Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

by Michael McDowell

  “Mama, are you deliberately misunderstanding me?” Oscar asked. He glanced out his mother’s bedroom window at his own home next door. He could see his wife and daughter sitting on the swing in the sleeping porch. They sat beneath a red-fringed lamp, and Elinor was reading to Frances in a soft voice he could hear as a murmur.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I am asking you to lend me the money for my own sake, not for the mill’s. That land is all I’ve got in the world. If I lose it then I don’t have anything.”

  “You have your house.”

  “Mama, that house belongs to you. You have never given me the deed,” replied Oscar sadly.

  “You have your work at the mill.”

  “Yes, I do,” returned Oscar. “And I have near about worked myself to death for that mill. Every penny of the money I’ve made has gone to you and James—now wait, I’m not complaining. I was glad to do it. It’s the Caskey mill, and I’m a Caskey, but, Mama, it sure looks to me like you might give me a little something to pay me back for making life so easy for you in these hard times.”

  “I don’t call a hundred and eleven thousand dollars ‘a little something.’”

  “Mama, you’ve got the money. I know you have. I know you’ve got it, because I made that money for you. I wrote the checks and put it in your account in Mobile.”

  “I’m not gone throw good money after bad. Oscar, you don’t need that land. Let it go. Let the bank take it back. They had no business lending you money for it in the first place. I’d even like to hear what you used for collateral. You give ’em Frances maybe? The way you gave Miriam to me in exchange for your house?”

  Oscar felt embarrassed for the cruelty in his mother’s words.

  “All right, Mama,” he said, rising. His voice and his face were stony.

  “You let that land go, you have no business owning property.”

  “Whatever you say, Mama.”

  He stood still, looking at her, where she sat in a rocker by the window. Over her shoulder, he could see Elinor and Frances in the soft light of the lamp. He could hear Elinor’s voice with that of his daughter blend, as together they read a poem out of the book. The evening was damp and cool. The water oak branches creaked high above the ground. Mary-Love Caskey grew restive beneath her son’s gaze.

  “Only reason you’re doing this is ’cause of Elinor,” she said. “If it wasn’t for Elinor, you’d be perfectly happy doing what you’ve always done. She’s the one made sure you went over your head in debt for that land that’s not ever gone do you one bit of good.”

  “Mama, is that what you really think?”

  “It is. And it’s the truth.”

  “Do you really hate Elinor that much?”

  “Shhh! She’s gone hear you.”

  “Do you hate Elinor, Mama, hate her so much you’d send me into bankruptcy just to hurt her?”

  “You’re gone be all right, Oscar. You think I’d let you starve?”

  “No, I don’t,” said Oscar. “But I do think you’d like to see Elinor and Frances and me kneeling on your back steps, waiting for Miriam to bring us a plate of food.”

  For a moment, Mary-Love was silent. Her son had never spoken to her in such a manner, and yet there was no anger or emotion in his voice.

  “Oscar,” she went on as if he had said nothing, “all this is gone teach you a lesson.”

  “Bankruptcy?”

  “It’s gone teach you not to try to do things over your head.”

  Oscar laughed one brief, mirthless laugh. “Mama, I’m not going into bankruptcy. I’m gone keep that land.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that if you won’t help me, James will.”

  “He won’t!”

  “Mama, James co-signed the loan. If I default, the bank will go to him for the money. You know that if that happens, James will sell everything he owns to pay it off. It’ll be hard for him, and I hate to put him through it, but he’ll see that the bank is paid. Then I’ll owe him the money instead of owing it to the bank.”

  “Lord, Oscar, if this is true, then why in the world did you come to me?”

  “Because you’re my mama and you’re rich and I have worked for you all my life. I made you rich, and it was time that you did a little something to help me.”

  “I’ll help you, Oscar, I’d help you with anything.”

  “No, Mama,” said Oscar. He had gone to the door, and leaned his back against it, twisting the knob in his hands. “You wouldn’t. You just said you wouldn’t. You just said you had rather send me into bankruptcy than help me out—even though, in the end, you’d be hurting the mill and James and yourself. You’d do all that just to spite Elinor and spite me for marrying her.”

  “You did this as a test, Oscar! You didn’t have any intention of trying to borrow from me, you just wanted to see if I’d give in, that’s all! That’s despicable of you, that’s—”

  “No, Mama,” said Oscar, shaking his head, and his soft voice overcame her angry tone. “I really needed you this time. James had helped me before, and now I wanted you to help me, but you wouldn’t do it. That makes me real sad, Mama...”

  “What are you gone do, Oscar?” Mary-Love asked, in a low, mistrustful voice. The test might not be over yet.

  “I’m gone borrow the money from James. I told you that.”

  “Are you sure he’s got it? Are you sure he’ll give it to you?”

  “Yes,” said Oscar. “I’m sure he will. Nobody’s gone default. I’ll come through it, and someday I’ll pay James back. And the Caskey mill will come through, and Mama, you’re just gone get richer and richer. And when you die, we’re gone fill your coffin with hundred-dollar bills, and we’re gone put you in the cemetery right next to Genevieve—and I guess you’ll have the time of your life, with Genevieve to keep you company and all that money to keep you warm.”

  After her son had gone home Mary-Love sat in her darkened room and looked out of her window. She saw Oscar appear on the screened porch next door, saw him kiss Elinor and take up Frances. She heard his murmuring voice as he read to his daughter.

  . . .

  The next day Luvadia Sapp knocked on Elinor’s door. “Morning, Luvadia,” Elinor said in greeting. “Is there something you need?”

  “Miss Mary-Love tell me to give you this,” replied Luvadia, holding out a folded document with a red seal. That morning in the office of the clerk of probate, Mary-Love had signed over the house to Oscar and Elinor.

  Chapter 36

  At the River’s Source

  In dealing with her son’s request for a loan, Mary-Love had not understood that there are some acts that are unforgivable. Oscar had been only half right in telling his mother that she wanted him to go bankrupt to spite Elinor; she also wanted to make certain that her son would always remain dependent. If Mary-Love had realized that James would lend Oscar the money—and she should have realized that—then she would not have had a moment’s hesitation in helping out her son. In that way, she also realized later, she might have maintained her position as the Caskey cornucopia.

  When she had refused her son, Oscar went to James, who sold off a sheaf of bonds and handed the money over to Oscar without a murmur or a reproach. Half of Oscar’s outstanding debt to the bank was immediately canceled, and his monthly payments on the remainder were consequently eased. He and Elinor were left with more than they had had to get along with formerly. It was true that Oscar was now heavily indebted to his uncle, as well as to the bank, but James would rather have gone bankrupt himself than inconvenience his nephew by demanding repayment of this sum.

  Oscar felt that he had outwitted his mother. Yet his victory did not make him forgiving toward her. He had told no one of her refusal to help him, but now he barely spoke to Mary-Love. When she lay in wait for him on her front porch, and beckoned to him as he got out of his automobile, he’d only reply, in his blandest voice, “Hey, Mama, sorry I cain’t come over right now, got to go
inside. Elinor wants me!” When she called him on the telephone he would politely answer any question she put to him, but would volunteer nothing more, and always rang off as quickly as possible with an unabashedly fabricated excuse. They would sit in the same pew at church—the Caskeys had always sat together—but Oscar called a halt to his attending Mary-Love’s Sunday afternoon dinners. After services he and Elinor and Frances would usually drive to Pensacola for dinner at the Hotel Palafox.

  Oscar’s repudiation was particularly painful to Mary-Love because it wasn’t public; she therefore couldn’t represent herself as a martyr to Oscar’s cruelty. She knew he never said a word against her. He was always polite when she spoke to him, but nothing on earth would persuade him to have anything to do with her. Mary-Love at last felt compelled to speak to Elinor. She knocked on the door of the big house next door one morning an hour or so before Oscar was expected home for the noon meal.

  “I won’t stay,” Mary-Love assured her daughter-in-law. “I won’t even come inside. But, Elinor, can you sit out here on the porch with me a minute.”

  “Of course,” said Elinor, and the two women placed themselves in facing rockers. Across the road from the Caskey houses was a large, fenced pecan orchard, with a number of Holstein heifers grazing in it. No pair of those cows appeared more phlegmatic or imperturbable than Mary-Love Caskey and her daughter-in-law, as they sat on the porch and prepared to do battle.

  “Elinor, you got to talk to Oscar.”

  “About what?”

  “About the way he’s treating me.”

  Elinor looked at her mother-in-law without expression. “I don’t understand.”

  “You know what I’m talking about,” Mary-Love continued, annoyed that her honesty should not be reciprocated.

  “He hasn’t been visiting you the way he used to,” Elinor admitted. “I’ve noticed that.”

  “And he’s told you why, hasn’t he?”

  “No,” returned Elinor. “He hasn’t said a word.”

  “Well, didn’t you ask?”

  “Whatever it is, it’s between you and Oscar. I didn’t think it was any of my business.”

  “Elinor, I came to ask you to help me patch things up. It hurts me the way he treats me. I’m embarrassed for Oscar’s sake. And I think you ought to speak to him about it.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Tell him that people see how he treats me. And people think ill of him for it. If he doesn’t watch out, people are going to turn on him for acting toward me the way he does. He should put things back the way they used to be.”

  “Why should he?” Elinor asked innocently. “I mean, what reason should I give him?”

  “Because the whole town is talking, like I said!”

  “You’re telling me that you want Oscar to patch things up for his sake, not yours? That is, you don’t care one way or the other?”

  “No, that’s not what I mean at all!” said Mary-Love. “I do care! Oscar hurts me, the way he treats me. We all used to be so happy!” she sighed.

  “Miss Mary-Love, I don’t think I’d go so far as to say that! But I will speak to Oscar, I will tell him what you said, and I will tell him that he is injuring his reputation in town by his treatment of you.”

  “Elinor, what do you think about it?”

  “I think it’s between you and Oscar and that it’s none of my business. I’ll speak to Oscar purely as a favor to you.”

  Mary-Love Caskey loathed favors done her. She sought desperately for a device that would make Elinor see things differently and relieve her of any possible obligation to her daughter-in-law. “Yes, but wouldn’t you like to see Oscar and me on good terms again? Things would be much easier for you then, too.”

  “Miss Mary-Love, it makes not one bit of difference in the world to me what goes on between you and your son. Oscar is a grown man, and Oscar can do exactly what he wants. I think that in the end that will be what Oscar does do about it: exactly what he wants.”

  “Elinor,” said Mary-Love, halting the rocker and looking her daughter-in-law straight in the eye, “you sure you don’t know what any of this is about?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

  “Elinor, you can sit there and say that, but I’m just not so sure I can believe you.”

  “I have no reason to lie to you, Miss Mary-Love. I’ll speak to Oscar.” With this unsatisfactory assurance, Mary-Love departed.

  When Oscar came home for lunch, Elinor dutifully reported his mother’s visit, pleas, and exhortations.

  Oscar looked at his wife across the table, and said, “Elinor, Mama did something to me that I don’t know if I can ever forgive her for. One thing sure, I haven’t forgiven her yet. And it’s not that I don’t want to, because I do, it’s that I just cain’t. And that’s what you can tell her.”

  “Oscar, I refuse to act as a go-between. I wish you’d tell your mother that yourself.”

  “All right, I suppose I’ll have to. Elinor, did Mama tell you what all this was about?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Aren’t you curious?”

  “If you want to tell me, then tell me. If you don’t want to tell me, then I don’t intend to ask.”

  “Well then,” said Oscar, after a pause, “I guess I better go on and tell you.” Oscar told his wife about Mary-Love’s refusal to give him any money and about their confrontation. Elinor made no comment. “What are you thinking?” her husband asked.

  “I’m thinking that it’s a wonder you speak to her at all. It’s one thing for her to hate me, but it’s something else for her to injure herself and the entire family.”

  To this, her husband made rueful agreement. “Someday,” he said sadly, “we are gone look out the dining room window and see the barnyard fowl lining up on Mama’s rain gutter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Someday,” Oscar explained, “Mama’s chickens are gone come home to roost.”

  Mary-Love intercepted her son as he left the house on his way back to work a half hour later. She had been sitting on her front porch, and she hurried over just as he was getting into his car.

  “Oscar, did Elinor speak to you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well? Did she tell you how you were being talked about all over town because of your treatment of me?”

  Oscar put his hand on the hood of the car. “Mama,” he said softly, “that’s just like you.”

  “What is?”

  “I think it would kill you just to come out and say, ‘Oscar, what you’re doing is hurting me.’ Instead you’re saying, ‘Oscar, I don’t care about me, but you’re hurting yourself.’ You always have to be the one who does the favors. Well, Mama, if it’s not hurting you, then that’s fine. Go on back inside the house. Leave me alone.”

  . . .

  During this unhappy time for Mary-Love and Oscar, James Caskey and Danjo Strickland were getting along wonderfully well. Now seven, Danjo felt secure in his position. His father was dead and unlikely to claim him again. His mother seemed content only to visit him, though this she did nearly every day. James had recently purchased a car, and Danjo had been staked as no part of that transaction. Grace returned from Vanderbilt for summers and holiday vacations. Twice James and Danjo had driven up to Nashville to visit her.

  Grace loved the boy for James’s sake, and whenever she saw him the first thing she invariably asked was, “Are you taking care of my daddy?”

  Danjo always nodded vigorously and replied proudly, “He said he couldn’t get along without me!”

  “I don’t think he could!” Grace always cried, hugging her father until the breath was nearly squeezed out of him.

  It seemed that all had worked out for the best. Grace had abandoned her father, but James never tired of saying, “I was so lonesome when Grace left that I went down to the Ben Franklin and bought me a little boy. He cost me a dollar fifty-nine, but he’s been worth every penny.”

  Grace was ha
ppy at school. This was always evident to James when he and Danjo visited her in Nashville. Her room was crammed with furniture James had bought. She had pennants on the walls. Oriental parasols opened and suspended from the ceiling had electric light bulbs hidden behind them. There were layers of carpet on the floor and two palms and a Victrola sat in one corner.

  James could also see that Grace was very popular. Every time he walked into the room a bevy of young women who had been lounging there jumped up and shook his hand, hugged Danjo, and all cried out, “What’d you bring Grace this time, Mr. Caskey?” Besides the sheaf of five-dollar bills in the unmarked envelope, he usually had a vast package tied up in brown paper and string, sitting downstairs in the hallway. Grace would unwrap it, and a pleasant half hour was then spent in trying to find a place to put whatever it was James had brought. James always took Grace out to dinner alone on Friday night, but on Saturday night he treated almost the entire dormitory at a restaurant. Nobody on earth was blessed with a sweeter father than Grace Caskey. No man’s daughter was better loved than Grace Caskey.

  “Have you made acquaintance with the man of your dreams?” was James’s invariable question when he and Grace were alone together.

  “Ugh!” Grace always cried. “Why should I want to do that?”

  “So you can settle down and get married, that’s why,” James would return mildly.

  “I don’t want to get married, Daddy. I’m having a good time. I don’t think I’ve let myself be introduced to one single man on this campus.”

  James would laugh. “Well, darling, if you don’t even let ’em know your name, how are they supposed to propose to you?”

  “I don’t want them to! And I’ll beat ’em over the head if they try.”

  This did not seem such an idle threat. At college, Grace Caskey had discovered the delights of physical culture, and she had a closetful of white tennis dresses, white boating clothes, white gymnasium pants, and white football sweaters. Her many handsome sporting outfits began to crowd out her regular wardrobe. Her favorite pastime was rowing, and she was unanimously elected captain of the girls’ crew team when she was a junior. She also ran track and played basketball, where the Caskey height stood her in good stead. In this rough-and-tumble atmosphere, Grace acquired a forthrightness and heartiness of demeanor that was shocking to those in Perdido who remembered her only as a slight, somewhat diffident, whiny child. Grace had become strong enough actually to lift her father bodily from the floor, and now whenever they met, she did it.