Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

by Michael McDowell

Billy never investigated these phenomena, never attempted to discover their source or identity. They were Elinor’s business, he intuited, and he would do nothing that abridged her privacy. Even when he woke earlier than usual, he remained in bed. He would not go out of his room, for he did not want again to surprise Zaddie in the act of mopping up Perdido water from the stairs. He laid no traps, he made no insinuating remarks, he put aside even the appearance of curiosity or puzzlement. This, however, did not mean that his curiosity and puzzlement did not increase, almost daily.

  One day in October the air conditioning was turned off, and when Billy went to bed that night he wondered whether the noises would continue as before. They did not, that first night, and he was disappointed. He hardly slept at all, and next morning both Elinor and Zaddie commented on how poorly he looked. “It’s because the air conditioner got turned off,” he said blandly. “I’m used to all that noise, I guess.”

  But the following night Billy was pleased to hear the footsteps again, and the two voices: Elinor’s and the one that sounded so much like Frances’s that he could not imagine its belonging to anyone else. About a week later, the second visitor came as well, and Billy heard quite vividly the clumsy steps upon the stairs, a hoarse muffled bleat in the hallway, and much later in the night, the high-pitched singing. Billy listened and tried to imagine who could be singing thus, a wandering interminable hypnotic song, in accents, and pitches, and rhythms that were wholly unfamiliar.

  The autumn passed, winter came on, and Elinor put down carpeting on the stairs. Most mornings it was still damp when Billy came down to breakfast. Elinor always asked him, “How did you sleep last night?”

  “Fine,” Billy always replied. “I dreamed of Frances. I dreamed Frances came to see us.”

  One rainy night in February of 1969, Billy lay long awake. Both sets of footsteps had come not long after he had got into bed, and he was upset that the loud patter of the rain kept him from hearing nothing more than an occasional laugh or croaking bleat. Yet that night, just as Billy was finally drifting off to sleep, the singing came again, stronger than ever before; singing that was at once caught in the rhythm of the falling rain, yet running counter to it in such a way that he could catch every quaver of its wandering melody. He listened in delight, and then in wonder when a second voice was united with the first, in precise cadence and then in counterpoint; and his wonder turned to rapture when a third voice joined them. The third voice was Elinor’s, and she was singing as neither Billy nor anyone else in Perdido had ever heard her sing. The three voices—female but not human, Billy thought—went on for more than an hour, lasting as long as the rain. But as the rain slackened, so did the three voices. When the water was no more than an irregular dripping from the eaves, the singing stopped altogether. Billy had long ago lost the habit of prayer, but now he prayed for the clouds to return, and to open up above the house in hope that the voices might again unite in song. The clouds had flown beyond Perdido, however, and the house was silent except for an occasional drip from the roof. But Billy did not sleep; straining against sleep, he waited for the footsteps to leave Elinor’s room. At last, when he thought that dawn must soon be upon them, he was rewarded. The door of Elinor’s sitting room softly opened, and he heard the footsteps move out into the hallway. Instead of going directly to the stairs, however, they paused before the door of his room.

  This is something else new, Billy thought excitedly.

  He had trained his eyes as well as his ears, and he saw quite well in the darkened rom. He saw the glass knob of the door turning softly, and it shone a little fractured light into his eyes.

  The door was pushed quietly open.

  Billy closed his eyes. Whoever it was expected him to be asleep, and he would no more have appeared to be awake than he would have said to Elinor, “Who do you entertain every night in your room?”

  Billy’s eyes were closed, but he could not refrain from smiling.

  See, whispered the voice that was Frances’s—but not Frances’s, because Frances was dead, drowned in the black waters of the Perdido. See, Nerita? That’s your daddy.

  Chapter 82

  Mrs. Woskoboinikow

  In the spring of 1969, Lilah Bronze graduated from Barnard with high honors. If she hadn’t fought relentlessly with her tutor during her senior year she would probably have graduated Summa rather than only Magna cum laude. The Caskeys wondered whether Lilah would return to Perdido, but no one asked her plans. They would find out quickly enough, and Lilah was just the sort to say, “I have no idea,” just for the perversity of it. She returned home once that summer, in August, and then barely long enough to reassure her family that she had taken no part in the campus riots of the previous spring.

  “And I’m only here for a week,” she said at the Sunday dinner table to which all the Caskeys had gathered to welcome her back. “So nobody run off accepting invitations for me or anything like that.”

  Elinor and Billy, Miriam and Malcolm all glanced at one another, but for several moments no one said anything. Grace and Lucille said nothing; they did not approve of the manner in which Lilah had always been allowed to go her own way, unchecked. Tommy Lee Burgess simply looked embarrassed. Then, at last, with vast diffidence, Malcolm said, “Ah, Lilah...”

  “Yes?” Lilah returned quickly and almost savagely.

  Malcolm saw that it was his responsibility to ask the great question, and he cast about in his mind for a framework for it that wouldn’t anger Lilah. He at last found a supremely delicate interrogatory: “If you decide to change your telephone number, you might write down the new one and send it to me—just in case there’s an emergency or anything.”

  Lilah nodded, and everyone felt relieved. Lilah was evidently appeased by Malcolm’s subtlety.

  “In fact,” Lilah said, mollified, “I’ve already changed my number. I’ll give it to you before I leave.”

  Billy cleared his throat, and said, “Lilah, did you move out of your old apartment or did you just have the number changed?”

  “Why the hell would I change my number unless I moved?” Lilah demanded.

  Her father shrugged as if to indicate that nothing Lilah did could astonish him.

  “I’ve moved about two blocks away,” Lilah continued reluctantly. It seemed as if her family had ferreted out her most private and long-guarded secret.

  “A bigger place?” asked Miriam.

  “Yes...” said Lilah thoughtfully. “Yes, it is bigger.”

  “Higher up?” asked Elinor. “Or lower down?” Previously Lilah had lived on the twenty-first floor.

  Lilah didn’t answer at once. She glanced around the table, clucked her tongue, sighed, dropped her napkin into her lap, and said, “Well, I guess I may as well go on and tell you...”

  “Tell us what?” asked Tommy Lee quickly.

  “...because you will worm it out of me before I get out of here, anyway. And if I say it now, maybe you will let me have some peace.”

  “What is it, honey?” asked Malcolm.

  “Two things,” said Lilah. “First one is, I’m staying in New York. I’m not coming back here.”

  “We figured that,” said Grace dryly, “when you said you had moved two blocks away.”

  “And the reason I’m staying is that I’m going to law school in the fall. Columbia again.”

  The Caskeys all thought about this for a few moments, and then offered their congratulations. It was thought a wise decision; there were so many others she might have made that wouldn’t have been wise at all.

  “Any particular kind of law?” asked Billy.

  “I’m not sure,” replied Lilah. “Tax law, probably.”

  “Good,” said Miriam. “Then you’ll be able to help us. Billy and I go through I don’t know what all every year with those people we hire up in Atlanta.”

  “Maybe,” said Lilah. “Maybe I’ll help—and maybe not. Maybe I won’t go into tax law at all.”

  Some discussion followed now on the business
of taxes and lawyers in general, a discussion in which Lilah took no part. When finally there was a pause, Lilah spoke up with exasperation. “Well, doesn’t anybody want to hear the other part of my news?”

  “I thought that was it,” said Lucille. “You’re staying in New York, and you’re going to tax law school.”

  “That was just one thing,” said Lilah peevishly. “I was counting those two as one.”

  “What else then?” asked Tommy Lee.

  Lilah looked around the table to make sure that she had everyone’s attention. “Now, I don’t want you all to jump all over me,” she warned.

  No one said anything, and that counted as a promise not to disapprove no matter what she was about to tell them.

  “I got married last week,” said Lilah. “On Thursday.”

  The Caskeys said nothing, partly out of shock, and partly in fulfilment of their promise not to express displeasure. She could hardly have said anything more stunning.

  Grace, at last, with an exaggerated gesture of peering around the room, said, “Is he here? Did you bring him?”

  “I did not,” said Lilah definitely.

  “You could have,” said Miriam. “There’s plenty of room.”

  “He wouldn’t come,” said Lilah. “I did ask him.”

  “Why not?” asked Billy. “Why wouldn’t he come?”

  “He hates Alabama,” replied Lilah. “He came down here in ’64 and ’65 for all the civil rights business, and he got hosed down and beaten up and thrown into the Selma jail. He says he will never set foot in Alabama again.”

  “This man have a name?” asked Lucille.

  “His name is Michael.”

  “Does he have a last name?” asked Miriam.

  “Woskoboinikow.” The whole table looked blank. Lilah repeated the name very slowly. “Wosko—rhymes with Roscoe. Boin—like boing-boing. Ikow—like he coughs. Got it? Woskoboinikow. Real simple. It’s Polish. He’s not. Or his grandfather was, I guess. He’s from Cleveland. So now I’m Lilah Woskoboinikow. I’ve already had my checks printed up. If you want to see them, I’ve got them in my bag.”

  “And what does he do?” asked Billy. “Now that he’s out of jail?”

  “He’s a plasma physicist. A scientist,” she explained when everyone regarded her blankly.

  The Caskeys shook their heads. It was just like Lilah to have got married without warning to a man with a name that no one had ever heard of or could rightly pronounce or remember how to spell, whose job involved something they had never heard of, and who refused absolutely ever to come to Alabama.

  “Are we gone be allowed to meet him?” Miriam asked.

  “If you come to New York,” said Lilah.

  “Let me ask you something,” said Miriam.

  “What?”

  “Does Michael know how much money you have?”

  “I don’t have any money of my own,” Lilah reminded her.

  “Does Michael know how much money we have then?” Miriam persisted.

  “I’ve told him,” Lilah replied. “But I don’t think he really realizes it. Michael doesn’t know anything about money. I’ve been handling all his finances for the past year. I don’t think he cares.”

  The Caskeys sighed, and once the immediate shock was over, it occurred to each of them that they should have known all along that it would happen precisely this way.

  . . .

  Tommy Lee Burgess, in his new position as Miriam’s assistant in matters relating to the Caskey oil properties, had grown in stature not only in his own eyes, but in those of his family and the community at large. He was, in fact, thought quite a catch. He wasn’t handsome, and he certainly was overweight, but he was good-natured and kind—and very rich. Tommy Lee, however, showed no interest whatsoever in any one of the thirty or forty thousand marriageable young women in Baldwin County, Alabama, and Escambia County, Florida. Tommy Lee was content to stay at home with Grace and Lucille. His recreation was still hunting and fishing, and occasionally innocently carousing with the men who worked the oil rigs in the swamp south of the farm. The fact was—and all the Caskeys knew it—that Tommy Lee was hopelessly in love with Lilah Bronze; had loved her since the day he had moved in with his grandmother next door to Lilah. He had been mightily disappointed that Lilah did not go to school at Auburn, and now he was more severely distressed to discover that she had up and married a man whose name nobody could even pronounce. He said nothing at the dinner table when Lilah made her startling announcement, but on the drive back to the farm through the dark deserted countryside, he leaned forward from the back seat and, resting his chin on the seat between Grace and Lucille, remarked ruefully, “I could have told everybody. I could have told everybody it was gone happen just this way.”

  “How would you have known?” asked Lucille. “Nobody could predict that.”

  “I could have, if I hadn’t been foolish. But I wanted to believe that someday Lilah would come back here.”

  “You’re disappointed, aren’t you, Tommy Lee?” sighed Grace.

  “I sure am,” Tommy Lee admitted in the dark.

  “You shouldn’t be. Look at the way Lilah treats people. I never thought I’d be able to say this about anybody, but Lilah Whatever-her-name-is-now is harder to get along with than Miriam ever was. You even wanted to marry her, I guess.”

  “I would have. I would have married her in a minute.”

  “And have been miserable from that very minute into all eternity,” said Lucille. “She would have led you around by the nose.”

  “I know it,” said Tommy Lee wistfully.

  “You know what I think?” said Grace.

  “What?”

  “I think you ought to go and speak to Lilah and tell her how you feel.”

  “What good would that do?” said Tommy Lee. “I had my chance. I didn’t say anything. Now it’s too late.”

  “Then this is the time to say it,” argued Grace. “When it’s too late for her to say yes. And you’ll get it off your chest. I know you, Tommy Lee. I know you’ll carry this around like a two-ton safe on your back unless you go up to Lilah and tell her what you feel.”

  “Better do it,” agreed Tommy Lee’s mother.

  “Turn the car around,” said Tommy Lee, throwing himself mightily against the back seat. “Drive back right now and I’ll do it.”

  But Grace continued on through Babylon toward the farm. “Go tomorrow,” she advised. “Do it in the daylight.”

  So Tommy Lee drove back to Perdido the following morning and arrived before Lilah was even up. Melva had delivered Lilah’s breakfast on a tray, and Lilah was sitting up in bed. Tommy Lee knocked on the door jamb, and Lilah said, as she buttered her toast, “Miriam’s already gone down to the mill, Tommy Lee. I don’t know where the hell Malcolm’s gone off to.”

  “I came to see you,” said Tommy Lee.

  “Then come on in and sit on the edge of the bed,” said Lilah. She looked up and smiled at him. Lilah was a handsome girl, the handsomest girl Tommy Lee had ever known, and once Tommy Lee had gone out with the Auburn homecoming queen. Lilah’s smile was radiant, and it was also the kindest greeting she had ever given him.

  “What are you doing here?” Tommy Lee began awkwardly.

  “I am eating my breakfast. You know, you can’t get grits in New York City for love nor money.”

  “No, I mean, what are you doing in Perdido? If you just got married last week, why aren’t you on your honeymoon?”

  “Michael couldn’t get off right away. We’re going down to the Caribbean in the winter sometime. It doesn’t matter anyway. I hate all that business.”

  “What business?” asked Tommy Lee.

  “Wedding business,” returned Lilah. “That’s why I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t want anybody to do anything. We went down to city hall. It was very impersonal,” she added with something very like pride.

  Tommy Lee shifted his weight on the bed, nearly upsetting Lilah’s tray.

  “You are big
as a house, Tommy Lee,” Lilah remarked. “If you don’t be still, I’m going to make you move over to a chair.”

  “I’ve missed you all that time you’ve been in New York,” said Tommy Lee.

  “And I’ve missed you, too,” said Lilah, blowing on her coffee to cool it.

  “Have you?”

  “Yes. I wouldn’t say so if I hadn’t. I didn’t miss Grace and Lucille, for instance. I did miss you, though.”

  Tommy Lee was silent for a few moments, not knowing how to go on. Melva came up again to see if everything was all right with the breakfast, and Lilah asked her to bring a tray for Tommy Lee.

  “I just ate out at the farm,” Tommy Lee protested.

  “You haven’t stopped at just one breakfast in ten years,” said Lilah. “Have another one, and keep me company.”

  “So you’re going to be a lawyer,” said Tommy Lee, putting off the inevitable.

  “I intend to make a fortune,” said Lilah vehemently.

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, ‘Why?’ Everybody wants to make a lot of money.”

  “You have a lot of money, Lilah.”

  “I don’t have one thing that’s mine,” said Lilah.

  “If you wanted it, all you’d have to do is ask somebody for it. Just ask the first person in the family you ran up against and they’d write you a check for a million dollars. I know they would.”

  “I know they would, too,” said Lilah quietly. “And you know me, Tommy Lee. You’d know I’d never ask.”

  Tommy Lee shrugged. “I guess,” he said. Melva brought another breakfast on a tray and Tommy Lee moved to a wide chair. When Melva had left, Tommy Lee said, “Lilah, you want me to write you a big check? I would, you know, and I’d be pleased to do it. I’d keep it a secret, too. Nobody’d find out about it.”

  Lilah looked up and considered this. “Tommy Lee,” she said, “would it make you happy if I let you pay for my law school?”

  “It sure would!”

  “Then I’ll let you do it. Don’t tell anybody, though.”

  “I won’t,” Tommy Lee promised. “But you know, they’re gone figure it out.”