sudden exclamation and a look of surprise.

  “What is it?” cried Elinor.

  “I just got kicked!” Frances laughed.

  “By the little girl?”

  “No,” replied Frances. “By the other one.”

  . . .