Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

by Michael McDowell

  Oscar had lost some of his buoyancy. The death of Mary-Love and the retirement of James had placed the management of the mill squarely and exclusively upon his shoulders. He had at once to deal with an expanded operation and declining receipts. He was no longer youthful, for that matter, nearly forty-five now, with two daughters in college, and the responsibility for an industry on which the well-being of the entire town was dependent. He had settled into a narrow, strictured life, hemmed in by his family and by the mill. He loved his family, and he was proud of the mill, but sometimes he looked about and wondered. Sometimes his eyes fell upon his wife, and he thought, Who is she?

  Elinor had changed, most noticeably since the death of Mary-Love. She was a good deal calmer now, less prone to fits of anger; she seemed less dangerous. She hadn’t the destructive instincts he had seen in her before. There had been times, Oscar knew, when his wife had been motivated by a kind of unselfish greed—that is, greed for his and Frances’s sake, more than for her own. The wellsprings of that loving avarice seemed to have lost some of their strength recently. Oscar occasionally thought of the future of the mill as he and Elinor lay in bed at night, and he would ask Elinor’s opinion. He wanted to know what she would do in his place; he wanted to hear what people in town thought about this and that. But Elinor’s interest in such conversations had waned. In fact, her interest in nearly everything had diminished to such an extent that Oscar became alarmed, and he suggested that she visit Leo Benquith and get a prescription. He was certain that something was the matter with her.

  “Elinor,” he asked one night, turning toward her in the darkness. “Tell me something. How old are you?”

  “You have never asked me that question before,” returned Elinor. “Why are you asking me now?”

  Oscar hesitated. “You’ve been acting so funny, I thought you were pregnant.”

  Elinor laughed, but her laugh was small and weak.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Elinor.

  It suddenly occurred to Oscar that his wife had only been waiting for such a question from him to enable her to speak about something that had oppressed her spirit for some time.

  “Thinking about what?” her husband asked gently.

  “I was thinking about Miriam and how homesick she got when she first went away to school.”

  “She sure did. And she didn’t let on, either.”

  “I’m homesick, too, Oscar,” said Elinor in a small voice, and wound her arms around her husband’s neck in a kind of cold desperation.

  “Elinor,” he cried in surprise, “I don’t believe you have mentioned Wade once in fifteen years.”

  Elinor paused. “I’ve thought about it a lot, though.”

  “Do you have any people who are still alive? I know you never hear from them.”

  “There’s not many of us left, that’s true. And we never were big on letters or the telephone.”

  “Then why don’t you just drive on up there and visit with them a spell?”

  “I think I might do just that,” said Elinor.

  “It might do you some good to get away from here. I think you’ve been cooped up. Perdido’s so small. And it’s been so long since you were home...”

  “It has been,” sighed Elinor. “I miss it too. I’ve been feeling tired lately, peaked, and maybe all I need to get my strength back up is to go home for a little while.”

  “I wish I could go with you—”

  “You can’t, Oscar, you’re too busy with the mill,” said Elinor hastily.

  “I know, so take somebody else. Take Sister or Grace or James. I know we’d all like to meet your family. You never talk about them, so I just always forget that you have a family. Somehow I had it in my head that they were all dead.”

  “As I said, there are some left,” said Elinor. “But I think I want to go up there alone.”

  “You want to get away from us all, don’t you? I don’t blame you one little bit for that. We’re all pretty wearing, aren’t we?”

  Elinor laughed, and hugged her husband close. There wasn’t as much desperation in her embrace now, but her arms around him still felt damp and cold.

  . . .

  Next morning at the barbershop, Oscar thought not about the mill but about his wife. He was pleased to think he had pressed the trigger of her secret—her homesickness for Wade in Fayette County. Of all things that might have depressed or saddened Elinor, absence from her family and early home was the last he would ever have considered. He would see that she got away soon, because he wanted no delay in the recovery of her spirits and energy. When he went home for dinner at noon, he thought, he would encourage her to leave that very week; there was nothing keeping her in Perdido.

  When he reached home at noon, he was startled to discover that, without a word, Elinor had already left. Zaddie said, “She got out a suitcase, that small one. She sent Bray off to fill up the car with gas. She told me what all to do while she was gone. And then she took off. I said, ‘Miss Elinor, don’t you want some chicken?’ and she said, ‘Zaddie, I’m just dying to get home.’ She wasn’t gone wait for nothing, Mr. Oscar.”

  “I cain’t believe it,” said Oscar in amazement. “She didn’t even say goodbye.”

  Zaddie repeated her story for the other members of the family as each arrived for the noontime meal. The Caskeys were perplexed, and every few moments Zaddie was called into the dining room to answer another puzzling question.

  “Zaddie, did she call up to Wade first to see if anyone was gone be home?” asked Queenie.

  “Did she leave a number where we can get in touch with her?” asked Grace.

  “Or an address, so we could send a telegram?” queried James.

  “Or did she even say what the people’s names were?” wondered Oscar. “I guess maybe they’re Dammerts, but I don’t think I ever even heard Elinor say for sure. They could be her mama’s people, and we never would know how to get in touch with them.” He looked around the table. “Has anybody ever been to Wade?”

  The Caskeys all shook their heads.

  “I never even heard of the place till Elinor said she came from there,” said James. “And I had forgot all about it till just now. Who would have thought that Elinor still had any family to go and visit? I don’t believe she has mentioned them even once in the past twenty years.”

  “All I can say,” said Sister, “is that she must have been awfully anxious to get up there if she left without saying goodbye to anybody but Zaddie. Oscar, you sure she didn’t stop by the mill on her way out of town?”

  “I’m sure she didn’t,” said Oscar.

  “She went in the other direction,” said Zaddie from the kitchen. “Out toward the Old Federal Road.”

  Everyone was astounded. “That won’t take her anywhere!” cried James. “I hope she had a map with her, ’cause that Old Federal Road just fades out...”

  . . .

  No one could make anything of it. They had no way of getting in touch with Elinor should an emergency arise, and they had no idea of when she intended to return. She had given no indication of the length of her stay. Every day the Caskeys hoped for her reappearance, and nightly Oscar went to bed alone and disappointed. After a week, Grace volunteered to drive up to Wade—wherever in the world it was—and find Elinor, but Oscar said, “No, I don’t want you to do that. Elinor’s all right, I’m not worried about her. She wanted to get away from us for a bit. After twenty years, I don’t hold that against her. We’re not gone go traipsing up there and drag her back like we cain’t do without her.”

  “I cain’t do without her, Daddy,” protested Frances. “I miss her so much!”

  “I know, darling, and so do I,” Oscar sighed.

  . . .

  In the middle of the second week of Elinor’s absence, during an unseasonably warm week in January of 1941, the National Guardsmen received word that in two days more they would be sent down to Camp Blanding on the Atlantic coast of Florida for basic training. The boys and men had two days
to put their affairs in order, to say their goodbyes, and to go out and get good and drunk.

  On the afternoon of the day before they were to go off at six the following morning, two high school seniors, next-door neighbors and friends all their lives, who were now being plucked from the middle of their schooling and their infatuations with girls, drove over the Florida line, and with a one-dollar bribe, purchased a case of twenty-four bottles of Budweiser beer.

  Upon returning to Perdido, fearful of being seen by parents or other adults likely to be disapproving of their alcoholic indulgence, they drove around the town to the north and parked their automobile in the grove of live oaks just above the junction of the Perdido and Blackwater rivers. They immediately proceeded to open bottles and to guzzle them down. On their third round, one of the boys was overcome with the need to relieve himself. He climbed out of the car and went over to one of the live oaks. Standing there, urinating on one of the outermost drooping limbs, he caught sight of something shining and metallic within the curtain of branches and leaves. When he had buttoned up, he pushed aside the limbs and went under the living umbrella that the ancient live oak had produced. To his astonishment, he discovered an automobile. A small suitcase lay on the back seat, and the keys remained in the ignition. In his beer-befuddled state he tried to solve the mystery of the unoccupied car’s presence in this spot.

  His protracted absence drew his friend, but the friend could provide no explanation either. In hope of finding some clue to the owner of the vehicle, and emboldened by the consumption of three bottles of Budweiser, the boys opened the suitcase. It was empty.

  “The car’s stolen,” said the boy who had discovered it. “It’s bound to be stolen, and the thief left it here.”

  “If he was just leaving it and going off, then why would he bother to hide it?” his friend asked.

  “Maybe there’s a body in the trunk.”

  Not even the thought that tomorrow they would be formally inducted into the army provided courage sufficient to test that hypothesis.

  The boys stumbled nervously out from beneath the tree and returned to their car. They consumed four more bottles of beer in an attempt to forget about the automobile hidden under the tree, and six more than that in drunkenly trying to predict what military life would have in store for them. As the sun lowered in the sky, the boys fell unconscious in the car. They hoped to wake sober.

  . . .

  Early next morning three buses parked in front of the town hall, and one hundred fifteen men climbed on. Most of Perdido was there to see them off. The occasion was suddenly marred, however, by the announcement that two high school seniors were missing. No other conscripted men in all of Baldwin County had failed to appear. It was perceived as a black mark against the town that these two boys had deserted. Their parents, shamed and fretful, returned to their homes, faintly maintaining that some accident had befallen the boys; that some irreproachable necessity had kept them away.

  The Caskeys had joined their fellow townspeople at the town hall, and after the buses had driven off to a lackluster cheering, they also returned home. To their immense surprise, Elinor’s automobile was parked in front of her house, and Elinor herself was sitting on the front porch, waiting for them. Oscar’s step quickened, as Frances actually ran toward her mother. Elinor caught her daughter in her arms, and lifted her off the ground.

  “Oh, Mama, I missed you so much! We didn’t know when you were coming back, and I looked out the window about fifty million times hoping I would see you come driving up.”

  “Well,” laughed Elinor, “I’m back now, darling.”

  “You look wonderful,” said Frances, somewhat surprised, as she drew back from her mother and looked carefully into her face.

  Oscar and the others had reached the steps of the house by now.

  “You do look wonderful,” said Oscar. Elinor came down the steps and kissed her husband. Everyone fought for the opportunity to hug her.

  “I feel wonderful,” said Elinor. “I feel like I could take on the whole German army.”

  “It looks like this trip did you a world of good,” said James.

  “What’d you do up in Wade, Mama?” asked Frances.

  “Nothing. Not a single thing. I just went home and sat around. I didn’t do a thing in the world. I was just so glad to get rid of all of you for two weeks, that’s all.” She laughed merrily. Oscar wondered how long it had been since he had heard his wife so lighthearted.

  “How was your family?” asked Sister.

  “Oh, fine,” replied Elinor vaguely. “There’s not many of them left, and we don’t get along so well anymore.”

  “Why not?” asked Grace.

  “Oh, because they think I went off and deserted them when I came down here and married Oscar, that’s why. Most of ’em never leave home, and I was one of ’em who did. They got mad, that’s all.”

  “Are they still mad?” asked Oscar curiously. Elinor had never spoken of her family.

  “Of course,” she returned with a smile. “But for two weeks, I didn’t care. They could say whatever they wanted. I was just glad to be home for a while.”

  . . .

  Elinor seemed to have regained all her energy and drive. Now she was never still, she was never unhappy, and she was never without some project or other. She set Bray to building up a new camellia bed in the back of the house, despite his protestation that nothing would grow in the sand. She bought new furniture for the downstairs rooms. She ran up curtains for the second floor of Miriam and Sister’s house without their having said they needed them. She talked to Oscar ceaselessly about the coming war’s probable effect on business, and she drove all around the county knocking on doors and asking if anyone needed employment at the mill. She sometimes went with Frances and Miriam to Mobile and shopped all day while they were in school. She and Zaddie cleaned the house, and threw out everything that hadn’t been used in the past two years. She drove Leo Benquith out to the Sapps and made him examine and treat every one of the Sapp children and grandchildren for the diseases that were common to impoverished country families. She went with Queenie to visit Dollie Faye Crawford out on the Bay Minette road. She offered to teach Lucille how to sew on a machine. She made fruitcakes to send to Malcolm who was stationed in New Jersey. Her high spirits seemed to infect the whole family.

  The news from Europe grew worse and worse, and the War Department placed more and more orders with Oscar’s office. For the first time since 1926 the Caskey mill operated at near capacity. Beneath all life in Perdido there was a low-pitched hum of activity. It might have been the mill machinery cutting lumber and chips, fashioning poles and posts, doorjambs and window frames. Or it might have been the Perdido, nearly forgotten behind its walls of red clay, spilling along with its old urgency, its old inexorability, tumbling leaves and sticks and bones down to the junction, and burying them in the mud at the bottom of the river.

  The one hundred fifteen Perdido boys finished basic training late in April, and then were scattered around the country. Most ended up in Michigan, some in Missouri, and a few were sent to help in the building of Camp Rucca. The two high school seniors were never found. A week after they were to have left for basic training, however, their automobile, with a half case of unopened Budweiser beer in the back, was discovered in the grove of live oaks on the uninhabited side of the junction.

  Chapter 49

  Rationing

  Lucille and Queenie didn’t even know where Pearl Harbor was when they heard the news over the radio on Sunday afternoon; few people in Perdido did. Everyone, though, knew what the Japanese bombing meant to the country. All afternoon people went from house to house, and said things like: “I wonder what’s gone come of us now.” War was indisputable. How Perdido would be affected was a much-discussed question.

  Three days after the declaration of war, gasoline was rationed. Because of their ownership of an industry considered vital to the defense of the nation, each of the Caskey households was awarde
d a “C” classification, entitling them to fifteen gallons of gasoline a week. Sugar rationing followed in short order. Later, shoes and meat were placed under containment. All citizens were required to register at the town hall in order to receive their coupons, and revelation of age was necessary. The privacy of Perdido women had never been so infringed upon before, and despite the pleas for patriotism, not one admitted to years beyond fifty-five—even those who frequently had been heard to draw up some remembrance of the Civil War.

  With a sudden bound, the country’s economy was on its feet again, as Oscar had predicted. The office of the Caskey mill was filled with defense orders. Frances and Miriam, on Saturdays and Sundays, went to the mill to help their father sort through his work. Frances was as much hindrance as help, but Miriam understood the business instinctively, though she had rarely even visited the mill. In one of the company trucks—so as not to waste their personal allotment of gasoline—Elinor and Queenie drove through the countryside, stopping every man they saw and offering him work at the Caskey mills.

  All the new military bases were being constructed of wood. At Camp Rucca three thousand men were living in tents. Barracks needed to be raised as quickly as possible. Oscar often was able to deliver lumber on the day after it was formally requested. Eglin Field, down near Pensacola, had begun its expansion. Oscar got that contract, too. Thousands of miles of electric lines were being strung across the country, and Oscar’s plant manufactured utility poles quicker and better than anyone else.

  Oscar was devilishly busy. He had not only to cope with mounting paperwork, but had to learn to deal with the military. This was quite different from his previous business experience, which had been transacted with less exacting but more knowledgeable civilians. At a time when every patriotic man had enlisted, and every poor man had gone in for the twenty-one dollars a month with room and board, and every other man had been drafted, Oscar sought workers to staff a second shift. He made inspection tours of the Caskey forests to determine order of cutting; and because he knew more about the matter than anyone else, he had to supervise replanting.