Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga (30 page)

“Of course she does. But not in the person of a son-in-law. Mama wouldn’t approve of my intended if he was the King of the Jews dropped down on the front steps with a shoebox full of diamonds. Mama is not gone want to let me go, that’s all.”

“Sister, I don’t mind trouble. I can stand up to your mama.”

They were still making their way through the woods from Brickyard Lake toward the Landing, where Bray waited with the automobile. They had spent hours on the water in their borrowed boat and now the sun was in its decline. The woods were shadowed, but the sunlight now and then broke through the tops of the trees and blinded them for a moment as they walked along hand in hand.

“Of course you can, Early. That’s not the point. I’m thinking about the levee.”

“How you mean?”

“I mean, I think you ought to finish off all your plans and get everything set before we tell Mama anything. ’Cause there’s bound to be trouble, and if there’s trouble, then you won’t get your work done like you should. Besides, you couldn’t rightly go away on a honeymoon with me if you hadn’t finished what you had set out to do, could you?”

“I could not,” said Early stoutly, proud that his fiancée should see the thing in so responsible, practical, and—when it came down to it—so
masculine
a perspective.

For a time nothing was said. Sister told Ivey of the engagement. To Sister’s relief Ivey said only, “I’m so happy for you, Sister!” and made no mention of the buried chicken. Everything continued as before, except that Sister, having reached her goal, spent less time with Early. Mary-Love grew complacent, and imagined a cooling between the two. Sister, she thought, had at last been discouraged by Early’s inattentiveness to her.

Early was working harder, knowing that when he had completed the plans he would have not only the cash bonus promised by James Caskey, but Sister’s hand in marriage. From the back pages of a periodical he purchased at the pharmacy he cut out an advertisement and sent away for a patented guaranteed cure for snoring. Every day he expectantly awaited its arrival. He once had heard his mother say that she had almost abandoned his father on account of his nocturnal wheezings and snufflings, and he had no wish to take any such chances with Sister when they should share the same bed.

Summer gradually and grudgingly gave way to autumn. Across the Caskey property the wind blew sometimes chill and damp across the Perdido, but the leathery leaves of the water oaks remained in place on the twigs and branches of the ever-taller trees. Moss grew on the trunks, and tiny stunted ferns sprouted in the crotches of the roots, and Zaddie in a long woolen sweater went out early every morning and raked patterns in the sand.

. . .

On an afternoon in the early part of October, Bray appeared in James Caskey’s office, and said, “Mr. James, Miss Mary-Love wants you home right now.”

“Bray, I’m coming,” said James, and he got up from his desk and walked out of the office without a moment’s hesitation. The last time his presence had been so commanded was the afternoon that Elinor had sent his wife away to her death.

“What is it?” said James as he got into the car.

“I don’t know,” said Bray, who knew perfectly well, but whose instructions had been to say nothing. James understood this, and asked no more questions, although he was very much disturbed. When Bray drew up before Mary-Love’s house, James ran up to the front porch, wondering if Grace had been hit on the head with a falling timber in the collapse of her schoolroom roof.

“James!” said Mary-Love in her most musical tone. “We’re out here on the porch!”

James stopped dead. Mary-Love’s voice bore no hint whatever of disaster, yet there was something in its sweetness, coupled with his summons from the mill and the directive to Bray to say nothing to him, that put James on his guard, as if Mary-Love had called out,
Hurry up, James! The most awful thing has happened!

He slowly mounted the steps, then opened the screened door on to the porch. It was more crowded than usual: Mary-Love sat on the glider with Early Haskew next to her. Sister was on the swing with a little girl beside her. And on the other glider, the one with the chenille blanket thrown over it, sat James’s sister-in-law Queenie Strickland and Queenie’s son, Malcolm. Malcolm was picking the threads out of a chenille rose. James had not seen any of the Stricklands since his wife’s funeral.

“James, I’m so glad you could get away,” said Mary-Love. “Queenie came all the way from Nashville to see us!”

Queenie Strickland, who was short and dimpled with bobbed hair that was dyed a shiny black, jumped up and barreled her way toward James, crying out, “Oh, Lord, James Caskey, don’t you miss her!”

“I do, I—” But he could say no more, for Queenie had grabbed him around his narrow waist and squeezed the breath right out of him.

“Genevieve was the light of my life! I am miserable without her! I came down to see if you were dead of grief yet!” She released James for a moment and pointed to the glider. “You remember my boy, Malcolm, he was prostrated at his aunt’s funeral, say hello to James Caskey, your sweet uncle, boy!”

“Hey, Uncle James,” said Malcolm sullenly, and managed at that moment to pick a hole through the chenille spread with his thumbnail.

“And that’s my preciousest girl, Lucille, who came down with mumps on the day our darling died and wanted something desperate to come to the funeral but I wouldn’t let her even though I had to put her in the hospital in order to get down here in time and one nurse told me she had never heard a child carry on the way that child carried on ’cause she couldn’t come to her Aunt Genevieve’s funeral!”

Lucille appeared to be about three years old, so she could not have been more than two when Genevieve died. That seemed very young to show such a great interest in the obsequies of even one’s closest relatives. However, as if on cue, Lucille burst into tears in the swing, and pulled away with beating fists when Sister attempted to put an arm around her for comfort.

James drew back from Queenie, who had lifted her short arms with the apparent intention of embracing him again. He felt distinctly as if he had fallen into a trap. He looked from Queenie to Mary-Love, as if wondering which of them had been responsible for laying this snare in his unobservant path.

“Well, Queenie,” said James after a moment, “did Carl come down here with you?”

Queenie clapped the flat of her hand against her breast, as if to still the sudden beating of her injured heart.

“You have wounded me in speaking of that man!” cried Queenie, staggering backward and waving her other hand carefully behind her to make certain she did not trip over anything.

James stood very still, and was almost certain that he had just stepped into a second pitfall.

Queenie staggered all the way back to the glider, and fell into it heavily. She sat on Malcolm’s hand, causing the boy to squeal. He made a great show of his difficulty in extricating his hand from beneath his mother’s bulk, then wiggled his fingers to see if they were broken. When he judged them whole, he bunched them into a fist and punched his mother’s thigh, but she took no notice at all.

“Mr. Haskew,” cried Queenie, “I am sorry!”

“It’s all right,” said Early automatically, though neither he nor anyone else had any idea why Queenie Strickland should beg his pardon.

“You are not family,” said Queenie in explanation. “You should not be burdened with the Strickland family troubles.”

“You want me to go inside?” said Early amiably, already getting to his feet.

“You sit down,” said Mary-Love in a low voice. Then she said more loudly, “Miz Strickland, if you are gone talk family trouble, then I would suggest that you send away these children. I don’t particularly want to hear Strickland family tribulations myself, but I certainly don’t feel they are fit for the ears of your little boy and your little girl.”

“I will not!” cried Queenie. “These children know as much as I do! They have suffered as I have suffered! Has your father beat you, Malcolm Strickland?” she said, turning to her son as if in cross-examination.

“I’ll beat him!” cried Malcolm belligerently, and he punched his mother’s thigh again.

“Has he touched your pretty angel face, Lucille Strickland?” said Queenie.

Queenie’s daughter, who had only just subsided from her previous eruption, suddenly threw her hands up to her face and burst once more into loud sobbing. Sister attempted to draw her hands away, but Lucille wailed so loudly that Sister allowed the tiny hands to snap back into position, so that at least the cries were muffled.

“Carl Strickland,” said Queenie in a low, awful voice, “laid his hands on my body. My dress covers the bruises. I would not have you see them for the world. If I had stayed with that man, people in Nashville would have held my name dog-cheap. I will reveal to y’all the greatest mistake that I ever made in my entire life. I will say it out to you, even though there is one of you here who is of no relation whatsoever...” Here she gazed at Early Haskew, and then glanced over the porch in a general sort of way.
“I got into the wrong pew with that man.”

The Caskeys were uncomfortable. Sister would not look at Queenie Strickland, but stared instead at the little girl sitting beside her. Occasionally she attempted to whisper a word or two of consolation. Mary-Love sat stolidly with her arms crossed over her breast and stared at Queenie as if in disbelief that a civilized woman should so disgrace herself. Now and then she glanced up at James reproachfully as if the whole business were his fault. She rather considered that it was, for it was through his marriage that the Caskeys were connected with such a woman as Queenie Strickland. James stood exactly as he stood when he had first stepped onto the porch. He did not know what to do and had no idea what to say and was cognizant of every thought going through Mary-Love’s head. In his heart he agreed with her—it was all his fault. All that he might do then was to get the business over with as quickly as possible.

“So you’ve left Carl, is that what you’re saying, Queenie?”

“Of course!” cried Queenie, rising to her feet and apparently preparing to rush James once more. He held up his hands and waved her down again. She fell back onto the glider, but not before Malcolm had another opportunity deliberately to stick his hand beneath her so that he again might have the pleasure of squealing and of administering another punch to his mother’s thigh. “Did you want me to stay with him?” cried Queenie. “Did you want to see me beat down into the ground by that devil-man’s heavy hand?”

“Oh, Ma, I’d beat him!” cried Malcolm, now administering a volley of illustrative punches against his mother’s leg.

“Well,” said James, after a moment’s thought, “where
is
Carl?”

“Is Carl Strickland in Nashville?” cried Queenie wildly, jumping up and down on the glider. “Do I know? He may be. He may not be. Does Carl Strickland know where
I
am is a better question. He does not. Or if he does,
I
am not the one who told him. I put my bags and my darlings in the back seat of a car and I drove directly to Perdido, Alabama, without a license or ten dollars to my name.”

Sister looked up quickly at this mention of money.

Queenie was suddenly quiet. She looked around the porch and when she continued her manner was greatly subdued.

“Do I have a place to go? is another question you might well ask, James Caskey. And what would the answer be, Malcolm Strickland? Would the answer be ‘yes’? No, it wouldn’t. Would the answer be ‘no,’ Lucille Strickland? Yes, it would. The Stricklands—except Carl Strickland—are without a roof for their heads. Their automobile is broken down in front of the Perdido town hall, blocking traffic, and will never move again. The Stricklands—except Carl Strickland—don’t have the ready cash to purchase themselves a box of rotten apples sold by a colored boy on the side of the highway.”

James Caskey collapsed onto the glider between Early Haskew and Mary-Love. For several moments no one said anything, and all that could be heard was the sobbing of Lucille, which had begun anew when her mother had addressed her with the rhetorical question. Ivey Sapp could be seen through the kitchen window that looked out onto the porch, unabashedly watching all that was happening.

“Why exactly did you come to Perdido, Miz Strickland?” asked Mary-Love in a cold voice.

“You have
got
to call me Queenie! You just
got
to! I came to Perdido because of James. I don’t have any family. I had Genevieve, and she was all. We were Snyders. All the Snyders are dead. Except my brother Pony Snyder. Pony went to Oklahoma. Married an Indian girl. My darlings here have got fifteen, twenty little Indian cousins now, I hear. But I couldn’t go live with Pony. They don’t have anything. I don’t even know what his Indian wife’s first name is. Would I raise my darlings on an Indian reservation?”

“I’d shoot ’em, Ma!” cried Malcolm.

“I know you would, darling,” said Queenie indulgently, brushing her son’s hair with an affectionate hand. “But I was thinking about all those times my sweet sister stayed with me, and I’d say to her, ‘Genevieve Snyder’—I never did get used to her married name, and I guess I’ll always think of her as a Snyder—‘why are you staying here with me when you’ve got the best husband in all the world pining away for you down in Perdido? Why aren’t you with him?’ And she’d say, ‘I don’t know, ’cause you’re right, he’s the best man in all the world, he’d do anything for me or for you or for your children. I guess I just love Nashville too much for my own good.’ That was her problem, she loved Nashville. I never saw a girl take to a city the way Genevieve took to Nashville. She couldn’t be happy anywhere else in the world, I guess. So she told me if anything ever happened and I needed help to come down here and speak to her husband James Caskey, and when something happened—something truly awful—I got in my car and here I am.”

. . .

Though patently meretricious, Queenie Strickland’s speech achieved its desired effect. James Caskey was persuaded to assist her and her children. Their meager baggage was carried into his house by Bray, and later in the afternoon Grace Caskey was introduced to her younger cousins. By way of greeting, Lucille smeared chocolate onto Grace’s dress and Malcolm punched her in the stomach.