Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

by Michael McDowell

  “There’s never been enough money,” the mayor argued weakly. The engineer shrugged again. “What can we do?” the mayor asked then.

  The colonel spoke now, glancing out the window where the rain was falling steadily. He was uncomfortable, for his uniform was wet through and he had an upset stomach from the journey in the helicopter. “I’ll send down some men. They’ll start arriving tonight and tomorrow. They can try to shore up the levee, filling sandbags, evacuate people if need be, that sort of thing. Can’t promise anything, though, can’t promise they’ll do any good. The only thing I can promise is that they’ll be here working their goddamn asses off to save this town.”

  “Save it,” repeated the mayor in whispered alarm. “What happens,” he went on tremulously, “if the levee does break?”

  “Well,” said one of the other engineers, a younger man who did not understand the niceties of evasion and prevarication, “the water breaks through in one place, and it takes a hell of a lot more of the levee with it. A wall of water rushes in. You’d better have already gotten your people out, because there won’t be anyone or anything left in the path of that water. The water would rush in so fast that it would be better to have had no levee at all.”

  What the man said was accurate, but the colonel and the other engineers glared at him: they had wanted to persuade the mayor, not frighten him, into the advisability of evacuation.

  “The hospital...” said the colonel. “Where is the hospital in this town?”

  “On high ground,” replied the mayor’s wife, who entered now with coffee and towels.

  “Just as well,” said the officer, and no more.

  . . .

  No one in Perdido noticed that Elinor Caskey had not been out of her house in ten days. For ten days the rain had fallen, and Perdido thought of nothing but that. Some children were taken out of the school and sent to their grandparents in places where it wasn’t raining and there was no danger of flooding. Those who had beach houses at Gulf Shores or Destin were suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to visit those places, though April was still quite early in the season for the beach. Quietly, at Billy Bronze’s suggestion, all the important files of the mill were packed up and taken out to Gavin Pond Farm. It was true that the farmhouse was no more than half a mile from the river, but it was situated on much higher ground than Perdido, and unlikely to be inundated. When that was done, Tommy Lee went to Elinor’s house and took away the files in Billy’s office, too. And so, day by day, and little by little, Tommy Lee took everything that was important to the Caskeys—including the boxes of jewelry in the bottom of Miriam’s dresser—out to Gavin Pond Farm. Grace and Lucille had made so many additions to the house over the years that there was plenty of room for everything to be stored.

  After his first interview with Elinor in her bed Tommy Lee did not visit her again; in fact, when he and Escue went to the house to collect some records from Billy’s office, Tommy Lee sidled quickly past the door to Elinor’s room.

  Lucille and Grace did pay a visit to Elinor, a single visit of state, quite formal and brief.

  Lucille, looking more and more like Queenie every day, and already surpassing her mother in the matter of girth, stood at the window and looked out. Through the curtain of water that spilled off the roof, Lucille could see the gently twisted narrow trunks of the water oaks that Elinor had planted before she was married to Oscar. She heard their branches creaking beneath the weight of the water, and once after a sodden crack, she saw a large branch, leafless and rotten, fall from the very top of the tree to the ground, where it landed with a loud splash in the sheet of shallow water that covered the yard. Lucille did not want to look at Elinor. Tommy Lee had told them that Elinor was dying.

  Grace had pulled a chair up close to the side of the bed.

  “Tommy Lee says you are dying,” said Grace. “Did he know what he was talking about?”

  Elinor nodded solemnly. “I am dying,” she said.

  “Are you in pain?” Grace asked.

  “Yes,” said Elinor.

  “Is there anything Lucille and I can do?”

  “No,” said Elinor. “One thing,” she amended.

  “What?” said Lucille, turning with alacrity. She felt helpless, and was glad to hear there was something to be done for Elinor.

  Elinor spoke softly, but with deliberation. “Tell Tommy Lee that it was not his fault.”

  Grace and Lucille exchanged glances.

  “Does he think it was?” asked Grace. When Elinor nodded, Grace said, “What is wrong with you, Elinor?”

  Elinor shook her head. “Just make sure Tommy Lee knows that it wasn’t his fault.”

  Lucille was about to speak, but Grace said quickly and with finality. “We will. It wasn’t his fault,” she repeated, as if to get the message straight.

  “You’re tired,” said Lucille solicitously. “We’ll come back tomorrow.”

  “No,” said Elinor. “Say goodbye now.”

  “You have to let us come back!” exclaimed Lucille.

  “Stay out at the farm,” said Elinor. “Don’t come back into town.”

  “Why not?” asked Grace.

  “Because the levee is going to break,” said Elinor. “And I don’t want you to get caught.”

  Lucille involuntarily glanced out of the window at the kudzu-covered embankment beyond the water oaks. “It’s not gone break, Elinor!”

  “Are you sure?” said Grace to Elinor, ignoring Lucille’s wishful thinking. Elinor nodded. “Then you ought to let us take you out to the farm where you’ll be safe. Lucille, start packing Elinor a bag.”

  “No,” said Elinor. “I’m staying here.”

  “And get washed away?” Lucille demanded.

  Elinor only smiled.

  “What about Billy and Zaddie?” asked Grace. “What happens to them if the levee breaks? You ought to let them bring you out to the farm. We’ve got so much room!”

  “I’m tired,” said Elinor weakly. “Say goodbye to me and go back out to the farm. You’ll be safe there.”

  Lucille and Grace stood at the side of the bed holding hands.

  “I cain’t say goodbye!” exclaimed Lucille. “Oh, Elinor, don’t make me say goodbye!”

  “Goodbye, Lucille. Queenie was very proud of you. We’ve all been proud of you.”

  Lucille turned away and began to weep softly.

  “Goodbye, Elinor,” said Grace.

  “Open that top drawer,” said Elinor. “And take out the box that’s right at the front.”

  Grace did so; inside the box were Elinor’s black pearls.

  “James gave those to Genevieve,” said Elinor. “They should come to you now.”

  “No,” said Grace. “I couldn’t take them.”

  “Mary-Love got all of Genevieve’s other jewelry, and Miriam has it now. Miriam’s not likely to give any of it up, so take the pearls, Grace.”

  “I’ll wait,” she said softly.

  “You can’t wait. When I die, I’m not leaving anything behind.” Elinor glanced around the room and smiled. “Not a thing. If you don’t take them now, those pearls will be lost forever, and I’d hate to think of that happening.”

  Grace nodded and put the box of pearls into her purse.

  “You’re the only one left who was alive when I came to Perdido,” said Elinor. “It’s hard to believe they’re all dead.”

  “I remember,” said Grace. “I remember sitting on your knee out at Miz Driver’s church. I remember when you came to live with Daddy and me.”

  “A long time ago. You were such a little girl back then—a prissy little girl.” Elinor laughed softly.

  “I loved you very much, Elinor,” said Grace simply. “I always have. I do now.”

  “It hurts me to say goodbye,” said Elinor. “To you especially.”

  Grace leaned over the bed and quickly embraced Elinor. Then she stood up, wiped her eyes, and walked out of the room. Lucille quickly followed.

  “Goodbye! Goodb
ye!” Elinor called weakly after them until her voice was lost to them beneath the beating of the rain against the windows of the house.

  . . .

  On the eleventh day of rain, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officially advised all residents of Perdido to evacuate the town and move to higher ground. Many had already done so, and those who had stubbornly stayed, trusting the levee and their own good luck, gave second thoughts to the advisability of remaining in a town that might very soon be washed away. The foolhardily curious climbed the levee, and were astonished at the height of the water. The grove of live oaks north of the junction was now no more than a black field of water punctuated by monumental green domes. The forests to the northwest of Perdido were flooded, and no logging could be done within ten miles of the town. To the northeast, the swamp in which the Blackwater River had its source had long since overflowed its bounds and the road between Perdido and Atmore was closed. To the south of town, the Perdido was more than twice its usual width; shrubs and small trees along its banks were drowned, and a number of even the biggest trees had been uprooted by the pressure of the flowing black water.

  The National Guard had been in town for three days, sandbagging the levee, and knocking on the doors of every house to make certain that the residents were alert to the danger. Downtown shops closed, and trucks were loaded with merchandise to be stored temporarily on high ground. The Caskey mill shut down under orders from Miriam—now in New York City—and most of the workers left town. All the lumber and other wood products that had been warehoused in the vicinity were trucked down to Bay Minette, not because Bay Minette was convenient, but because the road to the southwest was the only one that seemed safe against flooding. A siren was installed in the room beneath the clocks in the town hall, and its sounding was to be the warning that the levee had broken.

  The installation of that siren convinced the doubting Thomases of Perdido, as nothing else had before, that the town lay in great danger. The National Guard, these people considered, was always doing something or other to keep their men busy, and they might as well fill sandbags as anything else. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was always looking for an excuse to throw its weight around and declare this and that construction unsafe and dangerous. The mayor always grabbed any opportunity to appear important and capable. The sandbags, the engineers’ warnings, and the mayor’s frenzied busyness could be shrugged off, but that siren in the room beneath the town hall clocks could not be. The rivers were at thirty-one feet, and everyone—or almost everyone—left town.

  The patients in the Perdido hospital had all been transferred to Bay Minette or Mobile. Because the hospital was on high ground, the National Guard now slept in its beds at night. They were confident that the town had been completely evacuated.

  The supports for the bridge that crossed from downtown to Baptist Bottom had been weakened by the water, and on the evening of the twelfth day of rain the bridge came loose. The underpinnings of the Baptist Bottom side went first, and with terrible creakings and snappings the bridge swung southward along the line of the current. Two unlucky National Guardsmen were walking across the bridge at the time, their jeep having stalled in a huge puddle in Baptist Bottom. They ran and jumped for the levee just as the bridge was knocked completely loose. One of them made it, but the other slipped in the mud of the levee and slid into the water. He caught, for a moment, onto a twisted piling of the bridge that remained. His hands and arms were torn as he attempted to climb out of the reach of the rushing water. The noise made by the bridge as it was wracked and crumbled was deafening; the incessant rain out of the black sky was blinding. The National Guardsmen who had gained the safety of the levee heard his friend scream from his precarious perch on that tilted piling, and he thought he saw him dragged under the water—by two long arms that ended in flat webbed hands.

  . . .

  Billy Bronze sat in the dark on the upstairs screened-in porch on the evening of the twelfth day of rain. The screens were opaque with rainwater. Rainwater splashed on the half-railing all around the porch. Rainwater still poured in a steady sheet from the eaves of the house.

  He sat in the dark, for at night now he and Zaddie did not turn on any lights except in Elinor’s room, and there the curtains were tightly drawn. The National Guard had been there three days ago, and Billy had promised them that he would go away within the hour. Zaddie had gone around, locking up, drawing the curtains, just as if they had intended to leave. Elinor would not go, and Zaddie and Billy had no intention of abandoning her.

  It occurred to him now, almost for the first time, that this loyalty might mean his own death, and Zaddie’s. If the levee behind the house broke, then they and the house were sure to be swept away. He and Zaddie would be drowned or crushed in the catastrophe.

  He pondered this for some time, not out of fear, but as a way to pass the time. It somehow did not seem so much for Elinor to ask; he certainly had no intention of remonstrating with her on the matter. Even if she did die before the levee broke—even if she were dead now, he thought, glancing over his shoulder—he and Zaddie would probably stay on with the corpse until the rains subsided and the rivers receded. Or until the river broke through the levee. It somehow wouldn’t be right to carry Elinor’s body out through the rain.

  He continued to sit and rock slowly in the swing, and though it grew late, he did not listen for the slow and surreptitious footsteps to come up the stairs on a visit to Elinor. Frances and Nerita—he thought of those visitors by name now—had stayed away since Elinor had appeared with the bullet hole in her breast. They had not come since the day that the rain began its assault on Perdido.

  He rose and went inside. There was something a little frightening about being in a house that was supposed to be empty, in a town that had been evacuated, knowing that the siren, if and when it blew, would blow to warn them alone, they who would not heed its warning. Billy felt himself an intruder in that dark silent house. Only Elinor’s bedroom, with a single lamp burning with pine-scented oil—and burning always, throughout the black night and the dark, rain-sodden days—seemed of any comfort to him at all. And that room housed a dying old woman.

  He was turning the knob on the door to Elinor’s sitting room when he thought he heard a noise at the far end of the hallway, something that wasn’t rain, that wasn’t the creaking of furniture, something that was as surreptitious as those footsteps of Frances’s had once been. Billy did not pause, but pushed open the door of the sitting room and went inside. Long accustomed to the darkness, he found the line of light around the door into Elinor’s bedroom blinding. He stood a few moments until his eyes had adjusted, and then went in.

  Thin and pale and looking ancient with all her makeup long washed off, her eyes closed, and her feeble hands curled palms up atop the neatly folded covers, Elinor Caskey lay in the center of the bed. She was the very picture of a dying woman, like an old engraving—sentimental and pretty—of how such a thing ought to be done. Zaddie lay sleeping on a cot at the side of the bed; she stirred drowsily as Billy entered. She and Billy did not leave Elinor alone for a minute.

  Elinor slowly opened her eyes and, seeing Billy, smiled.

  “How are you?” he asked quietly.

  “Poor Billy,” she said. “You won’t have much longer to wait.”

  Billy shrugged, and went and sat on the edge of the bed. Elinor hadn’t the strength to move her hands, but he saw them trembling there, and grasped them both.

  “Tonight,” Elinor said, “you stay with me—you and Zaddie, both of you, all night long, you hear?”

  Billy’s eyebrows creased, but he did not argue. If he had accepted her refusal to see a doctor or enter the hospital, was he going to balk at such a minor point as this?

  “Zaddie,” said Elinor. “Wake up.”

  Though Elinor’s voice was scarcely a whisper, Zaddie instantly roused herself. “Ma’am?”

  “Go downstairs and fix some food for you and Billy. Don’t worry about the lights. Nobody’s g
oing to be out tonight. Then bring it back up here. Go now, and don’t dawdle.”

  Zaddie did just as she was told. When she had gone, Elinor said to Billy, “Get out the box of keys that’s in the second drawer of the bureau. Go through them and find the ones that fit the sitting room door and the door of this room.” She closed her eyes then, as if the effort to say even that much had cost her a lot.

  The sitting room door had never been locked before. Neither had the door of this bedroom. Billy knew that. He went through a dozen keys before he found the two that turned the tumblers in the locks. He then waited at the door of the sitting room for Zaddie to return. In a few moments she came up the stairs bearing a tray with sandwiches and beer. He opened the door for her, and then whispered, “I’m just going to get my glasses. I’ll be right back.”

  He went across the hall to his own room, fumbled for the right case on top of the dresser, tried to think if there was anything else he might need but could think of nothing. Then he was startled to hear, above the noise of the rain, two voices. They came from inside the house and they were not those of Elinor and Zaddie; they were of a woman and a child, and they came from the front room.

  Slipping his glasses into the pocket of his shirt, without thinking he went to the door to the linen closet. He quietly turned the handle and pulled it slowly open. That closed windowless corridor was pitch dark at first, but then Billy could see that the door at its opposite end was slowly being opened. There in the dim light that suffused the front room, he could see an old woman with her hand on the knob. Billy did not recognize her. Next to her was a child whom he did not recognize either. The old woman gave a little smile, pointed at Billy, then pushed the boy into the corridor. The boy, holding out his hands before him, stumbled down between the shelves of sheets and towels toward Billy.

  Billy slammed the door shut, and rushed out of his room and across the hallway, not even glancing back. He stumbled into the sitting room and slammed the door closed. He pulled what he thought was the right key from his pocket and slipped it quickly into the lock. The key did not turn. He jerked it out, and tried a second key. This one did turn, but even before Billy had taken his hand away, he saw the knob of the door turning.