After the blessing, recited by James sitting between Elinor and Queenie, Sister turned to Early, seated beside her, and said, “So, so far as you’re concerned, everything is pretty much set?”
“Well, yes,” said Early. “Why do you ask?”
“Because then I have something to say,” said Sister.
But just at that moment Ivey and Roxie brought in a turkey, half of which had already been carved in the kitchen, a pheasant shot by Oscar on Caskey land in Monroe County, a plate of fried mullet, a small ham, a sweet potato casserole, bowls of little green peas, creamed corn, stuffing, black-eyed peas and ham hocks, boiled okra, pickle relish, a plate of Parker House rolls, a plate of biscuits, a mold of ice-cold butter with a design of a Christmas tree on top, and a pitcher of iced tea. James was given the ham to carve and Oscar the pheasant.
With the arrival of the food, no one showed any great curiosity to know what Sister had to say; in any case she was used to her concerns being accorded precious little worth. When at last everyone had filled his plate and the platters had been removed to the sideboard and Zaddie had taken away the biscuits and replaced the cooled rolls with hot, Mary-Love said, “So what is it you are dying to say, Sister? I never saw a grown woman twitch so!”
“Has everybody been served now?” asked Sister sarcastically.
“Yes,” said Mary-Love, apparently unaware of the tone in her daughter’s voice. “So will you please get on with it?”
“Well,” said Sister, gazing around the table and disregarding the fact that every head was bowed over a plate and not even bothering to glance up at her, “now that everything is set on the levee, so far as Early is concerned, he and I are gone get married.”
Everyone looked up. Everyone put down his fork and stared at Sister. Everyone then turned and looked at Early. Everyone in fact half-suspected that Sister had made it up and that Early would appear as amazed as anybody.
But Early was grinning, and he said loudly, “Sister doesn’t care how loud I snore!”
Mary-Love pushed her plate away, saying tartly, “Sister, I do wish you and Oscar wouldn’t tell me things like this during dinner. I tell you, it takes my appetite right away and there’s nothing I can do to get it back. Roxie!” she called. Roxie appeared in the doorway. “Roxie, take away my plate. I am not gone be able to eat another bite.” Roxie came and took the plate. “Early,” said Mary-Love, turning to the engineer who sat at her right hand, “is this true, are you gone marry my little girl?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Early proudly.
“I don’t believe it,” returned Mary-Love. “Did she ask you, or did you ask her?”
“I asked her, she—”
By this time, the others at the table had regained their composure, and Early’s reply to Mary-Love was lost beneath a welter of congratulations. James spoke for all, perhaps, when he remarked, with no thought of unkindness, “Sister, I never thought I’d see the day!”
“When is the day?” asked Mary-Love suddenly.
Early’s eyebrows shot up. He had no idea. He turned to Sister. Sister said: “Thursday week. The third of January.”
“Oh, you cain’t, Sister!” cried Mary-Love. “You got to put it off, you got—”
“Thursday week,” repeated Sister, quite as loudly as her fiancé might have spoken. She turned to her mother, smiled her bland smile, and said, “Mama, you tricked Oscar into putting off, and all it got you was trouble. You’re not gone have a word to say about it this time.”
“I am ashamed,” said Mary-Love vehemently, “to have people sit at my table and listen to my child talk to her mother that way.”
“They can leave if they want to,” said Sister indifferently. “Or, Mama, you can leave. Or I can leave and take Early with me. Or we can all just sit here and finish our dinner. Merry Christmas, y’all.”
The assembled table thought they had never seen such a hardness in Sister. They looked at her and at Early, and wondered if the engineer knew what kind of bargain he had made.
Sister called to Roxie and told her to bring Mary-Love’s plate back. “Mama,” said Sister grimly, “this is a happy day for me, and you are not gone spoil it by sending back your plate to the kitchen. You are gone sit still in your place and be happy for me, you hear?”
Mary-Love spent the next half-hour gnawing at a wing of the pheasant. Sister, meanwhile, gave a little account of her wooing by Early, and remarked that everything had been settled between them for more than a month and had only waited for the completion of his plans for the levee to be announced properly.
Mary-Love didn’t say another word, but once or twice she glanced at Elinor. Elinor always caught those glances and returned them with a little satisfied half-smile. Mary-Love had been bested by the very weapon she had attempted to employ against Elinor—Early Haskew. Elinor asked what Mary-Love dared not ask: “Sister,” Elinor said, “where you going to be living after you and Mr. Haskew get married? Are you going to stay on here, or are you planning to pack up and move out and leave Miss Mary-Love all by herself?”
Chapter 22
The Spy
Sister would not be put off, Sister would not be persuaded. Mary-Love begged that she be allowed to have a half-decent wedding for at least one of her children, but Sister said briskly, “Will it take more than a month to arrange?”
“Anything half-decent would take at least three months, Sister, you know that! We would have to—”
“Then Early and I are getting married next week,” said Sister.
Mary-Love would have liked to put up a fight, but Sister made it clear that she would take no part in such an altercation. She intended to marry Early Haskew, and her mother’s objection to any part of such a proceeding would only serve to drive Sister away.
Mary-Love was bewildered. She had intended Christmas to be the first step in a major campaign mounted against Elinor and Elinor’s ally Queenie. Instead she had found herself attacked by an army—Sister’s—she had not even known was in the field. Caught by surprise, she could do nothing but perform a strategic surrender. Her consolation had to be that she was inducting into her family a soldier—Early Haskew—who was inimical to her enemy.
. . .
The ceremony was held in Mary-Love’s front parlor, where there were still needles in the carpet from the Christmas tree. The Methodist minister officiated, and Grace was a combination bridesmaid and flower girl. Sister had debated about whether to ask Elinor to be her matron of honor, but knowing with what disgust Elinor viewed her fiancé—or at least her fiancé’s purpose in the town—Sister decided not to risk the embarrassment of a refusal.
For a wedding gift James and Mary-Love went in together and bought Early an automobile—just such a one as James had heard him admire on the street one day. In this new automobile, directly after the ceremony, Sister and Early took off for Charleston, South Carolina, a city Sister had never visited but had always wanted to see. After they were gone, Mary-Love sighed her biggest sigh, then sat down at a corner of the dining room table and tilted her head until it came to rest horizontally on the upraised palm of her hand.
“What’s wrong with you, Mary-Love?” said Queenie, who, for the ceremony, had got permission from James to purchase a sea green silk dress at Berta Hamilton’s. “Don’t you know you have now got one of the finest son-in-laws in all the state of Alabama south of Montgomery?”
“I do know it, Queenie,” sighed Mary-Love loudly, as if she intended those still in the front parlor to hear her words. “What I just cain’t understand is the way I am treated by my children.”
“You have fine children. Your children could squeeze you to death with their love.”
“Well, that’s how I feel about them. They don’t care much for me, though.”
“Of course we do, Mama,” said Oscar, who had heard his mother from the parlor and had come in to pronounce his undiminished affection.
“If you really loved me,” said Mary-Love, still loudly for Elinor and James remaine
d in the next room, “would you have gotten married in James’s living room one afternoon when I was down in Mobile shopping? Would Elinor have stood up in front of a female preacher wearing a dress that was only basted together? Would you two have driven away on a honeymoon before I had the chance to kiss you on the mouth and say how happy I was?” Mary-Love had raised her head to the vertical again, and now was speaking these words savagely. “If Sister had loved me, would she have contracted an engagement and kept it secret until she could spring it on me at the dinner table on Christmas Day? Would she have gotten married one week later, when she could just as easily have waited a couple of months and made me happy by it? Would she have invited nobody but the family, when we could have sent out invitations and gotten three hundred people to travel by automobile from Montgomery and by train from Mobile, and filled the church?”
“Mama,” said Oscar, unmoved by either the loving reproach of her words or the angry reproach of her voice, “you didn’t want Elinor and me to get married at all. You put off and put off, until we had to do it behind your back. That’s what Sister was thinking of. She didn’t want you to start with her, that’s all. She thought you had an ulterior motive in wanting a church wedding three months from now.”
Mary-Love sighed again and said, “Go away, Oscar. You don’t love me.”
“I do, Mama,” said Oscar softly, and he walked out of the room.
. . .
Sister had never said where she and Early intended to live when they returned from their honeymoon. Mary-Love was in a perfect agony to know, but she had never dared put that question to her daughter. Just asking would have given Sister a tremendous advantage in any subsequent bargaining in the matter. Mary-Love was by no means a stupid woman, and she understood perfectly that for all their rebelliousness—exhibited principally in the manner of their marriages—Oscar and Sister loved her. Their high-handedness was a tactic they had learned from Mary-Love herself. Oscar, being a man, had learned it only imperfectly, and had needed Elinor to prod him. Sister had swallowed the lessons whole, and had dragged Early Haskew willy-nilly to the altar. Though she would never have admitted it, Mary-Love was actually proud of her daughter for doing what she had done. By her sudden marriage Sister had attained adulthood in Mary-Love’s eyes; she was within striking distance of equality. And now more than ever before, Mary-Love dreaded losing her, dreaded to be alone in the house; she even declared to herself that she would miss Early Haskew’s loud voice and terrible snoring.
And then there was Miriam to consider; the child belonged to Mary-Love and Sister jointly. It was inconceivable that Sister would attempt to take the child away with her—and almost as difficult for Mary-Love to imagine how she could manage the child on her own. The only solution, it seemed to Mary-Love, was that Sister and Early should remain in the house. Therefore, while Sister and Early were away on honeymoon, Mary-Love drove down to Mobile and picked out the most expensive suite of bedroom furniture she could find. She moved Sister’s furniture out of the front bedroom and repainted the walls. She installed a new carpet, then filled the room with the vast new suite. She even went so far as to knock on Elinor’s door and ask if Elinor might consider running up a new set of draperies for Sister’s homecoming. Elinor, to Mary-Love’s considerable surprise, agreed readily. She even offered to purchase the fabric, but Mary-Love had already taken care of this.
The draperies were sewn that evening and hung the next day. Mary-Love thanked Elinor, and accepted her daughter-in-law’s invitation to take supper with her and Oscar. For the first time, Mary-Love ate a meal in the house she had built for her son and his wife. Miriam, nearly two, was placed in a high chair brought over earlier by Zaddie, and throughout the meal eyed her real mother with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion.
. . .
A few days later, Sister and Early returned. She kissed Mary-Love hello, and before she had even taken off her hat she exclaimed, “Mama, I smell new furniture! Have you been down in Mobile again?” Then Mary-Love took her upstairs and showed her what had been accomplished in her absence.
Early, a simple man, remembered that Sister had said that very little would give her greater pleasure than to leave her mother high and dry. He had therefore assumed that upon their return from honeymoon, they would find another place to live. This newly furnished room puzzled him, as did the expression on Sister’s face.
“It’s real pretty, isn’t it, Early?” Sister asked.
He nodded, asking, “Is this where we’re gone be living?”
Sister looked at her mother. “For the time being,” Sister said. “Mama, it’s real pretty, you went to a lot of trouble.”
Mary-Love now knew several things. First was that, despite “for the time being,” Sister had no intention of leaving the house; and second, that she never had such an intention, the appearance she had given of having decided to leave her mother had been merely a feint. In this, Mary-Love thought she saw a little too much of herself. Sister knew what she was doing, and it was to an equal that Mary-Love replied, “Of course I went to some trouble, Sister! I had to do something to keep you with me! What would I have done if you and Early had wanted to find someplace else to live? What would we have done with poor old Miriam? Would we have cut her in two with a sword? Would we have given her back to Elinor?”
“Couldn’t give up Miriam! But, Mama,” warned Sister, unwilling completely to give up the edge she had attained, “don’t go getting too used to having Early and me around. You never know when we’ll up and leave you high and dry!”
“Oh, you wouldn’t do that to your poor old mama,” said Mary-Love softly, then left them to unpack.
. . .
Several contractors to whom Early had spoken the month before submitted sealed bids for the construction of the levee, and Early’s choice for the job, Morris Avant, had the next-to-lowest. On Early’s recommendation, Avant was awarded the first part of the contract.
But a great deal had to be accomplished before actual work on the levee could begin. The construction would require the services of between one hundred fifty and two hundred men, and though some might be unskilled and drawn from the unemployed ranks of Baptist Bottom, most were going to have to be imported. When the water pumping station had been built the year after the flood of 1919, twenty-five workers had been brought in. The foremen had stayed at the Osceola Hotel and the lower-paid workers had camped out on the stage of the school auditorium and been fed in the school kitchen on weekdays and at the Methodist Church on Saturdays and Sundays. This arrangement was hardly sufficient or appropriate for a near-army of men. Someone suggested housing the men in the schools, but depriving the schools of the use of the buildings for nearly two years wasn’t really to be thought of seriously. So, in a field just south of Baptist Bottom, the Hines brothers went to work putting up two large buildings for the accommodation of white workers, one a dormitory, and the other a kitchen and dining room.
Perdido citizens began to realize to what extent the levees would alter the aspect of their town. In the short term, it would mean the influx of workers and the expenditure of money, which was bad enough; but now they began to think about what it was going to be like to be hemmed in with walls of dirt for the remainder of their lives; to look out their windows and see not the rivers flowing past but only red walls of clay higher than their houses, wide and stolid and unhandsome. Some remembered how Elinor Caskey had spoken out against the levees, saying just some such thing, and had spoken even though her husband was one of the prime movers in the business.
People now began to ask Elinor’s opinion of the plans that had been made, and the preparations that were afoot, but Elinor would only say, “I told everybody what I thought. I still think it. By the time the levees are finished—if they are ever finished—it will be like living in an old clay quarry. Levees can wear down, and levees can wash away. Levees can spring holes, and levees can crack wide open. There’s nothing that’s ever going to stop the flow of a river when it wants to
flow down to the sea, and there’s nothing that can keep water from rising when it wants to spill over the top of a mound of clay.”
Elinor wasn’t to be meddled with during these days. There was something volatile in her temper, in her manner, and in her opinions. Her supper invitation to Mary-Love was not repeated, and though she had made curtains for Sister and Early’s marriage chamber, she never even so much as welcomed them back from their honeymoon.
One day when Mary-Love was visiting Creola Sapp, down with some sort of winter fever, she found Creola’s youngest child crawling about the floor wearing a dress that she, Mary-Love, had made for Miriam a year earlier. The garment had been one of the many articles of baby clothing that she had turned over to Elinor for the use of Frances, and which Elinor had accepted with apparent gratitude.
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” said Creola, when questioned, “Miss El’nor good to me, bring me out a whole box of things for Luvadia. Prettiest things you ever saw!”
“I’ll say they are, Creola. I’ll just say they are!” murmured Mary-Love, furious that Elinor would give all those fine things away to Creola Sapp. She was even more distressed about Elinor’s action because it had been discovered by merest accident—that is to say, it had not been done simply for effect. To Mary-Love, to do a thing not merely for effect argued a perversity in Elinor’s character. It quite took away Mary-Love’s breath.
Mary-Love rushed home and ran upstairs to Sister, who was in the nursery with Miriam. Mary-Love waxed indignant over the notion of those fine clothes going directly from their precious Miriam, two years old, and she cried unless there was a tiny diamond bracelet clapped around her wrist, to Luvadia Sapp, a fat grinning morsel of alligator bait crawling around on the splintery boards of a crumbling shack in the piney woods. “I cain’t understand why Elinor would do a thing like that!” cried Mary-Love, but included in her frustration was her inability to understand anything her daughter-in-law did.
Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga Page 26
