Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

  . . .

  In the spring of 1920 again came the rains, but they weren’t as severe as the year before. Everyone was nervous, and looked askance at the rivers every time they came within sight of them—which, considering the geography of Perdido, was frequently enough—and it became a habit to ask Miss Elinor what she thought about the matter. After all, she paddled down the Perdido every day. Even on Saturday and Sunday, when she didn’t have to teach, she’d row to church, with Oscar sitting idly and very much contented in the front of the boat.

  If someone in his Sunday school class twitted him on his allowing Miss Elinor to do all that work, he’d reply only, “Lord, you think I’ve got the strength to get that boat past the junction? I have been thinking of hiring Elinor to go up the Blackwater and knock me down some cypress. She said she’d do it if I hired her a little boy to bring ’em all back to town.”

  Miss Elinor, who saw the river more closely than anyone, ought to know if a flood was imminent. Miss Elinor was reassuring: there would be no flood this year. How could she tell? By the way sticks floated down to the junction, and by what kinds of sticks floated down. By how quickly the whirlpool went around and what dead animals were sucked down to the riverbed. By the color of the Perdido mud—and no one before had ever thought that the Perdido mud changed color, but Miss Elinor assured them that it did indeed. By alterations in sandbars and eddies and how much clay was washed away along the banks—alterations people who lived in Perdido all their lives couldn’t even see, must less interpret. And because Miss Elinor said so, everybody came to believe that there wasn’t going to be a flood this year.

  However, this didn’t mean that there wasn’t any rain. There was plenty of it. During the blooming of the azaleas, from late February into March, there were only light sprinklings, so that the blooms all died natural deaths upon their branches. When it came time for the roses to bloom, there were heavier rains, and water beat into the ground all around them.

  If it would start to rain during school hours, Miss Elinor would send her children to raise the windows high. “Smell that rain!” Miss Elinor would cry, and the children filled their lungs with the water-sodden air. If she was at home, Miss Elinor sat on the front porch and pulled her chair up close to the steps. Zaddie and Grace stood on either side of her and watched as if hypnotized as the rainwater poured off the eaveless roof in a sheer curtain, splashing on the steps and the porch railing and soaking their feet and the hems of their dresses. Zaddie and Grace would have pulled back, but Miss Elinor reassured them, “It’ll dry. Don’t worry, nothing dries faster than rainwater! It’s the sweetest water there is!” And she would lean forward and catch water in her cupped hands as it poured off the roof and hold it out for Grace and Zaddie to lap up like obedient dogs.

  . . .

  Oscar felt guilty not only for having given in to his mother, but because Elinor wouldn’t say to him that he had done wrong. The courtship continued as before, with this exception: whenever the subject of Mary-Love’s promised wedding gift or the date of the ceremony was brought up, Elinor was obstinately silent and could not be brought to respond to Oscar’s interrogatories with more than a grudging yes or a sullen no.

  Oscar was determined to show Elinor that he wasn’t weak, that he could stand up to his mother. Of course he had made his bargain, and he had to stick to that, but there were to be no more bargains or changes; there would not be even a week’s delay in the wedding. And then there was the great question of the house. He told Mary-Love, “Mama, you are putting off.”

  “I am not! Putting off about what?”

  “About this house. You won’t see to it because you don’t want Elinor and me to get married.”

  Mary-Love was silent. She couldn’t bring herself to speak so great a lie as a denial of that accusation would have been.

  “Well, Mama, let me tell you,” Oscar went on, “Elinor and I are going to be married the Saturday after Thanksgiving whether there is a house there or not. And if there is no house, then we’re going to go live somewhere else. And ‘somewhere else’ may be in Perdido and it may not be...”

  Mary-Love was persuaded by this single speech. She knew her son would do what he said, just as she was convinced he would keep the bargain he had made with her. Though the weather was still cold, she went to Mobile the next day and talked to some architects. One of these men came to Perdido the following Monday and looked at the lot and had further discussion with Mary-Love about what kind of house she had in mind. Construction on the house was begun the second week in March.

  It was to be built on the far side of Mary-Love’s house, on the edge of the sandy lot next to the town line. In fact, all the windows on the west side of the house would face directly into the wall of pine and hemlock that demarcated the edge of the Caskey property. It was set back farther from the road than Mary-Love’s house, but since the Perdido curved northward just at that point, the houses were equidistant from the water. In order to begin building, six of Miss Elinor’s trees had to be hewn down. These six trees were already of sufficient girth to be hauled away to the mill; there they were sliced into narrow planks, which eventually were used for the lattice-work on the back of the new house. In the whole business, Mary-Love’s sole consolation was the destruction of these six of Elinor’s trees.

  Day after day the building went on no more than two hundred feet from where Elinor sat on the front porch of James Caskey’s house. If she had stood and leaned forward only a little she might have seen the new house rising, but Elinor would not go to so much trouble as that. Zaddie, at her feet, said, “Miss El’nor, why don’t you go and look at your new house?”

  “Miss Mary-Love is building that house,” said Elinor.

  “But it’s for you!” cried Grace, who had only lately grown accustomed to the notion that Elinor would be leaving. She had secretly formed a dim little plan to run away from home the day after Elinor married and send back a note that she would return only on the condition that she be adopted by Elinor.

  “When that house is finished and belongs to Oscar and me,” said Elinor, “there’ll be time enough for me to go through and see what the rooms are like.”

  Oscar knew that Elinor hadn’t been in the house, although by the first of May you could walk right up to the second floor. It was to be the biggest and finest house in Perdido, and he delighted in describing it to her; he ticked off its amenities and sketched diagrams of its layout as if it were a carved marble tomb on the other side of the world that he doubted she would ever visit rather than the house being constructed next door but one and which was intended for her own habitation. Elinor listened patiently to all his raptures, and when he had finished said merely, “It sounds as if it’s going to be very nice, Oscar. I know you can hardly wait to be in it.”

  “But what about you! Mama is building this house as much for you as for me, Elinor!”

  “Ohhh!” said Elinor, “I couldn’t begin to think about that till the Saturday after Thanksgiving.”

  After one too many conversations just such as this, Oscar went to Sister and said, “Sister, Elinor thinks I’m gone back out. She thinks I’m gone let Mama trick me again—you know Mama tricked me, don’t you?”

  “Elinor is just mad,” said Sister. “Elinor is just disappointed you weren’t smarter.”

  “I wasn’t prepared!” Oscar protested. “Mama tricked me at the dinner table!”

  “Men s’posed to be smarter than women,” said Sister.

  “Nobody in Perdido has ever said that within my hearing,” said Oscar. “And, Sister, I don’t believe for one minute that you mean it!”

  “No,” said Sister after a moment, “I don’t mean it. Listen to me, Oscar.” In her voice was a tone Oscar had never heard his sister employ before. They were in Sister’s room, and Sister motioned for Oscar to seat himself. He did so, in a chair near the window; he could see the river and he could see Elinor’s trees.

  “Oscar, Elinor is biding her time.”

 
“What do you mean?”

  “I mean that Elinor is waiting to see if you are gone act right.”

  “Sister, I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “If you would stop and think,” said Sister in an exasperated voice, “you would know. The reason that Elinor has not said anything is that she wants to play fair.”

  “Play fair?” Oscar echoed.

  “Oscar, don’t you think that if Miss Elinor had put her foot down at the beginning you and she would be married this minute? Don’t you see that that house next door would be finished and you would be living in it?”

  Oscar considered this a moment and then nodded his head in agreement.

  “Oscar, you are dense—”

  “I know it!” he exclaimed, and he meant it.

  “—because you don’t see how much Elinor and Mama are alike. Mama tells you what to do and you do it. Elinor tells you what to do and you do it.”

  “But, Sister, that’s the whole problem. Elinor won’t tell me what she wants!”

  “Of course, she won’t,” said Sister. “She is waiting for you to do a little something on your own. That’s why she won’t say anything. She’s not gone say anything against Mama. She’s not gone tell you what you ought to do. But, Oscar...my Lord, if you sat down for five minutes you’d know what to do. And why you haven’t done it, I’ll never know!”

  Sister got up and walked out of the room. Oscar sat there a quarter of an hour longer staring out the window at the river. In all his life he had never heard Sister speak so much to the purpose.

  . . .

  On the last Thursday in May, Oscar dropped by his uncle’s house on his way home. As usual, Elinor, Zaddie, and Grace sat on the front porch. Zaddie and Elinor were shelling early peas; Grace was reading aloud from a book about Eskimos. Oscar leaned over close to Elinor and said without preamble, “Elinor, you think you could take tomorrow off from school?”

  “I could,” replied Elinor. “Is there a reason why I should?”

  “There is,” said Oscar.

  “Then I’ll do it,” said Elinor. She didn’t ask his reason.

  “Why?” said Grace.

  “Shhh!” said Oscar. “Not a word to my mama, not a word to anybody, you hear, Grace? You hear, Zaddie?”

  “We hear!” cried Zaddie and Grace in unison.

  “I’m taking off tomorrow, too,” said Oscar. “Elinor, I’ll be over just as soon as Mama leaves for Mobile. She is going with Caroline DeBordenave. Miss Caroline likes to leave early, I know that.”

  Elinor nodded, and said only, “Oscar, Miss Mary-Love is looking at you from the side porch and probably wondering what you are whispering about.”

  “Hey, Mama!” cried Oscar, as he turned and waved. “I’m home now!”

  . . .

  Caroline DeBordenave and Mary-Love Caskey left at seven o’clock the following morning in Caroline’s automobile. They intended to stay the night in Mobile. Oscar, who had lingered over his breakfast so long that his mother began to wonder, got up and watched the car go off. “Sister,” he said, “you gone help Elinor and me today?”

  “Help you what?” asked Sister, slicing the crust off a piece of toast.

  Oscar turned back with a grin.

  “Help us get married, that’s what.”

  . . .

  Zaddie was raking the yard and glancing up at the clear sky, wondering when the clouds would roll in—she knew it was going to rain because Miss Elinor had told her so. Miss Elinor, Grace, and James Caskey were still at breakfast. Oscar walked into James’s house without knocking.

  Elinor said, “Zaddie is going over to the school at seven-thirty and tell Miz Digman I’m not feeling well.” She still did not ask Oscar the reason for his request that she stay at home.

  “I am head of the school board,” said James Caskey. “Oscar, I cain’t approve of Elinor’s lying to Miz Digman, so I want you to tell Elinor and I want you to tell me what all this is about.”

  “Elinor and I are gone be married today.”

  Elinor didn’t look a bit surprised. “What does Miss Mary-Love say to that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Oscar.

  “What about your bargain?” asked Elinor.

  “Mama tricked me into that! Mama got me by surprise!”

  “This is not going to make her happy, Oscar. She may even take back her house.”

  “And give it to who?” demanded James Caskey, actually pleased with Oscar’s decision, even if it meant deceiving both Miz Digman and Mary-Love.

  “Me!” cried Grace. “I want it. It’s got a sleeping porch on the second floor and Aunt Mary-Love said there was gone be four swings on it. Daddy, you and me and Zaddie can live there.”

  “I am not leaving this house,” replied James, who always responded to his daughter’s wildest suggestions with the utmost gravity.

  “Mama cain’t do anything,” said Oscar. “I have got a license and I have talked to Miz Driver and that is that.”

  “I’m glad,” said James. “I think you are doing the right thing, Oscar. I think you are going about it the right way, but I just want Miss Elinor to know that we are all gone shrivel up and die without her. Aren’t we, Grace?”

  Grace nodded her head vigorously. “We’re gone die!”

  “You are not,” said Elinor. “Where is this wedding supposed to take place? And when is it?”

  “Today, of course. Today, while Mama is in Mobile. I don’t know where, I—”

  “Here!” cried Grace.

  “Here,” said James. “Have it right here in the parlor.”

  “All right,” said Oscar.

  Elinor took Oscar’s proposal that they be married immediately with an almost bewildering calmness, as if she had for months past expected this most unexpected thing. She merely said, “Oscar, I want to finish my breakfast. Then I will have to see about something to wear. You haven’t given me much time to prepare.”

  Sister, in fact, was seeing about the dress. She had called Miz Daughtry, the dressmaker, and before Elinor had got up from the table, that woman was knocking on the door. Elinor had a biscuit in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other as Miz Daughtry took her measurements.

  All morning long, while Miz Daughtry sat in the sewing room and cut out the dress that Elinor Dammert was to be married in, Ivey Sapp baked cakes and pies, and Roxie Welles worked on the wedding supper. Zaddie took a hatchet and went down to the banks of the Perdido and hacked off tree branches to decorate James Caskey’s parlor.

  Elinor and Oscar and James sat down for a hurried dinner at twelve o’clock, joined by Annie Bell Driver. Elinor had been in town almost a year now, but was close really to no one but James and Grace and Oscar. Outside the Caskey family and the children at the school, Elinor saw no one, with the exception of Annie Bell Driver, who would stop for a quarter-hour or so when she drove her wagon past James Caskey’s house and saw Miss Elinor sitting on the porch. Elinor and the female preacher were by no means intimate, but Annie Bell knew Mary-Love and knew what Mary-Love thought of the engagement of her son to Miss Elinor. So Oscar had asked Annie Bell to perform the wedding ceremony not only because of her friendship with Elinor, but also because no other preacher in town would risk Mary-Love’s displeasure.

  After dinner Elinor sent Zaddie with a note to tell Miz Digman that she was feeling much better, so much better in fact that she had decided she might as well go on and get married to Oscar and probably wouldn’t be back in the school until Tuesday. Zaddie brought back congratulations from Miz Digman. She brought back Grace, too, which was just as well since Grace was almost delirious with thoughts of the wedding and hadn’t heard a word that her teacher had said all morning long. In the afternoon Elinor and Oscar packed for the honeymoon and Sister sat weeping on the front porch. By two o’clock it had begun to rain, just a little at first from clouds that didn’t even completely cover the sky. The sun shone through to the south, and formed a rainbow that arched over the Perdido. Ivey Sapp told Za
ddie that the rain falling as the sun shone was indisputable evidence that the devil was beating his wife.

  . . .

  “Sister!” said Oscar, coming through the front door out onto the porch, “what are you crying for?”

  “You’re getting married, Oscar!”

  “I know it,” said Oscar. “I am doing it on purpose, too. I have gone out of my way.”

  “You are leaving me here with Mama. It’s a crying shame! I want to go with you and Elinor tonight. Take me with you!”

  “Sister, we cain’t take you on our honeymoon. You know that.”

  “I want to go! I don’t want to be the one to tell Mama you got married while she was out shopping for portieres!”

  “I’ll tell her—after the honeymoon. Though truth to tell, Sister, I don’t much look forward to it. But it’s my wedding and I’ll be the one who tells her.”

  “Oscar, she’s gone know as soon as she gets back and sees you gone and sees Elinor gone too!”

  “You tell Mama we couldn’t wait, you tell Mama I couldn’t wait all summer long.”

  The rain was pouring down off the roof and splashing on the porch railing; Oscar pulled back. Elinor waved to him from next door. “Half an hour!” she called. “Send Zaddie over here and let Roxie fix her head!”

  . . .

  The wedding was at five o’clock. The parlor was decorated with the hemlock and cedar branches that had overspread the Perdido that morning. Miz Daughtry hadn’t had time to finish the dress, and it was only basted together, so the dressmaker warned Elinor not to make any sudden moves or try to lift her arms. Zaddie and Grace were flower girls, dressed in white, with baskets of crape myrtle petals over their arms. James Caskey gave Elinor away. Roxie and Ivey and Bray were the only guests, and they stood in the dining room door. Sister sat on the sofa and wept bitter tears.