Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga (35 page)

One night, in the midst of the heat—and the rocking, and the fanning, and the worry—the telephone rang in Oscar Caskey’s house about ten o’clock, an advanced hour for the call to be anything but an emergency. Oscar and Elinor were sitting on their upstairs porch as usual and Oscar went to answer it. He came back in a few moments and said, a little uneasily, “It’s Florida Benquith, she sounds worried.”

Elinor got up and went to the telephone. Oscar hung about and listened to his wife’s end of the conversation. This wasn’t much, for Florida was a great talker and on this occasion she had more than usual to say.

“Listen, Elinor,” she began without preamble, “I’m sorry to call you like this, but I thought you ought to know what happened—or what we
think
has happened, because we’re not sure yet. I’ve just now sent Leo on over there.”

“Are you talking about Queenie?” asked Elinor calmly.

“Of course I am! I was standing in my kitchen, Elinor, putting away plates. My window’s open for a little breath of air and suddenly I hear all kinds of carrying-on coming from Queenie’s house—and it’s not Queenie going after those two children either, it’s Queenie’s voice and a man’s voice and who is Queenie arguing with? is all I can think. So I turn out the light and step out on the back porch so they cain’t see me—I didn’t want ’em to think I was spying, and anyway I wasn’t, I just wanted to make sure Queenie was all right—and I’m listening but I cain’t tell what anybody is saying but they keep on with it. Then I hear Queenie holler ‘No!’ and then I don’t hear anything else. Elinor, I tell you, I was starting to get worried.”

“What’d you do?” said Elinor.

“I run to get Leo. He’s in the living room, reading. I bring him out on the porch and I tell him what I heard and we just stand there listening, but we cain’t hear much. We cain’t hear anything at all, in fact, and I tell him what I heard before and he says, ‘It’s probably James Caskey over there telling Queenie she’s spending too much money down at Berta’s, that’s probably what you heard.’ I say to him, ‘If it’s James Caskey visiting over there, then why are all the lights out?’ And he doesn’t know. So we just stand there in the dark, and then I say to Leo, ‘Leo, maybe I ought to give a call over there and make sure she’s all right.’ And Leo says, ‘That’s a good idea,’ and I’m just about to go inside and pick up the telephone when Leo whispers to me, ‘Stop.’ So I stop and I look out across the yard and there is somebody coming out of the back door of Queenie’s house and it’s a man.”

“What man?” asked Elinor.

“That’s just it, we have no idea what man. But, Elinor, both Leo and I were almost positive
it was a levee-man.
He snuck around the front of the house and looked around and then he took off like lightning. I
know
it was a levee-man, I just know it, and I think something happened to Queenie, so I sent Leo right over there. I told him don’t even knock, just go on in, and he did it. So he’s over there now and I’m on my way over and, Elinor, I think you better come too.”

Florida hung up and Elinor turned to her husband and said: “Well, Oscar, it looks like one of your levee-men has gone and raped Queenie Strickland.”

. . .

In the darkened room Queenie sat weeping on the edge of the bed. She had pulled on a skirt, but hadn’t bothered to button it. Her underslip was soiled and torn, and she had drawn a house jacket around her bruised shoulders. Florida had made some of Elinor’s special Russian tea and taken it to her, but the cup sat untasted on the small table beside the bed. Elinor and Oscar arrived, and Florida said immediately, “Well, Elinor, you’ve just got to talk to her. She won’t
let
us call Mr. Wiggins.” Aubrey Wiggins was the chief of the three-man Perdido police force.

Leo Benquith came in from the kitchen.

“Is she all right, Dr. Benquith?” Elinor asked.

Dr. Benquith shook his head. “Elinor, what happened here tonight…”

“I know, I know,” said Elinor soothingly as she sat down on the bed and put her arm about Queenie’s shoulder.

Oscar, standing ineffectually by, could only think to say, “Queenie, did you have your door locked?”

Queenie paid no attention to anyone, but continued to sob convulsively.

“Where are the children?” asked Oscar.

“They slept through everything, thank the Lord,” said Florida. “So I sent them over to my house. They’re fine.”

“You didn’t tell those children what happened, did you?” asked Elinor sharply.

“’Course not!” replied Florida. “But, Elinor, we got to do something. That levee-man walked into this house, and he”—out of consideration for Queenie she did not finish the sentence; but then she went on quite as if she had—“and so we
got
to call up Mr. Wiggins.”

Queenie reached over and squeezed Elinor’s hand pathetically, as much as to say,
Don’t…

“No,” said Elinor. “Don’t call Mr. Wiggins. We don’t want to say anything. And, Florida,” Elinor went on, turning to Florida and eyeing her with purpose, “you are not to say
anything
to
anybody
, you hear?”

“Elinor—” began Oscar, but was interrupted by Leo Benquith.

“This could happen to other people, Elinor. We got to find the man who did this and string him up on the nearest tree. Or buy him a ticket on the Hummingbird—or something. Queenie, you think you could recognize the man who came in here tonight?”

Queenie drew in her breath sharply and held it. With weary eyes she looked around the room and held each person’s gaze for a moment. She swallowed back another sob and then said in a low voice, “Yes. I know the man who did it.”

“Well, then,” said Leo Benquith, “we ought to get Wiggins over to that dormitory right now and drag that man down to the jail. Soon as you feel—”

“No!” cried Queenie.

There was a moment’s silence, then Elinor asked, “Who was it, Queenie?”

Queenie sat very still and tried to control her shaking. She closed her eyes and then said, “It was Carl. That’s who it was. It was my husband.”

. . .

Nothing was to be done, then. Leo and Florida Benquith went home; there wasn’t any danger that the doctor would say anything, for doctors, after all, held many confidences. Both he and Elinor extracted ironbound oaths from Florida that she would say nothing to anyone. Leaving Malcolm and Lucille with the Benquiths, Elinor and Oscar took Queenie home with them. They went very quietly into the house, hoping to escape the eagle notice of Mary-Love next door.

Upstairs in the bathroom Elinor stripped off Queenie’s clothes and set her in a bathtub filled with hot water and sweet-smelling salts. Queenie sat unmoving as Elinor washed her all over. That night Queenie and Elinor slept together in the large bed in the front room.

The next morning, as Queenie picked at her breakfast, Elinor sat by the window and cut up all the clothing that Queenie had worn the night before. She made Queenie watch as she tossed the scraps into Roxie’s stove.

Somehow, Carl Strickland had found Queenie out. Probably it hadn’t been difficult, for the Snyders—Queenie’s family—were nearly all dead, and the ones that weren’t dead were dirt poor. It could only have been logical to look for Queenie in Perdido, where her rich brother-in-law owned a sawmill and forest land that a million birds could nest in. Penniless, indigent, forsaken by what little respectability his wife had afforded him, Carl bummed his way down from Nashville. He had been casually offered employment on the levee. He took it, worked part of one day, and found out the whereabouts of his wife that very evening. He cajoled his way into her house and demanded money and support. Fighting with her when she refused him, he hit her, ravished her, and slipped away into the darkness.

Early next morning, Oscar drove down to a work site near the town hall where he knew the most inexperienced men had been set to work and without any difficulty found Carl sullenly helping to turn over a wagonload of clay. Carl was tall and thin, with a coarse face that showed in every crease the man’s ill-humor toward the world. Oscar casually called him over and said, “You’re Carl Strickland. I believe I met you at Genevieve’s funeral.”

The easy tone of his voice made Carl grin, for he knew all of Queenie’s in-laws were rich, and he somehow had it in his mind that they would just as soon assist him as not. “That’s right. I ’member you, too. You’re Mr. Caskey, you’re old James’s nephew, right? Genevieve sure had it easy, living with a man like that. You got as much money as him?”

Oscar smiled, looked around curiously at the work progressing about them, glanced down at his shoes, then up at Carl again, and said, “Mr. Strickland, I got a little something to say to you...”

“What?”

“You better pack your portmanteau and hop on the back of the next conveyance out of this town.”

Carl’s grin and his expectations winked out quite as suddenly as they had winked on. He said nothing, but there was an unpleasant expression in his eyes.

“Mr. Strickland,” Oscar continued after an unflinching moment, “I believe you paid a visit to your wife last night.”

“I did,” said Carl shortly.

“Queenie complained to me of that visit. I think Queenie would be pleased if you didn’t knock on her door anymore. I think it would suit us all pretty well if you gave up this job—it’s mighty hard work, Mr. Strickland, and that sun is awful hot”—Oscar squinted up into the morning sky—“gave up this job, Mr. Strickland, and went someplace that was cool...and pretty far away.”

“I cain’t afford to,” said Carl Strickland. “I cain’t afford to go nowhere. Besides, Queenie is my wife. I got a right to be in this town. I got a right to hold down this job. You cain’t just come out here and say—”

“Mr. Strickland, you have been relieved of your position on this levee. There is
nothing
to keep you here in Perdido.” Oscar took an envelope from his pocket. “Now, considering your long service with our town in the construction of the levee and the great benefits that have accrued from your labor, Mr. Strickland, the town of Perdido is very proud to present you with seventy-five dollars in U.S. currency.” He stuck the envelope in the pocket of Carl’s shirt. “Also inside you will find a schedule of the trains that are going north from Atmore station and the trains that are going south. The town wasn’t certain in which direction you would be traveling this afternoon, Mr. Strickland.”

“I ain’t going nowhere.”

Oscar turned and glanced at the automobile in which he had arrived. As if this were a signal of some sort, a second man, who had been sitting inside fanning himself with the brim of his hat, stepped out of the automobile and wandered over to where Oscar and Carl were standing.

“Sure is early in the day to be so damn hot,” said the man, nodding to Carl as he spoke.

“Mr. Wiggins,” said Oscar, “this is Carl Strickland. He is distantly related to us Caskeys by marriage.”

“How-de-do?” said Aubrey Wiggins, a thin man who sweated and suffered in the sun as much as if he had weighed twice as much as he did.

Carl returned the nod.

“Mr. Wiggins is the head of our police force,” explained Oscar. “Mr. Wiggins is gone drive you up to Atmore.”

Aubrey Wiggins withdrew a yellow kerchief from his back pocket and wiped his brow. “Mr. Strickland, don’t you start worrying, I’m gone make sure I get you there in plenty of time. Which way you gone be going now? Are you going toward Montgomery? Or will you gone be traveling through Mobile? Oscar, my mama was born in Mobile, you know that?”

“I met your mama once,” replied Oscar. “She was real sweet to me.”

“I love that woman,” said Aubrey Wiggins, a faraway look momentarily clouding his eye. “Mr. Strickland, you want a ride over to the dormitory? I s’pose you got a few things you want to pack.”

“I ain’t going nowhere,” said Carl.

Oscar looked at Carl, then at Aubrey Wiggins. Then, pulling his watch from his pocket, he said, “Good Lord, look at what time it is! Aubrey, I got to be moving along or that mill is gone fall apart without me. Nice seeing you again, Mr. Strickland. You be sure and send me a postcard with a picture of some ice on it, you hear?”

“I ain’t going nowhere!” Carl shouted after Oscar’s retreating figure. Oscar smiled, got into his car, and waved as he drove off.

Aubrey Wiggins, who had put up his soaking kerchief, got it out again, and wiped his neck. “Mobile train is at two, Montgomery train is at three. We could make either one of ’em. You got any preference, Mr. Strickland?”

Everyone in Perdido found out what happened to Queenie Strickland, even though all those involved in the incident professed to have remained silent. Florida Benquith was suspected of retailing the incident, but she never admitted to her indiscretion. Fortunately, for Queenie’s peace of mind, the matter was laid to rest after a few days’ intense gossip by Queenie’s unwillingness to speak of the unhappy experience at all or even to acknowledge to herself that it had happened. Three or four months later, however, interest in the matter was renewed, for Queenie Strickland’s propensity to roundness of figure increased noticeably.

It was no use for Queenie to deny her pregnancy, or the fact that the impregnation had been highly unwelcome. It was all as generally known as though it had been printed on the front page of the Perdido
Standard
with a photograph of Queenie, her two children at her side, captioned: “Expectation of a Third.”

Mary-Love was mortified. This was a blow to the Caskey name, for Queenie was, in everybody’s eyes, under the family’s protection. That a woman related to her in any way should bear a child by the involuntary coupling with a levee-man—even if she
had
been married to him—was a disgrace to the family. Mary-Love couldn’t be brought to speak to Queenie, and declared that the woman ought to be strapped to her bed for the duration of the pregnancy; Mary-Love shuddered every time she heard that Queenie had been seen on the streets. “That woman is carrying her shame—and our shame—before her!”

James Caskey was brought down by the news as well. He imagined—rightly—that Mary-Love would construe the misfortune as his fault: for having in the first place married Genevieve Snyder, which brought Queenie to town, who attracted that villain Carl, who…and so forth. This unfortunate business in Queenie’s present made James wonder about Queenie’s past. During the seven years of James’s marriage to Genevieve Snyder, Genevieve had spent a total of at least five of those years in Nashville with her sister. James had of course met Queenie on several occasions, and had once visited her home in Nashville for the purpose of securing Genevieve’s signature on some important papers. He had known that Queenie was married to a man called Carl Strickland; James had met him once and thought him a sullen, unimproved sort of fellow, but respectably dressed and not an obviously vicious type. Here now was that same man, employed as a levee-worker, wearing ragged ill-fitting clothing, and raping his wife. James was very sorry for Queenie, but he could not help wondering how Genevieve could have spent five years in the same house with this terrible man. Genevieve hadn’t been a pleasant sort of woman, it was true, but she had always been well bred. In this respect she was the superior of Queenie, and it was hardly conceivable to James that his wife would have consented to share a home with a brother-in-law who could so easily sink to the level of a migrant worker. There was something wrong with the picture James had always had of Genevieve living quietly and decorously with her sister and her brother-in-law in their white frame house in Nashville. If he had been wrong on this point, then might he not have been mistaken on others as well? It was this sudden uncertainty concerning his wife’s past that sent James over to Elinor’s one afternoon in November to ask her what she knew of Queenie and Carl’s life together in Nashville.