Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

by Michael McDowell

  Outside, the house was painted a bright white, as were nearly all the houses in Perdido, but the interior was dim and dusky. The sunlight never penetrated far into the rooms. The paper on the walls was all in dark subtle patterns. On all the windows were amber canvas shades, venetian blinds, gauze curtains, and then lined draperies. In the summer, all these were kept tightly drawn against the heat, and opened only at dusk. Moonlit nights frequently brought more natural light into the house than the brightest summer afternoons.

  The house also had an odor that was peculiar to it, a mixture of the sun-bleached sand that surrounded the house, of the red clay of the levee, of the Perdido that flowed on the other side of the levee, of the mustiness of the dark walls and wide dark rooms, of Zaddie’s cooking in the kitchen, and of something that had come with the emptiness of the house and never quite gone away. Even in months of drought, when the farmers’ crops shriveled in the fields and the forests were so dry that a stroke of heat lightning could ignite whole acres within five minutes, the house had a slight odor of river water, so that the papered walls seemed damp to the touch and new envelopes stuck down and pie pastry didn’t come out right. It could seem that the entire house was enveloped in an invisible mist that had risen from the Perdido.

  These were Frances’s principal perceptions of the house in which she lived, but there were impressions that were more obscure, less tangible, felt immediately upon waking and immediately lost, or fashioned in the last moment before sleep and never recalled, or sensed so fleetingly as never to be recovered whole. But a hundred of these impressions, added up and tied together with the string of Ivey’s words and hints, left Frances with the distinct impression that she and her parents and Zaddie were not alone in the house.

  Frances’s fear of the house was confined to the front room—the bedroom at the front of the second floor. One window of this room overlooked her grandmother’s house, and a second opened onto the narrow front porch. The room had been set aside for guests, but Frances’s parents never had visitors who remained overnight. Between this room and Frances’s was a small passage with a door on either side fitted with cedar shelving for the storing of linens. It seemed to Frances that whatever was in the front room could come right through that passage and open the door of hers without her parents—across the wide corridor—knowing anything of it. Every night before Frances would get into bed, she’d make certain that the door of that passage was locked.

  When Zaddie was cleaning the front room, Frances sometimes ventured in, despite her ravening fear. She’d hang about and in great dread search for evidence to confirm her fear that the room was inhabited. Even as she did this, Frances knew in her heart of hearts that whatever lived there lived not in the room proper, but in the closet of that room.

  In the center of the back wall of the front room was a fireplace with black and cream tiles and a coal-burning grate. To the left of this was the door to the passage that led to Frances’s room and to the right of it was a small closet. Here were agglomerated Frances’s first fears of the house. The door of that closet was the most frightening thing Frances could imagine existing anywhere. It was misshapen, smaller than any other door in the house, only about four and a half feet high, when all the others were at least seven. To Frances’s emotional reasoning, it seemed that anything that hid in that closet must be smaller than anything that might wait for her beyond any other door, and she feared dreadfully that aberration of size. In this closet, Frances’s mother kept the clothes she wore least, but still wanted to preserve: out-of-season dresses, overcoats, shoes, handbags, oversized hats. It smelled of naphtha, feathers, and fur. Opened, the closet presented one flat expanse of leather and cloth and dark spangles. Because there was no light in it, Frances had no idea how far it extended either to the sides or to the back. To her imagination, it had no firm dimensions at all, but expanded or contracted according to the whim of whatever creature took its shelter within.

  Any house built on pilings, as all the Caskey houses were, is bound to shake a little under stray footfalls and other movements. Glass rattled in the dining room cabinets. Doors slipped on their latches. This Frances understood logically, but it still seemed to her that that closet was the echo point for all the vibrations in the house. That closet shook with every step that was taken. It treasured up stray noises. When it thought no one was paying attention, it instituted the noises and the vibrations and the shakings itself.

  All this Frances knew, and of all this Frances would say nothing to anyone.

  However, when it appeared that she was to be left alone in the house, as sometimes happened in the afternoon, Frances made some excuse to visit Grace two houses down, or begged permission to walk over to the Stricklands. If permission was denied, or no excuse could be found to go away, Frances did not remain alone inside. She waited patiently on the front steps until someone returned. If it was raining, she sat on the front porch in the chair nearest the steps, so that if she heard something moving inside, she would have a clear exit out into the yard. At these unhappy times, Frances did not even turn and peer through the stained glass into the parlor windows, fearful of what might peer back at her. To the little girl the house seemed a gigantic head, and she only a morsel of meat conveniently positioned in its gaping mouth. The front porch was that grinning mouth, the white porch railing its lower teeth, the ornamental wooden frieze above its upper teeth, the painted wicker chair on which she perched its green wagging tongue. Frances sat and rocked and wondered when the jaws would clamp shut.

  As soon as anyone returned, the house seemed for a time to lose all its threatening malevolence. Frances skipped blithely in behind Zaddie or behind her mother, and wondered at her own foolishness. In that first flush of bravery, Frances would run upstairs, fly to the door of the front room, peer in, and grin at the fact that there was nothing there at all. Sometimes she’d pull open a drawer of the dresser, and other times she’d drop to her knees and check under the bed—but she’d never go so far as to touch the knob of the closet door.

  III: The House

  Chapter 28

  Miriam and Frances

  Frances and Miriam Caskey were sisters born scarcely a year apart. They lived next door to each other in houses that were no more than a few dozen yards distant. Yet, so little commerce was maintained between their respective households that when they did meet—on the rare occasions of Caskey state—the sisters were shy and mistrustful.

  While Miriam was the elder by only about twelve months, in maturity she seemed to outdistance her sister by years. Reared in the house with her grandmother Mary-Love Caskey and her aunt Sister Haskew, until Sister and her husband moved away, Miriam had been fondled and coddled and pampered for every waking moment of her seven years. This indulgence had become more marked since 1926, when Sister, at last disgusted beyond endurance by her mother’s interferences and meddlesomeness, persuaded her husband to move to Mississippi. Mary-Love and Miriam had been left alone in their rambling house, and were one another’s company and solace. It was a common remark in Perdido that Miriam was just like Mary-Love, and not a bit like her own mother, who lived right next door and saw Miriam less often than she saw the hairdresser.

  Miriam, like all the Caskeys, was slender and tall, and Mary-Love saw to it that she was always dressed in the best of childhood fashion. Miriam was a neat, fastidious child; she talked nearly constantly, but never loudly. Her conversation turned mostly on what things she had seen in the possession of others, what things she had recently acquired, what things she still coveted. Miriam had her own room, with furniture specially bought for it. She herself had picked out the miniature rolltop desk from the showroom of a furniture store in Mobile. She loved its multitude of tiny drawers. Now every one of those tiny drawers was filled with things: buttons, lace, pieces of cheap jewelry, pencils, small porcelain figurines of dogs, spangles, ribbons, scraps of colored paper, and other such pretty detritus that could be gathered up in a household rich in worldly goods. Miriam occupied
herself for hours on end quietly looking through these items, rearranging them, stacking them, counting them, making records of them in a neat ledger, and scheming to get more.

  The possessions, however, that afforded Miriam Caskey greatest pleasure were those she was not allowed to keep in her room. These were the diamonds and emeralds and pearls that her grandmother presented to her on Christmas, on her birthday, and on a few otherwise run-of-the-mill days in between, and then hid away in a safety-deposit box in Mobile. “You are too young to keep this jewelry yourself,” Mary-Love said to her beloved granddaughter, “but you should always remember that it’s yours.”

  Miriam had a confused view of adulthood and wasn’t sure that she would ever reach that exalted state. While she couldn’t be certain that the jewels would ever be given over to her direct possession, this didn’t matter in the least to her. Thoughts of those jewels, in the distant, locked, silent safety-deposit box in Mobile always entered her mind before going to sleep every night and seemed almost to make up for the lullaby her real mother would never sing to her.

  Frances Caskey was very different. While Miriam was energetic and robust and strung together with a wiry nervous tension, Frances seemed to have a tenuous hold on her body and her health. Frances caught colds and fevers with dismaying ease; she developed allergies and brief undiagnosed illnesses with the frequency with which other children scraped their knees. She was timid in general, and would no more have thought it her prerogative to be jealous of her sister or her sister’s possessions than she would have thought it her right to declare herself Queen of All the Americas.

  Frances spent every day with Zaddie Sapp, shyly carrying and fetching in the kitchen, or following Zaddie about the house, sitting quietly in a corner with her feet carefully raised off the floor while Zaddie swept and dusted and polished. Frances was well behaved, never out of sorts, patient in sickness, willing—even eager—to perform any act or task delegated to her. Her self-effacement was so pronounced that her grandmother—on those rare occasions when Mary-Love saw her—would shake her by the shoulders, and cry, “Perk up, child! Where’s your gumption? You act like there’s somebody waiting to jump out from behind the door and grab you!”

  Every weekday morning, Frances would slip out onto the front porch on the second floor of the house and surreptitiously watch for her sister to leave for school. Miriam, always in a freshly starched dress and nicely polished shoes, would come out with her books and seat herself carefully in the back of the Packard. Miss Mary-Love would come out onto the porch, and call out, “Bray, come drive Miriam to school!” Bray would stand up from his gardening, brush off his hands, and drive away with Miriam, who always sat as still and composed and stately as if she were on her way to be presented to the Queen of England. In the afternoon, when Frances saw Bray driving off again, she would station herself to witness the return of her sister, as starched and polished and unruffled as when she had departed in the morning.

  Frances wasn’t jealous of her sister, but she was in awe of her, and she treasured memories of the few occasions when Miriam had spoken a kind word to her. Clasped around her neck, Frances wore the thin gold chain and locket that Miriam had given her the previous Christmas. It didn’t matter one bit that afterward, Miriam had whispered to her, “Grandmama picked it out. Ivey found a box. They put my name on it, but I never even saw it. I wouldn’t have spent all that money on you.”

  . . .

  In the autumn of 1928, Frances was eager to enter the first grade. She occupied herself relentlessly with the question of whether she would be allowed to ride with Miriam and Bray to school every morning. She dared not put the question to her parents directly for fear the answer would be no. The thought of being allowed to sit beside Miriam in the back seat of the Packard made Frances quiver in expectation. She daydreamed of intimacy with Miriam.

  When the first day of school finally arrived, Zaddie put Frances into her best dress. Oscar kissed his daughter, and Elinor told her to be very good and very smart. Frances went expectantly out the front door alone—it seemed for the very first time in her whole life—only to see her grandmother’s Packard roll off down the street with Bray behind the wheel. Starched and polished Miriam sat all alone in the back.

  Frances dropped onto the steps and wept.

  Oscar marched across to his mother’s house, entered without knocking, and angrily said to Mary-Love, “Mama, how in creation could you let Bray drive off and leave poor little Frances sitting on the front steps?”

  “Oh,” said Mary-Love, with the appearance of surprise, “was Frances intending on riding with Miriam?”

  “Well, you know she was, Mama. It’s her first day at school. Miriam could have shown her where to go.”

  “Miriam couldn’t have done that,” returned Mary-Love hastily. “She might have been late. I cain’t let Miriam be late on her first day at school.”

  Oscar sighed. “Miriam wouldn’t have been late, Mama. Poor Frances is just sitting on the steps, weeping bitter tears.”

  “I cain’t help that,” replied Mary-Love, unperturbed.

  “Well, tell me this, Mama,” Oscar went on, “are you gone let my little girl ride with Bray and Miriam from now on?”

  Mary-Love pondered this a moment, then replied at last, grudgingly: “If she insists on it, Oscar. But only if she’s out there waiting in the car when Miriam comes out of this house. I’m not gone have black marks against Miriam because Frances cain’t get herself dressed on time.”

  “Mama,” said Oscar, “are you forgetting that I pay half of Bray’s salary?”

  “Are you forgetting it’s my automobile?”

  Oscar was furious. On this first day of his daughter’s scholastic career, he drove Frances to school himself, showed her to the proper room, and introduced her to her teacher. At dinnertime, he told his wife what Mary-Love had said.

  “Oscar,” said Elinor, “your mama treats Frances like the dirt under her feet. I hate to think how many diamonds she has bought for Miriam. I hate to think what that child is worth in rubies and pearls alone. That locket they sent over here at Christmas must have cost all of seventy-five cents. I’m not going to have Miss Mary-Love do us any favors. We are not going to allow Frances to ride in that car—not once. People in town will see how Miss Mary-Love treats her own granddaughter!”

  Frances, who had enjoyed such high hopes for closeness with her sister, knew no intimacy at all. Every morning, Zaddie took Frances’s hand and walked her all the way to school—in fact, all the way to the door of the schoolroom—and left her there. Sometimes Bray and Miriam would pass them in the road, but Miriam wouldn’t even wave or nod to her sister. On the playground, Miriam would not play in any game in which her sister took part. “I’m in the second grade,” said Miriam to her sister on a rare occasion that she suffered herself to speak to her, “and I know this much more than you!” As Miriam spread her arms to their widest extent, Frances was crushed by the sense of her own inferiority.

  Mary-Love’s neglect of her second grandchild was not lost on Miriam, who had grown actively to despise her sister. She was embarrassed by Frances’s shyness, her inferior wardrobe, her dependence on Zaddie Sapp for companionship and affection, her lack of knowledge concerning real jewels, real crystal, and good china.

  Miriam’s feelings about Frances were intensified during the first weeks of December, when the first and second grades of the Perdido Elementary School began their Christmas Seal campaigns. Miriam thought that selling door-to-door like a man with vacuum cleaners was an activity beneath her. She decided only to repeat her previous year’s performance and sell a few dollar’s worth of the seals to Mary-Love and to Queenie, so as not simply to have a zero placed next to her name on the special chalkboards set up in the school hallway.

  Frances, however, took the business very seriously—in her small way—and set out to sell as many of the seals as she could; her teacher had told her it was a worthy cause. With Oscar’s permission, Frances paid a visit t
o the mill and went through the offices approaching all the workers. Frances was so diffident, so slight, and so charming in her own way that everyone bought a large quantity. Her great-uncle James Caskey and his daughter Grace then purchased more seals than all the millworkers combined. Before she knew it, Frances had sold more than anyone else on the first grade board.

  Miriam was astonished and humiliated by Frances’s success. Suddenly nothing in the world was more important than beating her sister at selling Christmas Seals. Mary-Love, not understanding the importance of the matter to her granddaughter, resisted buying any more than she could use. So Miriam went next door to James and to Grace, who claimed that they would like to oblige her, but were all bought out. Miriam went to the mill, under James’s aegis, but everyone there had already opened his purse to Frances. Miriam even swallowed enough pride to knock upon a few doors, but since it was late in the campaign, everyone who might have been persuaded to buy had already bought his seals.

  In despair, she went to her grandmother and explained her dilemma. Contrary to Miriam’s expectations, Mary-Love was by no means angry with her. “You mean to tell me, Miriam darling, that that little girl next door is gone beat you out—and you’re in the second grade and she’s in the first?”

  “James and Grace bought so many, Grandmama. And they wouldn’t buy a single seal from me!”