Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga (25 page)

Next door, in Mary-Love’s house, Early Haskew snored louder than he talked. Mary-Love tossed in her bed, pondering what effect the birth of Frances might have on things, fearing that the child might be the means by which Elinor gained an ascendancy acknowledged all over Perdido. And in her room, Sister thought alternately of Miriam, whom she loved very dearly, and of the man snoring in the room at the end of the hall, to whom she was not indifferent. Beside Sister in the bed, little Miriam Caskey dreamed her formless dreams of nameless things to eat and nameless things to pick up and nameless things to hide in the little box that Mary-Love had given her.

And in the next house, Grace Caskey tossed and turned and didn’t even want to go to sleep, so excited was she by the birth of Frances. Grace envisioned a trio of cousins—herself, Miriam, and Frances—loyal and loving. James Caskey thought—or did he dream?—of the earth above his wife’s grave, and wondered whether it ought not to be planted over in verbena or phlox. Eventually all the Caskeys fell asleep, and all dreamed of whatever concerned them most.

That night while the Caskeys slept and dreamed, fog roiled up out of the Perdido River and spilled across the dry Caskey property.

Fogs were not uncommon in this part of Alabama, but they came only at night and were seen by few. This fog, thicker and darker than usual, rose up out of the river as a beast of prey rises up in the night after a long diurnal sleep, keen to slake its hunger. It wrapped itself around the Caskey houses, enveloping them in a silent, thick, unmoving mist. What before had been only dark was now black. It was so silent, so subtle, that its arrival waked no one at all. The river moisture pervaded the houses and surrounded the sleepers with a suffocating dampness. Even Early Haskew’s snoring was muffled. Yet still none of the Caskeys woke, and if they struggled against it, they did so only in their dreams, dreams in which the oppressive fog had arms and legs that were slick and damp, and a mouth that exhaled mist and night.

Zaddie Sapp was the only one to know of it. She dreamed of the fog, dreamed that its moist fingers pulled back the sheet from her cot so that she grew chill, and dreamed that the fog awakened her and beckoned her to come out from the protection of her tiny closet behind the kitchen. The dream was so convincing that Zaddie opened her eyes to prove to herself that the fog was not there. But when she did so, and looked straight up at the ceiling, Zaddie saw thick wisps of the mist floating in her window. At the same time, very soft and muffled, she heard the sodden creak of the hinges of the lattice-door at the back of the house. At first she disbelieved her ears, the sound seemed so distant. Then she heard a step upon the stairs that led down to the back yard.

She sat up suddenly, and wisps of fog swirled into sudden turbulence before her eyes. Zaddie wasn’t afraid of thieves, because nothing had been stolen in Perdido since “Railroad” Bill held up the Turk’s mill in 1883, but with trepidation she peered out the window. Little could be seen through the fog, but when she squinted she could just make out a dark form moving carefully down those steps.

Zaddie knew that it was Elinor.

One step creaked. The form paused. Zaddie perceived that Elinor carried something in her cradled arms, and what did cradled arms usually hold but a baby?

Night air and fog just couldn’t be good for a child that wasn’t yet a day old! Clad only in her nightgown, and without thinking to put on shoes, Zaddie jumped quietly out of the bed, opened the door of her little closet, and stepped out to the latticed back porch. She pushed open the back door, softly but without trying to disguise the fact that she was there. She stood on the back steps, and shut the door behind her.

Elinor was off in the yard ahead, nearly invisible in the fog.

“Miss El’nor,” said Zaddie softly.

“Zaddie, go back inside.” Elinor’s voice sounded dreamy and moist. It seemed to come from a great distance.

Zaddie hesitated. “Miss El’nor, what you doing out here with that precious baby?”

Elinor shifted the child in her arms. “I’m going to baptize her in the Perdido water, and I don’t need you to help. So you go back inside, you hear? A little girl like you could get lost in this fog and die!”

Elinor’s voice faded, as did her shape. She was lost in the fog. Zaddie ran forward, fearful for the safety of the infant. “Miss El’nor!” Zaddie whispered in the inky darkness.

No answer came.

Zaddie ran forward toward the river. She tripped over the exposed root of one of the clumps of water oaks, and sprawled in the sand. She scrambled to her feet, and through a momentary thinning of the fog, could make out Miss Elinor’s form at the edge of the water.

She again hurried forward, and grabbed her mistress’s nightdress.

“Zaddie,” said Elinor, her voice still distant and strange, “I told you to stay back.”

“Miss El’nor, you cain’t put that child in the water!”

Elinor laughed. “Do you think this river is going to hurt
my
little girl?” And with that, Elinor flung her newborn daughter into the swirling black current of the Perdido. She might have been a fisherman tossing a too-small catch back into the river.

Zaddie had long been fearful of the Perdido, knowing how many people had drowned in its unabating currents. She had heard Ivey’s stories of what lived on the riverbed, and what things hid in the mud. But despite her fear, despite the fact that it was night and that the night was filled with fog, Zaddie rushed into the water in hope of saving the infant that, incredibly, had been tossed in by its mother.

“Zaddie,” cried Elinor, “come back. You’ll drown!”

Zaddie caught the child—or at least thought she caught it. Reaching down into the water, she had scooped up
something
. It felt very little like a baby! It was so slippery and unsoft, yet rubbery—a fishlike thing—that she very nearly let it go again. Zaddie shuddered with repulsion for whatever it was that she held in her hands, but she raised it up above the surface. She saw that she had caught hold of something black and vile, with a neckless head attached directly to a thick body. A stubby tail that was almost as thick as the body twitched convulsively, and the thing was covered with river slime. In the air it struggled to get away, to return to its element. But Zaddie held it tight, closing her fingers into its disgusting flesh. From its fishy mouth emerged a stream of foamy water, and the thrashing tail smacked against Zaddie’s forearms; dull, bulging eyes shone up into her face.

Elinor’s hand closed over Zaddie’s shoulder.

The girl stiffened, and looked around.

“You see,” said Elinor, “my baby’s fine.”

In Zaddie’s arms lay Frances Caskey, naked and limp, with Perdido river water dripping slowly from her elbows and feet.

“Come out of the water, Zaddie,” said Elinor, drawing the girl out by the sleeve of her dress. “The bottom is muddy, and you could slide...”

. . .

Next morning, Roxie shook Zaddie out of her deep slumber, saying, “Child, you have not
begun
to rake this morning! What’s wrong with you?” Zaddie dressed quickly, shaken but relieved that her previous night’s adventure had been no more than a dream. She had wandered through a nightmare, reached safety, and been immediately overtaken with undisturbed sleep. It was unthinkable, in the light of morning, that Elinor would throw her newborn baby into the Perdido, and Zaddie didn’t even allow herself to
think
of what she had caught up in her arms in the dream.

She ran to the kitchen and gobbled a biscuit. Grabbing her rake from its accustomed corner, she flung open the back door. For a moment, the sound of those hinges brought back the dream; but Zaddie merely grinned at her own fear. She ran down the back steps—and stopped dead in her tracks.

There in the sand were four sets of footprints. Two sets led down toward the river and two led back—and around the returning set were tiny circular depressions such as might be made where droplets of water dripped into the sand and dried.

With a heavy heart, Zaddie stepped off into the cool gray yard. With downcast eyes, she carefully obliterated those sets of footprints leading to and from the river, as if by that means she could blot out what had not been, after all, a dream. All the while she worked, she could hear Elinor on the second-floor sleeping porch. She was crooning a little tuneless song to her newborn baby.

About the time of the birth of her niece Frances, Sister Caskey became overwhelmed with a sense of powerlessness and inconsequence. Why she should be so affected now, when before she had always taken her condition so much for granted, she did not know. Perhaps it had something to do with Oscar’s marriage to Elinor, and his escaping the house while she remained behind, serving as a sponge to soak up Mary-Love’s resentment at her son’s desertion. Perhaps it was something about Elinor herself, who was younger than Sister, but unquestionably more powerful—Elinor had fought as an equal with Mary-Love. Perhaps Sister was tired of her mother’s mingy complaints against Elinor, against the town, and against Sister herself. Recently, Mary-Love had made her first attempts to take a greater share of control over Miriam, whom she had always shared equally with her daughter. Sister thought she resented this most of all. She knew that soon Mary-Love would take the child away from her completely, and Sister would be alone again.

Although the Caskeys were better off than almost any other Perdido family, Sister had very little that was hers. She possessed no more than some odd stocks that had been birthday gifts and whose dividends were erratic and negligible. She remembered well enough the Caskey jewels, buried with Genevieve, which had so mysteriously appeared at the ceiling of the front bedroom of Elinor’s house. But of that hoard, Sister had nothing at all. Except for the black pearls that Elinor took, Mary-Love had kept everything for herself and Miriam. Sister began to believe that her opinion was never solicited about any matter of consequence. One morning in July she showed up at James’s office at the mill and declared herself fit and ready for any task that might be assigned to her. James looked at his niece in perplexity and misgiving, and said, “Lord, Sister, I cain’t make heads or tails of this place myself, I don’t know why you should be coming to
me
to tell you what you can do!” When she went to her brother with the same announcement, Oscar said, “Sister, there’s nothing for you here, unless you can type-write or fix a broken-down chipper, and I know for a fact you cain’t.” Sister felt that the family was conspiring to keep her from the dignity and satisfaction of common human responsibilities.

She suggested to Mary-Love that she might open a store on Palafox Street to sell threads and buttons, but Mary-Love said, “No, Sister, I’m not gone give you the money, because the place would close down in six months. What do you know about running a shop? Besides, I want you here at home with me.” When her mother said that, Sister realized that “at home” was exactly where she did not want to remain for the rest of her life.

Sister was weary of all of it, and Sister thought she saw a way out.

Her solution wasn’t a new one; it was a remedy common all over the world. Procuring a husband would make all things right. As she began the task of looking about for likely candidates for the position, she discovered to her gratification that the most eligible man in Perdido—the one most exactly suited to her purposes—was also the handiest. He was the man whose snoring she heard at the other end of the hallway every night. Early Haskew.

Early was handsome, in a just-coming-in-out-of-the-sun sort of way. He was an engineer and looked to have a good future before him. All the Caskeys liked him. But none of this really mattered to Sister. What was most important about Early Haskew was that when the levee was finished, he would move away from Perdido. It was only to be assumed that if Early were married by that time, he would take his wife away with him.

Sister had no experience in even the simplest forms of flirtation and allurement, and in this matter she could scarcely go to her mother or her mother’s friends for advice. Elinor was also out of the question. So Sister went where she had gone once or twice before, to Ivey Sapp, Mary-Love’s cook and maid. She knew that Ivey’s advice would be supernatural in its base—and in its execution—but she could see no alternative. So, Sister, saying to herself,
I have nowhere else to turn
, went down into the kitchen one afternoon, and said to Ivey without preamble, “Ivey, you gone help me get married?”

“Sure will,” said Ivey, without hesitation. “Somebody particular?”

. . .

Ivey Sapp had come to Mary-Love’s house when she was sixteen, about three years earlier. She was shiny black and plump. Her legs were permanently bowed from riding the Sapp mule round and round the cane crusher for sometimes twelve hours a day. Finally she had grown tired of the oppressive monotony of her existence at home, and longed for what her mother, Creola, contemptuously called “a life in the town.” A kind of marriage had been arranged with Bray Sugarwhite, a man much older than Ivey, but he was kind and well situated in the Caskey household.

Ivey’s principal fault—at least in Mary-Love’s eyes—was a sort of rampant superstition that saw devils in every tree and portents in every cloud and dark meanings in every casual accident. Ivey Sapp slept with charms, and there were
things
on a chain around her neck. She wouldn’t begin canning on a Friday, and she would run off and not return for the rest of the day if she saw anyone open an umbrella in the house. She wouldn’t carry out ashes after three o’clock in the afternoon lest there be a death in the family. She wouldn’t sweep after dark because she’d sweep good fortune out the door. She wouldn’t wash on New Year’s day lest she wash a corpse in the ensuing year. She had many prohibitions and exceptions, and a little rhyme or saying for each, so that the days were scarce on which she performed without objection every task assigned her. Mary-Love sometimes said she believed that Ivey made up half of it in order to shirk her duties, but Ivey had plenty of superstition that was in no way connected with work. Thus it was a disconcerting fact of life in the Caskey household that the most innocent gesture observed by Ivey or unthinkingly reported to her elicited a dire prediction: “If you sing before you eat, you cry before you sleep,” for instance. Before Miriam was born, Mary-Love always declared herself glad that there were no children in the house, because Ivey would have turned them into sniveling, frightened creatures, with her tales and warnings of things that waited for you in the forest and looked in your windows and hitched rides on the underside of your boat.