Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga (42 page)

Queenie Strickland, after a tumultuous appearance in Perdido six years earlier, had settled down. She and her children had taken on a greater identity than mere penurious offshoots of the Caskeys. It was generally known in Perdido that Queenie’s third child Daniel Joseph—universally called Danjo from the hour of his birth—was the result of a rape committed on Queenie by her estranged husband. It had also become generally known that Danjo’s father was no good, that Queenie wanted no reconciliation, and that Danjo was much better off growing up without even having seen so much as a photograph of his father.

Queenie had gained a reputation in Perdido of being a sponger. The designation, though accurate, was repugnant to her. Shortly after the birth of her third child, she announced to James that she intended to seek employment. James, not wishing anyone else in town shouldering a burden he considered his own, appointed her his personal secretary. His sense of responsibility toward his unfortunate and indigent sister-in-law was greater than his doubt as to the extent of her clerical abilities and his misgivings as to what their daily propinquity at the mill office would be like.

In the summer of 1925, James had sent Queenie to Pensacola to take a typing course at the mechanics college there and thereby gave her a much needed rest from the demands of Malcolm, Lucille, and little Danjo. James would not have these rambunctious children in his own home, filled as it was with much that was fragile and valuable, but instead sent Grace over to Queenie’s to care for them there.

When Queenie returned, she was proficient at the typewriter, and in a short time she became indispensable to her brother-in-law, providing pencils, advice, coffee, a sympathetic ear, and freedom from obtrusive callers. She proved her worth, both in her official and private capacities, far beyond anything James Caskey could have imagined, and Queenie quickly came to know everything there was to know concerning the running of the Caskey mill. Since Queenie was close to Elinor, Elinor in turn learned what little her husband had not already told her. Queenie had long before been trained as Elinor’s spy, and she retained that position now.

Queenie’s intimacy with James Caskey and Elinor helped her to feel more secure and thus she became calmer. During her first year or so in Perdido she had not hesitated to employ a gushing hypocrisy to get what she wanted; she had mooned over James’s crystal, echoed Elinor’s decrying of the levee construction, and nodded vigorously at the list of the wrongs Mary-Love perceived had been made against her. She learned how quickly all this had been seen through by the Caskeys, and now she took great care to examine her own feelings on any matter and always expressed those feelings cautiously. Honesty in this case proved by far the best policy, though Queenie employed truthfulness exactly as she had employed hypocrisy—as a means to an end, and not as a thing to be appreciated for itself.

Although her principal struggle had apparently been won—Carl Strickland remaining mercifully absent from the scene—Queenie experienced her share of trials. These usually involved her children, and centered mostly on Malcolm, her eldest. He was ten, in the fourth grade, and prone to many minor mischiefs. He broke windows in abandoned houses, pocketed small items at the Ben Franklin store, and went swimming in the upper Perdido, where he was in some danger of being sucked down to the junction and drowned. He threw sand through the screens of Miss Elinor’s kitchen in order to annoy Zaddie Sapp. He knocked his teacher’s plants off the windowsill for the pleasure of hearing the pots smash on the pavement below. He threw potatoes at little girls. He stole his friends’ marbles. He was loud and raucous. He insulted every Negro child who crossed his path, and he continued to indulge every opportunity of punching his brother and his sister in the stomach. Every time the telephone rang in James’s office Queenie feared it would be another call complaining of Malcolm’s behavior.

Eight-year-old Lucille was easier on her mother’s nerves, but still caused Queenie a fair amount of grief. Lucille was sneaky, although Queenie would never voice this appraisal of her daughter, even to Elinor. Lucille lied when it suited her purpose. Lucille couldn’t be tucked into bed without her whispering in her mother’s ear some wrong she had suffered at her brother’s hand. If she decided she needed a new pair of shoes, she wasn’t above climbing the levee—against all orders—and deliberately kicking one of her best patent leathers into the muddy water of the Perdido and therewith validating her desire.

For the third child, four-year-old Danjo, Queenie held great hope. He was remarkably different from his siblings; he was everything they were not. He was calm, quiet, truthful, pleasant, and well-behaved. It was as if his whole being had been sobered by an intuitive knowledge of the unhappy circumstances of his conception. He was the only one of Queenie’s children James would allow into his house, the only one Mary-Love would stoop down and kiss, and the only one Elinor invited to sit beside her on the swing. Danjo acted as if he lived only by the generous sufferance of the whole world, and that if he performed any untoward act or spoke any unsuitable word he would be picked up by one hundred hands and mercilessly hurled into the river. It was generally considered a point in Danjo’s favor that neither his sister nor his brother liked him. During his nightly bath, Queenie generally found some new bruise or pinch mark that had been surreptitiously administered by either Malcolm or Lucille. The teachers in the school sighed in relief as Malcolm passed on up a grade, bore with stony resignation the presence of untrustworthy Lucille, and all sighed the same thought:
Lord, I can hardly wait till I get that precious child Danjo Strickland. After Malcolm and Lucille I will have earned him!

Of her husband’s doings, whereabouts, and condition Queenie had heard absolutely nothing. She thought there was a strong possibility that since he had not showed up again he was being prevented from doing so by the interposition of iron bars and prison walls. Whatever the case, Queenie knew that she would be protected from Carl by James and Oscar, who had come to her aid before, but still she always feared being taken by surprise. At night her house was locked tighter than any other home in Perdido, and an intruder might have got into the Perdido bank with greater ease at the same hour. When Queenie sat on her front porch she always had an escape route should she see Carl come walking down the street. Every strange automobile pulling up before the house caused her trepidation. She dreaded the postman because he might be delivering a message from Carl. She hated to pick up the telephone at home for fear Carl’s voice would greet her on the other end.

But all her precautions were of no avail; when Carl did return, Queenie was wholly unprepared for the hour and the manner of his arrival.

. . .

He was simply sitting on her porch one afternoon when she came home from work. Danjo was held an unhappy captive on his father’s lap. Lucille and Malcolm stood inside the safety of the house, wildly gesticulating to their mother through the screen door.

“Ma!” cried Malcolm in a stage whisper as she came up the steps, “we locked the door. We wouldn’t let him inside.”

“Hey, Queenie,” said Carl softly, “how you?”

He was wearing a suit, and looked uncomfortable in it.

Queenie suddenly felt herself borne down with the weight of the world. She realized how happy she had been for the past five years, how she hadn’t known a moment of
real
disquietude, had never gone without money or company or—she was astonished to think it for the first time—respect. With the reappearance of her husband in Perdido, all of that instantly vanished.

“What you doing back here, Carl?”

“Came to see you, Queenie. Where’d this here boy come from?”

Queenie didn’t answer.

“Been lonesome, Queenie?” he asked with a leer.

“No,” she returned. “Not one single little bit.” She waved Malcolm and Lucille away from the door. They retreated a few steps, but returned almost immediately as soon as their mother’s back was turned. Queenie seated herself in the rocker across from Carl. “Give me my baby,” she said.

“Whose baby is he?” said Carl, not letting go of Danjo.

“He’s yours.”

“You sure, Queenie? Maybe you made a mistake.”

“I didn’t make any mistake. Danjo, come here.”

Carl said, “Kiss your daddy.”

Danjo wriggled out of Carl’s grasp and fled to his mother’s lap.

“Where you been?” asked Queenie. She didn’t look at her husband, but stared out across the street.

“Here and there.”

“What pen were you in?”

“Tallahassee.” He grinned.

“What for this time?”

“Never you mind.”

Queenie was silent a moment, then she said, “Carl, I want you to go away. Me and Malcolm and Lucille and Danjo don’t need you. We don’t want you.”

“I cain’t desert my family, Queenie. What kind of man you take me for?”

“I don’t intend to argue,” said Queenie with weariness and despair pervading her voice. “I just want you to go away from this town and never come back again.”

“Oh, Queenie, you cain’t get rid of me. I’m your husband. I got legal rights. I got my children here that need me. That Malcolm’s a fine one, I tell you. That Lucille’s a little doll! And this boy Danjo, I’m gone help you bring him up right.”

Queenie stood and headed toward the door. Carl rose quickly and followed her.

“Unhook the screen,” Queenie said to Malcolm. She was carrying Danjo and shifted him in her arms.

“I don’t want him in here!” screamed Lucille.

“Baby girl!” cried Carl.

“Unhook the screen,” Queenie repeated.

Malcolm sullenly did so. Queenie slipped inside; Carl followed her in.

“Have you got a bag?” Queenie asked.

“Out on the porch, Queenie. Didn’t you see it?”

“I saw it.” She reached in her purse and took out five dollars. “Go take it over to the Osceola.”

He snatched the five dollars from her. “I can use this, but I tell you, I ain’t gone waste it on no hotel. I’m gone stay right here.”

“No,” said Queenie.

“Yes,” he said, taking her arm and squeezing it hard.

Queenie’s neck stretched with the pain, but she said nothing.

Carl slipped the five dollars into his pocket and let go of his wife’s arm. “Queenie, I sure am thirsty,” he said in a light, conversational voice. “You think you could fix me some iced tea?”

Carl sat down on the sofa and motioned his children over to him. Queenie looked at her husband, but there was no intelligible message in her gaze. She went into the kitchen, calling after her, “Lucille, I need some help.”

While Malcolm and Danjo sat uncomfortably on either side of their father and answered the questions put to them, Queenie in the kitchen whispered to her daughter, “Go out the back way. Run over to Elinor’s and tell her your daddy has come back. She’ll know what to do.”

Lucille took off immediately, allowing the back door to slam shut behind her. A moment later Carl pushed open the kitchen door. “Was that my baby girl going somewhere?”

“I sent her to tell the Caskeys that you’d come back.”

“So they can come greet me, tell me how glad they are to see me back in Perdido?”

“No,” said Queenie. “So they can get you out of town. On a rail. Tied to the back of a mule. Floating down the river on the back of a log.”

“They got me out once, sugar, but I wasn’t smart. I learned me a few things in the Tallahassee pen. Now I turned smart. I’m your lawful wedded husband, Queenie, and I’m gone stay around and help raise up my precious babies. I sent that boy Malcolm out on the porch and he’s gone bring in my bag. Those Caskeys aren’t gone be able to do a thing. I’m here to stay, Queenie. I look around, what do I see? I see a nice house. I see my babies and my wife. I see plenty to eat. Is there one reason on earth why I should go away?”

Queenie didn’t reply. She handed him a glass of iced tea and walked out of the kitchen and back into the living room. Danjo sat on the sofa, weeping softly.

. . .

But it wasn’t all that easy to get rid of Queenie’s husband. Oscar went over to speak to Carl and Carl said, “Who’s gone throw me out of town? Where’s your gun? You gone shoot me? Where’s your law-man? He gone arrest me for visiting my wife? He gone put me in jail for bouncing my little boy up and down on my knee?”

Aubrey Wiggins had been sheriff the first time Carl Strickland had showed up in Perdido. Wiggins assisted Oscar in driving the unwanted man out of town. Now Aubrey was dead, and his place had been taken by Charley Key. Charley was Perdido’s youngest sheriff ever. He was hotheaded and quick to take offense. He was particularly chary of doing favors or of having favors done for him. It was thought generally that in a few years he would see the light and then things would be accomplished with the ease and smoothness that had characterized his predecessor’s administration. But for right now, Sheriff Key wasn’t listening when Oscar came to him and said, “Mr. Key, I need you to back me up with Queenie Strickland’s husband. He’s no good and he ought to be run out of town.”

“What’s he done?”

“He’s bothering her.”

“How’s he bothering her, Mr. Caskey?”

“He’s moved in on her.”

“Aren’t they married?”

“They are.”

“Then what’s to stop him? A husband and a wife ought pretty much to be together. That’s about the way I’ve always heard it.”

“James and I want him to leave. He’s making Queenie unhappy, and we care a great deal for Queenie, Mr. Key.”

“I know Queenie Strickland,” replied the sheriff. “What I know of her, I like. I haven’t met her husband. Where’s he been?”

“Florida pen,” said Oscar in a low voice. This wasn’t general knowledge in Perdido, and his tone of conspiracy was a plea for the sheriff to keep the information to himself.

“What for?”

“Don’t know. But probably just about anything you care to name.”

“Is he out free and clear?”

“He says he is.”

“Then there’s nothing I can do.”