Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga (84 page)

Elinor smiled, as if her suggestion had been a kind of test and Frances had given the right answer.

“Sweetheart,” said Elinor, “you’re changing, you know that?”

Frances nodded. Her smile was rueful. “I know things I didn’t use to know.”

“It’s difficult for you...”

“Yes, ma’am,” agreed Frances. “But I don’t have any choice, do I?”

Elinor shook her head no. “What do you feel?” asked her mother curiously.

Frances sat back in her chair, and thought about this for a few moments, then replied carefully, “I feel different. I understand things I never used to understand. I see things I never saw before. Hear things I never heard before. The water oaks
do
have names, and I know what they are. I can sit here in this chair and feel that breeze through the screen and I know where it’s been. I couldn’t put it down on paper, but I know. I feel like there are changes in my body, and I think it’s something more than having a baby. They say all women’s systems change when they get pregnant, but this is something more than that. There’s something different about the way I move, about the way things feel when I pick them up. I’m not sure what it is. Mama, am I really
changing?”

“We all change. Even you. Even me.”

“Yes, but Mama, I feel—and this is going to sound crazy—I feel like I’m getting
younger.
And that’s not what you’re supposed to feel when you’re having babies for the first time. You’re supposed to feel like you’re growing up.”

“You don’t feel younger, you just feel happier, that’s all.”

Frances shook her head, and then asked thoughtfully, “How old are you?”

Elinor smiled, “I have never answered that question. Not for anybody. How old do you think I am?”

“Well, I think you’re Daddy’s age. And Daddy’s fifty-three.”

“Is that how old I look?”

“You look like you could be fifty-three,” said Frances. “I mean, you’re beautiful, Mama, but you look like you could be fifty-three. What year were you born? Are you older than Daddy or younger?”

“I don’t know. I lost my birth certificate in the flood of 1919.”

“But you must know how old you are.”

“Well, darling, some people say you shouldn’t measure your age by how many birthdays you’ve had, but by how young you feel. And even though I’m about to have my first grandchildren, I feel very young. And you, too, you said it—you feel like you’re getting younger, and I’m sure you are.”

As Elinor called Zaddie in for more coffee, Frances considered this. “Mama,” she asked, when Zaddie had gone back to the kitchen, “how long would I live if I lived in the water, all the time I mean?”

“Shhh!” said Elinor, with a toss of her head indicating the kitchen door.

“I thought you said Zaddie knew all our secrets.”

“Zaddie knows
some
secrets, darling, but we are not a parade with banners. And you shouldn’t be asking me questions like this, not...”

“Not what?”

“Not at breakfast.”

“Oh,” laughed Frances. “I’m just supposing. Now just suppose I lived at the bottom of some old river somewhere, I wonder how long I’d live. I wonder if I’d live longer than people living on the land.”

Elinor appeared uncomfortable; she toyed with her cup, turning it slowly around in its saucer.

“You might,” she said hesitantly.

“And twenty-five years old on the land is all grown-up, but maybe twenty-five years old under the water, at the bottom of some river, is not that old. Maybe there twenty-five is still just a little girl.”

“It might be,” said Elinor.

“And maybe,” Frances went on, more seriously, “and maybe if a twenty-five-year-old woman on the land were always
thinking
about the bottom of the river, and dreaming about it and seeing it when she closed her eyes and hearing it when she put her hands over her ears, maybe then she would start to feel younger.”

“She might,” said Elinor.

“And what if—oh—” Frances broke off with a sudden exclamation and a look of surprise.

“What is it?” cried Elinor.

“I just got kicked!” Frances laughed.

“By the little girl?”

“No,” replied Frances. “By the other one.”

. . .

Frances’s labor pains began at the supper table a week to the day later. Though she wasn’t finished, Miriam stood up and said, “I’m going home. Somebody call me when it’s over.” Queenie hurried away too, throwing congratulations over her shoulder. Billy ran toward the telephone to call Leo Benquith, but Frances stopped him with a sharp word.

“No!” she cried. “Mama and Zaddie. Just Mama and Zaddie.”

“Sweetheart,” said Billy in surprise, “you’re so big, what if there’s a problem?”

“Just Mama and Zaddie.” Frances was firm.

“Elinor,” said Oscar, alarmed, “take care of Frances, get her upstairs, quick.”

“Oscar, it doesn’t happen that quickly,” said Elinor calmly.

“Are you all right?” asked Frances’s husband solicitously.

“Zaddie,” said Oscar, “leave the dishes be. You take care of Frances.”

“She’s all right, Mr. Oscar,” replied Zaddie, and continued to clear the table.

“Or at least I will be,” said Frances, “as soon as you two get out of here.”

“Who?” said Billy. “Who is
you two?”

“You and Daddy.”

“What?”
cried Oscar.

“I don’t want you around here,” said Frances.

“You make her nervous,” explained Elinor. “I don’t blame her. When I was giving birth, I certainly didn’t want any men around. Men get in the way.”

“That’s right,” said Frances. “So I would be much obliged, Billy, if you and Daddy would go off somewhere.”

“Where would we go?” said Billy.

“Go out to Gavin Pond Farm and stay with Grace and Lucille for the night,” said Elinor. “We’ll call you when it’s over.”

“I’m not leaving!” said Billy.

“Yes, you are,” said Frances calmly. “And right now. Put some pajamas in a paper bag. Mama, call up Grace and tell her to turn down the bed for Billy and Daddy.”

Billy Bronze and Oscar Caskey sat in silent astonishment at the dining room table, watching as Elinor helped her daughter up the stairs.

Zaddie came in from the kitchen, and cried to the two men, “Shoo! Shoo! We don’t want y’all here!”

. . .

The July night was hot and fragrant. Lowering white clouds gathered up pinpoints of light from the earth and cast them back as a diffuse gray pall over Perdido. Billy Bronze with his father-in-law on the seat beside him drove recklessly out to the farm, as if his wife were
there
and had begged him to be at her side during the delivery of their child.

“Billy,” said Oscar in mild reproof, “you are going too fast. I don’t particularly want to die tonight. Not till I’ve seen my first little grandchild.”

“Sorry,” said Billy, and lifted his foot from the accelerator.

They drove through Babylon. It was only nine o’clock, but many of the houses were already shut up for the night.

Oscar said, “I tried to get Elinor to tell me whether it was gone be a boy or a girl, but she wouldn’t say. She said, ‘You and Billy got to wait and see.’”

“How would she know anyway?” asked Billy.

For a few seconds Oscar didn’t answer. Then he asked a question of his own: “How can you have been around Elinor as much as you have and not notice she knows things you and I don’t?”

“Miz Caskey’s smart as a whip,” agreed Billy. “But how would she know if it were going to be a boy or a girl?”

Lucille and Grace were expecting them, alerted by a telephone call from Elinor. They stood in the doorway to the farmhouse in identical housecoats.

“Y’all get thrown out?” said Grace with a smile.

“We sure did!” cried Billy, climbing out of the car.

“I know we’re disturbing you,” said Oscar with a shake of his head.

“Frances threw you out, I guess,” said Lucille, also smiling and standing aside so that the men could enter. “About time. How any self-respecting woman could live with a man, I will
never
know.”

“Hurts my feelings,” said Billy. “It really does.”

“I think I better call Elinor,” said Oscar, heading for the telephone.

“Don’t,” said Grace. “She told me to tell you
she’d
call. They wouldn’t answer it anyway, they’re all too busy to answer the telephone.”

“So we’re just going to sit here until the telephone rings,” said Billy with a sigh. “This is my first baby!”

“We are gone play cards to get your mind off things,” said Grace, leading the men into the dining room.

“I just play dominoes,” said Oscar. “If I had thought about it I would have brought them.”

“We’re gone teach you canasta,” said Lucille. “That’s what Grace and I always play. ’Course it’s different with four than it is with two, but that’s what rule books are for.”

The four sat down at the table, and Oscar was patiently told the rules. However, he couldn’t keep his mind on the game, and after about an hour they gave up trying to play. Lucille went into the kitchen and prepared glasses of Elinor’s blackberry nectar and brought it out to the dining room.

“Oscar, long as you are here,” Grace was saying, “I might as well tell you about something.”

“What’s that?”

“Miriam was out here last week with papers for me to sign.”

“I know she was.”

“Good. That’s all I wanted to know. I just wanted to make sure she wasn’t off rampaging on her own with all our property down there south of the farm.”

“Miriam says we’re gone make a fortune off it,” remarked Billy. “And Lord, if it can be done through hard work and sheer meanness, then Miriam is going to make us all rich.”

“I’d trust Miriam,” said Oscar, reassuring Grace. “If she says sign something, I’d go ahead and sign it. If she says, ‘Write me a check,’ then pull out your checkbook. She knows what she’s doing. Miriam doesn’t care about anything but making money, and it doesn’t matter to her if the money she makes goes into her account, or yours or mine or anybody else’s in the family. Nothing makes Miriam happier than adding up a column of figures every day, and seeing the total get higher and higher.”

“But doesn’t she talk to you about all this?” Grace asked incredulously.

“Why should she?” Oscar shrugged. “I know just about everything there is to know about trees, but not much about anything else. I certainly couldn’t go out to Texas and talk about oil in Escambia County, Florida, but Miriam could.”

“Would they listen to a woman?” asked Lucille.

“Maybe not,” put in Billy. “That’s why she’s taking me along with her. Just for insurance. I know
something
about all this—not as much as Miriam, of course—but I’ll sit there just looking smart, I guess, and she can do all the talking. I’ll spread out the maps on somebody’s desk, and Miriam can draw the little circles.”

“My question is,” said Grace, “how the hell does she know where to draw the little circles?”

Billy shrugged.

Oscar said: “Elinor showed her...”

Lines of inquiry in the Caskey family always stopped short at Elinor.

. . .

“Y’all,” said Grace a short time later, “Lucille and I are gone have to go upstairs. You city people can lie abed until eight o’clock in the morning if you want to, but in the summertime Lucille and I have to be up at four.”

“You go on,” said Oscar, “and thank y’all for keeping us company.”

“Did y’all bring pajamas?” asked Lucille.

“Out in the car,” said Billy.

“And y’all don’t mind sharing a bed for the night?” asked Grace.

“I was hoping Elinor would have called by now,” sighed Oscar.

“Go to bed,” said Grace. “Don’t expect anything before morning.”

“I know I’m not going to be able to sleep,” said Billy. “I’m going to be waiting to hear the phone ring.”

“Leave your door open,” said Grace, now standing on the lowermost stair with her hand atop Lucille’s on the newel post.

The two women went upstairs to bed. Downstairs, Oscar and Billy heard their door being softly pulled shut. They sat for another half hour at the dining room table talking quietly, then Billy went out to the car and fetched their pajamas. They went upstairs, undressed, and got into the bed.

“I’m not gone be able to sleep either,” said Oscar. “I cain’t sleep anywhere but in my own bed. This isn’t a feather mattress. I got to have a feather mattress. Elinor should have put a feather mattress in the back of the car. If I ever have to go anywhere again, I’m gone put a feather mattress in the back so I can get to sleep.”

“You really think,” said Billy softly, turning on his pillow to face his father-in-law, lying wide-eyed beside him, “that Elinor knows whether it’s gone be a boy or a girl?”

“Of course. And Frances does, too,” said Oscar. “Billy, get up and turn on that window fan, will you? Maybe I can get to sleep if there’s some air blowing over me.”

Billy did so, then turned and stood at the foot of the bed. “Frances knows it, too?”

“I know it for a fact. Why you think they got rid of us?”

“’Cause they didn’t want us there.”

“That’s right,” said Oscar. “And when was the last time Frances told you to do something and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“Never.”

“That’s right.”

“What does this all mean?” asked Billy, perplexed.

“It means,” said Oscar, “that they know something they don’t want us to find out.”

Billy went around and got into the bed again. “Yes,” he hissed, “but what is it?”

“Billy,” said Oscar, “are you gone keep me awake all night, talking?”

. . .

As he’d predicted, Oscar couldn’t get to sleep because he wasn’t sleeping on a feather mattress. Beside him in the bed, Billy Bronze didn’t sleep because he was worried about his wife and anxious to know of the birth of his child. Across the hall, Lucille and Grace tossed and turned because they had both had too much coffee after dinner. On his cot at the foot of their bed, Tommy Lee Burgess tossed and turned because of the heat and the wasp that buzzed around up near the ceiling.

In Perdido, Sister sat bolt upright in bed among her pillows. The bedside light was on and she was leafing impatiently through a large stack of magazines, feverishly clipping out recipes. In the darkness at the other end of the room, Miriam sat backward in a chair. Her arms were crossed on a little wicker table and she patiently turned the knob of the radio, searching out the late-night stations.