Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

by Michael McDowell

Frances’s labor pains began at the supper table a week to the day later. Though she wasn’t finished, Miriam stood up and said, “I’m going home. Somebody call me when it’s over.” Queenie hurried away too, throwing congratulations over her shoulder. Billy ran toward the telephone to call Leo Benquith, but Frances stopped him with a sharp word.

  “No!” she cried. “Mama and Zaddie. Just Mama and Zaddie.”

  “Sweetheart,” said Billy in surprise, “you’re so big, what if there’s a problem?”

  “Just Mama and Zaddie.” Frances was firm.

  “Elinor,” said Oscar, alarmed, “take care of Frances, get her upstairs, quick.”

  “Oscar, it doesn’t happen that quickly,” said Elinor calmly.

  “Are you all right?” asked Frances’s husband solicitously.

  “Zaddie,” said Oscar, “leave the dishes be. You take care of Frances.”

  “She’s all right, Mr. Oscar,” replied Zaddie, and continued to clear the table.

  “Or at least I will be,” said Frances, “as soon as you two get out of here.”

  “Who?” said Billy. “Who is you two?”

  “You and Daddy.”

  “What?” cried Oscar.

  “I don’t want you around here,” said Frances.

  “You make her nervous,” explained Elinor. “I don’t blame her. When I was giving birth, I certainly didn’t want any men around. Men get in the way.”

  “That’s right,” said Frances. “So I would be much obliged, Billy, if you and Daddy would go off somewhere.”

  “Where would we go?” said Billy.

  “Go out to Gavin Pond Farm and stay with Grace and Lucille for the night,” said Elinor. “We’ll call you when it’s over.”

  “I’m not leaving!” said Billy.

  “Yes, you are,” said Frances calmly. “And right now. Put some pajamas in a paper bag. Mama, call up Grace and tell her to turn down the bed for Billy and Daddy.”

  Billy Bronze and Oscar Caskey sat in silent astonishment at the dining room table, watching as Elinor helped her daughter up the stairs.

  Zaddie came in from the kitchen, and cried to the two men, “Shoo! Shoo! We don’t want y’all here!”

  . . .

  The July night was hot and fragrant. Lowering white clouds gathered up pinpoints of light from the earth and cast them back as a diffuse gray pall over Perdido. Billy Bronze with his father-in-law on the seat beside him drove recklessly out to the farm, as if his wife were there and had begged him to be at her side during the delivery of their child.

  “Billy,” said Oscar in mild reproof, “you are going too fast. I don’t particularly want to die tonight. Not till I’ve seen my first little grandchild.”

  “Sorry,” said Billy, and lifted his foot from the accelerator.

  They drove through Babylon. It was only nine o’clock, but many of the houses were already shut up for the night.

  Oscar said, “I tried to get Elinor to tell me whether it was gone be a boy or a girl, but she wouldn’t say. She said, ‘You and Billy got to wait and see.’”

  “How would she know anyway?” asked Billy.

  For a few seconds Oscar didn’t answer. Then he asked a question of his own: “How can you have been around Elinor as much as you have and not notice she knows things you and I don’t?”

  “Miz Caskey’s smart as a whip,” agreed Billy. “But how would she know if it were going to be a boy or a girl?”

  Lucille and Grace were expecting them, alerted by a telephone call from Elinor. They stood in the doorway to the farmhouse in identical housecoats.

  “Y’all get thrown out?” said Grace with a smile.

  “We sure did!” cried Billy, climbing out of the car.

  “I know we’re disturbing you,” said Oscar with a shake of his head.

  “Frances threw you out, I guess,” said Lucille, also smiling and standing aside so that the men could enter. “About time. How any self-respecting woman could live with a man, I will never know.”

  “Hurts my feelings,” said Billy. “It really does.”

  “I think I better call Elinor,” said Oscar, heading for the telephone.

  “Don’t,” said Grace. “She told me to tell you she’d call. They wouldn’t answer it anyway, they’re all too busy to answer the telephone.”

  “So we’re just going to sit here until the telephone rings,” said Billy with a sigh. “This is my first baby!”

  “We are gone play cards to get your mind off things,” said Grace, leading the men into the dining room.

  “I just play dominoes,” said Oscar. “If I had thought about it I would have brought them.”

  “We’re gone teach you canasta,” said Lucille. “That’s what Grace and I always play. ’Course it’s different with four than it is with two, but that’s what rule books are for.”

  The four sat down at the table, and Oscar was patiently told the rules. However, he couldn’t keep his mind on the game, and after about an hour they gave up trying to play. Lucille went into the kitchen and prepared glasses of Elinor’s blackberry nectar and brought it out to the dining room.

  “Oscar, long as you are here,” Grace was saying, “I might as well tell you about something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Miriam was out here last week with papers for me to sign.”

  “I know she was.”

  “Good. That’s all I wanted to know. I just wanted to make sure she wasn’t off rampaging on her own with all our property down there south of the farm.”

  “Miriam says we’re gone make a fortune off it,” remarked Billy. “And Lord, if it can be done through hard work and sheer meanness, then Miriam is going to make us all rich.”

  “I’d trust Miriam,” said Oscar, reassuring Grace. “If she says sign something, I’d go ahead and sign it. If she says, ‘Write me a check,’ then pull out your checkbook. She knows what she’s doing. Miriam doesn’t care about anything but making money, and it doesn’t matter to her if the money she makes goes into her account, or yours or mine or anybody else’s in the family. Nothing makes Miriam happier than adding up a column of figures every day, and seeing the total get higher and higher.”

  “But doesn’t she talk to you about all this?” Grace asked incredulously.

  “Why should she?” Oscar shrugged. “I know just about everything there is to know about trees, but not much about anything else. I certainly couldn’t go out to Texas and talk about oil in Escambia County, Florida, but Miriam could.”

  “Would they listen to a woman?” asked Lucille.

  “Maybe not,” put in Billy. “That’s why she’s taking me along with her. Just for insurance. I know something about all this—not as much as Miriam, of course—but I’ll sit there just looking smart, I guess, and she can do all the talking. I’ll spread out the maps on somebody’s desk, and Miriam can draw the little circles.”

  “My question is,” said Grace, “how the hell does she know where to draw the little circles?”

  Billy shrugged.

  Oscar said: “Elinor showed her...”

  Lines of inquiry in the Caskey family always stopped short at Elinor.

  . . .

  “Y’all,” said Grace a short time later, “Lucille and I are gone have to go upstairs. You city people can lie abed until eight o’clock in the morning if you want to, but in the summertime Lucille and I have to be up at four.”

  “You go on,” said Oscar, “and thank y’all for keeping us company.”

  “Did y’all bring pajamas?” asked Lucille.

  “Out in the car,” said Billy.

  “And y’all don’t mind sharing a bed for the night?” asked Grace.

  “I was hoping Elinor would have called by now,” sighed Oscar.

  “Go to bed,” said Grace. “Don’t expect anything before morning.”

  “I know I’m not going to be able to sleep,” said Billy. “I’m going to be waiting to hear the phone ring.”

  “Leave your door
open,” said Grace, now standing on the lowermost stair with her hand atop Lucille’s on the newel post.

  The two women went upstairs to bed. Downstairs, Oscar and Billy heard their door being softly pulled shut. They sat for another half hour at the dining room table talking quietly, then Billy went out to the car and fetched their pajamas. They went upstairs, undressed, and got into the bed.

  “I’m not gone be able to sleep either,” said Oscar. “I cain’t sleep anywhere but in my own bed. This isn’t a feather mattress. I got to have a feather mattress. Elinor should have put a feather mattress in the back of the car. If I ever have to go anywhere again, I’m gone put a feather mattress in the back so I can get to sleep.”

  “You really think,” said Billy softly, turning on his pillow to face his father-in-law, lying wide-eyed beside him, “that Elinor knows whether it’s gone be a boy or a girl?”

  “Of course. And Frances does, too,” said Oscar. “Billy, get up and turn on that window fan, will you? Maybe I can get to sleep if there’s some air blowing over me.”

  Billy did so, then turned and stood at the foot of the bed. “Frances knows it, too?”

  “I know it for a fact. Why you think they got rid of us?”

  “’Cause they didn’t want us there.”

  “That’s right,” said Oscar. “And when was the last time Frances told you to do something and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  “Never.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What does this all mean?” asked Billy, perplexed.

  “It means,” said Oscar, “that they know something they don’t want us to find out.”

  Billy went around and got into the bed again. “Yes,” he hissed, “but what is it?”

  “Billy,” said Oscar, “are you gone keep me awake all night, talking?”

  . . .

  As he’d predicted, Oscar couldn’t get to sleep because he wasn’t sleeping on a feather mattress. Beside him in the bed, Billy Bronze didn’t sleep because he was worried about his wife and anxious to know of the birth of his child. Across the hall, Lucille and Grace tossed and turned because they had both had too much coffee after dinner. On his cot at the foot of their bed, Tommy Lee Burgess tossed and turned because of the heat and the wasp that buzzed around up near the ceiling.

  In Perdido, Sister sat bolt upright in bed among her pillows. The bedside light was on and she was leafing impatiently through a large stack of magazines, feverishly clipping out recipes. In the darkness at the other end of the room, Miriam sat backward in a chair. Her arms were crossed on a little wicker table and she patiently turned the knob of the radio, searching out the late-night stations.

  It was the heat, the worry, the mattress, the suspense, the insects, the caffeine, and the smell of the river in the air that kept them all awake.

  Hearing a sudden sharp sound, Sister’s head snapped up from the magazine she was flipping through. “What was that?”

  Miriam stood up and went over to the window. She peered out through the screen, and saw the single lighted window in her parents’ home.

  “That was Frances,” she said. “She’s still in labor, I guess.”

  “I think they ought to get Leo Benquith over there this very minute.”

  “Leo’s so old,” stated Miriam impassively. “If I were having a baby, you know who’d I want to be there?”

  “Who?”

  “Elinor and Zaddie,” replied Miriam, sitting down again and once more turning the radio dial.

  “You’ll never have a baby,” said Sister with a shrug.

  . . .

  A single light on the vanity burned in Frances’s room. Elinor lay next to her daughter on the bed, holding both her hands. Frances’s hair was lank and wet on the pillowcase. She stared vacantly at the ceiling. Zaddie sat in a slim mahogany rocker at the foot of the bed.

  “Coming time,” remarked Zaddie.

  Elinor nodded. “Is everything ready?”

  Frances twitched. The sheets were damp with her perspiration. All the covers had been pulled down and lay draped over the foot of the bed. Elinor grasped her daughter’s hands more tightly. Frances began to groan, and attempted to turn over on her side. But Elinor’s hold didn’t allow that, and Frances began to squirm.

  Zaddie stood up, ready to proffer assistance. Frances grew quiet again.

  “Miss Elinor, is she gone be all right?” Zaddie asked. “She looks bad.”

  “She’s worried.”

  “Ever’body worries with their first.”

  Elinor nodded and looked at her daughter. Frances’s eyes were vacant, her mouth slack.

  “I ’member Miss Frances being born,” mused Zaddie.

  “You remember something else?” asked Elinor pointedly.

  “Ma’am?”

  “You remember what I did on the night Frances was born?”

  Zaddie shook her head slowly.

  “Yes, you do, Zaddie,” said Elinor. “Don’t tell me you don’t.”

  “Miss Elinor,” said Zaddie, “I have grown up in this house. I have never lived anywhere else. I am gone grow old here, I guess. I have never got married. I have never had anything to do with colored men, ’cause I belong to you.”

  “You’re mine,” Elinor assented.

  “And living in this house,” said Zaddie, “I’ve seen things and I’ve heard things. But that don’t mean I pay much attention. All I know is I belong to you, and I’m gone grow old here waiting on you and yours.”

  “Good,” said Elinor. “And you know what that means?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “It means you’re not going to be running off tonight, no matter what happens and no matter what you see. You’re—”

  Frances suddenly lurched up in the bed and screamed.

  With one stroke of her arm, Elinor pressed her daughter back down on the wet sheets. She lifted up Frances’s nightdress above her enormously distended and now rumbling belly.

  “That’s it!” hissed Zaddie. “Here he comes.”

  “She,” corrected Elinor, rubbing the tips of her fingers over the wet shining globe being excreted from between Frances’s legs.

  Frances screamed and shook, while Zaddie held both her writhing hands.

  In a minute, the baby’s shoulders were exposed. Elinor took it in her hands and gently helped it along. In only a little more time, the child was free. Elinor quickly severed the umbilical cord and cried, “Here, Zaddie, take her.”

  Frances continued to thrash, and Zaddie, with fearful eyes, said, “Lord God, there’s another.”

  “Take the baby,” Elinor insisted.

  Zaddie let go of Frances’s hands. Her arms dropped like leaden weights on the bed. She thrashed no longer. Zaddie picked up a towel and took the child from Elinor.

  “Turn out the light!” commanded Elinor.

  Zaddie stood stock-still, holding the miry female infant in her arms. “You cain’t see a thing with the lights out!”

  “Turn out the light!” Elinor repeated hastily. “Now!”

  Zaddie turned to do so, but as she was turning she glimpsed a second head emerging smoothly from Frances’s quietly heaving body. It was greenish-gray, and it seemed to wobble. Zaddie saw two wide-open, perfectly round filmy eyes, and two round black holes where a nose ought to have been before her fingers touched the switch on the lamp and the room was plunged into darkness.

  Clutching the newborn girl, Zaddie stood and listened. She heard a sound from the bed; it was like that of a man’s boot being slowly lifted up out of a pool of mire. Next Zaddie heard a scrambling sound, followed by a hard breath or two from Elinor, then the sharp clack of scissors. In a few seconds, Elinor said, “Turn on the light.”

  Zaddie fumbled for the lamp, knocked it over in her haste, then righted it and turned the light on.

  Frances lay limp, exhausted, but smiling. Elinor stood at the foot of the bed cradling the second child. A towel concealed it from Zaddie’s sight.

  Frances reach
ed out to Zaddie for her little girl.

  “Ten fingers,” said Elinor. “Ten toes on your little girl.”

  Zaddie, handing over the baby to Frances, stepped toward Elinor. Elinor withdrew.

  “Is it alive?” Zaddie whispered.

  The towel twitched and squirmed so violently that Elinor very nearly dropped it. She peeked under the flap, and laughed.

  “Mama,” said Frances, “let me see.”

  Elinor glanced at Zaddie. “Go wash the baby off,” Elinor said to the black woman. “In the bathroom—and close the door behind you.”

  Zaddie took back the female infant and carried it into the bathroom. She flicked on the light and turned to close the door. She saw Elinor go around the bed and hold out the toweled bundle to Frances. As Zaddie pulled the door shut, she heard yet one more scream from Frances. This time it was not a cry of physical pain, but one of shock and dismay.

  . . .

  “No,” said Elinor sternly to her daughter. “Don’t turn your face away. Go on and look at her.”

  “Her?” questioned Frances, shrinking back deeper into the damp pillows.

  “Two little girls,” said Elinor quietly. “Twins.”

  “Mama, you cain’t call that thing you’ve got—”

  “Take her, darling, and hold her for a minute.”

  “I cain’t!”

  “Yes, you can,” said Elinor, pressing the towel-wrapped bundle on Frances. A piece of the towel fell back, and Frances saw two moist flat eyes, the size of half-dollars, staring out at her. Frances, refusing to reach out her arms, simply shook her head no.

  “Lord,” laughed Elinor, “what do you think you looked like?”

  Frances looked up in amazement. “When I was born?”

  “No, but a little later. When I took you down to the river to baptize you. Before the levee was built.” Elinor hugged her second granddaughter close with the happy memory. “Zaddie followed me down there in the middle of the night because she didn’t know what I was going to do with you. She saw me throw you in the water—”

  “You threw me in the river!”

  “Of course. And then Zaddie waded right out there, and she picked you up. Except you didn’t look like Frances Caskey that got born that morning, you looked like this.”

  With that Elinor pulled the towel away, and before her daughter could protest, thrust the second child into Frances’s unwilling arms.