Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga (44 page)

“She is making one friend after another. She says she is so happy up there she can hardly stand it. She says she wants me to write her some bad news so she can come down off cloud nine.”

“James, did you have something to say to me?” said Queenie, having noted from the first a distraction in her brother-in-law’s manner.

“I did. Sit down, Queenie. I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday.”

“About what?”

“About Danjo.”

Queenie nodded.

“Things didn’t get any better last night, did they?”

She stopped and considered the matter a moment. “I hate to say it, James, but I think I am getting sort of used to Carl’s being back. I mean, he doesn’t go out beating people up anymore. I don’t think he’s stealing. As long as he’s in one room at night and I’m in another that’s all right—or at least it would be if it weren’t for Danjo.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I was thinking maybe you should get rid of Danjo.”

“He’s my preciousest!”

“I know, but, Queenie, you don’t want him contaminated! That’s the word you used yesterday.”

“I sure don’t, but what am I supposed to do with him?”

“Give him to me.”

“To you? You don’t want him!”

“How you know that! I do want him!”

“He’s so little! What would you do with a five-year-old, James?”

“I’d raise him up right. I’ve had experience. I raised Grace, and as you know, most of that time I was working pretty much on my own. Genevieve was mostly with you in Nashville.”

“Well, I know all that. What I mean is, what about all your pretty things?”

“I don’t mind. Danjo is careful. He’s been in my house before. And if some things get broken, that’s all right. I can buy others. I’m not poor. I can build high shelves. Danjo will be just fine. So why don’t you go on and give him to me? Queenie, I’m so lonesome without Grace, I cain’t hardly stand it. I was moping around last night, just thinking that what I could use most in the world was a little boy to keep me company.”

“And you think Danjo will do?”

“Danjo would be the best, Queenie!”

“I’d hate to give him up.”

“Queenie, it’s not like I’d be taking him to a different town—you could come see him all the time. And look at it this way: I wouldn’t be taking him away from you, I’d just be taking him away from Carl.”

“I’d like that,” Queenie admitted. “Carl will raise holy hell.”

“What’s he gone do about it?”

“Come and take Danjo back, that’s what.”

“I’ll shoot him,” James promised complacently.

Queenie beat her heel rapidly on the floor. “Let me think about it, James.” She got up and returned to her own office. In five minutes she was back.

“Well?” asked James.

“I don’t want to give him up, I really don’t. But it just seems so selfish of me, when I’ve got three and you’ve just lost the only one you ever had.”

“That’s right, Queenie. It would be real selfish of you to keep Danjo all to yourself. So why don’t you go on and give him to me?”

“All right.
If
we can get him away from Carl.”

“I’ll
speak to Carl.”

“You gone offer him money?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. How much you think he’d sell Danjo for? A hundred dollars a month?”

Queenie considered. “What about a new car?”

. . .

Queenie was right. In exchange for a new automobile—Carl’s choice and costing twelve hundred dollars—Danjo was given over to James Caskey for safekeeping. Ostensibly, the exchange was temporary, but no one was deceived. The boy was not consulted, but Danjo was so meek a child that he would doubtless have acquiesced to any proposition. Danjo was put in the old nursery in James’s house, which had been freshly wallpapered and given a set of furniture. The boy was bewildered to think that he wouldn’t have to share it with anyone. He cried a little when he left his mother, but he stopped his tears when she assured him that she would see him all the time. He had thought that he was being taken away from her forever, and even at that he had ventured no vehement protest.

The first weekend that Danjo spent in his new home, he would not venture out of his room, and when James would peep in, his nephew would always be sitting very still on the edge of his bed. The boy appeared so constrained and unhappy that James forewent his usual reluctance to intrude, and finally ventured into the room. Leaning against a chifforobe just inside the door, he peered down at Danjo and said, “Am I gone have to send you back to your mama and daddy, Danjo?”

Danjo looked up, his eyes full of tears.

“I want you to stay, Danjo, but you’re just not happy here, I guess.”

“I am!”

James Caskey was puzzled. “You don’t want to go home to your mama and daddy?”

Danjo considered this. “I miss Mama...” he ventured.

“But not your daddy?”

Danjo shook his head vigorously.

“Then why aren’t you happier here with me? Why don’t you run around and play? You used to play all the time. Do you miss Lucille and Malcolm?”

Danjo shook his head cautiously. “I don’t want to break anything,” he said in a low voice.

“Break anything? Break what?”

“Break your stuff.”

James stared at the boy. “You mean you’re not leaving this room ’cause you’re afraid you’re gone knock something over?”

Danjo nodded, and appeared very near tears again.

“Lord, Lord,” cried James Caskey. “Don’t you worry about that, Danjo!
I
don’t care if you break something. How much stuff you suppose my girl Grace broke while she was growing up? How much stuff you guess Roxie breaks while she’s cleaning this house? You think I can walk through a room without something falling to the floor and smashing? I cain’t! And I don’t expect you can, either. Danjo, I want you to be happy here. You know how much I’ve got in this house. You breaking something’s not gone make one little bit of difference. I’ve got closets full of junk, and I’m gone be going out buying more anyway. Now, I don’t want you to run out of here and start pitching things against the wall—”

Danjo’s eyes widened in horror at the suggestion.

“—but I do want you to enjoy yourself here. I want you at your ease.”

“You do?”

“I sure do. Danjo, do you know what I paid for you?”

“You bought Daddy a car?”

“I did. It cost me one thousand two hundred dollars. I’ve made a big investment in you, Danjo. And you got to help pay it back.”

“How?”

“By having a good time. By letting me watch you enjoy yourself here. By keeping me company, and making me not feel so sorry for myself because my little girl’s gone away. Will you do that?”

“I’ll try!” cried Danjo, and he ran across the room and hugged his uncle.

Perdido claimed that it had never seen a family to match the Caskeys when it came to giving children up and taking children in, switching offspring around as if they had been extra turkey platters or other household items that there might be an excess of in one house and a lack of in the next. Carl Strickland made no secret of the terms of the deal by which James Caskey got custody of his Danjo. That was a sale that had all the force of a deeded exchange of land in the eyes of Perdido. Thenceforth, Danjo belonged to James Caskey, and Perdido thought it was wonderful of James that he allowed the boy’s mother to visit her son whenever she liked.

It seemed a perfect situation. Carl Strickland had his new automobile. Queenie Strickland was assured of her boy’s moral and financial future. James Caskey had a child to take the place of the one who had grown up and gone away. And no one was happier with the situation than Danjo himself.

Rather than taking it as an affront that he had been sold off for the price of a new automobile, Danjo was comforted by the binding aspects of that transaction. He was less likely to be snatched away and carried back across town to the house in which he was assaulted, in varying degrees and in varying ways, by his brother, his sister, and his father, and where his mother had been his sole but inadequate comfort. He loved James Caskey. He never got over a sense of privilege of having a room all to himself, of living in a house that was quiet and filled with beautiful things, of being kissed and hugged rather than pinched and punched. The boy’s only agony, and he kept it a deep secret, was the fear that someday his uncle would trade him off in turn, in exchange for a diamond ring, perhaps, or a little girl. Where would Danjo end up
then?

Ten years before, the Caskeys had appeared a barren family to the rest of Perdido. There had been only James’s little daughter Grace, a pale, whining thing hardly worth the attention her effeminate father paid her. Later Elinor and Queenie produced five children between them and divided them among the wanting Caskey households. It was as if Mary-Love and James had looked up and cried,
Good Lord, Elinor! For goodness’ sake, Queenie! Y’all have got so many, and we don’t have any, why don’t y’all pass a couple of those children around so we can all enjoy them.
It wasn’t quite like that, of course, not in the Caskey family, where a favor done was no more to be tolerated than a slap in the face—but the children were distributed nonetheless, so that each household had at least one. In consequence, the very texture of the entire family was altered, and despite individual animosities, the Caskeys seemed a younger, more vigorous and happier clan.

The stock market crashed on October 29, 1929, but no one in Perdido realized what effect that distant event—that strange crisis of faith and paper—would bring to bear upon each of them. The Caskeys, who perhaps might have had at least a crinkled brow or two of worry for what it would all mean to the family and to the town, were occupied at that time with a more immediate matter: the day the stock market crashed, Carl Strickland attempted to murder Queenie.

Unpremeditated assaults rarely occur in the morning. Violent passions are most often engendered by accumulated heat, by alcohol, by weariness of the body—elements whose effects are generally felt most strongly in the evening or late at night. But Queenie Strickland raised her husband’s ire at the breakfast table by refusing to give him fifteen dollars to visit the track. His unpredictably savage reaction only showed Perdido how close to the edge the man had always been, even when he appeared to live quite peaceably in their midst.

“Queenie, you’ve got the money!” he shouted across the kitchen table.

“’Course I got it, but I’m gone spend it on food! How much you suppose I make?”

“I suppose you make plenty, that old man pays you plenty!”

“He doesn’t! I make enough to feed this family, and that’s all! Do you see me in new dresses? Where are Malcolm’s new shoes? Is Lucille taking piano lessons? Do you hear a piano every afternoon when you come back from the track? If you need money so bad, why don’t you go get yourself a job?”

“Give me the money, Queenie. You got it!”

“No,” said Queenie. She got up from the table and motioned for Lucille and Malcolm to leave the room. They did so, making faces at their father’s back. With relief, a moment later, Queenie heard the front door slam as the children went out.

“The money’s mine,” said Carl, getting up from the table and pushing it away from him so that all the dishes rattled, and a cup rolled off and smashed on the linoleum. “Everything you got is mine. Where is it?”

“Carl, get away from me!”

He pushed her against the sink. He grabbed handfuls of flesh around her thick waist and squeezed until she cried out in pain. She attempted to pull away. He pressed her harder. He momentarily let go, and with his right hand ripped the pocket from the front of her dress. Nothing fell out but the two coins kept in reserve for his dead eyes.

Seeing them, Carl retreated. Queenie gasped for breath, and stared at her husband. He seemed to her suddenly crazed, as if he had lost both reason and control in a single stroke. He turned wildly, lifted the table by a corner, and toppled it onto its side. All the dishes smashed, and Queenie’s legs were splattered and burned with hot coffee. She cried out and staggered toward the back door.

Carl ran up behind her, doubled up his fist and hit her as hard as he could in the kidney. Queenie’s breath forsook her, and she fell face down in the pile of broken crockery. As she rolled over in an attempt to rise, Carl kicked her three times in the belly—short, sharp, powerful kicks. Queenie stretched out in a long moan.

Carl placed his booted foot on her head, pressed down and ground Queenie’s face into the broken fragments of a white porcelain cup. The yellow linoleum grew bloody beneath Queenie’s prostrate body.

As the pressure of the boot was withdrawn, Queenie struggled to raise her head. One eye was masked with blood. Malcolm and Lucille stood horror-struck outside the kitchen door, peering through the screen. Lucille shrieked and ran away. Malcolm followed her a moment after.

Carl picked up a chair and smashed it across his wife’s back.

. . .

Lucille’s shrieks brought Florida Benquith to her kitchen window next door. Seeing the fleeing Malcolm, she went outside and hurried over to the Stricklands’ house. She peered in at the back door, and saw Carl Strickland, like an overfed demon, sitting on his wife’s rear end, and shredding open the back of her dress with a vegetable peeler held convulsively in both hands.

“Queenie! Queenie!” Florida screamed.

Blood welled up out of the long stripes in Queenie’s back, where the potato peeler had cut through the material and flayed open her skin.

Florida ran back to her house and, not taking the time to say a word to her astonished husband, took up his loaded shotgun from its place in the corner of the dining room, and flung herself out the door once more. When she was still twenty feet from the house, and long before she could actually see through the Stricklands’ back door, she fired the gun once, blowing a hole in the screen.

“Carl Strickland, I’m gone shoot you!” she hollered as she ran up to the door and into the house.

Startled by the blast of the shotgun, Carl rose from his wife’s back, and fled through the house, out the front door, and across the front yard. Florida left Queenie in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor and followed him. As she got out onto the front porch, Carl was just flinging himself into his automobile. Florida fired again, and knocked out a side window of the car. Carl got the engine started and he barreled off.