BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (2 page)

"Bray," he said, "I don't know what to make of it."

"Don't you try to make nothing of it," replied Bray. "And I don't know what you talking about anyway, Mr. Oscar."

"Nothing's disturbed in this room. The floor's just wet."

Oscar had turned to speak these last words to Bray, who shook his head and again indicated his wish to be well away from this half-submerged building. He was afraid Oscar would want to circle the hotel and look in every last window.

Oscar turned back in order to push off from the concrete casement. He glanced in the window, and then fell back into the boat with a small strangled cry of alarm.

In that room, which five seconds before had been patently unoccupied, he had seen a woman. She sat quietly on the edge of the bed with her back to the window.

Bray, not waiting for an explanation for Oscar's evident fright—and wanting none—immediately began to paddle off away from the hotel.

"Bray! Go back! Row back!" cried Oscar when he had recovered his voice.

"No, Mr. Oscar, I ain't gone."

"Bray, I'm telling you..."

Bray reluctantly paddled back. Oscar was reaching for the casement when the window shot up in its frame.

Bray stiffened with his paddle in the water. The boat rammed against the brick wall, and the black man and the white man rocked backward and forward with the shock.

"I have waited and waited," said the young woman standing in the open window.

She was tall, thin, pale, erect, and handsome. Her hair was a kind of muddy red, thick, and wound in a loose coil. She wore a black skirt and a white blouse. There was a rectangular gold-and-jet brooch at her throat.

"Who are you?" said Oscar in wonder.

"Elinor Dammert."

"I mean," said Oscar, "why are you here?"

"In the hotel?"

"Yes."

"I was caught by the flood. I couldn't get away."

"Ever'body got out of the hotel," said Bray. "They got out or they took 'em out. Last Wednesday."

"They forgot me," said Elinor. "I was asleep. They forgot I was here. I didn't hear them call."

"Town hall bell rang for two hours," said Bray sullenly.

"Are you all right?" asked Oscar. "How long have you been here?"

"As he says, since Wednesday. Four days. I've been sleeping most of the time. Not much else to do when there's a flood. Have you got anything in that boat I can have?"

"To eat?" Oscar asked.

"Got nothing," said Bray shortly.

"There's nothing," said Oscar. "I'm sorry, we should have brought something."

"Why?" asked Elinor. "You didn't expect to find anybody still in the hotel, did you?"

"Surely did not!" said Bray in a tone of voice which suggested that the surprise had in fact been not completely agreeable.

"Hush!" cried Oscar, annoyed by Bray's rudeness, and wondering at it, too. "Are you all right?" he repeated. "What did you do when the water was high?"

"Nothing," replied Elinor. "I sat on the edge of the bed and waited for somebody to come and get me."

"When I first looked in the window, you weren't there. There wasn't anybody in the room."

"I was there," said Elinor. "You just couldn't see me through the window right. There must have been a reflection on the glass. I was just sitting there. I didn't hear you at first."

There was silence a moment. Bray looked at Elinor Dammert with deep mistrust. Oscar bowed his head and tried to puzzle out what to do.

"Is there room for me in that boat?" asked Elinor after a bit.

"Of course!" cried Oscar. "We'll take you away. You must be starved."

"Pull the boat around," said Elinor to Bray, "right under the window, and I'll climb out."

Bray did so. Holding on to the awning with one hand, Oscar stood and gave Elinor his other. She lifted her skirt and stepped gracefully out of the hotel window into the boat. Quite at her ease, and giving no indication of the terror she must have felt at being for four days the only occupant of a town that was almost completely submerged, Elinor Dammert squeezed herself in the boat between Oscar Caskey and Bray Sugarwhite.

"Miss Elinor, my name is Oscar Caskey, and this is Bray. Bray works for us."

"How do you do, Bray?" said Elinor, turning to him with a smile.

"Fine, ma'am," said Bray in a tone and with a frown that contradicted his words.

"We'll get you to high ground," said Oscar.

"Is there room for my things?" said Elinor, as the black man pushed his paddle against the bricks of the Osceola Hotel.

"No," replied Oscar regretfully, "we are pretty tight in here now. I tell you what, though—soon as Bray gets us to dry land, he can come back here and pick 'em up."

"I cain't go inside that place!" Bray protested.

"Bray, you are gone do it!" said Oscar. "You realize what Miss Elinor has just been through for four days? When you and me and Mama and Sister were high and dry? And eating breakfast, dinner, and a little supper and complaining just because we brought two packs of cards away with us instead of four? You realize what Miss Elinor must have been thinking about, all alone in that hotel, with the water rising?"

"Bray," said Elinor Dammert, "I have just two little bags and I put 'em right beside the window on the floor. All you have to do is reach in."

• • •

Bray paddled in silence, headed back the way he and Oscar had come. He stared at the back of the young woman who had had no business at all being found where she was found.

Oscar, in the front of the boat, wanted very much to find something to say to Miss Elinor Dammert, but could think of nothing at all—certainly no remark came to mind that would justify his turning right around in the boat and awkwardly speaking to her over his shoulder. Lucidly, as he thought it, the carcass of a large raccoon suddenly bobbed to the surface of the oily black water when they had just passed the town hall, and Oscar explained that pigs, attempting to swim through the floodwater, had slashed their own throats with their forefeet. It was an undetermined point whether they all had drowned or bled to death. Miss Elinor smiled and nodded and said nothing. Oscar said nothing further, and did not turn around again until Bray was paddling past Oscar's own house. "That's where I live," said Oscar, pointing out the second story of the submerged Cas-key mansion. Miss Elinor nodded and smiled, and said that it looked like a very big and very pretty house and she wished she could see it sometime when it wasn't underwater. Oscar heartily concurred in that wish; Bray did not. Only a few minutes later Bray ran the boat up between two large exposed roots of a vast live oak that marked the town line to the northwest. Oscar stood out of the boat, balancing on one of the roots, and then helped Elinor on to dry land. Elinor turned to Bray. "Thank you," she said. "I really do 'predate you going back. Those two bags are all I've got, Bray, and I've got to have them or I've got nothing. I put 'em both right inside the window, and all you have to do is reach inside." Then she and Oscar set out together for the Zion Grace Church, which was on high ground a mile away, where the first families of Perdido had taken refuge.

A quarter of an hour later, Bray had maneuvered the little boat back against the side of the Osceola Hotel. The water, in even so short a time, had dropped several inches. He sat for several moments just staring at that blank open window, wondering how he would ever get the courage up to stick his arm inside and retrieve the bags. "Hungry!" he cried aloud to himself. "What'd that white woman eat?!" The sound of his own voice strengthened him—even though it had defined a portion of that unpleasant mystery he felt surrounded Elinor Dammert—and he turned the boat so that he could lean his shoulder against the brick wall of the hotel. Holding on to the concrete casement with one hand, he reached his other arm quickly into the room. His hand closed around the handle of a suitcase. He jerked it out of the window and into the boat. He took a deep breath, and thrust his arm in once more.

His hand closed around... nothing.

He jerked it out again. He stared at the sun a moment through squinting eyes, cocked his ear and heard nothing but the scraping of the boat against the orange bricks of the hotel, thrust his hand in again and moved it all about beneath the window inside the room. No second case was there.

Now there was nothing for it but actually to look into the hotel room—to put his head into the blank opening and stare around, looking for Miss Elinor's second bag.

With an unpleasant consciousness that he was the only person in all Perdido at that moment, Bray sat down again in the boat and considered the matter. He might, if he peered into the window, see the case within reach. That, definitely, was the most hopeful possibility, for then he could bring it out almost as simply as he had brought out the other. He might, however, see the case out of his reach. This would necessitate climbing through the window. He would not do that—but that would be all right, because he could always report to Mr. Oscar that he could not get out of the boat because he had been unable to tether it.

Bray stood up in the boat and steadied himself by grasping the awning. He looked in the window, but could not see the second case at all. It simply wasn't there.

Without thinking, he leaned inside the window and peered all along the outer wall. His fear had been subsumed by curiosity.

"Lord have mercy," he murmured. "Mr. Oscar," he said to himself, rehearsing the speech that would procure pardon for his failure to bring back both bags, "I look all over that room, and it just not there. Would have gone but not no place to tie the boat to, I—"

But there was—a little tongue of painted metal around which the cord of the Venetian blind had been wound. Bray cursed his own eyes for picking that out. He knew he couldn't lie to Mr. Oscar, no matter what his fear now, and still cursing his eyes and his inability to tell Mr. Oscar anything but gospel truth, he tied the slender mooring rope of the boat around that tongue of painted metal. When the boat was tethered to the window he carefully raised one foot onto the casement, and in a single slow bound found himself inside the hotel room.

The carpet was sopping wet. Foul floodwater was squeezed from beneath his boots. The morning sunlight poured into the room through the window in the eastern wall. Bray approached the bed where Mr. Oscar had seen Miss Elinor sitting. Experimentally, he pressed a finger against the spread. It too was sopping—and coated with a black grime. Though he had pressed lightly, foul water formed a dank pool around that finger. "It wasn't there," said Bray aloud, still rehearsing the conversation he would have with Mr. Oscar. Why didn't you look under the bed? demanded Mr. Oscar in Bray's voice.

Bray leaned down. Black grimy water dripped from the fringe of the spread all around. Beneath the bed was a grimy black pool of stinking water. "Lord my Lord! Where'd that white woman sleep?" cried Bray in a whisper. He turned around quickly. No suitcase. He went to the chifforobe and opened it. Nothing was in it but an inch of water in each of the drawers on the left-hand side. There wasn't a closet in the room or anywhere else for the case to have been hidden—even supposing Miss Elinor had wanted to keep him from finding it, and Miss Elinor had particularly wanted him to fetch it. "Lord, Mr. Oscar! Somebody come and done stole it!"

Bray was already headed back to the window, but Mr. Oscar, in Bray's voice, demanded now, Well, Bray, why didn't you look out in the hall?

" 'Cause," whispered Bray, "that old room was bad enough..."

The hallway door was closed, but there was a key in the lock. Bray moved over to the door and tried the handle. The door was locked, so he turned the key. The key itself was grimy and black. Bray pulled the door open.

He looked down the long uncarpeted hallway. There was no case. He saw nothing. He paused a moment, waiting for Mr. Oscar's voice to demand that he go farther. But no voice came. Bray breathed relief, and eased the door closed. He returned to the window and climbed carefully out into the boat. It was while he untied the tethering rope slowly, savoring the notion of his having come through this unpleasant adventure safely, that Bray noticed what he had not seen before: the sunlight shining through the window now illuminated the high-water mark on the dark-papered walls. It was two feet higher than the head of Elinor Dammert's carefully made bed. If the water had risen so high as that, how had the woman survived?

CHAPTER I
The Ladies of Perdido

The Zion Grace Baptist Church was situated on the Old Federal Road about a mile and a half outside Perdido. Its congregation was Hard-Shell, so the church was about the most uncomfortable sort of structure imaginable: a single whitewashed room with a vaulted ceiling that trapped the heat in the summer and the cold in February; that housed boisterous crickets in winter and flying cockroaches in July. It was an old building, raised on brick pilings some years before the Civil War, and beneath it, in the dark sand, lived sometimes polecats and sometimes rattlesnakes.

The members of the Perdido Hard-Shell congregation were known for three things: their benches, which were very hard; their sermons, which were very long; and their minister, a tiny woman with black hair and a shrill laugh, called Annie Bell Driver. Sometimes people put up with the backless benches and the three-hour sermons simply for the novelty of hearing a woman stand at the front of the church, behind a pulpit, and speak of sin, damnation, and the wrath of God. Annie Bell had an insignificant husband, three insignificant sons, and a girl called Ruthie who was going to grow up to be just like her.

When the waters of the rivers began to rise, Annie Bell Driver threw open the doors of the Zion Grace Church to house any who might be driven from their homes. As it happened, the first to be driven from their homes on that side of town were the three richest families of Perdido—the Caskeys, the Turks, and the DeBordenaves. These three families owned the three sawmills and lumberyards in town, and lumber comprised the whole of Perdido's industry.

So, as the waters of the muddy red Perdido rose over their back lawns, the three rich families of Perdido got wagons and mules from their mills and backed them up to the front porches of their fine houses and filled them with trunks and barrels and crates of food and clothing and valuables. What couldn't be taken away was carried to the tops of the houses. Only the heaviest furniture was allowed to remain on the lower floors, as it was thought that these pieces would survive high water.