BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (18 page)

Something flashed in the corner of the ceiling directly above the chifforobe. Immediately thereafter there was a loud thump. Sister cried out.

"What was it?" demanded Mary-Love, who had been looking in another direction.

"Something on the ceiling! It was on the ceiling!"

"What was it?"

"I don't know!" Mama, pull that door closed and let's get out of here."

"We cain't see anything with those curtains closed. Sister, go pull those draperies aside."

"Mama! I'm not going in there! There's something in there!"

"It's a bat," said Mary-Love, "and I'll have to kill it. But I have to be able to see it first."

"Bats don't shine!"

There was another flash, immediately followed by a jangle.

Sister screamed, whirled around, and ran down the hallway.

Mary-Love looked after her daughter for a moment, then walked resolutely across the room to pull open the draperies. "Sister!" she called as she jerked aside the fabric. She turned around but just as she did so, out of the corner of her eye she saw another flash up near the ceiling, and then felt something heavy and sharp strike the crown of her head. She heard a thud as it hit the floor.

Sister appeared timorously in the doorway. Mary-Love stooped and picked up whatever it was that had struck her.

"Mama, what is it?" asked Sister fearfully.

Mary-Love held it up in the light. "It's a sapphire ring," she said. Then after a moment she grimly added, "Your grandmama wore this ring on the third finger of her right hand."

Sister screamed and pointed up into the corner of the room. Right above the chifforobe, protruding from the plaster of the ceiling, was a narrow glinting band of jewels. It looked as though it were being squeezed out, as potatoes might be extruded through a ricer. The bracelet dangled there an instant, then dropped with a little clatter and jangle onto the top of the chifforobe. Mary-Love went over and picked it up. The bracelet was made up of seven rubies, each surrounded by small round white diamonds. "Elven-nia wore this to my wedding," said Mary-Love. Also on top of the chifforobe was a ring mounted with three quite good-sized diamonds.

"Mama," whispered Sister, pointing at the bed.

There, on top of the protective sheet, lay a small jumble of jewelry.

"Mama," said Sister, "this stuff is coming through the ceiling!"

"Sister, shhh!" With an unhappy puzzled brow, Mary-Love squeezed the bracelet and two rings in her hand until she felt the facets of the jewels pressing into her flesh. "Sister," she whispered, "these are all the things that James buried in Genevieve's coffin."

Sister bit her lip and began to back toward the door.

"Mama," she said, almost in tears, "how did it get here, how..."

A brooch of rubies and emeralds dropped from the ceiling onto the center of the bed, adding to the pile there.

It was too much even for Mary-Love. "Get out, get out, get out!" she cried and waved Sister toward the door. Sister turned to run.

The door slammed shut.

Two more rings were flung out of the ceiling and hit Sister on the back of her head. She dropped to her knees and cried out in fear.

Mary-Love stumbled past her daughter to the door and tried to jerk it open. The knob rattled in her hands. The door was locked.

"Mama!" Sister screamed. "It's locked!"

"No, it's not!" cried Mary-Love. "No, it's not, it's just stuck."

Sister looked up. Another bracelet popped out from the ceiling, this one from a different place than before, and after a dangling moment it fell draped over the edge of the dresser mirror.

Mary-Love reached down and drew her daughter up. Sister whimpered.

Not knowing what else to do, and more bewildered than she had ever been in her life, Mary-Love pulled open the door of the closet in that room. It was a small door, smaller than any other door in the house, and Mary-Love couldn't remember why it had been constructed so much out of proportion. It swung open. The closet was empty except for a solitary black dress on a hanger. Pinned to the lapel was a black veil, that even as Mary-Love stared at it began to drip a dark mixture of blood and rainwater onto the floor of the closet.

She slammed the closet door shut.

Sister clung to her mother still. Mary-Love pushed her away and went back to the hallway door. Perhaps it had been only stuck, swollen with the damp and caught in the jamb. She pulled hard at the knob. Nothing. Mary-Love drew back, biting her lips to keep from crying out in frustration and fear. " The door swung open.

Elinor Caskey stood there in the hallway. She was wearing a green dress that had belonged to Gene-vieve and the smallest of the three ropes of Gene-vieve's black pearls clasped around her neck.

"Doors get stuck in wet weather," said Elinor.

Sister, gasping, cried out, "Oh, Elinor, Mama and I were so scared! We thought that somebody had locked us in!"

"We did not," said Mary-Love stiffly, beginning to recover a bit from her fright, and now very much interested in the pearls around Elinor's neck. "We just thought that the door had stuck...like you said."

Sister glanced at her mother, but did not contradict her. "But why are you here? Did you hear us call? Is that why you came over?"

"No," said Elinor with a little smile, "I came over for a different reason. I had a little bit of news."

"What is it?" said Mary-Love quickly.

"Oh, Elinor, cain't it wait for a few minutes? I want to get home!" cried Sister.

"Yes," said Elinor, "it can wait. But I think we probably ought to gather up all these things." She went past Mary-Love and Sister to the bed and began to slip the jewels into the pockets of her dress. Mary-Love rushed over and filled her pockets, too.

CHAPTER 11
Elinor's News

Later that afternoon, when the rain had diminished to just a drip from awnings over the windows, Sister recovered behind the closed door of her room and Mary-Love and Elinor calmly deliberated about Gen-evieve's recovered jewelry. Strangely enough, no mention was made by either woman of the inexplicable manner of the return of the gems, except by inference. It was decided right off that James could never be allowed to see them en masse, for he would be certain to recognize his mother's and his wife's jewelry. Mary-Love would keep the three rings that she liked best, she would hold out two sapphire and diamond bracelets for Sister, and the remainder would be put aside in a safety-deposit box in Mobile for Grace's majority. "By then," said Mary-Love, "James may be dead, or he may have lost his memory and we won't have a problem about giving things to Grace. I suppose," she went on delicately, "that you ought to keep the pearls, Elinor."

"I suppose I will," Elinor replied.

Of all the jewelry that had been buried in Gene-vieve's casket, only the black pearls had not materialized from the ceiling of the upper room of the new house, and even in her great fear and greater wonder, Mary-Love's iron-trap mind had closed on that fact. But she had seen one strand of the pearls around Elinor's neck, and she more than suspected that the other two strands were in Elinor's possession. Mary-Love of course had wanted those pearls for herself—they were the most valuable of all, as well as the most beautiful and useful of the jewels— but Mary-Love, even as she conveniently suppressed thoughts about the inexplicable manner of the return of the jewels, yet credited the fact of their recovery somehow to Elinor. And if Elinor had brought the jewels—Sister, don't ask how, it won't do for us to know—why then, Elinor ought to have her pick of the lot.

After this conference, Mary-Love never mentioned what she had seen in the house next door. She had no wish to dig out its meaning. When Sister came to her and in whispers demanded to know what it was all about and wanted five reasons why that house should not be burned to the ground this very minute, Mary-Love said only, "Sister, we got Elven-nia's things back and that's all I care about. But I tell you what I'm gone do, I'm gone send Bray over there first thing tomorrow with a broom and tell him to kill all those bats that are up there in that room."

"Bats!" cried Sister, so angered by her mother's stubborn obtuseness that she couldn't bring herself to speak another civil word and walked right out of the room.

Though Mary-Love perhaps convinced herself that there were bats in the front bedroom of the house next door, she did not return to make certain that all the jewelry had been gathered up, or to see if it had really been blood dripping from the dress and veil hanging in the closet.

That evening, after supper, the three women went out and sat on the side porch, watched the moon rise, and waited for Oscar to return from the town council meeting.

"Elinor!" blurted Sister suddenly. "This afternoon you said you had some news, but you never told us what it was. I forgot all about it."

"I did too," said Mary-Love. It was apparent she had not, but had only been reluctant to seem interested or curious.

"I went to see Dr. Benquith this afternoon. It looks as if I'm pregnant," said Elinor calmly.

Mary-Love was for once unrestrained. She got up from the swing and went over and hugged Elinor close. Sister wasn't far behind.

"Oh, Elinor!" cried Mary-Love. "You have just made me a happy woman! You are gone give me a grandchild!"

"Go tell James," Sister urged. "I see his lights are on. James will be so happy!"

"No," said Elinor, "I have to tell Oscar first."

"You told us," argued Sister.

"That's different," said Mary-Love. "You and I are women. James is a man. Elinor is right. James has no business finding out about it before Oscar."

"Could you tell Grace? She's a girl."

Mary-Love shook her head. "Sister, I am sometimes surprised at what you do not know. Women find things out first, then they tell the men—otherwise the men wouldn't find out anything—then the servants find out, and the children last of all. And sometimes children don't ever find things out, even after they've grown up. There are secrets that die. Sister, I shouldn't have to be telling you any of this. These are things you should know!"

"Well, I don't," said Sister sullenly. "I guess that's why I'm never gone get married."

"Don't say that," said Mary-Love with some severity. "When you get ready..."

Oscar's automobile pulled up before the house.

"You want us to go inside?" Mary-Love whispered, but Elinor shook her head no.

"All I'm going to do is tell him," said Elinor easily. "There's no reason for you not to be here."

Oscar came up onto the front porch and was about to go inside the house, but Elinor called, "Oscar, we're out here!"

Oscar came around. "Hey, y'all," he said, "sure is a pretty night. All the clouds cleared away."

"Oscar," said Elinor without preamble, "I'm going to have a baby."

Oscar stood stock-still, then he grinned. "Elinor, I'm so happy. But what I want to know is, is it gone be a boy or a girl?"

"You'll take whatever you get," said Mary-Love.

"Which do you want?" asked Sister.

"I want a girl," said Oscar, sitting down and putting his arm around his wife's shoulder.

"Well, Oscar, you are in luck today, because that's what it's going to be." Elinor stated this not as a matter of belief or conjecture, but rather as if it had been a matter of choice, just as she might have said, I'm going to buy a pink dress, rather than I'm going to get a blue one.

"How you know?" demanded Sister, who that day had come to feel that there was entirely too much about life she did not understand.

"Shhh!" said Mary-Love. "I think it'll be wonderful to have a little girl baby in the house!"

Elinor's announcement completely overshadowed the little agenda of news that Oscar brought with him from the town council meeting, and they didn't hear it until the next morning at breakfast. A third man was to be added to the town police force; the Palafox Street merchants had agreed to bear half the expense of new concrete sidewalks; and finally, an engineer from Montgomery, whose name was Early Haskew, had put up at the Osceola the previous afternoon, had introduced himself to the town council ("a real nice man, and good looking," remarked Oscar, hardly satisfying his mother's desire for a detailed description), and would today begin his survey of Perdido.

"Surveying for what?" asked Sister.

"Well, for the levee of course," said Oscar. Elinor put down her fork with a clatter.

Oscar knew nothing about pregnancy except that it required nine months. So he calculated the birth of his daughter nine months from the day Elinor told him he was going to be a father, as if she had been impregnated the night before and somehow knew it. He was overjoyed to learn that he would have to wait only seven months—his daughter (of that he was certain, for Elinor had said it) would be born in May.

That night, while Elinor was undressing and Oscar was rising from his prayers at the side of the bed, he said, "Elinor, I think you ought to give up the school."

"I won't do it," returned Elinor.

"You're pregnant!"

"Oscar," she said, "do you think that I want to sit in this house all day long with Miss Mary-Love perched on one shoulder and Sister perching on the other?"

"No," he admitted, "I suspect you wouldn't be partial to that."

"Oscar," said Elinor, going over and drawing back the curtain so that the moon could shine into the room, "it is time we moved into our new house." She raised the screen and leaned out the window. Looking to her left, she could see the house that had been built for her: large, square, and stolid, rising from a pitted lake of shining sand, with the dark pine forest sighing softly behind it.

"Oscar," Elinor went on, "that house was our wedding present. We have been married for six months and we are still living in the room you had as a little boy. Every time I hang up a dress I see your old toys in the back of the closet—they're still there, and I don't have anywhere to put my shoes! The house next door has sixteen rooms and not a single person in any one of them." She got into bed.

"Mama will be lonesome when we go," Oscar ventured.