Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga (45 page)

Florida Benquith dropped the shotgun on the grass and looked all around her, astonished. Miz Daughtry across the street stood on her front steps in her nightdress. The Moye children perched open-mouthed at the end of their sidewalk.

“Call Elinor Caskey!” Florida shouted at Miz Daughtry, and ran back inside. Dr. Benquith was already there, and said only, “She’s still alive...”

. . .

No one had any idea where Carl Strickland had gone. Oscar went to the sheriff and remarked coldly, “If Carl does come back, Mr. Key, and you happen to see him, let us know, will you, so that we can get Queenie out of his way. This next time, Queenie might not be so lucky.”

Embarrassed, Charley Key asked, “How is Miz Strickland, Oscar?”

“Three broken ribs, dislocated jaw. Lost most of the vision in her right eye. Other than that, just cut up and bruised.”

“Well,” said the sheriff, “I’m sorry to hear it. I notified the state police. Over in Florida, too. Told ’em Mr. Strickland hung out a lot down at Cantonement. They’re looking for him there.”

“I don’t care where he is, as long as he’s not in Perdido.”

“I’m gone make sure he don’t hurt nobody else,” Charley said staunchly.

“You could have stopped
this
from happening,” Oscar pointed out, and walked out of the office.

Queenie spent ten days at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola. During that time, Malcolm and Lucille stayed with Elinor, and were given the guest bedroom at the front of the house—a room so little used that it hadn’t even been given a name, though later it would be called, “the children’s room.” Elinor and Oscar had anticipated some difficulty with Malcolm and Lucille, who were not known as model children, but the brother and sister appeared subdued and genuinely concerned for their mother’s well-being. Every day Bray drove either Elinor or Mary-Love or James down to visit Queenie, and every day one or another of her children would go along. Queenie’s attitude during her recuperation was one almost of relief: “If this is what I had to go through to get rid of Carl for once and all, then I am happy to have done it. I’m just gone have to hope he doesn’t try to come back for more.”

. . .

Queenie was brought back to Perdido on the eighth of November, and installed in Elinor’s house. Until Carl was found, it was not thought safe for her to stay in her own home. He had caught her there by surprise twice before, and might possibly do so again. While she recuperated at Elinor’s, Queenie was given Frances’s room, because it had its own bath.

When she returned home from school that day, Frances ran into the house, up the stairs, and into her own bedroom. She wanted to hug Queenie, but Queenie cried, “Lord, no, child! You cain’t touch me, look at my face! You ought to see my arms and back under these bedclothes! I am a sight for men and angels. You squeeze my hand, though,” she said, holding out her fingers for the timid child to grasp.

“Queenie, I’m real glad you’re back from the hospital,” said Frances.

“No, you’re not,” said Queenie.

“What do you mean by that?” asked Elinor, peering into the room through the window that opened onto the porch.

“Hey, Mama,” said Frances. “I
am
glad she’s back.”

“No, you’re not,” said Queenie, “’cause I took over your room.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Frances. “’Cause you’re sick, and I’m not.”

“I’m not sick, I’m just so sore all over I cain’t hardly move without wanting to sit down and write out my will, that’s all.”

Frances left Queenie alone and joined her mother on the porch. “Mama,” she asked, “if Queenie’s in here, then where am I gone sleep?”

“I’m putting you in the front room, darling,” replied Elinor.

Frances was dumbstruck. Her fear of the front room and the undersized closet door to the right of the hearth was as strong as ever. She still would not remain in the house alone, even during brightest day; she still listened every night from her bed for the sound of that closet door in the next room being surreptitiously opened, and of whatever was inside emerging cautiously into the dark.

Crushed by the terror that her mother’s simple revelation inspired in her, Frances was unable to speak another word. She wandered off in a daze. In her worst fears, Frances had never imagined that she would ever actually have to spend a
night
in that front room. The thought was too horrible to imagine—that she would be forced to lie in that bed alone, at night, and stare straight across at the weird little door, waiting for whatever was inside slowly to turn the knob and squeeze out. It would not matter that Queenie would be in the next room, through the passage where the linens were stored; that Lucille and Malcolm and her parents were across the hall, that Zaddie was downstairs. The entire town of Perdido might squeeze into the house and arrange themselves along the walls, but it would make no difference if Frances had to sleep alone in the front room. She thought she would surely die.

Now she found herself standing before the door of that very room, not having realized where her distracted footsteps were taking her. She softly turned the knob and peered in. As always, the room was dim and cool. No air moved in it. It smelled old—older than a room in any house in Perdido could possibly be. To Frances it smelled as if whole generations of Caskeys had died there in that room—as if decade after decade, Caskey mothers had been delivered of stillborn infants in that bed; as if an uninterrupted line of Caskey husbands had murdered their adulterous wives and stuck them in that chifforobe; as if a hundred skeletons with rotting flesh and tatters of clothing were heaped in that little closet, jostled in among the fur and feathers. For the first time in her memory, Frances noticed that the clock on the mantel had been wound and was ticking. She was about to shut the door when the clock chiming the quarter-hour seemed to beckon her. Frances resisted its call, anxiously pulled the door shut, and fled down the hall, not daring to look behind her. She ran back onto the porch and buried her head in her mother’s lap.

“Darling, what’s wrong?” said Elinor.

“I don’t want to sleep in the front room!” cried Frances.

“Why not?”

“I’m scared.”

“Scared of what?”

Frances paused, and wondered how to frame her reply. “I’m scared of that closet.”

“That closet?” Elinor laughed. “There’s nothing in that closet. Just my clothes and my shoes and my hats. You’ve seen inside that closet.”

“Let me sleep in the room Lucille and Malcolm are in. They can sleep in the front room.”

“They’ve already settled in, and they’re doing fine where they are. I’m not going to move them.”

“Then let Queenie sleep in there! Let me have my own room back, Mama!”

“Queenie needs to have a bathroom of her own. And I want her to be near me, darling, so I can hear her if she calls.”

“Let me go over to James’s, then.”

“James has his hands full with Danjo.” Elinor’s voice wasn’t as soft now as when Frances had made her first plea. “Do you have any other suggestions?”

“I’ll even go stay with Grandmama.”

“Miss Mary-Love would never let me hear the end of it, if I sent you over there when I have got an empty bed in this house. I don’t want to hear another word. You’re going to sleep in the front room until Queenie is well enough to go home and until we’re sure that Carl is not going to bother her anymore. Do you understand?”

“Elinor!” Queenie called through the window.

Elinor stepped over to the window and peered in. “Queenie, can I do something for you?”

“You sure can. I couldn’t help hearing all of that and I want you to put me in the front room, and let Frances have her room back.”

“Queenie, I hope you weren’t taking Frances’s nonsense seriously.”

“She doesn’t want me in her bed, and I can understand that. She wants her own little room back. If this were my room, I wouldn’t want to give it up either.”

“Queenie, I’m not letting you move. Now you listen, you need your own bathroom, and I want you where I can sit out here on the porch and talk to you through the window. That’s why you are where you are, and there is no reason on this earth why Frances can’t sleep in the front room. It is only six feet away. The front room is not at the end of the earth.”

Frances listened to this conversation with trembling.

“Frances,” said her mother sternly, “come with me.”

Frances followed her mother down the hall into the front room. Elinor unhesitatingly went over to the closet and pulled open the door. “Now do you see that there is nothing inside this closet? I have got so much stuff in there that there is not
room
for anything to be hiding in there.”

The child made no reply, but only hung her head.

“Frances, have you been talking to Ivey Sapp? Has Ivey been telling you stories about things that are supposed to eat up little girls?”

“No, ma’am!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, if Ivey does start to try to fill your head with nonsense like that, I don’t want you to listen to her. Ivey doesn’t always know what she’s talking about. Ivey gets things wrong.”

“Then there
are
things that eat you?”

“Not in this closet,” replied her mother with a disquieting evasiveness.

“Where are they then?”

“Nothing’s going to eat
you,
darling,” said Elinor as she closed the closet door and seated herself on the edge of the bed. “Come here, Frances.” Frances went over timidly to her mother and Elinor lifted her up beside her.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Now, we go out together sometimes on the river in Bray’s little boat, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Are you afraid then?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Why not? Other little girls would be afraid. Lucille Strickland won’t go out in a boat on the Perdido.”

“It’s ’cause you’re there, Mama, that’s why I’m not afraid.”

Elinor hugged Frances close, and said, “That’s right, you’re my little girl, and nothing’s ever going to happen to you. Besides,
you
of all people never have to be afraid of that river. So why are you afraid to stay in this room, when you know I’m right across the hall?”

“I don’t know,” said Frances, troubled. “’Cause it might get me before you could come in and save me.”

“What is ‘it’?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then how do you know it’s there?”

“I can feel it, Mama!”

Elinor pried her daughter’s arms from around her waist, pushed her aside, and looked directly in her face. “Now, listen to me, Frances,” she said in a patient but determined voice, “there is nothing in this room to hurt you, you understand? If you see anything, it’s only your imagination. It’s shadows, it’s dust catching the light. If you hear anything, it’s only your imagination. It’s the house settling on its foundations, or it’s the furniture creaking. If you feel anything touching you, it’s your nerves going to sleep or it’s a mosquito landing on your arm. That’s all it is. You’re dreaming. You’re dreaming that you hear something, you’re dreaming that you see something, you’re dreaming that something is trying to pull you out of bed. Do you understand? Nothing will happen to you in this room because I won’t let it.”

Her mother showed her that some of her clothes had already been brought in and hung up in the chifforobe. Elinor pulled out drawers and made her daughter admit how sweet the sachet inside smelled. She opened the curtains and showed Frances that the view of the levee and Miss Mary-Love’s house was very nearly the same from here as from her own room. At the last, Elinor turned the key in the lock of the door of the small closet, and said, “Look, Frances, I’m locking the door. So you don’t have to worry. If there’s anything inside there, it won’t be able to get out now. You’ll be perfectly safe. And just remember, if you hear anything or see anything or feel anything, don’t pay any attention. It’s just your imagination. You’re
my
little girl, and nothing can happen to you.”

That first night of Queenie’s return to Perdido, Frances played out her entire repertoire of procrastination tricks, but ingenious as she was, at last she was roused out of her father’s lap on the porch and told that she must absolutely go to bed.

“Why are you being like this?” her father asked.

“She’s afraid to go to bed,” Elinor explained.

“You have slept by yourself since you were a
little
girl,” cried Oscar in surprise.

“She’s not afraid of being by herself,” Elinor continued, “she’s afraid of the front room.”

“What’s in the front room?” Oscar asked. “I can hardly remember the last time I was even in there. I remember looking at the new curtains, but that was years and years ago! Elinor, have you taken in a boarder that I don’t know anything about?”

But Frances didn’t laugh and clung to her father more tightly still.

“Elinor,” said Oscar, seeing that his daughter really was frightened, “cain’t we let her sleep with us?”

“No,” said Elinor. “Then she’d want to sleep with us forever.”

“I wouldn’t!” protested Frances. “Just tonight!”

“Then tomorrow night, then the night after that.”

“Your mama,” said Oscar, “wants you in the front room, so I guess I’m just gone have to carry you up there.”

Oscar did so, and laid her in the bed beneath the covers. He waggled the curtains to show her that no one was hiding behind them, ostentatiously knelt down on the floor and peered under the bed, opened the door of the passage that led to Frances’s own room where Queenie was already asleep, and rattled the knob of the closet to show that it remained locked. He kissed Frances good-night and left the room. Snaking his hand back through the door, he pushed the button that turned out the overhead light.

After her father had shut the door, Frances could no longer assure herself that the front room was connected with the rest of the house. She was cut off from her parents’ protection; they would never hear her if she called. The front room was real enough but those doors no longer communicated with the house in which Elinor and Oscar Caskey lived. Those windows no longer looked out on the same familiar scene. Frances trembled now to think what unimaginable space might lie behind those doors, what unexpected somber landscape might be imperfectly discerned through those windows. She lay rigidly in the bed, staring into the unsettling blackness, listening in a terrified stupor for something to begin shifting about inside the closet. Gradually her eyes became accustomed to the dark, and she faintly made out the room’s objects as inky shadows against more blackness. The cast-iron chandelier above the foot of her bed was her point of reference. She stared at it with concentration. It seemed to sway but there was no air moving in the room. Frances balled herself up and burrowed beneath the covers. Her stifled breath was hot and wet under the starched sheets.