BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (51 page)

"I am just about driven into the ground, Elinor."

"Getting everybody ready, I suppose."

"That's right. In fact, I just dropped by to make sure that Frances was all set."

"I am packing her suitcases this very minute. I imagine that tonight I'll have to hit her over the head with a hammer to get her to go to sleep."

"All the children are excited," replied Mary-Love.

"Come on upstairs," said Elinor, "and see what I've packed for her. See if you can think of anything I've forgotten."

"Why, I'd be happy to do that," said Mary-Love, though she wondered how it was that Elinor was making her inspection trip so easy. As she followed her daughter-in-law into the house, Mary-Love peered into the darkened front parlor and remarked, "Looks like you have been changing things around."

"A little," replied Elinor. "Miss Mary-Love, it is burning hot outside. Let me get you some nectar."

"Oh, Elinor, I am so glad you suggested that! Last week I had a glass of your nectar from Manda Turk, and it was the best stuff I've ever tasted. Who gathers your blackberries for you?"

"I send Luvadia and Frances. Go on upstairs and I'll fix us both some. I'm a little thirsty too. Frances's room is right next to the sleeping porch. The suitcases are open on her bed."

"Where is Frances?"

"James drove her and Danjo out to Lake Pinchona. Frances loves to feed that alligator!"

"Frances is gone fall in one day and get eaten up," Mary-Love said calmly, as she mounted the stairs.

Elinor went into the kitchen and said to Zaddie, "You go upstairs and see if Miss Mary-Love needs any help. She's going to want to undo everything I've already done. I'm going to fix her some nectar." She took out the ice pick and began to chop ice.

"I wish Frances had some prettier things," said Mary-Love. She had gone through Frances's luggage, clucking disapproval of what had been packed, how Elinor had packed it, and even of the two small suitcases themselves. Now she was seated on the glider on the sleeping-porch and sipping her blackberry nectar. Elinor rocked gently in the swing and was thoughtfully stirring the overpoweringly sweet nectar that had been diluted with water and ice. "I wish you and Oscar would let me buy Frances some things," Mary-Love continued. "You two don't even let me see my grandchild anymore."

"Miss Mary-Love," said Elinor calmly, "that's just not so. Frances loves you to death—Frances loves everybody—but you won't let that child near you."

"Elinor! How could you say such a thing!"

"I can say it because it's perfectly true. Oscar and I don't spend much time at your house and you don't spend much time over here either, but we have never tried to discourage Frances from going over to see you. You're her grandmother, but you don't ever want to have anything to do with her. You and Miriam treat Frances as if she were dirt under your feet. She lay in that room sick as she could be for three years, and not once did you visit her. I was embarrassed to mention it when anybody asked me about it. It's hard for me to believe that you could be so deliberately cruel to your own granddaughter."

There was no rancor in Elinor's voice. She spoke as if she stated obvious truths. The very baldness of Elinor's assertions wounded Mary-Love, who never looked at a thing directly, and now had no idea how to confront her daughter-in-law's unexpected forth-rightness.

"Elinor! I am shocked. Aren't we taking Frances with us to Chicago tomorrow? Won't she and Miriam have the time of their lives?"

"Maybe," said Elinor. "That is, if Miriam will speak to Frances—and I'm not convinced that she will."

Mary-Love was growing even less certain how to respond to her daughter-in-law. Elinor's remarks had the substance but not the feel of an attack. Mary-Love temporized by glancing around the porch and commenting idly, "It's been so long since I've been here."

"That's your fault, Miss Mary-Love," said Elinor, cannily returning to the subject. "Oscar and I would never have turned you away if you had knocked on the door."

"I didn't feel welcome," said Mary-Love, abashed that her innocent-sounding tactic of delay had so quickly been turned against her. "This isn't my house anymore, you know."

Elinor didn't reply. Her smile was vague.

"You know," Mary-Love went on, "one day I sent Luvadia Sapp over here with the deed to this house. I signed it over to you and Oscar. Did that girl bring it, or did she lose it somewhere on the way?"

"Oh, she brought it. We've got the deed inside somewhere."

"I was expecting a thank you, I must say."

"Miss Mary-Love, Oscar and I bought this house."

"I gave it to you!"

"No, you're wrong," Elinor said with ostensible amiability. "It was supposed to have been our wedding present. But then we had to pay for it. We had to give you Miriam for it. Miriam was eight years old before you finally turned over the deed. That kind of delay doesn't deserve a thank you."

Elinor's voice and tone continued soft and conversational, but Mary-Love was certain now that this attack had been long in the planning. She was little prepared to do battle when all her thought for months had been devoted to tomorrow's journey!

"I don't know why I'm sitting here listening to this," Mary-Love cried. "You're so hard! No wonder Frances is the way she is! No wonder Miriam doesn't want to play with her!"

"Frances, in case you hadn't noticed, is a thoroughly sweet child. She loves everybody, and everybody loves her. I wish I could say the same for Miriam. The way that child acts, I'm glad she lives with you and not with me."

"Miriam is worth ten of Frances!"

"You may think that, but it's still no excuse for you to treat Frances the way you do," said Elinor, remaining aggravatingly cool.

Mary-Love, in danger of becoming agitated, sought to turn the attack. "Elinor, why do you treat me the way you do?"

Elinor appeared to consider for a moment, and then replied: "Because of the way you treat Oscar. The way you treat your whole family, the way you've always treated them."

"I love every one of them! I love them to death! All I want in the world is for my family to love me."

"I know," said Elinor. "And you don't want them to love anyone else. You want to provide everybody with everything. You didn't want Oscar to marry me because you didn't want him to divide his love. The same with poor old Sister. You took Miriam away from us—"

"You let her go!"

"—and you raised her so that she loved you, and didn't give a single solitary thought to her own parents. I remember back when Grace was little and was close to Zaddie, you tried to break that up, too."

"I don't remember anything of the sort!"

"You did it, though. Miss Mary-Love, it's the kind of thing you do without thinking. It comes natural to you. If you had had your way, James would have thrown Queenie Strickland and her children out of town the day they showed up."

"Queenie was no good—"

"You told James he was making a big mistake in taking in Danjo, but Danjo has made James very happy."

"One day that boy is going to turn—"

Elinor again paid no attention to Mary-Love. "And when the bank called in Oscar's loan, you wouldn't lend him the money to save him from bankruptcy. You wanted to see Oscar and me go under. You wanted us poor so that we would have to come begging-"

"Oscar didn't go under. James lent him the money," Mary-Love protested.

"Oscar has never forgiven you. I don't imagine he ever will."

"You haven't either, have you, Elinor?"

"Miss Mary-Love, you don't like me because I took Oscar away from you. You haven't liked me since the day I showed up in Perdido. It can't make a whole lot of difference to you whether I forgive you or not."

"You're right," said Mary-Love, suddenly frank, almost without knowing it, letting her anger show and speaking her mind, "it doesn't. I've never expected anything from you except bitterness and reproach, Elinor. And it's all I've ever gotten. And this, I suppose, is your fond farewell with everybody about to go off to Chicago for a good time."

"Yes," replied Elinor, unperturbed. "Though you're not there yet."

"You've been biding your time, haven't you? You've been treasuring up your hostility, isn't that right?

You've been storing it up for five years, ever since Oscar asked me to lend him money he didn't even need!"

"I have been waiting..." Elinor admitted.

"I wondered when you were going to show your hand," snapped Mary-Love. "Since you showed up in this town during the flood, lounging in the Osceola and waiting for my boy to come along and rescue you and court you and marry you. Lying in wait for him like a lizard waiting for a green-bottle fly! And you got him. I couldn't stop you. But I did stop you from getting anything else, didn't I? For all your running-around, and all your little schemes and plans and biting, you've ended up with nothing at all."

"Nothing?" echoed Elinor.

"Nothing. What have you got? You've got this house, because I gave it to you. You've got a draw-erful of promissory notes to James, and he's the only man in the world who would lend money to Oscar, who never had anything I didn't give him and never will. You've got a deed to a little land that's scattered around here and there, but it's all flood land and there aren't any roads on any of it and Tom De-Bordenave when he owned it never made a crying dime off it. And you've got a little girl, but she's a puny thing, and nothing at all compared to the one you gave away fifteen years ago. You've got a few friends in town, but they're the ones you stole from me. They're the ones I didn't want anymore. And you've got a husband who will insist on living next door to his mother forever. That's what you've got, Elinor, and let me tell you, it isn't much. Not by my standards."

"It seems to me," said Elinor, "that you've showed your hand too."

"No! I'm not the one who's fighting. I'm not the one who's always playing games. Because I'm on top. You try to blame me for beating you out of what's rightfully yours, but nobody beat you out, Elinor.

You just didn't have the courage to go out and get what you wanted."

"I've held back," Elinor returned.

Mary-Love laughed derisively. "I'd like to see you try to do something, Elinor. Just what do you think you could do, to get back at me for all the things you think I've done? What paltry little thing will you do now?"

"Miss Mary-Love, despite you and despite everything you've tried to do to keep Oscar down, I intend to make him rich. I intend to make him richer than you ever dreamed of being—that's what I intend to do."

Again Mary-Love laughed. "And how do you intend to do that? The last time you convinced him to do something, all he did was get himself in debt, and he's never gotten out of it. Are you gone persuade him to buy more land?"

"Yes. Henry Turk is going to sell his land—that's all that poor man's got left. He's got a tract of about fifty thousand acres in Escambia County. He came to see Oscar about it the other day."

"How much does he want for it?"

"Twenty dollars an acre."

"That's a hundred thousand dollars! Where's Oscar gone get that money?"

Elinor smiled. "I thought I'd take this opportunity to ask you to lend it to him."

Mary-Love's jaw dropped in her amazement. "Elinor, you are asking me to lend you one hundred thousand dollars so Oscar can buy a lot of worthless land?"

"It's not worthless. It's covered with pine."

"Lord God, what do we need more pine for? There's nobody buying it, Elinor. Or hadn't you heard there's a Depression going on?"

"We ought to have that land, Miss Mary-Love. Will you lend us the money?"

"No! Of course I'm not gone lend you the money!

You'd like to drive me to the poor house, is what you'd like to do, Elinor. Well, I'm not gone be driven anywhere, I'm not lending Oscar one penny. What has he been able to do with that land he bought from Tom DeBordenave? He hasn't even been able to keep up bank payments on it."

"Then your answer is no?"

"Of course it's no! Did you actually expect me to say yes?"

"No," admitted Elinor. "I just wanted to give you one more chance."

"One more chance for what?"

To this Elinor made no reply. She drank off the last of her nectar and put the glass on the table at the side of the swing.

"Miss Mary-Love," she replied, still unmoved, "think whatever you like about me. All I've said today is that I know what you're up to. I've always known. And when the time comes when you have the leisure to think things over, just remember that I gave you one last chance."

Mary-Love stood up from the glider and straightened her dress. "I'll tell you another thing, Elinor..."

"What?"

"You make the worst nectar I've ever had in my life. It tastes like you made it with water straight out of that stinking old river. The only reason I drank more than one sip was out of pure politeness."

The next morning a caravan of automobiles, filled with people and luggage, headed for the train station in Atmore. Florida Benquith drove Queenie, Queen-ie's children, and Ivey; Bray drove Mary-Love, Sister, and Miriam; and Oscar drove James, Danjo, and Frances. Everyone was jammed together and anxious to be off. Sister carried sheaves of tickets in her pocketbook. She had taken the responsibility of managing all the logistics of the excursion.

At the train station the Caskeys and all their luggage were lined up on the platform, waiting for the Hummingbird, which would take them as far as Montgomery. There they would change trains and be on their way directly to Chicago.

Mary-Love attempted to wheedle out of her son some small expression of affection: "Are you gone miss us?"

"You're taking away half the town, Mama."

"Say goodbye to me, Oscar!"

"Have a good time, Mama," said Oscar, perfunctorily kissing her on the cheek. She had not dared hope for more. She turned to thank Florida Benquith for her assistance, when she suddenly grew dizzy and grasped the back of a bench to keep from falling.

"Are you all right, Mary-Love?" asked Queenie.

Mary-Love looked up with an expression of pained surprise. "Suddenly I think I have got the worst headache I've ever had in all my life."