“Mama,” said Frances, with a little uneasiness in her voice, “I’ll be fine. Dr. Benquith can—”
“Zaddie and I will take care of you,” said Elinor firmly and without looking at her daughter. “Not Leo. I nursed Frances through her arthritis—”
“You did cure me,” Frances admitted.
“—and I am going to see you through this, too.”
“Do you think there might be complications?” asked Billy.
“I think,” said Elinor, “that starting tomorrow, I am going to bathe Frances just the way I used to when she was so sick.”
“In Perdido water?” asked Frances in a low voice.
. . .
Thereafter, as if she were a little girl again, Frances Bronze sat in the bathtub for one hour each day while her mother knelt on the floor and sponged Perdido water all over her body. While Frances never really looked forward to this ablution, she did not, after the first few times, dread it either. She actually seemed never even to think of it or remember it, until Elinor would seek her out, and say softly, “Time to go upstairs, Frances.” Then that unvarying phrase would act as a trigger in Frances’s mind; when she heard it spoken, she seemed to forget everything else. She would drop whatever she was doing, and march upstairs. Her clothing seemed to fall off her, and she would step into the bathtub. With that muddy red water being rubbed into her skin, and the odor of the river rising up around her, Frances would think there was no pleasure equal to it. After one brief stab at sending her mother away, Frances gave herself up to the intense pleasure. At the last moment, before she forgot everything else, Frances would ask herself, Is there a transformation now? or There is a transformation now, but how complete is it?, and would vow to question her mother afterward. But afterward—always more than an hour later by the clock, though she could scarcely believe the time had passed so quickly—Frances no longer recalled those questions. She remembered, in fact, only two things: her mother locking the door of the bathroom to make sure there would be no intrusion, and then standing out of the tub, with the sensation of the muddy red water flowing off her body and back into the bath. But the hour between that click of the turning key and the feel of the muddy water pouring off her was lost to Frances, and she had no more memory of it than she had of the three years she had lain in bed with her illness years before.
Billy sometimes complained of the smell of the river in his wife’s hair and upon her skin. Frances, acquiescent to her husband in all else, said only, “You’ll get used to it.”
. . .
To everyone else in the family, Frances’s pregnancy was another undeniable instance of the forthrightness of Billy Bronze. When he set his mind to something, he walked right in at the door and did it. When he had got it into his head to become part of the Caskey family, he had picked out a marriageable daughter, wooed her, won her, married her, and got her pregnant in order to produce more Caskeys. The family’s admiration for Billy Bronze was unbounded, and much faith was put in his judgments and opinions.
Grace, for instance, was constantly seeking his approval and advice on her plans for the development of Gavin Pond Farm. With the money that had come to her from her father, Grace was anxious to buy more land. Most everyone in the family was against this, saying that Grace already owned more property than she knew what to do with over there on the other side of the Perdido River in Florida, that most of what she contemplated buying—south of her current holdings—was merely swampland, good neither as farmland or as usable forest. Yet Grace found two unexpected champions—Billy and Elinor. Billy said, “If you have money you’re not using, and aren’t likely to need, then go ahead and buy that land. You’ll never lose.”
Elinor said, “I have a feeling about that swampland.”
“You’ve never even seen it!” cried Oscar.
“How do you know that?” Elinor returned, arching an eyebrow at her husband. Oscar said no more.
With an irrational acquisitiveness worthy of the deceased Mary-Love, Grace Caskey bought up more than sixteen thousand acres of seemingly worthless swampland directly south of Gavin Pond Farm. Though claimed over the decades by the Creek Indians, the Spanish, the French, the English, and the Americans successively, this desolate expanse of marsh and pool and cypress had never been lived on, hunted on, or even completely scouted. This land, added to Gavin Pond Farm, made Grace’s holdings contiguous to the fifty thousand acres of timber owned by Oscar in that westernmost county of Florida. Outside the federal government, the Caskeys had become the largest landowners in the Florida panhandle.
Queenie, visiting her daughter and grandson at the farm, shook her head at Grace and said, “I don’t understand it at all. Why did you buy all that land—if that’s what you can call it.”
“Ma,” protested Lucille, “Grace didn’t want us to be hemmed in.”
“Hemmed in!” cried Queenie, bouncing little Tommy Lee violently on her knee in her agitation. “There’s not anybody living within five miles of this place. You could scream your head off for years and wouldn’t anybody come! And who in his right mind would try to do anything with that old swamp? Y’all are not even gone have poachers!”
“Queenie,” said Grace calmly, “Tommy Lee has just gotten all his teeth in. Are you trying to shake them loose?”
. . .
Shortly after this, Sister received a letter from Early Haskew. She had not seen her husband since Christmas of 1943. The note read:
Dear Sister,
I am in Kitzen, Germany, working on some bridges for the Allies. I heard Queenys boy was living over here and went to see him. His wife is real sweet I guess. They live in a big castle that belonged to her daddy and it is too big for them. Castles can be real cold and cold in Europe is not what cold is in Perdido. I should be through in March and then I am coming home. Look for me around the middle of April I guess. Ask Ivey if her Mama will give us some puppies. It sure is hard living without a dog. How is Grip?
Love,
Your husband Early
“Grip is dead!” Sister wailed to Ivey, as she staggered through the dining room and into the kitchen. “Grip was chasing a car and got run over. What am I gone do?” Sister’s distress was not for her dead bird dog, but rather for herself. There was no longer any pretense on Sister’s part that she missed Early Haskew or that she wanted to renew her married life.
“Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!” Sister cried, flinging herself in through the front door of Elinor’s house with the crumpled letter in her hand. “Why in the world did so many people die in the war, and Early’s coming back alive?”
“Early wasn’t in the fighting,” said Elinor, coming out into the hallway with a dinner napkin still in her hand.
She led Sister back into the dining room. Sister threw herself into Elinor’s vacated chair at the head of the table and pushed away Elinor’s plate as if it had been her own and she had lost all her appetite. Elinor went into the kitchen and brought out a glass of iced tea. Sister was now sprawled in the chair, her head down on her breast. “I don’t want anything!” cried Sister.
No one said anything.
Sister suddenly looked up; fevered hope was in her eyes. “Billy!” she cried. “Billy Bronze! You tell me what to do! You tell me how to keep Early Haskew out of Perdido!”
But in this instance Billy had no advice; he could think of no solution, could provide no help.
The weeks passed. April arrived, and every day brought Sister closer to the time of her husband’s dreaded reappearance.
Chapter 60
Ivey’s Blue Bottle
Waking at dawn after yet another restless night some time during the first week in April 1947, Sister suddenly had an inspiration. It was Ivey Sapp who had been responsible for her marriage to Early in the first place, providing the spell that had captured him. Maybe Ivey could now do something about getting him out of Sister’s life. Sister crept downstairs, just as Ivey and Bray were coming in the back door from Baptist Bottom.
“Go away, B
ray,” said Sister. “I got to speak to Ivey in private.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Bray, turning around and going back out the door.
Ivey, not in the least put off by Sister’s urgency in the dim early morning light, unpinned her hat, placed it atop the bread box, and began to slip into her apron. “What you got to say, Miz Caskey?”
“Protect me,” whispered Sister. “Please.”
“From what?” said Ivey. Sister and Miriam had bought Ivey an electric range, but Ivey said biscuits didn’t cook right in an electric oven, so every morning she still fired up the wood stove in the corner of the kitchen. She now set about this task. Sister remembered the skewered chicken heart she had once thrown into that very blaze.
“From Early.”
“Early your husband, Miz Caskey.”
“I don’t want him to be, Ivey.”
Ivey shook her head in a combination of sorrow, disapproval, and confirmation, as if to say, Isn’t that something!
“Help me,” whispered Sister.
“I think a white lady ought to make up her mind what she wants,” remarked Ivey.
“Ivey,” cried Sister. “I wanted Early twenty-five years ago! Mama was still alive. Everything was different. I don’t want him now. I don’t want to go away with him. I want to stay here with you and Miriam, that’s what I want.”
Ivey shook her head again and ignited the crumpled newspaper that lay beneath the kindling that she had placed in the oven.
“Not gone be easy to get rid of Mr. Early,” said Ivey doubtfully. “Not after what we done.”
“You can do it, though,” said Sister earnestly. “I know you can.”
“I...could,” agreed Ivey tentatively.
“And you will?”
“What if it hurts?” Ivey asked.
“I don’t care!”
Ivey said nothing further. Sister grew impatient for more information, and said, “Well? Are you gone help me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It has to be soon,” Sister prodded. “He could be on his way here right this very minute. He could be here before I sit down to breakfast.”
“Miz Caskey, you in my way. I’m not never gone get breakfast on the table ’less you get out of here and leave me alone.”
Sister knew that tone in the black woman’s voice, so she backed out of the kitchen and returned to her bed, though not to sleep. Now that Ivey had agreed to assist her, Sister began to worry that Ivey would dally, and that the changes in her fate would not be rung in time.
An hour later, Sister and Miriam went down to breakfast together. When they had finished, Ivey dropped a small, corked blue bottle into the pocket of Sister’s dress.
“When you see him coming,” said Ivey in a low voice, “when you hear his voice, drink this.”
Sister pressed her hand against the bottle. Poison was stored in blue-glass bottles. “What will it do?”
“Drink every drop,” was all Ivey said, and then she turned away.
. . .
Miriam had finally grown so self-confident in her identity and position at the Caskey mill that she sometimes allowed herself to fall into conversation with her mother. After all, Miriam was in close conference with her father four or five times a day, and it hardly seemed acceptable that she completely ignore her mother. Besides, more than a quarter of a century had passed since Elinor had done the unforgivable—given Miriam away in exchange for her freedom from Mary-Love. Everyone in town accepted the fact that Miriam and her mother would never be close, and the understated reconciliation of the two was looked on rather as the affection between a dog and a cat is seen: an object of curiosity, and sentimentality—and fascination. After all, one never knew at what moment the cat might claw out one of the mooning dog’s eyes, or when the dog might snap up the cat in its fierce jaws.
Miriam and Elinor, however, had a common ground and interest that provided sufficient reason for a number of small private conferences. This common ground was money—the desire for the Caskeys to be even richer than they already were. Miriam would never have allowed her mother to speak to her on the subject of her manner of dress, or young men, or her conduct in regard to Sister or Queenie, but Miriam’s ears prickled with interest when Elinor spoke to her of the Caskey finances. Sometimes, to everyone’s surprise, Elinor and Miriam could be seen out in the yard, rocking slowly in one of the swings that hung between two of Elinor’s water oaks. Miriam sat with her legs drawn up beneath her, and Elinor used one foot to keep the swing in motion; they were absorbed in deep conversation, the subject of which they would never subsequently reveal.
When Oscar called them in to supper, mother and daughter would enter the house separately, as if to deny what everyone had seen. And if Oscar in a whisper ventured to say to his daughter, “I’m so glad you and Elinor are starting to get along,” Miriam would reply only, “It’s less trouble to speak than it is not to speak, Oscar. That’s all.”
One Saturday afternoon early in April, Miriam and Elinor were sitting in the swing and quietly talking when Elinor suddenly said, “Let me ask you, Miriam—”
“What?” said Miriam suddenly and aggressively, as if she expected her mother to open some inappropriate matter of discussion.
Elinor paused for a moment, then asked a question that Miriam certainly hadn’t expected: “How well do you know Grace and Lucille’s farm?”
Miriam looked at her mother mistrustfully. She still wasn’t used to being alone with her, and had been suspecting that Elinor would eventually use this quiet time together to put one over on her. She was now instantly defensive, trying to figure out what trick might lie behind this innocent question. Miriam decided to take it quite literally, and to answer with complete truthfulness. “I know how to get to there,” said Miriam carefully. “And I’ve seen maps of the whole place. I know the house. I’ve been in the orchard, and one time Grace took me out to the pigpen and showed me a sow she had paid eight hundred dollars for. Once I went to see Luvadia in the little house that Escue built for her on the other side of the pond next to the graveyard there.”
“What about the swamp south of the property?”
“Well,” said Miriam, with a loud exhalation of disapproval, “I know you encouraged her to buy it, and I know she bought it. I’ve seen it on a map, too, and it’s enormous, four times as big as the farm itself. I know what she paid for it, and I know that it was the biggest waste of money since—”
“It wasn’t a waste of money,” said Elinor quietly.
“She cain’t farm it!” cried Miriam. “She cain’t do any cutting on it, ’cause there aren’t any roads—and most of it is just swamp and quicksand anyway. She cain’t sell hunting licenses—you know there are big cats still in that swamp? Big cats and alligators. So you tell me why it wasn’t a waste of money.”
“Miriam,” said her mother, “this is between you and me, you hear?”
Miriam didn’t respond. The idea of a confidence between Elinor and herself was not appealing.
“Miriam?” Elinor prompted after a moment.
“I don’t make promises like that.”
“I’m not asking for promises,” said Elinor. “I just don’t want you to say anything about what I’m going to tell you until the time is right...and ripe.”
“What is it, then?”
“I know that land looks worthless. It looks worthless on the map. It’d look worthless if you rowed down the Perdido and looked at it from the river or if you were foolish enough to go traipsing around in it. I know that. And that’s why Grace was able to get it so cheap.”
“No piece of land is ‘cheap’ when you buy that much,” Miriam pointed out. “Grace spent nearly everything that James left her. Now she doesn’t have anything to fall back on.”
“Grace didn’t pay for all that land herself,” said Elinor.
Miriam gave a small start. This was news to her.
“Oscar and I put up most of the money for that property,” Elinor stated evenly.
“Why?” demanded Miriam, stunned.
“Because,” Elinor replied in the same tone of voice, “underneath that swamp there is nothing but oil, oil, oil, and more oil.”
. . .
The next day, Elinor and Miriam drove out to Gavin Pond Farm. When they knocked on Grace and Lucille’s door, no one answered. Miriam went around to the side of the house, and then called out, “I see them! They’re out in the pasture.”
The sun shone bright and hot in a cloudless cerulean sky. The pecan trees wore their brightest spring leaves, whole and luscious, not yet covered with summer’s dust or set upon by caterpillars. And below the trees, the pasture was awash in blooming clover. Lucille sat amid the ravishing red blossoms, with three-year-old Tommy Lee and two-year-old Sammy Sapp gamboling at her side. Grace stood a few yards in front of them taking photographs. The scene was a child’s palette of colors: the blue sky above, the green pecan trees in the middle, and the red clover beneath. When the wind blew it seemed that the earth was covered in a sheet of flame.
Lucille saw Elinor and Miriam and waved.
Mother and daughter went out into the pasture. Miriam allowed her photograph to be taken with her mother’s arm around her waist; Miriam picked up Sammy and Elinor picked up Tommy Lee and Grace snapped another picture. Then Elinor took a photograph of Lucille, Grace, and Miriam all sitting together in the clover.
When they returned to the house, Miriam turned to Grace and said, “Have you got those maps of that land you bought?”
“Of course,” Grace replied.
“Can Elinor and I have a look at them?”
Puzzled, Grace said yes. The maps were spread out on the dining room table, and while Grace and Lucille went into the kitchen and prepared iced tea, they heard Elinor and Miriam speaking in low voices. Lucille peeked through the door, then went back to Grace and whispered, “They’re pointing out things on the map.”
“What on earth,” said Grace, entering the dining room with a tray of glasses, “are y’all looking at on that map?”
Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga Page 63
