But the flood wasn’t all bad, they would say later. When it cut off the town’s water supply for several days, the citizens of Perdido understood the inadequacy of their present system and quickly voted an expenditure of forty thousand dollars to build a new pumping station on the nearest two acres of land that hadn’t been flooded. Because everyone’s yard was torn up and most of the streets had been washed away, it seemed the appropriate time to install a modern sewage system—and so, with money borrowed from the owners of the three mills, new sewers were laid into the ground all over the town. Even Baptist Bottom was not forgotten in these improvements, and for the first time there were streetlamps to illuminate the tin roofs of the shacks at night.
Perdido was forgotten by all but the Baldwin County legislator who tried, unsuccessfully, to get loans in Montgomery, and by several firms in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania who had placed orders with one of the mill companies and now learned how late those orders would be delivered. But the effects of the flood remained a long while in Perdido, months and months after the waters had receded, even after the sewer lines had been laid and the new pumping station was drawing up the coldest and sweetest water that anyone in town had ever tasted. The stink of the flood never entirely went away, it seemed. Even after the slime had been swept out of the houses, the walls scrubbed down, new carpets laid, new furniture bought, new curtains hung; even after every ruined thing had been carted away and burned and the broken branches and rotting carcasses of dead animals had been washed out of the yards and grass had begun to grow again, Perdido would start up the stairs last thing at night and pause with its hand on the banister, and beneath the jasmine and the roses on the front porch, beneath the leftover pungency of supper from the kitchen, and beneath the starch in its own collar—Perdido would smell the flood. It had seeped into the boards and beams and very bricks of the houses and buildings. Now and then, it would remind Perdido of what desolation there had been, and what desolation might very well come upon the town again.
Chapter 3
Water Oak
During the five days that Miss Elinor spent at the Zion Grace Church, she had made herself as useful as possible, keeping the children, doing a little cooking, cleaning the church, washing the bedclothes, and complaining not at all. She had won the admiration of everyone but Mary-Love, and Mary-Love’s antipathy toward Miss Elinor was a subject of some remark. For lack of any better reason, it was ascribed to family pride—Mary-Love had seen what inroads Miss Elinor had made into the affection of Grace and the esteem of James Caskey, and possibly saw this as a dangerous disruptive element in her family. That, at any rate, was the least illogical possibility—though it was only a hypothesis; the real cause was probably something else altogether. No one thought to ask Mary-Love directly why she didn’t like Miss Elinor, but, as it happened, she wouldn’t have known what to answer. The truth was, she didn’t know. It was, Mary-Love confusedly told herself, Miss Elinor’s red hair—by which she meant: it was the way Miss Elinor looked, it was the way Miss Elinor talked, carried herself, picked up Grace, made friends of Miz Driver, and had even learned to distinguish among Roland, Oland, and Poland Driver—the female preacher’s three insignificant sons—and who had ever done that before? Such energy expended in a strange community seemed to indicate a firm purpose at work—and what could Miss Elinor’s purpose be?
“I am sorry for that child,” said Mary-Love emphatically as she and Sister sat rocking on the front porch, peering through the screen of dead-looking camellias to James’s house and watching for Elinor Dammert to appear at one of the windows. Mary-Love and Sister had been back in their house for nearly two weeks, and still the stink of the flood wasn’t out of everything.
“What child, Mama?” Sister was embroidering a pillowcase with green and yellow thread. So much linen had been ruined!
“Little Grace Caskey, that’s what child! Your tiny cousin!”
“Why you feel sorry for Grace? She does fine as long as Genevieve stays away.”
“That’s what I mean,” said Mary-Love. “For all intents and purposes, James has got rid of that woman, I am thankful to say. James had no business being married in the first place. James was not cut out for marriage, and he should have known it as well as everybody else in this town knew it. You could have knocked the entire population of Perdido down with a feather—the same feather—when James Caskey came back here with a wife in a sleeping compartment. Sometimes I think James was smart, and signed a paper with Genevieve that said she could come to Perdido, get pregnant, leave him a baby, and then go away again forever. I wouldn’t be surprised if he signs a check every month to the liquor store in Nashville giving Genevieve an open account. An open account at a liquor store would keep Genevieve in Moose Paw, Saskatchewan!”
“Mama,” said Sister patiently, “I never ever heard of that place.” It was the habit of mother and daughter to maintain contradictory stances on any question: if Mary-Love were excited, then Sister remained calm. If Sister waxed indignant, then Mary-Love became conciliatory. The technique had developed over the course of many years, and now was so natural to them that they did it without thinking or willing it to be so.
“I made it up. But, Sister, James got rid of that woman—we don’t know how, we are just grateful that he did—and what does he do first chance he gets?”
“What?”
“He takes in another who’s just as bad!”
“Miss Elinor?” asked Sister in a voice which suggested she didn’t think the comparison was justified.
“You knew who I was talking about, Sister.”
It was hard to rock steadily on the front porch now that so many of the floorboards had been warped. Grady Henderson’s Fancy Goods Store had brought in a shipment of scented candles, which were bought up immediately. One of them burned now in a saucer on the floor between Mary-Love and Sister; its scent of vanilla did something to cover the rankness of the river soil that had been deposited all around the house. Bray and three men from the mill, which wasn’t yet back in operation, were systematically turning over all the dirt in the front yard, burying what had been laid down by the flood.
“Mama, your voice carries. Don’t let Miss Elinor hear you.”
“She won’t hear me unless she’s listening at the window,” replied Mary-Love, in an even louder voice. “And I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if she were!”
“What don’t you like about her?” asked Sister mildly. “I like her. I don’t see any reason not to like her, to tell you the truth, Mama.”
“I do. I see every reason in the world.” Mary-Love paused a moment, then suggested: “She has red hair.”
“Lots of people have red hair. That McCall boy I went to school with—you remember him?—who died at Verdun last year, he had red hair. You told me you liked him.”
“Oh, not like this woman, Sister! You ever see a color like hers? A color like Perdido mud? I never have. Besides, it’s not just the red hair.”
“What is it, then?”
“Where did she come from? Why did she come to Perdido? What does she want? How did she get James to ask her to come and live with him? Has James ever asked any other young lady to sit at his table?”
“No, Mama, of course not. But Miss Elinor answered all those questions. Oscar told you all the answers. She came from Fayette County, and she came down here to teach. She heard there was an opening.”
“There wasn’t!”
“Then she was wrong, Mama, but there’s an opening now. Miz McGhee has already sent three postcards from Tallahassee. That’s what I heard.”
“She made that opening.”
“She didn’t, Mama. How can you say that? The flood made that opening. High water caused that vacancy in the schoolroom!”
Mary-Love frowned and stood from her chair. “I haven’t seen her pass a window in ten minutes. I wonder what she’s doing in there? I’ll bet she’s plundering drawers!”
“She’s helping clean up. James told me he had
never seen anybody work as hard as she did in a house that wasn’t her own.”
Mary-Love sat down again and began plying her needle furiously. “You know what I think, Sister? I think she gone try to talk James into getting a divorce from Genevieve so she can take right over. That’s why she’s working so hard on that house—because she thinks it’s gone be hers! A divorce! Can you even think of it, Sister?”
“Mama, you cain’t stand Genevieve.”
“Well, I don’t think James should get a divorce. I think Genevieve should die or go away forever. What does James need with a wife? James has got little Grace—now is that child sweet? And he has got you and me and Oscar right next door. If James wanted, I would cut down every last one of these camellia bushes—they’re practically dead now anyway—and he could see us every time he looked out the window. You know what kind of thing makes James happy? Buying silver. I have seen him do it. He sees a cake knife he doesn’t have, his face shines. A fish slicer?—the same thing, a shining face. Now, with all that, not to mention the mill to keep him busy and raising a little girl, what on earth does he need a wife for?”
It was a peculiar thing that no scandal was breathed in the length and width of Perdido over the fact that James Caskey, a well-off man who was mercifully separated from his wife, had invited a very pretty, unattached, and penniless young woman to share his home. The people of Perdido looked at it this way: here was a teacher come to town, whose money and certificates and clothing had been lost in the flood. She needed a place to stay until she got on her feet. James Caskey had this big house with at least two extra bedrooms in it and he had a little girl who could use a woman around to teach her manners, and with his wife off in Nashville doing nobody-dared-suggest-what, James himself needed somebody to talk to at supper. At the same time, everybody whistled and wondered what Genevieve would say, if only Genevieve knew. Elinor Dammert was smart; people could tell that just by looking at her. And Elinor Dammert probably had a temper; anybody with hair that color had a temper. But whether Elinor Dammert could stand up to Genevieve Caskey was a question charitable people hoped would never be put to the test.
. . .
The damage inflicted by the floodwaters had not been confined to animals and man-made objects. Flowers, shrubs, and trees had perished by the thousands, and the whole town had to be replanted. The most extensive damage had been to the Caskey grounds. All the trees had been uprooted. There were no more crape myrtles or roses, no more beds of day lilies, bearded irises, and King Alfreds, no more hedges of oleander and ligustrum, no more specimens of hawthorn or Japanese magnolia. The azaleas remained in their beds around the house, but they were dead. The camellias looked dead, but Bray said they had survived and Mary-Love accepted his opinion—at any rate, she did not demand that they be dug up. And certainly there was no more grass. The river had deposited over the ground half a foot or more of sopping red mud. Every day, Mary-Love and Sister watched for blades of grass to sprout through the red soil, but every day they watched in vain.
The DeBordenave and Turk yards, which had suffered equally, had been dug up and reseeded, and the mud from the Perdido seemed to have brought with it a great number of nutrients, for their lawns sprang up sudden, green, and splendid, growing more lushly and certainly faster than ever before. But next door at James Caskey’s, the yard was a flat expanse of dark mud. And at Mary-Love’s place it was the same. After a few weeks the sun dried out that dark river soil and left a layer of gray sand two inches deep, with the reddish river soil packed beneath that. Sister picked up a fistful of this sand and let it drift through her fingers. Mixed in with the sand were the desiccated grass seeds that Bray broadcast every Friday afternoon. The destruction of the Caskey lawns was a subject for comment in Perdido, for the little plague of sterility was confined only to the Caskey lots. The DeBordenaves were not affected at all, the sand stopping in a straight line at the end of the Caskey property and the grass beginning immediately on the other side. The sand continued to the edge of Mary-Love’s deeded property, at the town limit, where the pine forest began with its dense and prickly underbrush. By the end of June, Mary-Love and James had given up hope of ever growing grass again, and Mary-Love hired little Buster Sapp to come every morning at six-thirty and rake patterns in the sand with a leaf broom. By the end of the day most of Buster’s careful work had been obliterated by footsteps of servants and visitors and the inhabitants of the houses, but Buster was always there first thing the following morning to renew the artificial symmetry and texture he gave to the injured Caskey demesne. The expanse of sand—somewhat more than two acres in all—was a depressing sight when one remembered the fine gardens and lawn that had surrounded the houses. Only Buster’s rigorous patterning made it bearable. So despite talk, Buster worked even on Sundays (for which he was paid double). The households quickly grew accustomed to waking to the sound of rake on sand. Buster was a small, sleepy, infinitely patient child—who moved slowly about, producing an impromptu map of concentric circles and elongated spirals. He plied his rake with a rhythm as inexorable as that of a pendulum. And perhaps it was that indication of time passing that made the sound of the rake on the sand so suggestive of death.
Each morning at six o’clock, before he began his work, Buster’s sister fixed his breakfast in Mary-Love’s kitchen. Buster was finished by ten, and at that time James Caskey’s cook Roxie Welles made him a second breakfast. Then he took a pillow and went down to the mooring dock and took a nap until it was time for the midday meal. In the afternoon he ran errands for the two households. Sometimes he was paid by Mary-Love and sometimes by Miss Elinor—and sometimes he was inadvertently given money by both.
For several months Buster Sapp was practically the only line of communication between the two households, which formerly had been greatly intimate. Mary-Love Caskey didn’t approve of Elinor Dammert’s living with her brother-in-law and she didn’t allow her daughter to approve of it either. James Caskey knew how his sister-in-law felt, but he was too pleased with Elinor’s being in the house with him to argue with Mary-Love about the matter. After all, if he got into an argument with Mary-Love, Mary-Love would probably win it, and if Mary-Love won it, Elinor would have to go—and that was exactly what James Caskey did not want.
Elinor took care of him in the way that Genevieve might have if Genevieve had been a real wife. Elinor had supervised the cleaning and repair of the house. Each day in his absence she ordered about Roxie and Roxie’s girl, Reta, and Roxie’s boy, Escue. Reta spent all day on her knees, scrubbing the floors. Escue painted everything that could be attacked with a brush. Elinor and Roxie sat on the front porch and sewed new curtains for every room in the house. James gave Elinor three hundred dollars and told her to go out and buy what she needed; one day Elinor and Escue drove a wagon ten miles over to Atmore and came back with a load of new linens. Everything that had been touched by the floodwater she threw out. Sooner than any other house in town, James Caskey’s—which had been the worst damaged—was in the best repair.
Through means James never discovered, Elinor was able to save many of the fine pieces of furniture that had been thought lost to the floodwater. “I don’t know what she did, Oscar,” James said one morning at the mill, “but I got home last evening and there was Mama’s sofa—the one I was all ready to throw out the back door—bright as bright could be. The rosewood was all polished and every last carved medallion back on it—and I know two of ’em broke off and floated out the front door—and a kind of blue upholstery exactly like I remember from when I was just little. I’d forgot all about it till I walked in and saw it! I could have sat down and cried it made me think so much of Mama!”
“James,” said Oscar, “are you working Miss Elinor too hard, you think?”
“I think I am,” replied James modestly, “but she doesn’t. That house is in as good a shape as when Mama was living in it and Daddy was dead and couldn’t mess it up. That’s what that house looks like now! And Grace! Have you seen Grace of la
te?”
“I have,” said Oscar, and they paused to speak to a man who was about to go out of the lumberyard in a wagon.
“But have you seen Grace’s dresses?” James went on when the wagon was rolling out the front gate. “Miss Elinor doesn’t think a thing in the world of sitting in the kitchen with Roxie and running up an outfit for Grace, while Grace is sitting under the table watching her do it! And with all this, Mary-Love is asking me to charge Miss Elinor room rent!”
“Mama doesn’t know Miss Elinor, that’s all,” said Oscar.
“Mary-Love doesn’t want to know her, that’s what it is! Oscar, you know how I love your mama, and you know your mama has always been right about everything, but I’ll tell you something, she is wrong about Miss Elinor. Grace loves her, and I think the world of her! Do you know,” said James in a low voice, tapping a bony finger in the air, “that she has polished all my silver and wrapped it up in yellow felt?”
. . .
Oscar Caskey was frustrated. The thing he wanted most in the world was the thing he could not have—and that was the opportunity to learn more about Miss Elinor Dammert. The exigencies of his work at the mill required that he be either in the office or off somewhere in the forest by seven o’clock every morning. He returned home at noontime, but could spare only half an hour to eat, and had to drink his second glass of iced tea on the way back to work. In the evening he might not get home until six or seven o’clock, and by then he was so weary it was all he could do to sit up straight at the supper table. And sometimes in the evening his presence was required at a meeting, the purpose of which was to plan the restoration and improvement of Perdido after the disaster of the Easter flood. He could scarcely do more than wave at Miss Elinor on the front porch of his uncle’s house as he rode past in his automobile, or call out, “How you, Miss Elinor?” as he trudged up the steps of his own home, to where his mother held open the door for him and shut it and hooked it as soon as he got inside.