Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

by Michael McDowell

  The more they all thought of it, the clearer it became that Elinor was to be the new head of the family. There was no actual delegation to inform her of the choice, but there might as well have been. Her opinion was solicited on every matter great and small. Her decision was always acceded to without objection. Her house became the focus of family activity. The hub of the Caskey universe, with a little grinding of gears and spinning of wheels, slipped twenty yards to the west.

  Though the Caskeys watched carefully, few alterations in management were apparent. In the first week of mourning for Mary-Love, there was little activity. The Caskeys kept to themselves. Early Haskew had come and gone, leaving behind his wife and tobacco-juice stains on the glossy leaves of Mary-Love’s prized camellias. Miriam remained with Sister in Mary-Love’s house.

  “When are we gone go send for Miriam?” Oscar asked his wife.

  “I don’t want to uproot her yet,” said Elinor. “She’s attached to Sister, and when Sister goes back to Chattanooga, that’ll be time enough.”

  “When is Sister planning on going back?”

  “She’s waiting for the reading of the will, I suppose. I don’t know what else could keep her here.”

  There was some speculation among the Caskeys about the contents of Mary-Love’s will. It was assumed in the town that Mary-Love would divide her substantial fortune between her two children, Oscar and Sister. Oscar would at last be rewarded for his many years of service to the mill; Sister would never have to worry about Early’s ability to scratch work out of a depressed economy. Doubtless some special provision would be made for Miriam, for the child had been very dear to Mary-Love. Perdido could not imagine that the dead woman had done anything different.

  The Caskeys, however, knew to what lengths Mary-Love would go to thwart happiness and dampen expectations. It was not inconceivable, for instance, that she would have left everything to James, who was old and didn’t need it; or to Miriam, who was young and couldn’t handle it. Elinor, in particular, was anxious for the will to be read. She wanted Oscar to get the money as quickly as possible so that he would be able to purchase Henry Turk’s final tract of land. She was fearful another buyer might step forward in the interim. “Just go to Henry, Oscar, and tell him not to sell it to anybody else. Tell him we’ll buy it up just as soon as Mary-Love’s will is read.”

  “Elinor, we’ve just got to wait. We’re not sure yet who Mama left her money to. And even if I get half and Sister gets half, it’s still gone be a while before the thing’s probated. It’s gone be six months at least before I see a single dime of Mama’s money.”

  “Then borrow the money from James. We just can’t let that Escambia County land get away from us.”

  “Why are you so all fired up to buy land in Florida? We’ve never seen fit to cross a state line before.”

  “That’s good land over there, Oscar.”

  “It’s just like it is over here, same old trees, same old creeks, same old Perdido River flowing alongside it. Only nobody lives there, and it’s hard to get to. Henry Turk never made a crying dime off the land, and that’s the reason he’s still got it—nobody in his right mind wants that land. Henry was able to get rid of everything but that. And you know if we got it, we’d have to learn all about Florida laws and Florida taxes.”

  “You’ll be sorry if we don’t buy it up.”

  “Why?”

  “I know that land,” returned Elinor. “Someday it will make us more money than you ever dreamed of.”

  Oscar was mystified by this remark. As far as he knew, his wife had never crossed over into any part of Escambia County, Florida. How could she know anything of those empty quadrants of pine, ribbed with the creeks and branches that emptied into the lower Perdido?

  . . .

  The will was brief. Two thousand dollars went to Ivey Sapp and Bray Sugarwhite, to build themselves a new house on higher land than Baptist Bottom, and five hundred dollars went to Luvadia Sapp. Seven hundred dollars bought a new window for the Methodist Church attended by the family, and three hundred dollars bought a new baptismal font for the Methodist Church in Baptist Bottom. Ten thousand dollars to the Athenaeum Club established a scholarship for a deserving Perdido girl to attend the University of Alabama.

  The Caskeys nodded approval of these small bequests. They showed, everyone thought, a sense of community responsibility in the dead woman.

  The bulk of her fortune—her half of the Caskey sawmill and allied industries; the holdings of land and leasing rights; the stocks and bonds; the mortgages and liens upon other properties in Baldwin, Escambia, Monroe, and Washington counties; the savings accounts in the Perdido bank, three Mobile banks, and two Pensacola banks; and the investments in Louisiana and Arkansas—were to be divided equally between her beloved son Oscar and her devoted daughter Elvennia Haskew.

  To her granddaughter, Miriam Caskey, Mary-Love left her house, its contents, and the land on which it stood; all her jewels, precious and semiprecious stones—mounted or loose; all silverware and objects of virtu; and the contents of four safe deposit boxes in various banks.

  There was enormous relief in the family. Mary-Love had done what everyone thought to be right and proper. She had not sought to perpetuate her animadversions from the grave. The malice of her cloying love apparently had been dampened when she had contemplated her own death in the writing of her testament.

  . . .

  Miriam was sixteen, but she seemed grown-up. And she thought she had a reason to seem so. After all, she was an heiress in her own right. She had cases of jewels in her room, and she had safety-deposit boxes of diamonds and rubies and sapphires in four different banks in Mobile. She was no one’s daughter. Mary-Love had died and left her as alone as if she had been abandoned in the midst of the pine forest. She didn’t belong to her parents, for they had given her up when she was a baby. Despite their proximity during the intervening years, they remained little more than strangers. They were rather like cousins, once or twice removed, whom one didn’t particularly care for, though they bore one’s name and one’s likeness. She wasn’t Sister’s either, though once she had been. Sister had gone off and married Early Haskew, whom Miriam deprecated for his coarse country ways and his chewing tobacco.

  Sister and Miriam sat at the supper table together a few hours after the will was read. Sister had helped raise Miriam when she was a baby, but after Sister’s marriage, Miriam had become Mary-Love’s child alone. Sister and Miriam had not exactly become strangers, but there was now a certain distance between them.

  “It’s funny,” said Miriam.

  “What is?”

  “To think that this whole house is mine now, and everything in it.”

  “I’m glad Mama left it to you,” said Sister. “That way you can sell it and put some money in the bank. That’ll send you to school.”

  “I don’t intend to sell it.”

  Sister looked up, surprised. “You’re gone let it sit here empty? You shouldn’t, you know. Rats take up in empty houses. Squirrels will break in through the roof.”

  “I’m gone live here,” said Miriam.

  Sister was more surprised than ever. “You’re not coming back to Chattanooga with me?”

  “I hate Chattanooga.”

  “You’ve never even been there. What do you think you’d hate about it?”

  “Everything.”

  “That’s no answer.”

  “Do you really want an answer, Sister?”

  “Yes, of course I do.”

  “I wouldn’t be comfortable,” said Miriam.

  “Comfortable?”

  “Around Early.”

  “You don’t like Early?”

  “I’m not comfortable around him, that’s all. He’s too...country. I’m not used to being around country people.”

  Sister flushed. “That school you go to is filled with boys and girls who are a lot more country than Early.”

  “But I don’t have to live with them.”

  Mi
riam and Sister then passed plates around for second helpings. Ivey came out of the kitchen and poured more iced tea.

  “Ivey’s already said she would stay on with me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Ivey to Sister. “I did say it.”

  Sister shook her head. “What’s your mama gone say?”

  “You mean Elinor?”

  “Yes, of course I mean Elinor. If I go off back to Chattanooga and don’t take you with me, Elinor’s gone say that you got to move in with her and Oscar over there.”

  “I wouldn’t move in with them if they threw a rope over my neck and dragged me across the yard.”

  “Elinor might do it. Elinor wants you back. She’s spoken to me about it.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said, ‘Sister, don’t try to take Miriam back to Chattanooga, because I want her over here with me.’”

  “She can’t have me!”

  “You’re her daughter, Miriam. That’s what it comes down to.”

  They were silent for a while longer. Ivey cleared away and brought out dessert. It was Boston cream pie, Sister’s favorite.

  “I don’t want to go to Chattanooga,” said Miriam to Ivey.

  “No, I know you don’t,” said Ivey in mild confirmation.

  “And I certainly don’t want to move in with Elinor and Oscar.”

  “No, ma’am, I know you don’t want to do that.”

  “I want to stay right in this house.”

  “You love this house,” said Ivey with pride. “Miss Mary-Love wanted you to have it to live in.”

  “Then what do I do? How do I get to stay on here?” Miriam looked to the black woman for an answer. Sister, as if she knew exactly what that answer was going to be, continued eating her pie.

  “Miss Miriam, why don’t you ask Sister to stay on here with you?”

  Miriam looked surprised. “But what about Early?”

  “Mr. Early’s got his jobs here, there, everywhere,” said Ivey. “Sister, you want another piece of pie?”

  “I sure do.”

  “Sister,” said Miriam, “will you stay on here with me? Be my mama.”

  Sister dug into the second piece of pie. “Let me think about it, Miriam. Let me put that idea under my pillow.”

  . . .

  Next morning at breakfast, the first thing Miriam said to Sister was: “Did you decide?”

  “No, and I don’t want to be pestered about this, either. You have no right to ask me to leave Early just so you can do what you want.”

  “Then you’re leaving?”

  “Not yet.”

  “When?”

  “I said that I don’t want to be pestered about this.”

  “When can I ask you again if you’ve made up your mind?”

  “Never.”

  “Then what do I say to Elinor when she comes over here and wants to carry me off?”

  “I’ll deal with your mother, Miriam. Just stop asking me about it.”

  Miriam said no more. And her evil day was postponed, because Sister did not return to Chattanooga. She remained in Perdido a week beyond the reading of the will, then two weeks, then a month. The girl lived, however, in continual suspense, because Sister never would say how long she intended to remain in the house that had been deeded to Miriam.

  Next door, Oscar worried. He thought it was time for Sister to return home, and for Miriam to move into the front room. He mentioned his misgivings to Elinor, who said, “Leave it alone, Oscar. Don’t push things.”

  “What do you mean, Elinor? What is there to push? Is there something you know about that you’re not telling me?”

  “Nobody’s told me anything. If I were you, though, I’d just leave Sister and Miriam alone for the time being.”

  “I have,” protested Oscar. “And now I just want to know how long this ‘time being’ is going to go on. Do you know?”

  “I do not.”

  “I’m gone have to go over there.”

  Elinor didn’t waste any more words in an attempt to dissuade her husband, and that evening he knocked on the front door of his daughter’s house. Sister let him in. He hadn’t been inside the house for five years. “Sister, can I speak to Miriam for a minute?”

  “Of course, Oscar. Let me go upstairs and get her.”

  In a few minutes, Miriam came down alone. “Hello, Oscar,” she said, pointedly eschewing the appellation “Father.”

  “Hello honey. I came over because I thought there were a few things we ought to talk about.”

  “All right,” said Miriam, seating herself in the mahogany platform rocker which her grandmother had often occupied. Oscar sat in a corner of the blue sofa, where he had so often been placed as a child.

  “Miriam, darling,” Oscar began, “your mama and I need to figure out what’s going to become of you.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Where you’re going to go and what you’re going to do, now that Mama’s dead.”

  “I’m not going to do anything,” Miriam replied calmly. “I’m not going to go anywhere.”

  “You mean you don’t want to come over and live with your mama and Frances and me?”

  “No, sir. I have my own room here, and I don’t want to leave.”

  “You’d have your own room next door. Elinor says you could have the front room.”

  “I don’t want that room—or any room in that house. I just want to stay here. This is my house. Grandmama left it to me because she wanted me to live here. And that’s exactly what I intend to do.”

  “But what happens when Sister goes back to Chattanooga? What would people in this town think if they heard I was allowing a sixteen-year-old girl to live all by herself in a big house like this?”

  “They could think whatever they wanted,” returned Miriam. “What do I care what people think? I don’t intend to leave, and nobody can make me.”

  “Your mama and I could make you,” said Oscar. “We’re your parents.”

  Miriam looked directly at her father. “I suppose you could make me. I suppose you could rope me to the bed. I suppose you could stick food down my throat till I swallowed it.”

  “You don’t want to live with us?” Oscar asked his daughter, plaintively.

  “Of course, I don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “You didn’t want me when I was born. And now it’s too late.”

  For a few moments, her father sat stunned.

  “That was...sixteen years ago...darling!” Oscar faltered when he had recovered himself. “And Mama wanted a little girl of her own. You’re not sorry we gave you to Mama, are you?”

  Miriam made no reply.

  “You cain’t still be upset about that, not after all these years. You know how much your grandmama loved you. You know how happy you were with Sister and Mama. We would never have let you go if we hadn’t thought you were gone be happy as the day is long.”

  Miriam looked at her father impassively and said nothing.

  “Miriam, you are only sixteen years old. You cain’t tell me what to do and expect me to hop to it.” This injunction carried no conviction in Oscar’s mouth.

  “I’m not trying to tell you what to do, Oscar. I’m just telling you what I’m not gone do. And what I’m not gone do is leave this house, at least not of my own free will. You can get Mr. Key down here and have him throw me in jail for not doing what you tell me to do, or you can get Zaddie to tie me up with clothesline and put me in a croker sack and carry me over there on a cane pole, but that’s about the only way you will get me inside that house.”

  “It hurts me to hear you speak like this, darling!”

  Miriam said nothing.

  “I’m gone send Elinor over here to talk to you. She’s gone have to try to talk some sense into your head about all this. You are so upset about Mama that you’re plumb not thinking straight.”

  “If Elinor comes over here...”

  “Yes?”

  “...just tell her to make sure
she brings me the rings she stole off Grandmama’s fingers. Otherwise, I’m not gone speak to her.”

  Oscar sank deeper into the corner of the blue sofa where he had so often been placed as a child to listen to his mother’s pronouncements. He looked at his daughter Miriam as he had looked at Mary-Love Caskey in that far-off time. In his daughter, who was so great a stranger to him, he saw much of his mother. He understood for the first time that Miriam bore as much animosity toward Elinor as Mary-Love had. Oscar didn’t know what was to come of all this, but he now knew that Miriam would never take up residence in his house.

  Miriam sedately rocked beneath the red-shaded lamp, her thick, carefully brushed hair falling across her face and shadowing her expression. She did not appear to concern herself overmuch with this discussion of her future. She seemed only politely to conceal her impatience with her father to get on with whatever it was he had come to say.

  Seeing his daughter thus, Oscar decided to say no more. Miriam might be only sixteen, but Oscar decided that he would be very surprised if she did not get her own way. He wondered if Elinor had yet realized to what extent Miriam was prepared to take her grandmother’s place.

  Chapter 42

  The Linen Closet

  Sister remained on in Perdido through the winter. There was speculation as to why she had deserted her husband in that manner. Early Haskew came to town for Christmas, but his visit was strained. He was gone again by New Year’s. Perdido, and all the Caskeys—including Miriam herself—assumed that it was on Miriam’s account that Sister stayed. Sister was sacrificing her own marriage at the whim of that spoiled girl, everyone thought. She elected to remain in Perdido in a house of mourning for the wholly inadequate reason that Miriam Caskey didn’t want to move twenty yards to the west and take up residence in her parents’ home.