Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

by Michael McDowell

Chapter 8

  The Wedding Gift

  As soon as school was over for Elinor at the beginning of June she and Oscar took a real wedding journey. They went to New York and Boston, and to everyone’s surprise they traveled by boat from Pensacola. That was Elinor’s idea, but most people thought it a clever one. Since the coming of the speedy trains no one thought of traveling by water; traveling by water was the poor man’s transport. Anyone could jump on the back of a log and end up tomorrow night floating around in the Gulf of Mexico.

  When Elinor returned from their honeymoon she and Mary-Love and Sister settled down in a polite truce (“for Oscar’s sake,” Mary-Love said). Even to such close and observant neighbors as Manda Turk and Caroline DeBordenave, the three women appeared to get along perfectly well. When Manda Turk rose with a toothache early one morning just at dawn, looked out her bedroom window and saw Elinor Caskey swimming around in the river wearing nothing but a white cotton shift, and later commented on the irregularity and possible impropriety of such a proceeding, Mary-Love went so far as actually to defend her daughter-in-law. “Oh, Manda,” sighed Mary-Love, “when yours get married, just wait, you’ll see then how behind the times you are. I have come to believe that there is nothing wrong with early morning exercise.”

  Elinor and Oscar shared the room that before had been Oscar’s alone. The largest bedchamber in the house, it was at the back of the second story. It had a small sitting room attached, and three windows that looked out over the Perdido. Despite these amenities, Oscar and Elinor would have preferred to be on their own, and not beneath the constantly watchful eye of Mary-Love Caskey.

  There had been a halt in the progress of the house next door. There was only one contracting firm in Perdido—“firm” being a kind word for two white men named Hines and seven colored men who worked under them for one dollar and twenty-five cents a day. Henry Turk had begged Mary-Love to release the Hines brothers from their commitment to her so that they might be set to the task of rebuilding a new pulpwood storage barn for the Turk mill. Of the three millowners, Henry Turk had been most severely affected by the flood, and still was not quite recovered. Unknown to the other, Oscar and James had each lent him money, and those very funds were to be employed for this necessary construction. Mary-Love was pleased as punch to turn the contractors over to Henry, and she told him to keep them as long as he wanted. She even offered—as long as he promised not to tell—to lend him ten thousand dollars in case there was anything else he wanted put up on his property. So the workmen went away, and the summer rains drummed down into what should have been rooms that provided privacy and contentment to Elinor and Oscar, but which were still only open areas of beams and planks and studs.

  Oscar apologized to his wife for the delay. Elinor said only, “If it could be helped, Oscar, you’d be doing something, I imagine.”

  This cold reply goaded him into a bit of action, and he went to his mother, asking if he might not go down to Bay Minette and over to Atmore and Jay to see if there weren’t someone else available for the job. The house ought to have been long finished by this time, he pointed out.

  Mary-Love pointed out that a contract was a contract, and she had signed one with the Hines brothers, and she wasn’t about to go back on it now. Oscar had to admit the justice of this, and at the same time reflected that it was, after all, his mother’s money that was paying for everything and that she ought to do things exactly as she wanted them and no other way.

  For the summer then, the uneasy Caskey household of Elinor and Oscar and Mary-Love and Sister settled down to a routine of getting along with one another. They felt hemmed in a little with the unfinished construction on one side of them—boards were already beginning to darken with exposure—and Genevieve Caskey on the other. Mary-Love declared she didn’t even like to look out the windows anymore. But of Mary-Love’s three main sources of unease—her daughter-in-law who couldn’t be managed the way Sister and Oscar could; her skeletal wedding gift half-risen out of the sand; or the specter of a mobilized Genevieve, lurching down the street swinging a bottle and forever disgracing the good Caskey name—she was probably most disturbed by Genevieve.

  Every morning Mary-Love’s household took breakfast on the screened-in side porch, and every morning Mary-Love asked her family: “Well, do you think today will be the day that Genevieve goes back to Nashville?” But it never was the day. Genevieve had remained in Perdido longer than anytime since the beginning of her marriage.

  “I think I know why she’s staying,” said Sister one morning in a low voice.

  “Why?” said Oscar quickly. It is a great mistake to imagine that men care less for gossip than women.

  “Because of Elinor,” replied Sister, nodding to her sister-in-law.

  “Why me?” asked Elinor, who was rocking with her coffee.

  “Genevieve comes back here and she discovers that her husband has been happy in her absence. James had you, Elinor. He had you to take care of him and Grace, and you made him happy.”

  “James was good to me,” said Elinor simply. “And I dote on Grace.”

  “We all do,” snapped Mary-Love. “Except for Genevieve. If she cared a straw for those two, she’d throw herself into the junction directly. Elinor, maybe one day you ought to take her for a ride in Bray’s little boat.”

  Elinor smiled, then looked in the direction of James Caskey’s house, though her view, for the practical purpose of observation, was obscured by camellias. “They seem to be doing all right. I don’t believe that Genevieve has made so much of a problem of herself.”

  “Have you talked to Grace, Elinor?” said Mary-Love. “Grace is not a happy child, not the way she was happy when it was you living over there and not her mama. I wish things were the way they used to be.”

  It was not lost on anyone on that porch that “the way they used to be” denoted a time before Oscar and Elinor were married.

  Ivey brought out more coffee and said: “Miss Genevieve thinks Miss Elinor gone talk Mr. James into getting a divorce.”

  “How you know that, Ivey?” asked Oscar.

  “Zaddie told me,” replied Ivey, and went back inside.

  “Zaddie would know,” Elinor pointed out.

  “That child listens at windows!” cried Mary-Love, who had never forgiven Zaddie for becoming Elinor’s creature. “She climbs on a cement block and leans her face against the screen!”

  “No, she doesn’t,” said Elinor calmly. “Zaddie’s just got good ears, and in the morning when she’s out raking the yard she hears things through open windows.”

  “Would you try to talk James into a divorce, Elinor?” her husband asked.

  “I don’t believe in divorce,” said Elinor. “But I don’t believe in marrying the wrong person, either,” she added after a moment.

  So Genevieve remained in Perdido. If she drank, at least she didn’t drink sitting in the front window, nor did she go down the sidewalk swinging a bottle. She’d go to church and sit in the Caskey pew next to Elinor, but she wouldn’t go to Sunday school; this, Mary-Love maintained, was so she wouldn’t have to talk to anybody. The half-hour between Sunday school and morning service was a great social occasion at every church in Perdido, and if Genevieve showed up during the organ prelude, then she didn’t have to speak to anybody. And that’s exactly what Genevieve did, sidling into the pew and taking hold of Grace’s hand and only nodding to Elinor, Sister, and Mary-Love.

  Once or twice Genevieve invited Elinor to ride with her down to Mobile to go shopping, and Elinor accepted the invitation. Genevieve liked to drive herself, and the two women took Zaddie along to carry packages. When Genevieve shopped, with James’s money, there was sure to be a great load for Zaddie to balance on her outstretched arms. Mary-Love totally approved of these excursions. “Oh, Sister,” she’d say, nodding, “it gets Elinor out of the house—and it’s like old times, just you and me and Oscar here for dinner. It also means that Elinor has to deal with Genevieve and we don’t.”

 
; “They get along all right,” Sister pointed out.

  “I’m not a bit surprised,” said Mary-Love darkly.

  “But I also think,” said Sister in Elinor’s defense, “that she is trying to keep an eye on Genevieve. It’s because of what you said about Grace being unhappy with her mama. Elinor loves that child the way we do!”

  . . .

  Oddly, it was Genevieve Caskey who was to alter the entire future and aspect of Perdido. Weary of listening to James’s stories of the flood and his fears of its possible recurrence, she suggested, “Well, why in the world don’t you just build a levee?”

  James Caskey fell back into his chair in astonishment that no one had thought of such a simple solution before.

  “Natchez has a levee,” Genevieve pointed out. “New Orleans has a levee. Those places don’t flood. There’s no reason Perdido cain’t have a levee, is there? If Perdido had a levee I wouldn’t have to look at that damn river anymore.”

  The idea took hold of James Caskey. He told Oscar about it, and the next night brought it up as new business before the school board, though it was not, strictly speaking, within the school board’s scope of concern. Oscar, however, broached the matter at town council meeting, but by then all of Perdido had discussed and mostly approved the idea. Only two people in town were against the earthen embankment: one was an ancient white woman who lived on the edge of Baptist Bottom and said that murderous spirits were fostered in mounds of earth. The other was Elinor Caskey.

  Elinor declared the levee ugly, costly, and impractical. Above the junction, the levee would have to be built all along the southern bank of the Perdido—this would not only spoil their view of the river and take away the mooring dock, it would hem them in till they would all think they were going to smother. On the Blackwater side, the three sawmills would no longer have free access to the river. Logs that were to be sent downstream to other sawmills or to the Gulf would have to be dragged all the way south of town. Below the junction, the levee would have to be built on both sides of the river, to protect downtown, the workers’ houses, and Baptist Bottom. New bridges would have to be constructed, at enormous expense, and in the end Perdido would look as if it had been sunk into an old clay quarry. The town would have sacrificed its charm and received in exchange nothing but the illusion of safety. Illusion of safety, because no levee could be built so strong or so high that it would hold back the river water when the river water wanted to rise. A flood, Elinor declared vehemently, wasn’t to be held back by mounds of earth.

  “Lord, Genevieve,” said Elinor the morning after the town council meeting at which funds for an engineering study were approved. “I don’t know why you wanted to make trouble and bring it up!”

  “This town is gone wash away in the next heavy rain if they don’t build ’emselves a levee.” Genevieve was standing in her kitchen, mixing a cake. She put in a whole cup of dark rum, using the liquor instead of milk. “I for one will be glad of it, too. I hate the sight of that water, Elinor. I know you like to swim in it and all, but give me dust and dry land! The Lord God deliver me from a watery grave!”

  . . .

  Despite Mary-Love’s best efforts for a delay, the house next door was finished the last week in July. The Hines brothers displayed an inconvenient sort of honesty, which dictated as strict a compliance with their original deadline as possible. Mary-Love pleaded with each of the brothers in private to follow their own best interests and work on Henry Turk’s projects, but each of the brothers held up his hand, and said, “Miz Caskey, a promise is a promise, and we know how anxious Oscar is to get his new house.”

  So, on the seventh of August, right after church, Elinor set foot for the first time in the mansion that was her wedding gift. Oscar showed her around with pride. It was, in fact, a very fine house: large, square, and white. On the first floor were a kitchen, a breakfast room, two pantries, a back porch for washing, a dining room, two parlors, and a narrow front porch for rocking. On the second floor, arranged around a central hallway, were two bedroom suites containing bedchamber, sitting room, dressing room, and bath; two more smaller bedrooms; a nursery or maid’s room; a third bath; and a vast screened-in sleeping porch in the back corner, that overlooked the Perdido. It was this last room that seemed to please Elinor most.

  “Mama,” said Oscar excitedly, on their return to his mother’s house, “Elinor just loves it!”

  “How could she not?” said Mary-Love calmly.

  “It’s a beautiful house,” said Elinor, who in Mary-Love’s opinion might have said a good deal more, perhaps adding such words as, Thank you, Miss Mary-Love.

  “Mama, when can we move in?” Oscar asked. “We’re both anxious!”

  “Oh, not yet!” Mary-Love cried. “Oscar, did you see any draperies up in that house?”

  “No, but—”

  “Do you want all and sundry looking in your windows? Sister and I are beginning work on the draperies this week. And Friday week we’re going to Mobile to look for furniture.”

  “Mama,” said Oscar, “it doesn’t have to be perfect, you know. Elinor and I are gone be living in that house for the rest of our lives. There will be time enough to fill it up with furniture.”

  “Think of me!” cried Mary-Love. “Think of Sister and me. How you think we’re gone feel when Elinor invites people over and they come in and look? People are gone say, ‘Lord, if this was a wedding gift from Mary-Love Caskey, I cain’t say she put herself out when it came furniture and drapery time.’”

  “Mama,” pleaded Oscar, “there’s not a person in this town who’s gone say that.”

  “They’ll think it,” Mary-Love insisted, and the upshot was that Oscar and Elinor remained under Mary-Love’s roof while their finished home sat empty.

  Mary-Love kept up a careful pretense of furnishing the house. She was driven to Mobile once a week to select drapery fabric and dining room suites and carpets and crystal. Mary-Love shopped with all the apparent pleasure of a condemned criminal picking out the rope with which he is to be hanged. She never returned to Perdido with more than one item, and sometimes that solitary purchase was laughably small. Women had gotten the vote. Women might elect a president of their own sex by the time that Mary-Love had filled that house to her satisfaction.

  Sister sometimes went along on these excursions, but never with complete willingness. She was requisitioned by her mother not for the assistance she might lend in the matter of purchases, but rather in her capacity as listening post. Outside of Perdido, and away from Oscar and the servants, Mary-Love could rave about Elinor without stint. It was Mary-Love’s custom to go down on a Friday morning, shop Friday afternoon, visit friends in the evening—she had been born in Mobile, and still had people there—put up at the Government House, do more shopping on Saturday, and return home by suppertime Saturday night. Oscar particularly looked forward to these days when his mother was absent, for Mary-Love so much paraded the air of the martyr, with a dour face and words, that the atmosphere of the house was brightened every time she walked out the door.

  It had not been lost on Oscar that Elinor had not said a word when Mary-Love had denied them permission to move into their own home. He remembered his conversation with Sister and understood now that Elinor was waiting for him to act properly in the matter. But how to act properly was exactly the difficulty. When he attempted to explain to his wife why he was giving in to his mother in this matter—saying that, after all, the house was Mary-Love’s gift and she ought to be able to fix it up exactly the way she wanted it—Elinor wouldn’t listen.

  “Oscar, this is between you and Miss Mary-Love. When you make a decision, you tell me what it is—that’s all I need to know about it.”

  Oscar sighed. He loved Elinor and he was very happy being married to her. But sometimes he looked at her closely and he wondered to himself, Who is she? That was a question he couldn’t begin to answer.

  What he did know was that Elinor was very much like his mother: strong-willed and domina
nt, wielding power in a fashion he could never hope to emulate. That was the great misconception about men: because they dealt with money, because they could hire someone on and later fire him, because they alone filled state assemblies and were elected congressional representatives, everyone thought they had power. Yet all the hiring and firing, the land deals and the lumber contracts, the complicated process for putting through a constitutional amendment—these were only bluster. They were blinds to disguise the fact of men’s real powerlessness in life. Men controlled the legislatures, but when it came down to it, they didn’t control themselves. Men had failed to study their own minds sufficiently, and because of this failure they were at the mercy of fleeting passions; men, much more than women, were moved by petty jealousies and the desire for petty revenges. Because they enjoyed their enormous but superficial power, men had never been forced to know themselves the way that women, in their adversity and superficial subservience, had been forced to learn about the workings of their brains and their emotions.

  Oscar knew that Mary-Love and Elinor could think and scheme rings around him. They got what they wanted. In fact, every female on the census rolls of Perdido, Alabama, got what she wanted. Of course, no man admitted that he was railroaded by his mother, his sister, his wife, his daughter, his cook, or by any female who happened to walk along the street toward him—most of them, in fact, didn’t even know it. But Oscar did; yet even knowing of his inferiority, his real powerlessness, he was helpless to throw off any of the fetters that bound him.

  Who was Elinor Caskey? And where did she come from? She didn’t talk about her people. They had lived in Wade, in Fayette County, and now they were all dead. Her father had once run a ferry across the Tombigbee River. Elinor had gone to Huntingdon College, but Oscar didn’t even know who had paid for her schooling. She never talked about her girlfriends in Montgomery, never got letters from them, never wrote herself. Elinor had appeared one day in a corner room of the Osceola Hotel and Oscar had married her. That’s all there was to it.