Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga (56 page)

“She was very sick. Sister, you didn’t see her in that room up there.”

“What was
wrong
with her?”

“We don’t know. After Bray and I brought her back here from Atmore, she didn’t speak a single word to anybody. And she wasn’t left alone for a minute.”

“She must have been,” Sister pointed out. “Nobody was with her when she died.”

“Elinor went downstairs for two seconds, and when she came back, Mama was gone.”

“As long as there wasn’t any pain...”

“Sister, I wish I could say for sure that there wasn’t but I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not used to being around the mortally ill, but I never saw anything like it.”

“Like what?”

“Like what happened in that front room up there.”

“What do you mean? What happened?”

“Nothing happened. That’s what I mean. She was in that room all the while you were gone. She didn’t move, she didn’t speak, she didn’t close her eyes. Either Elinor or Zaddie was with her all the time. Elinor slept on a rollaway at the foot of the bed. I just don’t know whether Mama was in pain or not. All I know is that Elinor took care of her like she was her own mama, and had loved her every day of her life. If Mama had lived, I suppose they would have gone back to their old ways, but while Mama was sick, Elinor was always there. That must have made Mama feel good, if she knew it...”

“I’m not so sure about that, Oscar.”

As the sun rose over the pecan orchard opposite the house, the stained-glass windows were suddenly flooded with bright light. The wicker casket sprang to prominence before them, and Mary-Love’s ringless fingers were stained a bright blue.

Visitors began arriving at seven-thirty that morning for a last respectful view of the corpse. An endless round of breakfasts and an inexhaustible supply of coffee were set in the dining room by Zaddie, Ivey, and Roxie.

The funeral service was held in the parlor with only the family present. Early Haskew had been alerted the morning of Mary-Love’s death, and he arrived with only an hour to spare. Grace couldn’t be found because she was off on some sort of expedition to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park with her friend who taught English literature.

While the funeral in the parlor was private, the service at the cemetery was open, and almost the entire town showed up. The mill had been closed for the day, and all the workers wandered about at a distance among the other graves, reading epitaphs aloud, toeing rocks out of the sandy earth, and slapping their thighs with the brims of their hats. Mary-Love’s coffin was lowered into the earth next to Genevieve’s. James, Sister, and Queenie wept.

. . .

After the graveside service, all the citizens of Perdido seemed to disperse themselves for the remainder of the afternoon. Little business was done. The Caskeys retired to their separate houses and grieved alone.

Elinor and Oscar had a houseful of food. Zaddie and Bray made a number of trips that quiet afternoon, delivering casseroles and hams and messes of peas and the like to the other Caskeys, who for certain didn’t yet feel like cooking anything.

Elinor, Oscar, and Frances sat on the porch upstairs. The day had turned even hotter than usual, and unpleasantly damp. Even the kudzu on the levee appeared to wilt beneath the atmospheric oppression. The creaking chains of the swing seemed muted, and downstairs Zaddie was working barefoot.

“Are you sad?” Oscar asked his daughter.

Frances nodded. She sat on the swing beside her mother, holding Elinor’s hand.

“It was a shock, wasn’t it?”

Frances nodded again.

“Elinor,” remarked Oscar, “Sister asked me this morning why we didn’t tell them all to come home when Mary-Love was so sick.”

“You know why we didn’t, Oscar.”

“Why?”

“Because it wouldn’t have done any good to have everybody here. In fact, it would have done your mama harm. All those people traipsing in and out all day. She would never have gotten a minute’s rest.”

“But she died anyway,” Frances pointed out. “And nobody got to see her.”

“Frances is right,” said her father. “When everybody got back, there was Mama in her casket. I don’t blame them for feeling as bad as they do. James said it’s horrible to think that while they were all having such a good time in Chicago and St. Louis and New Orleans, Mama was lying in the front room, suffering and dying, and they didn’t know a thing about it.”

“Oscar, that’s the point. Even if they had known anything, they couldn’t have helped.”

“Mama would have wanted everybody at home.”

“Yes!” said Frances.

“Well,” said Elinor, “your mama wasn’t running the show. I was.”

Oscar said nothing more, but continued to fan himself diligently with a paper fan bearing an advertisement for the undertaker. After a bit he stood up, went over to the edge of the porch and looked out at his mother’s house. He turned, appeared about to say something, then changed his mind and remarked suddenly, “Did you notice that Early was chewing tobacco?”

“At the funeral?”

“Yes!” cried Frances. “Miriam saw him spit into a camellia bush, and after that she wouldn’t speak to him. She said he was too country for words.”

“How long do you suppose Early’s gone stay around?” asked Oscar.

“How should I know?” Elinor said.

“You might have spoken to him.”

“Well, I didn’t,” said Elinor. “What difference does it make?”

“Because Sister will probably go back with him, that’s why.”

“And?”

“And then what becomes of Miriam?”

“Miriam,” said Elinor definitely, “comes home to us.”

“Home?” echoed Oscar. “Miriam’s never lived here. I don’t imagined she’s stepped foot in this house more than six times in her entire life.”

“You think she really might move over here?” asked Frances with suppressed excitement.

“Where else would she go?” returned Elinor. “In a day or so I’ll send Zaddie over to pack up her clothes.”

“Mama,” said Frances hesitantly, “are you gone give Miriam my room?”

“Of course not! We’ll put Miriam in the front room.”

“She cain’t sleep in there!” cried Oscar.

“Why not?”

“Mama died in there! Mama died in that bed!”

“Well, Oscar, that’s not going to hurt Miriam. Miss Mary-Love herself slept for twenty years in that bed your daddy died in. In fact, she probably slept in it the very night your daddy died, didn’t she?”

Oscar nodded.

“I don’t think Miriam will be scared,” said Frances quietly. “If she is, she can sleep with me.”

Elinor smiled at her daughter. “Aren’t you a little old to be sharing your bed?”

“Was Miriam good to you on your trip?” Oscar asked.

“Yes, sir...” replied Frances slowly.

“Really and truly?” her mother prompted.

“Well, she was a little short with me now and then, but I didn’t care. She was probably just worried about Grandmama.”

Oscar and Elinor exchanged glances.

“Miriam,” said Oscar, “may need a little talking to.”

“Miriam wants to know where Grandmama’s rings are, Mama.”

“She said something about that to you?”

“At the funeral.”

“What did she say?”

Frances hesitated.

“Frances, what did Miriam say about the rings?”

“She said they were hers and that you stole them. She said Grandmama gave them to her for her safety-deposit box in Mobile.”

Elinor said nothing, but her expression was hard.

“Elinor, Miriam’s bound to be upset. You know how she loved Mama. Lord, she lived with Mama all her life, she—”

“It’s all right, Oscar. I’m not upset. One way or another, Miriam and I will be able to work things out.”

With Mary-Love dead, the complexion of the Caskey family was greatly altered. Mary-Love had been its head, its guiding force, its principal source of rebuke, and the measure by which all its achievements, delights, and unhappinesses were judged. She was gone, and the Caskeys looked uneasily about them to see who might move into the vacant position. James was eldest, but frail, retiring, and without a calling to leadership. Oscar was Mary-Love’s male heir, but the Caskeys were used to a woman at the helm, and Oscar might well have to prove himself fit for such a place. Sister lived away; Grace was completely involved with her life at the Spartanburg girls’ school. Queenie wasn’t really a Caskey. The burden seemed to be poised above Elinor.

Because the Caskeys began to look upon her as the intuitive choice, they now sought reasons to make her the logical choice as well. She was wife to the man who ran the mill, source of all the Caskey power and prestige. She had status of her own in Perdido. She kept up the largest house in town. She had proved her worth by a willingness to do battle with Mary-Love. Who else had done that except when they had been driven to it in absolute desperation?

It was odd, but Elinor seemed to have changed in recent years. The change had been slower but no less radical than the transformation that James underwent on the day that Mary-Love had died. James Caskey had received more than an intimation of his own mortality: he had seen its very pattern in the wicker casket bathed in colored light. Frances’s three-year illness seemed to have accomplished something similar with Elinor. Her single-minded and constant nursing of Frances had almost seemed to suggest that Elinor felt she was capable, alone, of curing her child. As those days of nursing had lengthened into weeks, and the weeks into months, Elinor’s resolve to prove her healing prowess had grown. When Frances was finally well again, after three years of suffering, it had been impossible for anyone to say whether the cure had been effected by Elinor’s baths, Dr. Benquith’s medicine, or by some stray trigger accidentally pulled in Frances’s system. Elinor seemed to have been humbled by her daughter’s bout with the crippling disease and by her own failure to cure it easily and quickly. During the course of Frances’s illness, Elinor had not fought with her mother-in-law. Now that Mary-Love was dead, a chastened Elinor Caskey stood before the family, solemnly prepared to receive the Caskey crown.

The more they all thought of it, the clearer it became that Elinor was to be the new head of the family. There was no actual delegation to inform her of the choice, but there might as well have been. Her opinion was solicited on every matter great and small. Her decision was always acceded to without objection. Her house became the focus of family activity. The hub of the Caskey universe, with a little grinding of gears and spinning of wheels, slipped twenty yards to the west.

Though the Caskeys watched carefully, few alterations in management were apparent. In the first week of mourning for Mary-Love, there was little activity. The Caskeys kept to themselves. Early Haskew had come and gone, leaving behind his wife and tobacco-juice stains on the glossy leaves of Mary-Love’s prized camellias. Miriam remained with Sister in Mary-Love’s house.

“When are we gone go send for Miriam?” Oscar asked his wife.

“I don’t want to uproot her yet,” said Elinor. “She’s attached to Sister, and when Sister goes back to Chattanooga, that’ll be time enough.”

“When is Sister planning on going back?”

“She’s waiting for the reading of the will, I suppose. I don’t know what else could keep her here.”

There was some speculation among the Caskeys about the contents of Mary-Love’s will. It was assumed in the town that Mary-Love would divide her substantial fortune between her two children, Oscar and Sister. Oscar would at last be rewarded for his many years of service to the mill; Sister would never have to worry about Early’s ability to scratch work out of a depressed economy. Doubtless some special provision would be made for Miriam, for the child had been very dear to Mary-Love. Perdido could not imagine that the dead woman had done anything different.

The Caskeys, however, knew to what lengths Mary-Love would go to thwart happiness and dampen expectations. It was not inconceivable, for instance, that she would have left everything to James, who was old and didn’t need it; or to Miriam, who was young and couldn’t handle it. Elinor, in particular, was anxious for the will to be read. She wanted Oscar to get the money as quickly as possible so that he would be able to purchase Henry Turk’s final tract of land. She was fearful another buyer might step forward in the interim. “Just go to Henry, Oscar, and tell him not to sell it to anybody else. Tell him we’ll buy it up just as soon as Mary-Love’s will is read.”

“Elinor, we’ve just got to wait. We’re not sure yet who Mama left her money to. And even if I get half and Sister gets half, it’s still gone be a while before the thing’s probated. It’s gone be six months at least before I see a single dime of Mama’s money.”

“Then borrow the money from James. We just
can’t
let that Escambia County land get away from us.”

“Why are you so all fired up to buy land in Florida? We’ve never seen fit to cross a state line before.”

“That’s good land over there, Oscar.”

“It’s just like it is over here, same old trees, same old creeks, same old Perdido River flowing alongside it. Only nobody lives there, and it’s hard to get to. Henry Turk never made a crying dime off the land, and that’s the reason he’s still got it—nobody in his right mind wants that land. Henry was able to get rid of everything but that. And you know if we got it, we’d have to learn all about Florida laws and Florida taxes.”

“You’ll be sorry if we don’t buy it up.”

“Why?”

“I know that land,” returned Elinor. “Someday it will make us more money than you ever dreamed of.”

Oscar was mystified by this remark. As far as he knew, his wife had never crossed over into any part of Escambia County, Florida. How could she know anything of those empty quadrants of pine, ribbed with the creeks and branches that emptied into the lower Perdido?

. . .

The will was brief. Two thousand dollars went to Ivey Sapp and Bray Sugarwhite, to build themselves a new house on higher land than Baptist Bottom, and five hundred dollars went to Luvadia Sapp. Seven hundred dollars bought a new window for the Methodist Church attended by the family, and three hundred dollars bought a new baptismal font for the Methodist Church in Baptist Bottom. Ten thousand dollars to the Athenaeum Club established a scholarship for a deserving Perdido girl to attend the University of Alabama.