BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (37 page)

During those speeches on the day of dedication, Perdido looked around at what had been built, and now, quite suddenly Perdido seemed to see the levee with strange eyes: it looked as if some unimaginably vast snake had slithered out of the pine forest and curled itself around the town, and now lay sleeping, an unwitting protector of those whose habitation was within its shadow.

Perdido looked around at the levee that lay coiled on every side, and at the end of James Caskey's ceremony, the applause perhaps wasn't as enthusiastic as it had been at the beginning.

One warm evening in September of 1924, about a week after the dedication of the levee, Tom De-Bordenave knocked on the door of Oscar Caskey's house. Zaddie let him in and showed him up to the screened porch on the second floor where Oscar and Elinor sat in the swing. Tom admired the baby in Elinor's arms; he admired the house he had walked through; he admired the view of the levee from the second floor of Oscar's house. Probably he would have gone on forever in admiration of something or other had not Elinor discreetly taken her leave and left him alone with Oscar.

"Oscar," Tom began, breaking off in the middle of an encomium upon the generous dimensions of the sleeping porch the moment it seemed Elinor was out of earshot, "we are in trouble." Not yet knowing whom "we" was intended to signify, Oscar said nothing. "The flood hurt us—real bad."

"It hurt everybody," agreed Oscar with cautious sympathy.

"It hurt us worst of all. I lost my records, I lost my inventory. If it could float, then it got washed away. If it could spoil, then it rotted away to nothing. If it could sink, then it sank, and I never saw it again."

"Tom, you've recovered," said Oscar kindly, confident that by "we," Tom referred only to the De-Bordenave mill. "You've got everything going again. Of course it takes time—"

"It takes money, Oscar. Money I haven't got."

"Well, now that the levee's built, you can borrow it from the Pensacola banks. Or the Mobile banks."

"Oscar, cain't you understand? I don't want to straighten things out. I want to get out of the business." He sighed. "I want to get out of Perdido."

Quietly, Oscar said, "Are you talking about John Robert?"

"Caroline won't even pick up the telephone when it rings. She thinks it's gone be some old fisherman saying he has caught John Robert on his hook and could we please come and pick him up. And I'm about as bad as she is. Poor old John Robert, I just know he drowned in the Perdido, but, Lord God! I wish we could find his poor old body so we could know for sure. It sure would be a comfort to put him in a decent grave. Oscar, Caroline is about to go out of her mind. Elizabeth Ann is away at school and I'm at the mill, and she's alone in that house all day. I just don't know what we're gone do. Except I do know we're gone get out of Perdido. Caroline has people up near Raleigh, and we're going there. Her brother has a tobacco concern, and I'm sure he'll find me something to do. We sure are gone miss this place, but, Lord God! we got to get away and stop thinking about poor old John Robert. So that's why I'm here, on account of John Robert. I came to see if you wanted to buy the mill."

Oscar whistled for a few moments, leaned forward and put his hands on his knees. Then he said, "Tom, listen, I'm not the man you should be coming to. You know that James and Mama are the only ones around here with money."

"I know that. I also know that you make the decisions. You know, Oscar, you may think Henry and I don't know what's going on, but I tell you we do. We know what's going on because Caroline and Manda have told us what is going on."

Oscar's brow was furrowed. "Elinor has been saying something?"

"Not much," aaid Tom. "But enough so that Caroline and Manda figured it out. Elinor thinks you don't have enough on your own. And Henry and I think that, too. That's why I am offering you the mill and that's why I am not offering it to James and Mary-Love."

The two men remained another couple of hours on the darkened porch. Their business, the most momentous deal that had ever been considered in the history of the town of Perdido, might have been about the price of a load of kindling, their voices were so soft and conversational. Real business in Alabama wasn't conducted in offices or in mill-yards or across store counters. It went on on porches, in swings, in the moonlight, or perhaps in the corner of the barbershop on the shoe-shining perches or in the grassy plot behind the Methodist Church between Sunday school and morning service or in the quarter-hour that preceded Oscar's Wednesday night domino game.

" 'Course," said Tom DeBordenave, "the real question is, have you got the money?"

"Mama and James do. Or they could get it. I haven't got a penny except my salary and a little bit of stock."

"Borrow it from the bank. James will cosign even if Mary-Love won't. And I tell you what, you pay me half tomorrow, you can pay the rest over five years, ten years, that doesn't matter much. I'd like to be rid of it and I'd like it to go to you."

"Tom, something worries me."

"What?"

"Henry Turk worries me. Henry's not gone be happy if I suddenly buy you out and he's left sitting there in the Caskey shadow."

"Henry's in a little trouble, too," said Tom. "You know that. Henry couldn't afford to buy me out. There'd be no point in my even speaking to him."

"I don't like making Henry feel bad," said Oscar, shaking his head.

"I don't either, but what can I do? I want to sell my place."

"Sell Henry part of it," Oscar suggested.

"What part?"

"Anything he wants—your customers, your inventory, your notes outstanding, your equipment, your mill-yard—whatever he wants except the land. I want all your land. You make sure I get every acre."

"You're asking me to go to more trouble."

"You'll get more money out of it if you sell to two instead of one. And I want old Henry to feel good about this. If he buys up your mill over there it'll look to him like he beat me out, and he'll feel fine. All Henry wants is a bigger yard to walk around in, and all I really want is the land."

"Oscar, let me tell you something. I think you're foolish buying up all this land. You don't even cut what you've got now. You haven't got the mill capacity to do it."

"Oh, Tom, you're right, you came to the right man when you wanted to sell, 'cause I know I'm no good at this sort of thing. But the fact is, Mama and James and I decided that we wanted land, so whenever we see it coming down the road we flag it down and hop on."

The men talked at greater length, though to no altered purpose. In the way of Southern business, any agreement of this complexity must be talked over until every point has been argued out and agreed upon at least three times, by way of fixing it not only in the minds of the parties involved, but in their hearts as well. At Elinor's direction, Zaddie brought up a tray with two small glasses and a bottle of pre-Prohibition whiskey on it, and the third reiteration of the agreement was worked through rather more quickly with the help of the liquor.

The next morning, Oscar led James Caskey out into a remote corner of the pine forest and told him of Tom's offer. James thought it an excellent opportunity for Oscar, and by Oscar's decision to take only the land, the whole thing might be kept more or less a secret from Mary-Love. She would otherwise object to any plan by which her son achieved any semblance of financial independence, even if that semblance were no more than a debt for a quarter of a million dollars.

Within the week, a kind of treaty had been worked out among the three millowners for the division of the DeBordenave holdings. Henry Turk, as Oscar had predicted, took over the physical plant along the Blackwater River—all the land there, the buildings, the inventory, and the machinery. This cost him three hundred thousand dollars, which he was to pay in eight installments without interest. This excellent bargain Tom DeBordenave was able to accede to because Oscar was paying him an equal amount, in cash borrowed from the Pensacola bank, for the thirty-seven thousand acres of timber he owned in Baldwin, Escambia, and Monroe counties.

Two lawyers came down from Montgomery, put up at the Osceola Hotel, and worked for a week straight on the business of deeds and transfers. Only when everything had been signed was the announcement made of the partition of the DeBordenave property. This was a vast shock in Perdido, and all the townspeople walked about in a daze, wondering how the change would affect them personally.

Tom and Caroline, bereft of their son, their property, and their position, quickly packed and left for North Carolina. Mary-Love and Manda Turk had time to do no more than take Caroline to lunch one day in Mobile and present her tearfully with a dia-mond-and-ruby brooch in the shape of a peacock. At this meal Mary-Love learned that it was Oscar, not herself and James, who possessed the former DeBordenave acreage. She was so humiliated and angered by James and Oscar's high-handedness in the matter that the next day without a word to anybody she took Sister and Miriam and Early on a two-week's trip to Cincinnati and Washington, D.C.

"They'll be back," said Elinor, without concern.

"Mary-Love and Sister will take good care of Miriam. I'm not worried."

Nothing, in fact, could have disrupted Elinor's equanimity at this time. The big money of Perdido, which formerly had been partitioned equally among three families, was now divided between only two. Oscar, who had had no share of the wealth before, was now a man rich in timber-bearing land spread over three counties. Although Elinor might no longer be able to see the river from where she rocked in the swing, she continued to spend her afternoons on the upstairs porch, where she bounced Frances up and down on her knee and cooed, "Oh, my precious baby! One day your daddy is going to own all the mills along the river. And one day we are going to have a whole shoebox full of land deeds, and every acre of land we own will have a river or a creek or a branch or a run on it for my precious baby to play in. And Frances and her mama will have more dresses and more pearls and more pretty things than everybody in the rest of Perdido put together!"

John Robert DeBordenave lay immolated in the levee, the town's right and savory sacrifice to the river whose name it bore. John Robert's death had permitted the levee to be completed and had given Oscar Caskey ownership of the land that would make the Caskey fortune even greater than Elinor herself dreamed. John Robert's parents had gone away from Perdido and gravel had stopped his mouth from calling out to them. Red clay had prevented his detached arms from waving them to return. Black dirt had held down his severed legs from running after them. But, torn, pinned, and buried though he lay, John Robert DeBordenave wasn't finished with Perdido, or the Caskeys, or the woman responsible for his death.

CHAPTER 27
THE CLOSET

In the years following, Perdido grew considerably. The levee had been the primary cause for this increase in population, wealth, and prominence. Not all the men who had worked on it went away when it was finished. Some were offered jobs at the mills, took them, and settled down. The banks in Pensacola and Mobile, seeing that the future of the mills was protected by the embankments of earth, were now willing to lend money to the millowners for the expansion of their businesses. Both the Caskey and the Turk mills took advantage of this, bought more land, ordered more equipment, and together helped to finance a spur of railroad track from the mills up to the L&N line in Atmore. With this useful track and the larger trucks being produced by Detroit, the rivers were employed less and less for the transportation of felled trees and lumber. No longer were the Perdido and Blackwater rivers of overwhelming economic importance to the town.

Except for the business of the mutually advantageous construction of the railroad spur, the two lumber mills drew apart. Henry Turk's only idea was to do what he had always done, only much more of it. Oscar and James Caskey, on the other hand, realized that demand for lumber might not always be what it was today, and so decided to diversify. Accordingly, in 1927, James and Oscar purchased the dormitories on the other side of Baptist Bottom, and converted the buildings to a sash-door and window plant. Perdido's unemployment plummeted to nothing at all. The following year, a small veneer plant was added next to it, thus making it possible to utilize the bottomland hardwoods that did not otherwise provide profitable cutting.

Henry Turk laughed up his sleeve at the Caskeys, for these operations were patently not as profitable as the mere production of building lumber. The Caskeys were in debt for the capital they had needed to start up their new business, they had vastly larger payrolls, the demand for window sashes and hardwood veneers was troublesomely erratic and likely to remain so. The Caskeys ignored Henry Turk's laughter, and waited only for these new operations to become solvent before they established a plant to produce fence posts and utility poles.

It was Oscar's intention to appoint within the Caskey dominion a use for every part of a tree. Nothing should go to waste; everything should be turned to productiveness and value. Early Haskew was redesigning the town's steam plant so that it would run on the bark and dust that were a by-product of the cutting operations. Already the burning of waste was heating the kilns that dried the lumber and the pulp.

Of equal importance to Oscar was the maintenance of the forests. He hired men from the Auburn forestry department to come down and talk to him. Under their guidance, he instituted a system of selective cutting and intensive replanting. It was Oscar's goal—quickly achieved—to plant more trees than he cut down. He set up an experimental station near the ruins of Fort Mims, in hope of creating a more vigorous strain of yellow pine. He corresponded with agriculture departments all over the South, and at least once a year made inspection trips to other lumberyards from Texas to North Carolina.

Oscar's energy was surprising. He had certainly never done so much before. It was his work that had kept the mill going so well for the past decade, but all this extra business was something new. Perdido wasn't used to such quick expansion, such explosive innovation. Perdido tended to agree with Henry Turk, and considered that Oscar was spreading the mill and its resources too thin. Mary-Love occasionally complained to James that her son was running the mill into the ground, but James refused to interfere. Mary-Love wouldn't speak to her son directly about the family business because she knew that he would not heed her advice. She didn't want to put herself in the position of having any request refused.