BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (11 page)

"All of them?" asked Sister.

"I'm the last one."

"Then, Mama," said Oscar, "you're gone have to help us."

"First thing to do,""said Mary-Love quickly, "is to set the date."

"All right, Mama," said Oscar eagerly. During the course of the meal, Mary-Love had addressed several remarks to Miss Elinor, but none to her own son. Once when Oscar asked his mother a question she pretended not to have heard him and didn't answer.

"One year from today," said Mary-Love.

Miss Elinor stopped directly behind Mary-Love, holding a plate of pie intended for Grace who was vainly reaching for it. Elinor looked steadily at Oscar but said nothing.

"Mama," cried Oscar, "that's a long time away! Elinor and I were thinking more like maybe February. You're talking—"

"Miss Elinor, you and Oscar don't have anyplace to live, do you?"

Elinor finally came around with the pie and set it before Grace. "No, ma'am," she said, "not yet. But I think it will be easy enough to find something."

"Not something suitable," said Mary-Love, staring straight in front of her. "Not something that would really do. If you got married in February, you'd have to live here with Sister and me."

"No!" cried Grace. "Miss Elinor said—"

"Hush, child!" cried Sister in a low voice.

"I've invited them to live with me, Mary-Love," said James.

"James, you have less room than I have. And it's not right for newlyweds to share. Newlyweds need time to be alone together."

There was an iciness in Mary-Love's voice that contradicted the benignity of her words.

"Well, Mama, waiting a year doesn't solve any of those problems," said Oscar. "We'd still have to go out looking for a place to live."

"No, you wouldn't," said Mary-Love quickly, looking at her son for the first time since the meal had begun. Oscar blushed and glanced away. Elinor had resumed her place at the table and regarded her future husband in silence.

"I've already decided what to give you as a wedding gift."

"What?" said Oscar, looking up.

"I'm building you a house," said Mary-Love, "right here next door to us, between this house and the town line." She went on quickly, before anyone had the opportunity to express surprise in words. "But even if they start tomorrow—and they won't, because I haven't mentioned this to anybody—it won't be done before April or May, and then we have to get it furnished. Sister and I will take care of that— Miss Elinor, you won't have to do a thing."

Miss Elinor made no reply.

"And when the house is done we can plan the wedding. That'll take another couple of months. Oscar is my only boy, and I'm going to see that this thing is done right. Oscar?" she said, demanding his approval of the plan without objection.

Oscar turned and looked at Elinor Dammert. She said nothing at all, made no motion of her eyes, did not alter her expression. He received no clue as to what she thought his answer ought to be—and it was his masculine opacity that prevented him from understanding that no clue was a very large clue indeed.

"Mama, does it have to be a whole year?" he asked at last.

"Yes," said Mary-Love.

He then nodded acquiescence.

"Miss Elinor?" said Mary-Love.

"Whatever Oscar wants," said Miss Elinor, putting a bite of coconut cake into her mouth.

CHAPTER 6
Oscar's Retaliation

Winters were mild in Perdido, but there was almost always a cold snap that lasted about a week late in January. Invariably some old colored woman in the country whose ramshackle house had walls made mostly of layers of newspaper would succumb and be found dead by her great-grandchildren who had come to gather her last pecans. The wives and daughters of the millowners would have a few days in which to show off their fur coats. Pipes burst everywhere, and everyone would sit in the kitchen by the stove. But with this single week as an exception, it was possible to sit out on the front porch all year long. And the weather was never so cold that Miss Elinor did not row Bray's little green boat to school. It was a common remark that Miss Elinor didn't feel the cold of that river anymore than did the fish that swam in it.

During that winter of 1920, Elinor's first in Perdido, the pact between Mary-Love and Oscar became known all over town; and it was a bargain that was seen in its true light. In exchange for Oscar's postponing the wedding for a year (during which time Mary-Love doubtless hoped that the engagement would be severed), she would build her son a fine house next door to her own. Supposing she got her wish and Miss Elinor went back to wherever it was that Miss Elinor came from, Mary-Love would retain her unmarried son, and her only problem would be what to do with the house. But perhaps, it was conjectured by those who liked to think about contingencies, she would move into it herself.

What Miss Elinor thought of the agreement no one ever learned. Elinor did not complain, though Christmas passed, and the new year came on, and nothing whatever had been done. There were no plans to be looked at. There wasn't a post in the ground or a building permit to tack upon that nonexistent post or contractors' agreements or strings pegged into the sandy earth. Mary-Love dallied throughout the winter, and whenever Oscar brought the subject up, she would cry, "Oh, Oscar, it's gone be the prettiest house in town!" and then in the next breath propound some excuse that took her out of the room.

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 help her 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, much 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 latticework 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—"