Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

by Michael McDowell

  “When did he ask you?” said Sister after a moment. Curiosity had got the upper hand over displeasure.

  “Last week. Last month. Last year. Malcolm’s been asking me to marry him for ten years. Malcolm brings me my mail in the morning, and says, ‘Good morning, Miriam. Will you marry me?’”

  “Then why did you all of a sudden say yes?”

  “Because I looked at my birth certificate the other day and I saw how old I was and I thought, It’s about time, Miriam. And one day, I walked in here, and I saw how old you were, Sister.”

  “How old I am!”

  Miriam nodded. “And I thought, Someday Sister’s gone die, and then I’m gone be left all alone.”

  This casual observation about her mortality shocked Sister into a horrified silence. When she finally spoke her voice was weak and she was not at all to the point. “Miriam, will you please keep your hands off that radio. You are driving me crazy.”

  Miriam dropped her hand from the dial and then continued, glancing out the window as she spoke. “I’ve never lived by myself. I got to thinking what it would be like to be in this house all by myself. And I don’t think I’d like it. I’d probably go crazy. And I’m much too busy to waste my time going crazy.”

  “So why didn’t you just wait till I was dead before you got married?” said Sister. “Then you wouldn’t have to deal with Malcolm until you had gotten me out of the way.”

  Miriam laughed. “Oh, Sister, you don’t bother me anymore. And neither does Malcolm.”

  “I don’t think I want Malcolm Strickland in this house,” said Sister. “His tread is too heavy.”

  “Then we’ll move in next door with Queenie and leave you here alone.”

  “No!” shouted Sister, suddenly panicked. “Miriam, why don’t you put off the marriage for a little while?”

  “Till you’re dead?”

  “No,” answered Sister, calming a bit, “just till I’m used to the idea. Just for a little while, Miriam. I’m confined to this bed. It’s so hard for me to change. I cain’t even think of you getting married. You’re still my little girl.”

  Miriam turned from the window and smiled.

  “What are you laughing about?” demanded Sister.

  “At you. You’re trying to get me to put off my wedding, just like Grandmama tried to get you to put off your wedding to Early.”

  “Mama was right! See what a mess I made of it? If I had listened to Mama, I’d be a happy woman today! So you ought to listen to me, and put this wedding off. Just for a while. Just till you’ve thought about it some more.”

  “No,” said Miriam easily, walking toward the door. “I’ve made up my mind, and that is that.”

  . . .

  And that was that. The ability the Caskeys had to astonish Perdido seemed inexhaustible. The announcement of the engagement of Malcolm Strickland and Miriam Caskey was a source of vast wonder in the town. Previously there had been two local theories when it came to the question of Miriam’s marriage. Half the town thought she would marry Billy Bronze, and the other half was certain she would never marry at all. That she would marry Malcolm Strickland was a possibility that had occurred to no one. The only satisfactory explanation Perdido could come up with was that Malcolm had raped Miriam, and that she was pregnant.

  Miriam wasn’t a woman for long engagements. She announced that the wedding would take place two days after Christmas, a date she chose for the practical reason that her calendar was clear for the holiday and the few days on either side of it. “I have no intention,” Miriam told her mother, “of calling up people in Houston and New York to rearrange my appointments just because I’m getting married.”

  That gave Elinor and Queenie just two months to make all the arrangements, but they went at it with a will. The wedding itself—like all the Caskey ceremonies—was to be a small and private affair, held at ten in the morning in the living room at Elinor’s. The reception, however, was a different matter. It was Queenie’s idea, originally, that for a change they should throw a proper party—“With everybody in Perdido and beyond invited,” as she put it. Queenie had really never expected Miriam to go along with this idea for a minute; she had been certain that Miriam would want everything as brief and casual as possible. But Miriam surprised her future mother-in-law. “Good idea. Invite everybody,” she said. And everyone was invited. More than five hundred invitations to the reception went out. Miriam was a businesswoman, and as such she was well known all over southern Alabama, the Florida panhandle, and much farther afield. She recognized that she had a position to maintain, and that position dictated that her wedding be in keeping with her stature. The bridegroom, it was true, was not all that he might have been, but all Miriam’s business associates had seen Malcolm in tow at one time or another. Most, if the truth be told, conjectured that Miriam kept him around for more reasons than the fact that he knew how to change a light bulb.

  Oscar was away much of the time between the announcement of Miriam’s engagement and the wedding itself. Elinor saw to that; she wanted him out of the way so that she could do what needed to be done. She suggested that he see what the golf courses were like in Kentucky, and Luvadia allowed her son Sammy to accompany Mr. Oscar as his caddy. Oscar’s eyes were poor, and he needed someone who was familiar and patient with his infirmity. For those two months, Oscar and Sammy—who was only fourteen, and illegally out of school for this time—drove around Georgia and South Carolina, and Oscar played at country clubs and public links all over both states. Oscar put up in motels and hotels, sneaking Sammy to his room at night, the boy sleeping on the floor, rolled in blankets. Oscar called Perdido every day and asked Elinor if things had quieted down enough for him to come home. Her invariable reply was, “Stay away as long as you can, darling. You’ll just be trampled underfoot down here.”

  Miriam wouldn’t help with anything, but insisted on maintaining her schedule at the mill. She and Malcolm and Billy made two trips to Houston, and one to Atlanta in those short eight weeks. Her wedding dress was fitted in her office while she was recording letters into a Dictaphone.

  Malcolm was helplessly happy. He could scarcely believe his good fortune. He worried a bit about whether or not he would make a good husband, but then reflected that this was none of his concern, really. Miriam would make of him what she wanted. With this bolstering reasoning, he gave himself up completely to his contentment. His relationship with Miriam was unchanged, with a single exception: when he and Miriam and Billy traveled together, it was now Malcolm and Miriam who put up in the double room and Billy who took the single. Before, Billy had usually shared the room with Miriam. Queenie had once asked Miriam why she didn’t let Malcolm and Billy share the double on these trips, and take the single herself. That surely had a better appearance. Queenie had received an unexpected reply: “Queenie, the truth is that I’m afraid to sleep alone. And I’m old enough and rich enough to do what I want.”

  Malcolm, now that he shared a room with Miriam, made no attempt to sleep in her bed. He would be guided by her in that business as well.

  Queenie remained bewildered by all these new circumstances. But she stayed busy—there was so little time, and so much to be done—and gave herself little time for reflection. Nevertheless, when she sat still for a few moments, she could scarcely credit her son’s engagement. He wasn’t marrying Miriam for her money, of that Queenie was certain. Queenie herself was rich now, and she had assured Malcolm that her will provided amply for him. She could not bring herself to believe, however, that Malcolm really loved his bride-to-be. Yet perhaps he did, and perhaps she even loved him. Queenie would sigh. All this was beyond her, and it was much easier to worry about getting the napkins printed in time.

  . . .

  On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Lucille and Grace hosted a shower for Miriam, and every woman of any social standing in Perdido was pleased to attend. Lucille and Grace had always been reclusive outside the family, and many in Perdido had never visited Gavin Pond Farm before.
The place was changed out of all recognition from what it once had been. The little farm house that pregnant Lucille had entered with such misgiving fourteen years before had been spruced up and added onto in so many different directions that it looked like a different place altogether. A blacktop lane led to it from the main road, there was a huge brick patio and a large swimming pool. Two acres of woods had been cleared for a camellia garden, and Lucille was busily establishing some of the rarest species known. An enormous herd of cows grazed in the pecan orchard, and the place boasted three cars, two trucks, two tractors, and five different boats. At night, the sky south of Gavin Pond Farm was orange with the light of the burn-off flares of the oil wells in the swamp.

  Grace was forty-six, thinner than any Caskey had ever been—gaunt, actually. She was burned by the sun, and made happy by Lucille. Lucille was thirty-eight, fatter than Queenie, and made happy by Grace. Lucille’s boy, Tommy Lee Burgess, was now fourteen. Shy, good-natured, and bumbling, he was an odd member of the family; not paid much attention to when he was about, and altogether forgotten when he was not. Tommy Lee loved to fish, hunt, drive cars, and be by himself. Grace once asked him if he maybe wanted to be sent to military school, where he’d be around some men for a change, but Tommy Lee shook his head in horror, and said he didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything else than what he was doing.

  Grace and Lucille had built Luvadia the biggest kitchen anybody in those parts had ever seen, and Zaddie and Melva came out to help with the food for the shower. The ladies of Perdido showed up half an hour early in hopes that they would be shown around the place. Lucille was proud of her house, and happy to comply. The ladies were impressed, and playfully chastised Grace and Lucille for keeping this wonderful place such a secret.

  In the midst of the festivities Grace said to Miriam, “This place started out a secret, what with Lucille coming out here when she was pregnant. And then when we found oil, we wanted to keep that secret for a while. So Lucille and I just got in the habit of living here all by ourselves, and never having anybody but family. Maybe we ought to start entertaining a little more.”

  “Wouldn’t catch me doing for this pack,” said Miriam in a low voice, gazing around at the crowd of women bent over the food on the dining room table.

  The charade played out by Miriam when she sat down and opened her gifts far outdid any of the performances the ladies put on during a real game of charades later. Miriam looked with excitement on a new adding machine, but she didn’t see much good in pink underwear and fuzzy bathroom slippers. She was, however, as gracious as she was capable of being, and afterward even Elinor went so far as to say, “You could have made things very unpleasant, but you didn’t.”

  “There was no point,” said Miriam. “They were being nice to me.”

  “Sometimes,” said Elinor, “I think you may be growing up.”

  “The question is,” sighed Miriam, “how the hell am I gone get rid of all that damned junk?”

  . . .

  Sister could not be reconciled to the wedding. She would have nothing to do with it, and she wouldn’t hear it spoken of in her presence. She refused even to admit aloud that Miriam was marrying Malcolm. Queenie had been forced to desert her in this busy time, so the whole thing rankled even more. Ivey sat with Sister every day, in the straight chair beside the radio, but Ivey wasn’t one for gossip, and Sister was bored and restless and stared out the window through binoculars at Elinor’s house. But she never saw more than Zaddie or Elinor occasionally passing a window.

  Ivey wouldn’t relay any news from next door, for her feud with Zaddie had kept up, and they were not speaking. No one had ever discovered the reason for this coolness between the aging black sisters, for it was a private affair, and neither Zaddie nor Ivey ever said anything about it directly.

  In the drawer of her bedside table, Sister kept a calendar on which she marked off the days until Christmas, and every day she would count up those remaining. The ever-decreasing figure preyed on her mind to an extent that Ivey found alarming. Ivey began to ply Sister with sweet liquids poured out of unmarked blue bottles, but these nostrums did not appear to help. Sister grew weaker—but crosser—and every morning she seemed to have sunk down deeper into her bulwark of goose-down pillows.

  About ten days before the wedding, Miriam went to New Orleans on an unexpected and unavoidable trip. When she returned at suppertime two days later, Ivey was waiting for her behind the screen door. “Miz Caskey sick,” she said simply. “She want to talk to you.”

  Upstairs, Miriam was shocked by Sister’s appearance. “You are sick,” she said bluntly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody look worse.”

  Sister seemed scarcely able to open her eyes. Her head lolled forward on her neck; her hands lay curled and helpless atop the neatly folded coverlet. She looked as if she had not moved for days, a frail puppet whose strings had all been cut.

  “Put it off,” she whispered. Her lips scarcely moved. Miriam moved closer to the bed.

  “Put it off,” Sister repeated, no more loudly than before.

  “No,” said Miriam, finally comprehending the cryptic command. “For one thing, Elinor and Queenie have gone to a great deal of trouble. For another thing, it’s too late. And last of all, I want to go through with it.”

  Sister’s head lolled to one side. “It’ll kill me,” she whispered. Her head lolled to the other side, and her eyes shut with the motion.

  Miriam sat on the edge of the bed. It was dark outside, and a single low lamp burned on the bedside table. Miriam took Sister’s hand. “Sister,” she said firmly, “even if I believed that, I’d go through with it.”

  Sister opened her eyes slowly, and peered up at Miriam through tears. “You’d kill me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Sister,” said Miriam, now taking the other hand, and pressing them lightly against Sister’s breast, “you are turning into Grandmama.”

  “Noooo...” Sister’s protest was no more than a slow exhalation of breath.

  “You are. You want to trick me into putting this wedding off. Just the way Grandmama would have done. But you’re not Grandmama, you’re Sister. And I’m not you, I’m not Oscar. I’m not even me when I was younger. Nobody’s going to run roughshod over me—not about this, and not about anything else. You think you can get me to put off this wedding by pulling this business—”

  “Not business...”

  “Whether it is or it isn’t is of no concern to me,” Miriam went on. “If you’re really sick, then I’m sorry, but it makes no difference. I won’t let it. So you might as well get better, Sister, because next Saturday night there are going to be four hundred and thirty-seven people tromping through this house giving me their congratulations, and I wouldn’t want the noise to disturb you.”

  Miriam released Sister’s hands, then rose and walked out the door and down the hall to her own room to unpack.

  “Put it off,” whispered Sister Haskew a few moments later, not realizing that Miriam was no longer in the room.

  Chapter 74

  The Wedding Party

  Sister’s condition remained the same in the week before the wedding. Oscar, on his return, was shocked to find her so deplorably weak and wandering. Christmas came and after presents had been opened at Elinor’s in the morning, everyone went over to give Sister her gifts, congregating in the hallway outside her room, but entering only one at a time. Sister smiled wanly, but she wasn’t always able to open her eyes. Lilah sat on the edge of the bed and placed a wrapped box on Sister’s upturned hand. One finger clawed briefly at the ribbon, but then Lilah had to open it herself. It was a box of Sister’s favorite powder, that smelled of dead roses. “Thank you, child,” Sister whispered, and her eyes, wet with tears, flickered open briefly.

  No one, not even Elinor, dared suggest that the wedding be postponed on account of Sister’s illness. Miriam had been preternaturally good about all the wedding arrangements, acquiescing to each and every suggestion put forth by Elinor or Qu
eenie, but who knew what might happen if Miriam were asked to put off the date of her marriage to Malcolm Strickland? She might not go through with it at all. She might cart Malcolm off to a justice of the peace, and never come home afterward. She would certainly never set foot in Sister’s room again. “And I’m not sure Miriam’s not right,” sighed Oscar, who was much affected by his sister’s increased infirmity. “I remember how I put off and put off to please Mama, and it got us into nothing but trouble.”

  Elinor did not contradict him, and the wedding remained scheduled for Saturday.

  The day after Christmas, workers from the mill came and erected open-sided tents in the yards behind all three of the Caskey houses, using the tall, narrow trunks of the water oaks as poles. The striped canvas tents stretched from the back porches of the houses all the way to the levee. A stage was erected on the edge of the forest, and here the small orchestra from Mobile would play. Malcolm was in charge of chairs and tables, and he had gathered them from churches, armories, and VFW halls all over the county. These preparations were of great interest to Perdido, and cars drove slowly up and down the road in front of the houses all day long. Children sat perched on the fence around the orchard across the way, wearing their new Christmas clothes and showing off to one another their new toys as they watched the proceedings.

  During all of this, Oscar felt only that he was in the way—in his own home—and the only place he might be out of the way was with Sister. So he made his way over to her house and sat at her side, talking of old times. Only occasionally would Sister respond to her brother’s long stories and reminiscences, and rarely in a voice loud enough for him to make out the words. And when he did understand her, he shifted uncomfortably in his chair, for it appeared to him that Sister hadn’t comprehended a word he had said to her. Yet there he continued to sit. He held Sister’s hand, and he talked about the years in which he and Sister had grown up in this house with their mother Mary-Love. “And, Sister, you know what?” he said. “You’re getting to look more and more like her every day.”