Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga (66 page)

Upon returning to Perdido, fearful of being seen by parents or other adults likely to be disapproving of their alcoholic indulgence, they drove around the town to the north and parked their automobile in the grove of live oaks just above the junction of the Perdido and Blackwater rivers. They immediately proceeded to open bottles and to guzzle them down. On their third round, one of the boys was overcome with the need to relieve himself. He climbed out of the car and went over to one of the live oaks. Standing there, urinating on one of the outermost drooping limbs, he caught sight of something shining and metallic within the curtain of branches and leaves. When he had buttoned up, he pushed aside the limbs and went under the living umbrella that the ancient live oak had produced. To his astonishment, he discovered an automobile. A small suitcase lay on the back seat, and the keys remained in the ignition. In his beer-befuddled state he tried to solve the mystery of the unoccupied car’s presence in this spot.

His protracted absence drew his friend, but the friend could provide no explanation either. In hope of finding some clue to the owner of the vehicle, and emboldened by the consumption of three bottles of Budweiser, the boys opened the suitcase. It was empty.

“The car’s stolen,” said the boy who had discovered it. “It’s bound to be stolen, and the thief left it here.”

“If he was just leaving it and going off, then why would he bother to hide it?” his friend asked.

“Maybe there’s a body in the trunk.”

Not even the thought that tomorrow they would be formally inducted into the army provided courage sufficient to test
that
hypothesis.

The boys stumbled nervously out from beneath the tree and returned to their car. They consumed four more bottles of beer in an attempt to forget about the automobile hidden under the tree, and six more than that in drunkenly trying to predict what military life would have in store for them. As the sun lowered in the sky, the boys fell unconscious in the car. They hoped to wake sober.

. . .

Early next morning three buses parked in front of the town hall, and one hundred fifteen men climbed on. Most of Perdido was there to see them off. The occasion was suddenly marred, however, by the announcement that two high school seniors were missing. No other conscripted men in all of Baldwin County had failed to appear. It was perceived as a black mark against the town that these two boys had deserted. Their parents, shamed and fretful, returned to their homes, faintly maintaining that some accident had befallen the boys; that some irreproachable necessity had kept them away.

The Caskeys had joined their fellow townspeople at the town hall, and after the buses had driven off to a lackluster cheering, they also returned home. To their immense surprise, Elinor’s automobile was parked in front of her house, and Elinor herself was sitting on the front porch, waiting for them. Oscar’s step quickened, as Frances actually ran toward her mother. Elinor caught her daughter in her arms, and lifted her off the ground.

“Oh, Mama, I missed you so much! We didn’t know
when
you were coming back, and I looked out the window about fifty million times hoping I would see you come driving up.”

“Well,” laughed Elinor, “I’m back now, darling.”

“You look wonderful,” said Frances, somewhat surprised, as she drew back from her mother and looked carefully into her face.

Oscar and the others had reached the steps of the house by now.

“You
do
look wonderful,” said Oscar. Elinor came down the steps and kissed her husband. Everyone fought for the opportunity to hug her.

“I
feel
wonderful,” said Elinor. “I feel like I could take on the whole German army.”

“It looks like this trip did you a world of good,” said James.

“What’d you do up in Wade, Mama?” asked Frances.

“Nothing. Not a single thing. I just went home and sat around. I didn’t do a thing in the world. I was just so glad to get rid of all of you for two weeks, that’s all.” She laughed merrily. Oscar wondered how long it had been since he had heard his wife so lighthearted.

“How was your family?” asked Sister.

“Oh, fine,” replied Elinor vaguely. “There’s not many of them left, and we don’t get along so well anymore.”

“Why not?” asked Grace.

“Oh, because they think I went off and deserted them when I came down here and married Oscar, that’s why. Most of ’em never leave home, and I was one of ’em who did. They got mad, that’s all.”

“Are they still mad?” asked Oscar curiously. Elinor had
never
spoken of her family.

“Of course,” she returned with a smile. “But for two weeks, I didn’t care. They could say whatever they wanted. I was just glad to be home for a while.”

. . .

Elinor seemed to have regained all her energy and drive. Now she was never still, she was never unhappy, and she was never without some project or other. She set Bray to building up a new camellia bed in the back of the house, despite his protestation that nothing would grow in the sand. She bought new furniture for the downstairs rooms. She ran up curtains for the second floor of Miriam and Sister’s house without their having said they needed them. She talked to Oscar ceaselessly about the coming war’s probable effect on business, and she drove all around the county knocking on doors and asking if anyone needed employment at the mill. She sometimes went with Frances and Miriam to Mobile and shopped all day while they were in school. She and Zaddie cleaned the house, and threw out everything that hadn’t been used in the past two years. She drove Leo Benquith out to the Sapps and made him examine and treat every one of the Sapp children and grandchildren for the diseases that were common to impoverished country families. She went with Queenie to visit Dollie Faye Crawford out on the Bay Minette road. She offered to teach Lucille how to sew on a machine. She made fruitcakes to send to Malcolm who was stationed in New Jersey. Her high spirits seemed to infect the whole family.

The news from Europe grew worse and worse, and the War Department placed more and more orders with Oscar’s office. For the first time since 1926 the Caskey mill operated at near capacity. Beneath all life in Perdido there was a low-pitched hum of activity. It might have been the mill machinery cutting lumber and chips, fashioning poles and posts, doorjambs and window frames. Or it might have been the Perdido, nearly forgotten behind its walls of red clay, spilling along with its old urgency, its old inexorability, tumbling leaves and sticks and bones down to the junction, and burying them in the mud at the bottom of the river.

The one hundred fifteen Perdido boys finished basic training late in April, and then were scattered around the country. Most ended up in Michigan, some in Missouri, and a few were sent to help in the building of Camp Rucca. The two high school seniors were never found. A week after they were to have left for basic training, however, their automobile, with a half case of unopened Budweiser beer in the back, was discovered in the grove of live oaks on the uninhabited side of the junction.

Lucille and Queenie didn’t even know where Pearl Harbor was when they heard the news over the radio on Sunday afternoon; few people in Perdido did. Everyone, though, knew what the Japanese bombing meant to the country. All afternoon people went from house to house, and said things like: “I wonder what’s gone come of us now.” War was indisputable. How Perdido would be affected was a much-discussed question.

Three days after the declaration of war, gasoline was rationed. Because of their ownership of an industry considered vital to the defense of the nation, each of the Caskey households was awarded a “C” classification, entitling them to fifteen gallons of gasoline a week. Sugar rationing followed in short order. Later, shoes and meat were placed under containment. All citizens were required to register at the town hall in order to receive their coupons, and revelation of age was necessary. The privacy of Perdido women had never been so infringed upon before, and despite the pleas for patriotism, not one admitted to years beyond fifty-five—even those who frequently had been heard to draw up some remembrance of the Civil War.

With a sudden bound, the country’s economy was on its feet again, as Oscar had predicted. The office of the Caskey mill was filled with defense orders. Frances and Miriam, on Saturdays and Sundays, went to the mill to help their father sort through his work. Frances was as much hindrance as help, but Miriam understood the business instinctively, though she had rarely even visited the mill. In one of the company trucks—so as not to waste their personal allotment of gasoline—Elinor and Queenie drove through the countryside, stopping every man they saw and offering him work at the Caskey mills.

All the new military bases were being constructed of wood. At Camp Rucca three thousand men were living in tents. Barracks needed to be raised as quickly as possible. Oscar often was able to deliver lumber on the day after it was formally requested. Eglin Field, down near Pensacola, had begun its expansion. Oscar got that contract, too. Thousands of miles of electric lines were being strung across the country, and Oscar’s plant manufactured utility poles quicker and better than anyone else.

Oscar was devilishly busy. He had not only to cope with mounting paperwork, but had to learn to deal with the military. This was quite different from his previous business experience, which had been transacted with less exacting but more knowledgeable civilians. At a time when every patriotic man had enlisted, and every poor man had gone in for the twenty-one dollars a month with room and board, and every other man had been drafted, Oscar sought workers to staff a second shift. He made inspection tours of the Caskey forests to determine order of cutting; and because he knew more about the matter than anyone else, he had to supervise replanting.

Life in Perdido changed quickly. There was now full employment, and the mill ached for more workers. Many of the women in town found employment building Liberty ships at the shipyards in Pensacola and Mobile. Every morning at six o’clock, two buses left from the town hall filled with excited Perdido wives who never had held jobs. There was intense activity wholly unprecedented in this quiet corner of rural Alabama. So much money came in from the defense contracts that Oscar saw fit to raise salaries across the board twice in the first six months of the war. The workers shared their newfound income with Perdido. Stores that had closed at the beginning of the Depression opened again and instantly thrived.

Even Baptist Bottom saw improvement. Black men worked at the mill or had joined the army. Black women took over the running of white households where husband and wife were both off working. Black girls as young as thirteen were pressed into responsible service.

From the beginning, Oscar made money. He had not anticipated that prosperity would be dependent upon the declaration of war, but nevertheless the Caskey mills
were
prepared, and in that readiness there was considerable profit.

Sister and James no longer had to come to Oscar for pin money. With increasing frequency, Oscar presented his uncle and his sister with checks for several hundred dollars. Later he was giving them several thousands. James and Sister stared at the drafts, and endorsed them with surprised and shaky hands.

“Oscar,” said Sister at dinner one evening, “when I was little, and then when I was living with Early, I didn’t know much about the mill. Nobody would ever tell me a thing. But we never made money like this, did we? Mama had it piled up and stashed away, I know, but it never came in this quick and easy, did it? Every time I turn around you are handing me a check.”

James replied to Sister, “No, it
never
came this easy or this fast. And it’s not just the war either. It’s what Oscar did
before
the war. Oscar, did you know all this was gone happen?”

“Sort of,” said Oscar with a little discomfort. “I knew
something
was gone happen. Actually, the one to thank is Elinor.”

Elinor nodded a small acknowledgement of her husband’s praise.

“What’d
you
do?” asked Sister.

“Elinor was always at me to expand the plant, to get things set up right, even when I was reaching into capital to do it. It took something for me to get over that—you know how Mama was about people using their capital. Expand, improve, build up, get new equipment, buy more land—Elinor just harped and harped on me about it.”

Sister and James turned to Elinor. “Then you knew about the war.”

“No,” said Elinor, as if she really didn’t mean it. “I just knew what was right for Oscar and the mill.”

“We are getting rich, I’m telling y’all that right now,” Oscar went on. “And what’s making us rich is that we have all that land. Every time five acres came up for sale Elinor was on to me about it. She’d say, ‘Oscar, go get it.’ And I’d do it, just to shut her up. You know, there’s those mills up in Atmore and Brewton, and if they had the trees they could get the contracts like I do. But they don’t have the trees, and every time an order comes in they got to go pretty far afield, they got to go
looking
for timber. In the last ten years they’ve been cutting back, they even sold some of their land to me, and now they’re being brought up short. They all thought I was crazy to sink money into land.”

“I thought you were crazy, too,” admitted James.

“Yes,” nodded Sister. “But you and Elinor proved James and me wrong, thank goodness. There have been times when I wasn’t sure I was gone be able to pay Miriam’s schooling.”

“Good Lord, Sister,” said James, “in another couple of months, we’re gone have enough money to buy that whole damn college...”

. . .

Queenie Strickland’s friendship with Dollie Faye Crawford had been sincere; she had not sought it only in order to assure favorable testimony when Malcolm’s case came to trial. After Malcolm had gone away to join the army, Queenie’s visits to the country store continued, and Queenie began shopping there, as did James and Elinor. It was an unheard of thing for the richest family in town to stock its pantry out of a ramshackle little place out in the country, but the Caskeys didn’t care for Perdido’s opinion. The family wanted to continue to make up for the shock Dollie Faye had suffered when confronted by Malcolm Strickland and Travis Gann with shotguns.