Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

  “Haven’t you noticed it? She is off in another world sometimes.”

  “I have noticed,” admitted Elinor, slipping into bed beside Oscar.

  “Do you think you should speak to her?”

  “And say what?” asked Elinor.

  “Oh,” said Oscar vaguely, “you could tell her that Billy is coming back.”

  “She knows that.”

  “You don’t think she imagines...”

  “Imagines what, Oscar?”

  “Imagines that Billy and Miriam are carrying on or anything.”

  Elinor slapped the back of her hand across her husband’s chest. “Oscar!” she protested. “What a thing to say.”

  “You never know what a wife might start to think when her husband drives off to Texas with another woman.”

  “We’re talking about Billy. And Miriam, of all people.”

  “I know, I know,” Oscar conceded. “And I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about what Frances might be thinking. That’s all. You want to speak to her tomorrow?”

  “I’ll speak to her,” said Elinor. “Now go to sleep. And in the morning tell me where you get your ideas.”

  . . .

  Next morning, after Oscar had gone off to work, Elinor and Frances sat on the upstairs porch while Frances nursed her infant daughter. Elinor was embroidering small pillowcases for Lilah’s bassinet. She said to Frances, “Oscar thinks you’re blue.”

  “I am blue.” Frances smiled wanly.

  “About Billy being gone, I guess.”

  Slowly Frances shook her head.

  Elinor looked up, puzzled. “About what, then? Something in particular? I know after I had Miriam—and after I had you—I had low periods, too. Maybe all women—”

  “No, Mama,” said Frances. “You know what it is? I’ve been thinking about...” She paused, leaned forward with the child against her breast, and whispered, “...my other little girl.”

  Elinor dropped her sewing onto her lap in surprise.

  “Mama,” said Frances, “that poor little baby doesn’t even have a name!”

  “Let’s give her one, then.”

  “You mean we can?”

  “Why not? You don’t always want to be referring to her as ‘my other little girl,’ do you?”

  “I’ve already thought of a name,” said Frances sheepishly.

  “What?”

  “In my mind I call her Nerita, ’cause that’s what you said your sister was named.”

  “Shhh! Nobody but you even knows I have a sister.”

  “But is Nerita all right? For a name, I mean.”

  “That’s very sweet. And it’s just fine. You know what it means? It means, of the water.”

  “That’s my little girl.”

  Elinor took up her sewing. “Do you think about Nerita?”

  Frances nodded. “All the time.”

  “When she was born, you couldn’t even stand to look at her.”

  “I know. But she’s still my little baby girl. I keep wondering if she’s all right.”

  Elinor said nothing for a moment, and then quietly suggested, “Why don’t you go find out?”

  Lilah turned away her mouth from her mother’s breast and Frances gently wiped the tiny lips with a fresh diaper folded over her shoulder.

  “Could I, Mama?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “How would I find her?”

  Elinor smiled. “Just go in the water. You’ll find each other.”

  “I’m worried that she’s not getting enough to eat down there. Leaving Nerita in the river that night was just like putting Lilah here down on the kitchen floor and expecting her to fend for herself. Can you see Lilah here mixing biscuits or breading chicken?”

  Elinor laughed. “But Lilah and Nerita are different. Nerita wouldn’t eat biscuits and breaded chicken if you put them on the end of a fishing hook.”

  Frances shuddered. “Mama, don’t even say a thing like that! Don’t you think I’ve thought about what would happen if Nerita saw a worm dangling on a fisherman’s hook down there?”

  Elinor shook her head and stood up. “Not going to happen. Now give Lilah to me and let me put her to sleep. You get into some other clothes and visit Nerita. Go around through the woods to the river. We don’t want Queenie and the rest of them seeing you go off toward the water.”

  Elinor took Lilah while her daughter quickly undressed and slipped into a loose robe.

  Frances smiled nervously at Zaddie as she went through the kitchen and out the back door. She slipped through the water oaks and into the forest to the west of the house. Soon she found herself on the clay-covered bank of the Perdido where the levee ended. She stood for several minutes on the edge of the water, at once anxious to avoid Nerita and yet fearful of not finding her. She remembered what the infant looked like, with what horror that form and visage had filled her, how alien Nerita had felt when she had held her in her arms. And now, actually to seek that embrace again, to enter the water and perhaps be surprised by Nerita flinging her small smooth arms around her neck or pressing her wide-eyed visage against Frances’s own! Frances dropped her robe and slowly waded into the river. She hesitated again when the water was no higher than her knees.

  She felt the river water rushing against her legs and soon they felt rubbery. She knew that if she did not go farther in she would topple over. So she lifted one leg and then the other and then the first again, and realized that she was undergoing the transformation that remained—after all these years—so mysterious a thing to her. She lifted a foot clear of the water, and saw that the flesh of her leg below the knee had turned gray and thick and smooth. Her foot was wide and splayed and webbed.

  Her first instinct was to throw herself completely into the river and allow the transformation to complete itself, as always before, without her actually being aware of it. But this time, Frances decided it would be different. Inhaling deeply, Frances Caskey waded slowly into the Perdido.

  As the water rose, so did the transformation. She stopped every few seconds to review the progress of the alteration; how thick she was growing below the waist, what the sensation was when she rubbed her legs together, what happened if she put one hand beneath the water and held it there.

  That hand became wide and splayed and webbed, as big as a paper fan stuck in the pews at church.

  She waded into deeper water. She could feel the strength that was gathering in her belly. She felt pangs of hunger for things that normally would have disgusted and revulsed her: living fish and shellfish swallowed whole, decaying animal carcasses, children’s limbs, organic detritus.

  She waded in up to her neck. She no longer had any difficulty maintaining her balance against the rushing water. She felt herself vast and strong and transformed below the surface. Her head, atop the huge body, felt absurdly small.

  Just then she felt something slide against her webbed hand. Next the something nibbled at one finger, and then began moving up her arm toward her breast.

  “Nerita!” Frances Caskey cried aloud, and ducked her head under the water. For a few seconds Frances’s human eyes remained unchanged, and through the red Perdido water she saw Nerita’s blurry form—already so much bigger!—making its way up along her arm. Even in her mother’s heart, something was repelled by the aspect of a such a daughter as that.

  Then Frances’s eyes were altered, and she saw Nerita clearly. No longer was the form repulsive. Nerita clasped her mother about her neck and lovingly pressed her entire head inside her mother’s mouth.

  Some part of Frances’s brain was surprised by this, but another part told how to caress that tender head lovingly with her own swollen black tongue.

  . . .

  At the dinner table that day, Oscar and Queenie were surprised to find Frances absent.

  “Where is she?” Oscar asked.

  “You were right about her low spirits,” said Elinor. “So I sent her off for the day. I’m taking care of Lilah.”

&
nbsp; “Where did she go?” asked Queenie. “All the cars are still here.”

  Elinor smiled and shrugged and said she couldn’t make anything of it either.

  After the meal Elinor made excuses to Queenie, and Queenie went home, a little puzzled. She had the indistinct feeling that something was up over at Elinor’s, and that it had to do with Frances and where Frances had gone. Queenie no longer wheedled information, and she reckoned that she would eventually find out what was going on if only she were patient.

  . . .

  Frances returned to the house late that afternoon, slipping in through the kitchen past the deliberately unobservant Zaddie. She ran upstairs, leaving damp muddy footprints all the way up the steps.

  Elinor was in her bedroom, rearranging Oscar’s closet.

  Frances burst in.

  Elinor laughed. “I guess you found her.”

  “She found me! And we had the best time! Lord, she grows quick! Mama, you ought to see what that child can do!”

  “You don’t know it, Frances, but I have been keeping my eye on Nerita.”

  “And I have been so worried. Why didn’t you tell me!”

  “Because I wanted to see if you were going to look after her yourself.”

  Frances shook her head. “That child doesn’t need us, Mama. She can take care of herself.”

  “Well, I know that,” said Elinor. “But that doesn’t mean she won’t benefit from a visit from her mama and her grandmama now and then.”

  Frances, still excited, cried, “Oh, Mama, when can I go back?”

  Elinor laughed. “Not today. Look at your skin, you are all puckered up. And you are covered with Perdido mud. Oscar is coming home in half an hour. We’ve got to get you cleaned up. We’ve also got to make up a story about where you went and what you did. Queenie already noticed that you didn’t go off in a car.”

  Frances waved this away. “Oh, I don’t care what they think.”

  Elinor was suddenly serious. “Yes you do care.”

  Abruptly Frances was still.

  “Good,” said Elinor. “Calm down a little. You can tell me all about it, while we get you washed.”

  . . .

  Zaddie, who now knew better than ever not to ask questions, mopped up Frances’s muddy tracks. In Frances’s bathroom, Elinor bathed her daughter and washed her hair, while Frances excitedly told what it was like to be with her daughter beneath the surface of the Perdido.

  “You know what’s different about this time, don’t you?” asked Elinor as she poured a basin of water over Frances’s soapy hair.

  “Everything was different!”

  “No,” said Elinor. “The most important difference is that you remember everything that happened. You remembered exactly what it was like.”

  “Mama, I told you, that’s because I took the change gradual. I waded into the water. I didn’t just dive in the way I usually do. And this time I was expecting the change, that’s all. That’s why I remembered.”

  “You wanted the change.”

  “I did,” admitted Frances. “For the first time, I guess. I guess I didn’t think Nerita would be able to find me unless I...”

  “Yes?” prompted Elinor.

  “Unless I...looked like her,” Frances said in a low voice.

  Elinor smiled and wiped some soap off her daughter’s face.

  “You were gone so long,” said Elinor indulgently. “I didn’t know what had happened to you.”

  “You weren’t really worried, though?”

  Elinor shook her head. “Not one bit.”

  “Do you know that Nerita can already talk?”

  “No, she can’t.”

  “She can, Mama. I can understand every word she says.”

  “That’s different,” said Elinor. “You can understand her, but she can’t talk. And neither can you, down there. But Nerita can understand you, too. You don’t have to talk.”

  “Mama,” said Frances after a few moments of consideration, “can we go down there together sometime and visit Nerita—both of us?”

  “Maybe. But wouldn’t you be upset?”

  “About what?”

  “Well,” said Elinor, “you’ve never seen me down there.”

  “I know,” said Frances quietly. “And I’d like to—so can we do it?”

  Elinor laughed softly. “You sound like you’re five years old again: ‘Mama, can I do this? Mama, can I do that?’ Well, yes, if we can find somebody to take care of Lilah. Aren’t you forgetting about Lilah?”

  “A little,” said Frances sheepishly. “But Lilah and Nerita are so different!”

  “Yes,” Elinor assented with a smile.

  “But now that I can remember what happens, I know what it’s like under the water. See, before,” Frances said excitedly, “I’d go through the change and then come back and I wouldn’t remember any of it. I had the feeling it was really awful, and I didn’t know why I was doing it and it was all really horrible. Like the time out at Lake Pinchona when I—”

  “When you ran into Travis Gann,” said Elinor placidly.

  “Yes,” said Frances. “But that’s not really what it’s like most of the time. I was so mad at Travis Gann because of what he had done to Lucille. But today I wasn’t mad at all, I was just having a good time with Nerita. Mama, that child—”

  “You really do love her after all, don’t you, baby?”

  “Oh, Mama, I sure do! You know she can put her entire head inside my mouth!”

  There was a little knock at the bathroom door and Zaddie’s voice came timidly through: “Miss Frances?”

  “What is it, Zaddie?” Elinor asked.

  “Your baby’s crying out here. I think she’s hungry.”

  “Well, Mama,” said Frances with a resigned sigh as she stepped out of the bathtub, “go on and bring her in. I guess I’ll feed her before Daddy gets home.”

  . . .

  Gathered for supper that night, the Caskeys wondered at the alteration in yet another family member—this time in Frances. It was a marked change not only from the despondency she had apparently felt since Billy had left on his trip, but from the general malaise of spirit that she had exhibited from the beginning of her pregnancy almost a year before. In fact, no one who saw her at table that night and listened to her voluble chatter and witnessed her grinning at nothing and eating an enormous plateful of food could remember a Frances to match this one.

  “You must have bought out a store this afternoon!” exclaimed Queenie, to whom buying things was the pinnacle of happiness.

  “Didn’t spend a penny,” laughed Frances. “Spent the whole afternoon with my baby.”

  “I thought you went out!” said Oscar.

  Frances just laughed and shook her head.

  And the wonderment of the family continued, because after that Frances left every afternoon, leaving Lilah napping in her bassinet. No one knew where she went. No one saw her leave the house. No cars were taken. Elinor said only, “Frances can’t stay cooped up all day. I imagine she goes for walks in the woods.”

  Zaddie, who ought to have known something, said only, “I got enough to do around this house without tying a string to Miss Frances’s belt.”

  Frances appeared deliriously happy these days. She seemed to miss her husband not at all, nor did she appear to be in the least disappointed when Miriam telephoned saying that she and Billy would be gone for another three days in order to visit Tulsa, as well. Lilah was a fretful baby and Frances seemed impatient with her, nursing her only when the child’s cries grew troublesome or her own breasts became heavy with milk. She otherwise took little notice of her little girl. Frances seemed quite happy to turn Lilah over to anyone who wanted to pet the baby, whether it was Zaddie or Elinor or Queenie.

  “I think,” said Queenie confidentially to Elinor, “that being without Billy has driven Frances crazy. I have never seen her act this way before. And I have known her since she was a baby in her crib.”

  Elinor defended her daughter
, making excuses for her near neglect of Lilah, saying, “Frances is just being sweet to me. She knows how much I love this little girl. I have already asked Frances to give her up to me, but Frances says I have to get Billy’s permission before she’d sign any deed.”

  Getting into bed a week and a half after his remarks to his wife about Frances’s sad mood, Oscar ventured to complain that Frances’s high spirits were getting on his nerves. Elinor punched his arm with her fist: “Oscar Caskey, ten days ago you were complaining to me that Frances was so low. Can’t you make up your mind? Can’t you be satisfied? Isn’t it enough that your little girl has found happiness?”

  “What I don’t understand is,” said Oscar, “where is she finding it?”

  Chapter 67

  The Prodigal

  Oscar Caskey greatly missed his daughter Miriam during the time that she was away in Texas attempting to lure the oil companies to the swamp south of Gavin Pond Farm. He discovered, in her absence, how responsible she was for the day-to-day running of the mill, and how much of the weight of the business she had taken from his shoulders. The plethora of small- and medium-weight decisions he was being forced to make was staggering, and he wondered how Miriam did it all. This recognition of his daughter’s abilities and energy made him feel even older and more tired than he actually was at the end of each day; he understood now that Miriam was not simply an assistant to him. His daughter worked in the mill office so that he could spend mornings either in the forests or in the yard and his afternoons at home on the upstairs porch. It became clear that Miriam was now responsible for the success of the Caskey mills; Oscar was the assistant, the appendage, the helper operating at Miriam’s convenience.

  This revelation did not embitter Oscar. It only made him all the more anxious for Miriam’s return.

  Early one morning when Miriam and Billy had been gone a little over two weeks, the telephone rang. Oscar jumped out of bed and answered it, certain it was Miriam.

  “Oscar,” Miriam said, “Billy and I are starting home in two minutes.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful,” sighed Oscar, “when do you think you’ll get here?”

  “Maybe tomorrow.”