Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

  Frances grimaced and shivered and tried to hand it back, but Elinor stepped out of reach. “You be careful,” Elinor said, “she’s slippery.”

  For a moment Frances looked as if she were about to throw the thing from her, but then it made a little swollen cry, rather like that of a kitten fallen into a pail of rainwater. Instinctively, Frances pressed it to her breast. The damp-sounding mewling continued.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Frances asked. “Why is she crying like this?”

  “She’s drowning,” said Elinor.

  “Drowning?!”

  “In the air. She needs to be in water.”

  “Is she gone die?” Frances asked with a tremor in her voice.

  Elinor shook her head. “All I have to do is take her down to the river and throw her in. She’ll be all right.”

  “Who’ll take care of her?”

  At first Elinor didn’t answer. “She’ll be all right,” is all Elinor finally said.

  “Mama, are you sure?”

  “I thought you didn’t want her.”

  “Well,” said Frances, who still held the changeling infant against her breast so she would not have to look at it directly, “I don’t want Billy to see her, or even Zaddie—” She glanced nervously at the bathroom door, as if she had forgot that Zaddie and her first little girl were on the other side of it.

  “Zaddie won’t come out till I tell her to,” said Elinor reassuringly.

  “—but I certainly don’t want her to die.”

  “Look at her, darling.”

  A single tear formed in the corner of Frances’s eye. “Mama, I cain’t.”

  “Hold her out in front of you,” said Elinor, “and see what your little girl looks like. This is the happiest moment in a mother’s life.”

  Frances did so, reluctantly.

  Her daughter squirmed.

  “Mama,” said Frances tremorously, “it’s the ugliest thing I ever saw in my life.”

  “Sweetheart!” laughed Elinor. “One of these days I’m going to walk up to the top of the levee and throw a hand mirror into the Perdido.”

  “Why?”

  “So you can see what you look like under the water.”

  Frances returned her gaze to her second daughter, and it was with new eyes that she beheld the infant that writhed vigorously before her.

  Chapter 64

  Billy’s Family

  Zaddie sat for an hour with the newborn infant in the bathroom adjacent to Frances’s room; she knew better than to come out before she was called. Years spent with Elinor Caskey had dampened her curiosity about things she wasn’t told directly. After a long while of sitting patiently on the edge of the bathtub with the newborn infant in her lap, she at last heard a single rap on the door. She got up and opened it. Elinor, still with the towel-wrapped bundle, was moving across the room to the far side of the bed. In the middle of the bed was a large circle of gore, water, some grayish-green slime the likes of which Zaddie had never seen before, and two umbilical cords—one of them bloody and fleshy and like every other umbilical cord, and the other smooth and gray and not bloody at all.

  Frances, still naked but having toweled away most of the evidence of the double birth, was seated at the vanity and brushing her hair. Her motions were weak and somewhat disjointed. She was pale and her expression was wan. But she sat straight, as if to give the impression of quickly returning strength. Zaddie carried the infant over for Frances to look at.

  “See how pretty!” cried Zaddie.

  Frances looked at the baby, and smiled absently.

  “Zaddie,” said Elinor, “Frances and I have to go out for a few minutes.”

  “Ma’am!” cried Zaddie, in acute astonishment.

  Frances stood up carefully from the vanity. “Lord, I feel so empty!” she laughed, stepping to the closet and removing a light robe from it. “I keep looking down and wondering where all of me went.”

  Zaddie, remembering another time long ago, said, “Miss Elinor, you gone be careful with this baby now?”

  “That baby stays here, Zaddie.”

  Zaddie appeared much relieved. She stared at the bundle in Elinor’s arms and said, “It’s a terrible thing, Miss Frances, when a baby is born dead.”

  The blanket in Elinor’s arms twitched, but if Zaddie saw the motion, she made no sign. She had decided that the second child born of Frances Caskey had been born dead. And she thought, considering what she had seen of it emerging from Frances’s straining body, that that was just as well. If it was still alive, Miss Elinor and Miss Frances couldn’t do better than to throw it in the river, and Zaddie herself might just as well keep her mouth shut.

  Frances slipped on a pair of sandals, and said, “Mama, I’m ready.”

  “Miss Frances!” cried Zaddie. “You not thinking of going out!”

  “There’s no need for you to go, darling,” said Elinor. “You can stay here. Call Billy and Oscar if you want. I’ll be back long before they get here.”

  “Mama,” said Frances, “I want to go with you. After all,” she said, glancing down at the fouled bed, “she’s my little girl. My other little girl.”

  In an attempt to ignore this conversation, Zaddie absorbed herself with the child in her arms, caressing the infant softly and crooning a little wordless tune.

  “Zaddie?” said Elinor.

  “Ma’am?”

  “You know what to say if anybody asks, don’t you?”

  “I’m gone say Miss Frances had the prettiest little baby girl anybody ever did see in their life.”

  “And that’s all,” said Elinor.

  “What else is there to say?” returned Zaddie, unperturbed.

  “Nothing,” said Frances, tickling her first infant under the chin. “Nothing else...”

  “We’re going out for a few minutes, then,” said Elinor. “Don’t answer the telephone if it rings, and don’t turn on any other lights. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sister wasn’t watching out her window, and if she sees lights coming on all over the house, she’ll probably pick up the telephone and call Oscar.”

  “I put two mattress pads under here,” said Zaddie with pride, pointing at the bed. “Not nothing got through, but if Mr. Billy comes back tonight, don’t y’all sleep in here. Y’all sleep somewhere else, and let me come in here tomorrow and scrub this place down. Smells like that old river in here, sure do. Miss Frances, you be careful out there. Don’t trip on nothing. Sure do wish you’d stay here with me. What would people think if they knew you were traipsing around outside right after you had a little baby girl?”

  “I’ll be all right, Zaddie,” Frances assured her. “Mama’s gone lead me, and she’ll walk real slow. I’m gone be careful, I promise.”

  . . .

  It was past midnight. Leaving her first infant in Zaddie’s care, and taking the second from Elinor, Frances went slowly down the stairs of the darkened house. Elinor had gone first to open doors and make sure no furniture was in their path. “I can see perfectly fine,” said Frances.

  They went quietly out the back door and ceased speaking. The lights in Sister’s room were burning, and they had no desire to draw her curiosity with their voices.

  Under cover of the water oaks, Elinor and Frances walked slowly along the base of the levee until they came to the concrete steps behind Queenie’s house. They started up the steps slowly and carefully, but Frances quickly became winded and more than once almost cried out in sharp pain. She didn’t stop, however, and soon they were at the top, hidden by the thick stands of saplings that had taken root there. The Perdido flowed swiftly below; its voice and its smell in that still night were achingly familiar—and comforting—to Frances.

  “Well?” said Elinor after a short time.

  “Mama,” whispered Frances, peering at her daughter, whose half-dollar eyes glistened moistly, “am I supposed to just throw her in? From way up here?”

  “No,” said Elinor. “I’ll take her down and put her in.”

  “
You sure she’ll be all right?”

  “Darling,” said Elinor, caressing the infant in Frances’s arms, “do you really think I’d deliberately kill this sweet, sweet thing? See, she’s not ugly to me, not ugly one little bit!” Elinor playfully poked a finger into the lipless mouth and twisted the swollen black tongue. “Not one little bit!”

  “But who’ll take care of her?”

  Elinor took the child, and tossed aside the towel in which she had been wrapped.

  “Are there others down there?” asked Frances. “Somebody else who’ll make sure she gets enough to eat?”

  Without answering, Elinor, with the help of one sapling trunk after another, began slipping down the slope of the levee toward the river.

  After a moment of indecision, Frances followed, though the pain in her groin beat with the pulse of her heart.

  “What does she eat?” Frances whispered loudly, but still Elinor did not answer.

  Frances tripped over a blackberry bush, scratching her right arm and leg.

  “Frances!” cried Elinor, stopping her downward progress.

  “I’m all right, Mama,” cried Frances a moment later in a strained voice. She picked herself up painfully.

  When Elinor reached the base of the levee, she reached out an arm. In a moment Frances had slipped down the last few feet of levee and grabbed her mother’s hand. Elinor squeezed.

  “Catch your breath,” she said.

  “How am I gone get back up?” sighed Frances.

  “You shouldn’t have come down here.”

  “Mama, that’s my baby.”

  “I’m glad you said that,” said Elinor with pride. “’Cause she is yours.”

  They stood on a sandbar. Crickets chirped in the kudzu vine all around them. When Frances’s breath had grown even once again, Elinor took a step forward into the water. Frances, shedding her robe, held her mother’s hand and followed.

  “Give her to me,” said Frances.

  Elinor relinquished the infant to Frances.

  Together, mother and daughter walked forward into the swiftly flowing dark water.

  . . .

  For two hours Zaddie Sapp sat in the mahogany rocker in Frances’s room holding the newborn infant. She rocked patiently, waiting for the return of Elinor and Frances and tried as best she could not to think of that second child, that other twin, the child who had been born deformed, and who was now dead. Zaddie trusted and loved Miss Elinor, and whatever Miss Elinor did was right and not to be questioned.

  The telephone rang twice, but Zaddie did not answer it.

  Sometime after three o’clock, Elinor and Frances returned. Both wore only robes, and their hair was tangled and wet.

  “How is she doing?” whispered Frances, poking at the child in Zaddie’s arms.

  “She’s hungry,” replied Zaddie.

  “Let me have her then,” whispered Frances. She took the child from Zaddie and then lay down on the bed, opened her robe, and put the child to her breast.

  “Mama,” said Frances, looking up at Elinor, who stood in the doorway brushing tangles out of her wet hair, “maybe you ought to go and call Billy and Daddy.”

  Elinor nodded, and went across the hall to telephone. In a moment Frances and Zaddie heard her talking in a low voice. “Zaddie,” said Frances, “Mama and I left tracks all through the house. You better see what you can do to clean them up before Billy and Daddy get back.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Zaddie?” said Frances.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Zaddie turned to go, but at the door she was stopped by one more word from Frances. The black woman turned back.

  “Don’t worry about the other one,” said Frances. “She’s doing fine.”

  . . .

  Billy and Oscar were home by four that morning, but neither of them went to sleep. Billy sat in the mahogany rocker and held his daughter, and Oscar and Elinor sat on the upstairs porch talking. Frances, wholly exhausted, slept the sleep of the dead. Queenie came over at five, announcing that she couldn’t sleep and wanted to see the baby. Miriam arrived at six, saying that their voices had kept her up all night and that somebody ought to take the baby over and show her to Sister before Sister had a stroke.

  Much later in the morning, Frances did take her daughter next door and exhibited her to Sister, who cooed and made much of the infant.

  “I always wanted me a baby girl,” sighed Sister. “What are you calling this one?”

  “We’ve decided on Lilah,” said Frances.

  “I sure wish you had an extra that you could send over here to keep me company.”

  At this Frances began to laugh, and Sister said, “What, may I ask, is so funny about that?”

  Frances only laughed more loudly.

  Lilah was duly examined by Leo Benquith, who pronounced her fine and perfect. He deprecated Frances’s decision to have the child at home—so many women were having their babies in hospitals now, and it was a good thing so far as he was concerned. Frances hadn’t even called in a midwife, and anything might have happened.

  “Mama was there,” returned Frances. “Zaddie was there. And everything worked out fine.”

  . . .

  Billy Bronze noted an abrupt change in Frances after the birth of their child. In that single night—during the hours in which he had been banished from the house—she seemed to have grown up, to have come instantly into the Caskey women’s legacy of imperiousness and self-sufficiency. She wasn’t belligerent or demanding, of course; Frances could never be that. But now she knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t afraid to ask for it. Previously, she had demurred to any opinion or wish contrary to her own; now she considered her own desires to be equal to anyone’s. And she didn’t cling as she once did. She said to Billy, “Maybe you ought to get yourself a real secretary down at your office. It’s gone be hard for me to get away every day and leave my little girl at home with Zaddie. Zaddie’s got enough to do.”

  Billy agreed with this, and hired a girl just out of high school who had got all A’s in her typing and accounting courses. She proved to be of much greater use to Billy than Frances, whose principal worth had been in her loyalty and her readiness to attempt any task rather than in her secretarial abilities.

  . . .

  Billy liked this improvement at the office. He really had been in need of more efficient assistance in his job of handling the Caskey personal finances. Miriam was running more and more of the mill’s business, with her father relinquishing bits of his power every day. Under Miriam’s stringent management, the mill prospered as it never had before, even during the height of the war.

  Miriam sought out contracts in a way that her father never had. She hired salesmen from Pensacola and Mobile to go out and solicit lumber business. She talked with major builders in the Florida and Alabama panhandles and offered them large discounts for volume orders. She had bought new improved machinery in order to speed production. She had a man who did nothing but look around the place and see that everything was being done correctly. She hired a firm of Atlanta accountants to do taxes and to advise her on how things should be done so as to minimize the mill’s liability to the government. She drove out into the country and bargained with dying farmers and the widows of dead farmers for the purchase of their land. It was said that she went to more funerals than anybody else in the county. Miriam was tireless, and more and more money poured into the Caskey coffers.

  Billy invested this newly made capital. After Miriam’s needs at the mill were taken care of, Billy worked out schemes with bonds, stocks, and personal loans that were bewildering to family members who occasionally asked such questions as: “Well, Billy, what have you been doing with our money lately?” He had a special telephone line put in to brokers in New Orleans, Atlanta, and New York. He kept a junior high school boy sitting against the wall in the hallway outside his office whose sole job was to take telegraph messages
down to Mr. Jett, who operated the Western Union franchise out of the stockroom of the Ben Franklin store.

  Billy prepared envelopes with crisp new notes for every member of the family every week; he wrote checks for all the bills that came in; and once a month he prepared a typewritten account showing how much everyone was worth. This single sheet was always a source of astonishment to the Caskeys. Queenie once said to Billy, “Why don’t you ever come down hard on us for spending money the way we do? I know I don’t think anything of going down to Pensacola, and buying out those dress shops!”

  Billy laughed and replied, “Well, Queenie, you’re worth so damned much that you’d have to go down to Pensacola every day for two years and just spend from eight o’clock in the morning until six o’clock at night, and then maybe I’d have to say, ‘Hey, Queenie, ease up...’ But not until then.”

  Queenie loved hearing this. How little, in her earlier life, had she ever imagined a day when she would actually have more money than she would know how to spend.

  . . .

  The Caskeys all eventually learned that Miriam intended to drill for oil on the swampland below Gavin Pond Farm. Queenie and Sister agreed that it was all foolishness, that they had enough money as it was, and that Lucille and Grace and Tommy Lee might be greatly upset at having such an operation so close to their home. Grace herself had become reconciled to the idea by Lucille’s pointing out, on every occasion the subject was brought up, that if there was oil under that swamp, then she and Lucille would become the richest farmers in Escambia County, Florida. They could buy ten bulls with unexceptionable pedigrees, they could clear a thousand more acres for soybeans and cotton and corn and peanuts. They could buy half a dozen tractors and put up new barns and dig out a second pond, and add an L to the farmhouse. Grace was so excited that she called Miriam up, and said, “When are you going to get on with this business? Lucille and I cain’t wait around forever for this money that’s gone come to us.”

  Miriam hired surveyors and geologists from the University of Texas and brought them to Perdido. They were fed at Elinor’s house and then taken out to Gavin Pond Farm, where they were introduced to Grace and then let loose in the swamp with their instruments, lenses, and logbooks.