Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga (76 page)

Billy heard this letter read aloud at the dinner table. He sighed and said, “Let him complain. When I think of the number of men I trained who’re dead now...”

“He could fall off that mountain,” said James. “That old graf could murder him in his bed!” James had somehow got it into his head that “graf” meant “cobbler,” and he wondered how a shoemaker came into possession of a castle.

“Nothing’s going to happen to Danjo,” said Queenie sternly. “James, I don’t want you to imagine one single thing more.”

James was seventy-five. It had been his lifelong quirk to show his age only in fits and starts. He would go along for five, ten, or fifteen years with no perceptible alteration of appearance or demeanor. Then one single event would suddenly pour down those years upon his head in a single moment. Such had been the case when his wife Genevieve had died violently on the Atmore road; he had then been a well-preserved young man suddenly thrust into middle years. The death of his sister-in-law Mary-Love had swept the well-preserved middle-aged man into old age. This departure of Danjo to Europe pitched James Caskey from a sturdy old age into incipient senility.

James was alone and Queenie was alone, so Queenie gave up her house and moved in with James. She even laughed about the situation to Elinor: “When I came to Perdido twenty-something years ago, I thought to myself, ‘I’ll get a divorce from Carl and then I’ll marry James Caskey. He’s a rich man and his money will make me happy.’ That seemed real simple. Now it’s hard to even think of all the things that have happened over those years. But here I am, moving in with him, and it’s
me
that’s taking care of
him.
And you know what’s real funny, Elinor?”

“What?”

“That I don’t even
think
about money anymore.” Queenie let out a little ironic chuckle.

Two or three times a week Queenie drove James out to Gavin Pond to visit their daughters. James loved the infant Tommy Lee and held him on his lap for as long as Tommy Lee would allow it. But James couldn’t always remember the boy’s name, and called him variously Danjo, Malcolm, and John Robert. James often seemed to have forgotten all about Danjo, and listened only vacantly to the letters that Queenie read to him. At the end of them, James would always say impatiently, “Queenie, let’s go out to the pond this afternoon. I need a little boy on my lap.”

“We were there yesterday, James,” Queenie would sometimes have to say.

“Yesterday?”

“That’s right. And we cain’t go again today, those girls would get tired of us and put a padlock on that gate.”

Sometimes at night Queenie would be awakened by the sound of James stumbling through the darkened house. He’d push open the door of her room and stand as Lazarus might have stood, bewildered at the mouth of the tomb. His wide-open eyes saw nothing.

“Who’s in here?” he’d call into the darkness. “Grace, is that you? Genevieve?”

“It’s me—Queenie. James, go back to bed.”

“Where is everybody? Why is the house empty?”

The death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in April, 1945, made a greater impression on Perdido than had the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the other great events of World War II. Roosevelt, after all, had been talked of daily for more than a dozen years. All the church bells in town had rung out for half an hour on D-Day. They rang out twice that long to mourn the death of the president. The German surrender soon afterward made a smaller impression.

Frances and Billy Bronze had made no definite plans to be wed, but the death of Roosevelt and the end of fighting in Europe made everyone feel, justifiably or not, that the war was over. Discipline at Eglin was more relaxed than ever. Enlisted men wanted only to go to the beach and stretch out their time in Billy’s classes until the day of the Japanese surrender, which surely could not be far off. On the screened porch upstairs one day after lunch, Billy Bronze said to Elinor, “Maybe Frances and I should think about July.”

“Are you getting out of the service?” asked Elinor.

“I’ve already started on that. I’ve been in a long time and I think they’ll let me go.”

Elinor eyed her future son-in-law with humorous mistrust. “You haven’t been changing your mind, have you?”

“About what, Mrs. Caskey?”

“About taking my little girl away from me. She’s all I’ve got.”

Billy laughed. That Elinor Caskey, head of her family, rich, always surrounded with relatives, sought after in the town and known even in Mobile and Pensacola, should declare that her younger daughter was all that she had, seemed ridiculous to Billy.

“It’s true,” said Elinor seriously. “If you were to take Frances away, it would kill me. And what’s more, it would kill Frances, too.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Billy. “But I’m not taking her away, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Elinor. “There’s plenty of room in this house for all of us.”

“Yes, ma’am,” returned Billy. “I just hope you and Mr. Caskey are prepared to support a son-in-law for a while. My daddy’s got all the money in the world, but I’m not going to see a crying dime of it before he dies. And it may be some time before I can even find a job.”

“We’re not worried,” Elinor reassured him. “We’ll let you know when to stop taking advantage of us.”

. . .

Billy was released from the Air Corps during the first week in July. All his belongings had been moved into Oscar and Elinor’s house. He and Frances were married late in the month in a simple ceremony in the sweltering heat of Elinor’s living room. No one in Perdido could understand why the Caskeys, rich as they were, never went in for large church weddings, as anyone else in their position assuredly would have done. Elinor Caskey could certainly have afforded a splendid wedding for her daughter, but the whole ceremony and reception probably had cost her less than fifty dollars. Perhaps, Perdido considered, Frances was pregnant. The truth was that the Caskeys were only following their custom. Their weddings were always sudden, hasty, casual affairs. Not one of them would have felt comfortable seeing the bride in a church, with mounds of flowers and rows of bridesmaids. There was also the difficulty of Billy’s father, who had refused to attend, to send congratulations, to speak to any member of the bride’s family over the telephone, or even to contribute five dollars as a wedding gift. At the end of the ceremony, before Billy and Frances had even broken their first wedded embrace, Miriam flung aside her wilting bouquet and cried, “Good Lord! Come on upstairs, Sister, and help me get out of this damned dress. There’s a pin been sticking in my side since two o’clock!”

Billy and Frances were pleased by the modestness of the wedding. It seemed more in keeping with the tenor of their quiet courtship than anything larger would have been. They honeymooned in New Orleans for a week, and returned directly to Perdido. Although Billy’s possessions were stored in the front room, the couple slept in Frances’s room next to the sleeping porch.

The Caskeys were satisfied with Frances’s new husband. One day not long after the wedding, Elinor said to Sister and to Queenie, “Do you notice a little bit of difference between Mary-Love and me? Do you notice that my little girl got married, but is not leaving home? Do you see that her husband is perfectly content to live under my roof?”

Miriam, though she said nothing, was grateful to Billy for not seeking a job at the mill, where her carefully built-up power would have been threatened by the force of his authority as a man.

With money supplied her by her father, Grace Caskey was able to buy up approximately five thousand acres of farming land around and contiguous to Gavin Pond. Most of it had been fallow since the beginning of the Depression, and some of it was nearly subtropical forest, with alligator ponds and creeks that flowed so smoothly and quietly that they seemed not to flow at all. Grace didn’t want yet to put this land to use, but like all other Caskeys, she felt better just
owning
it. Now she knew no one would invade her and Lucille’s cherished privacy. Their remoteness was insured.

Grace lured Luvadia Sapp out to live at Gavin Pond with a promise of unlimited fishing rights. Luvadia brought with her her three-year-old illegitimate son Sammy, fathered by Roxie’s forty-three-year-old son Escue. They lived in the kitchen for six weeks or so until Escue Welles built them a little house of their own, hidden in the cypress grove across the pond and next to the graveyard. Luvadia could see the epitaphs out her kitchen window. Escue decided not to return to Perdido, but to remain with Luvadia and Sammy. He gave up his job at the mill and was hired by Grace as her overseer. Escue knew less about farming than anyone Grace had ever met, but he was a hard worker and Luvadia loved him.

Grace had cleared out the pecan orchard the spring before, cutting out the oak and pine saplings that had destroyed the symmetry of the grid of massive trees. She had mown the grass short, and cleared out the stream that ran through it. With Lucille she had gone to Miami, Oklahoma, and bought seventy-five heifers. Even Lucille could tell the cows apart, and she kept careful records of their pedigrees, especially after the acquisition of Zato, their prize bull, worth every penny of the eleven thousand dollars that was paid for him. The animals had grazed contentedly among the pecan trees all summer long, but autumn had come now, and Grace was looking forward to the harvest of the nuts.

One morning late in September 1945, just before dawn, Grace climbed into her pickup truck and took off for Babylon. Luvadia and Escue sat together in the back of the vehicle. Grace drove into the colored section of town and started blowing her horn. Luvadia and Escue stood up on the bed of the truck and shouted, “Pecans! Pecans!”

Grace drove slowly. Teenage boys and girls flew off their front porches and out of their yards and leaped onto the back of the truck. In the houses, unemployed men were roused out of their sleep by their wives, shoved into their clothes, and pushed out the door toward the truck. Mothers climbed up with their babies wrapped in slings around their necks. Grace stopped occasionally for an old decrepit woman to be hoisted up with the rest. When the back of the truck could hold no more, Grace took off down the road toward Gavin Pond.

At the gate of the pecan orchard, each picker was given a croker sack to fill. Luvadia took all the children too young to work over to her house and set them on the floor with Sammy. The black workers fairly flew at the trees and began picking up all the nuts on the ground. Grace, armed with a large stick, patrolled for snakes and shooed away the curious cows. The two biggest black men went systematically down each row of the orchard, threw their arms about the trunk of each tree—the circumference of which always surpassed the reach of their arms—and shook it until the pecans showered down.

The pickers worked all morning, forever stooped, never looking up, sometimes singing hymns together, sometimes only humming to themselves, sometimes scolding the children or trading gossip. Lucille and Luvadia brought out innumerable plates of biscuits and cornbread, and one child did nothing but fill jugs of water at the stream that flowed through the orchard.

They stopped at eleven and went to Luvadia’s house where they were all served ham and black-eyed peas and collard greens. Grace and Lucille themselves dished up and passed out plates. The pecan gatherers agreed, when they returned to their work that afternoon, that no farmers had ever been so kind to them. During the day the workers dragged their croker sacks—either filled or too heavy to work with anymore—up to the porch of the house. There they were weighed by Escue, and tallies kept beside the names of the pickers. At three o’clock Grace totaled the weights and paid out to the pickers at the rate of five cents a pound. Some earned as much as six or seven dollars. Afterward she drove them all back to Babylon. Many fell asleep immediately upon climbing onto the bed of the truck, despite the bumpiness of the ride through the forest. They all hopped out in the center of the colored section of town, and Grace promised that she would be back bright and early the following morning.

News got around that night in Babylon, and next morning Grace didn’t even have to blow her horn. Colored people were waiting on their front porches in every direction, and she made only a single stop. The back of the truck was filled instantly. Luvadia and Escue even sat up front with Grace so that a few more could be crowded into the back. So many were disappointed that Grace promised to make a return trip that morning.

For two weeks the pickers came to Gavin Pond, and at the end of that time there was not a single pecan left on the ground or in the trees. Grace gave each of her pickers a two-dollar bonus for having been so thorough. The living room of the house was filled with croker sacks of pecans. With Escue’s help Grace loaded the sacks into the truck and carried them to the pecan wholesaler in Jay and received twenty cents a pound. She saved a sack for herself, a second sack for Luvadia, and took four more to Perdido. Miriam requisitioned two of the sacks, divided the pecans into ten-pound lots, and mailed them to purchasing agents in the North.

Grace’s seven-hundred-dollar profit was modest, and it wouldn’t begin to pay back what she had spent on heifers or the purchase of land or the improvements she had been making on the property—but she was nonetheless proud of her work. She felt encouraged to go forward, and bought pigs and chickens. As soon as Tommy Lee was able to walk, he was given a small sack of grain and was taught by Sammy how to scatter food for the fowl.

The pecan harvest had a secondary effect, unforeseen by Grace and Lucille. It was their means of introduction to Babylon. Their existence was known throughout the black community, and eventually it came to be known in the white community as well. Grace realized that there was no longer any reason for keeping their existence secret, and began to trade at the grain and feed stores. A female farmer was not unknown in these parts, for there had been a tradition, following each of the wars, for widows to take over the running of the farms, and Grace commanded respect on several counts: her success with the pecan harvest, her purchase of so much land with ready cash, and her determined demeanor. Southerners are an easygoing race when it comes to aberrations of conduct. They will react with anger if something out of the ordinary is presented as a possible future occurrence; but if an unusual circumstance is discovered to be an established fact, they will usually accept it without rancor or judgment as part of the normal order of things. To have informed the men who hung about the seed and feed stores that two women had bought Gavin Pond and were turning it into the biggest farm in the county would have brought out calls to repeal the voting rights amendment; but when confronted with Grace, the men were perfectly willing to accept her, her cousin Lucille, and Lucille’s little boy.