Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga (6 page)

“I’m all right,” said Annie Bell Driver weakly. “But, law, you scared me! What were you doing down in that water, girl?”

“Oh!” Elinor said in a light, smiling voice, “after going through a flood there’s just no other way to get clean—I know it for a fact, Miz Driver!”

She took a step upward and back onto the sandbar on which her bag had been placed, and if Miz Driver hadn’t still been so dizzy she would have been more certain that when Miss Elinor lifted her other foot out of that branch, it was not white and slender as was the one already braced upon the sand, but instead looked altogether different—wide and flat and gray and webbed.

Oh, but that was just the water!
thought Annie Bell Driver, shutting her eyes tightly.

Chapter 2

James Caskey, Oscar’s uncle and Mary-Love’s brother-in-law, was a quiet, sensitive, fastidious man to whom trouble came easily and left grudgingly. He was slender (“bony,” some said), mild, and quite well-off, at least by the standards of a small town in a poor county of an impoverished state. He was unhappily married, but his wife Genevieve, to Perdido’s relief, spent most of her time with a married sister in Nashville. He had a six-year-old daughter called Grace, and he had—despite the possession of that wife and daughter—the reputation of being marked with “the stamp of femininity.” He lived in the house his father had built in 1865. This had been the first substantial home raised in Perdido, though by current standards it was modest: just two parlors, a dining room, and three bedrooms—all on the same floor. The kitchen, which had originally been detached, had now been annexed to the house by the construction of a long addition, containing a nursery, a sewing room, and two bathrooms. The house was old-fashioned, with high ceilings, large square rooms, brick fireplaces, and dark wainscoting, but James’s mother had had taste, and the place was well furnished. Now, James did not know what remained to him in the house which had lain seven days wholly submerged beneath the muddy water of the upper Perdido. When Bray rowed him through town, James Caskey could tell where his house was only by looking at his sister’s house next door (which was two-storied) and by the brick chimney of the kitchen, which was higher than those of the parlors.

James, however, had given little thought to the contents of his house, though he loved every stick of his mother’s furniture, loved everything that had belonged to her. He had to think of the mill, whose loss, whether total or only temporary, meant hardship for the whole community. The Caskey mill, owned jointly by James and Mary-Love and run jointly by James and Mary-Love’s son Oscar, employed three hundred and thirty-nine men and twenty-two women, white and colored, ranging in age from seven to eighty-one—these last a great-grandson and a great-grandfather who stenciled the Caskey trefoil onto the boards of the company’s specialty woods: the pecan, oak, cypress, and cedar. Because these three hundred and sixty-one persons would suffer greatly if the mill could not be brought back quickly into operation, James Caskey had Bray row him over to the still submerged mill so he could see what, if anything, might be done.

James Caskey’s rickety frame made him appear frail, a general impression intensified by his movements, which were habitually slow and deliberate and displayed (as far as was consonant with a body that tended to jerkiness) some amount of flaccid grace. He certainly had never spent much time in the Caskey forests, and it was suspected that he didn’t know as much about trees as a Caskey ought to know. His disinclination to tramp about forests and have his boots muddied, his trousers ripped with briars, and his way impeded with rattlesnakes was well-known, but he was a splendid worker in the office, and no one in town could compose a better resolution or draft a subtler letter. When the town proposed incorporation to the state legislature, James Caskey represented Perdido before that assembly, and after a fine speech there it was universally wondered why the man had never gone into politics.

James’s examination of the mill-yard showed the Caskey warehouses in deplorable condition. Even those that were closed were ruined, for the water-soaked wood had buckled and warped. The lumber in the open sheds had all floated away to God only knew where. Inventory appeared a complete loss. The offices were wrecked too, but James had had the sense to fill two wagons with records current and immediately past, and these had been taken to higher land. They lay now under hay in the barn belonging to a potato farmer, but the mill had lost all records of everything before the year 1895. Tom DeBordenave was in a much worse fix however, for he had opted to save lumber before records; the lumber was lost anyway, for the barn in which it had been stored had eventually washed away as well, and now he had no record of bills outstanding, of future orders, or even of addresses of his best Yankee customers.

After a couple of hours being rowed uselessly about his submerged mill and calling out commiserations to Tom DeBordenave, who was in another little green boat, looking over his adjoining property, James Caskey was taken back past his submerged house to the forest track that led to the Zion Grace Baptist Church. Bray, of course, had already told him of the strange appearance of the red-haired woman in the Osceola Hotel, and he had heard the same story from his nephew. James was more than a little curious to see her. No one in Perdido had talked about anything but the flood for so long that he was glad of the opportunity to hear about something that had nothing to do with water.

That Miss Elinor had remained the night at the Zion Grace Baptist Church he knew from Bray, because Bray had fetched another mattress from Annie Bell Driver’s house. James Caskey hoped that Miss Elinor would be sitting out in front of the church when he walked past; that would save the subterfuge of seeking out Mary-Love or Sister or his daughter inside the church and bringing the conversation and the introductions gradually around to the rescued young woman.

Bray tied the little green boat to the exposed root of a tree at the edge of the floodwater—it had already subsided to such an extent that when they emerged on to dry land they were still within sight of Mary-Love’s house on the edge of the town line. Mr. James and Bray walked rather quickly through the springy, damp forest.

After a few minutes of silence Bray, who was walking in one wagon track while Mr. James walked in the other, ventured the opinion that Mr. James would be better off “if he left that lady alone.”

“Why you say that?” asked James curiously.

“I say that ’cause I know what I say.”

James shrugged, and replied, “Bray, I don’t believe you know what you are talking about.”

“I do, Mr. James, I do!” cried Bray, but there was an end to the argument. Mr. James wasn’t going to lengthen it by demanding specifics of Bray, and Bray wasn’t going to volunteer any hard information on Miss Elinor for the simple reason that he hadn’t any; and he wasn’t going to tell any of his suspicions either, which were notably formless and might—if Miss Elinor proved to be nothing more than what she appeared to want to appear—reflect badly upon Bray.

After all the chilly floodwater that had passed beneath Bray’s little boat, the forest seemed warm and dry and safe. James Caskey walked along smiling, turning his head quickly when he heard quail call, trying to see them but not succeeding.

“That her,” said Bray in a hoarse whisper when they came within sight of the Zion Grace Church.

Elinor Dammert sat on the front steps of the church with James’s daughter Grace huddled in her lap—it was almost as if she had been waiting for him there and had secured Grace in order to facilitate their meeting.

Bray hurried on toward the Driver house, but James, thanking the colored man for his trouble that afternoon, went up to the church and introduced himself to Elinor Dammert.

“You’re visiting Perdido at a bad time,” he remarked. “We cain’t offer you but a poor sort of hospitality.”

Elinor smiled. “There are worse things than a little high water.”

“Is that child bothering you? Grace, are you bothering Miss Elinor?”

“She’s not,” said Elinor. “Grace likes me pretty well.”

Grace hugged Elinor’s neck to show her father how much she liked the new young woman.

“Oscar told me you lost all your money in the flood.”

“I did. It was in my case, along with my certificates and diplomas.”

“That’s a real shame. I blame Bray. But we can get you on the Hummingbird back to Montgomery, at least.”

“Montgomery?”

“Isn’t that where you come from?”

“Went to school there. Huntingdon. I come from Wade, up in Fayette County.”

“Send you back to Wade, then,” said James with a smile. “Doesn’t Grace want to see her daddy?” he said, unfolding his arms with a jerk that might have put one in mind of a child’s jumping jack.

“No!” cried Grace, holding more tightly still to Elinor.

“You must think I’ve got someplace to go,” said Elinor over Grace’s shoulder.

“Not Wade?”

“That’s where my people are from. All my people are dead,” said Elinor Dammert, squeezing the child in her arms.

“I’m sorry. What will you do, then?” James Caskey asked solicitously.

“I came to Perdido because I heard there was a place in the school. If there is one, then I’ll stay and teach.”

“You know who you should ask, don’t you?” said Grace from the arms that encircled her.

“Who should she ask, Grace?” said James.

“You!” cried Grace. Then, turning to Elinor: “Daddy’s head of the board.”

“That’s right,” said James. “So you should be asking me.”

“That’s who I’ll ask then. I heard there was a vacancy.”

“There wasn’t,” said James, “at least not before the flood.”

“How do you mean?”

“Edna McGhee was teaching fourth grade—been teaching fourth grade for six years, I believe—but she told me night before last that she and Byrl were leaving town, that they weren’t waiting around for the next flood to come and sweep them all down to Pensacola on the back of a love seat. So if Edna and Byrl leave town like they say they are, we’ve got nobody to teach fourth grade.”

“Except me,” said Elinor. “I would be happy to teach fourth. But you ought to remember, Mr. Caskey, I’ve lost my certificates and my diploma.”

“Oh, said James with a smile, “but that was our fault, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it, Grace?”

Grace nodded her head vigorously, and threw her arms around Elinor’s neck.

. . .

James stayed at the church for an hour more, talking only briefly with Mary-Love about the state of the mill, but speaking at great and evidently congenial length with Miss Elinor, who
wouldn’t
put poor Grace down. He took his leave—with considerable reluctance—only when Tom DeBordenave and Henry Turk sent a man after him; the three millowners needed to talk concertedly about what was to be done now. Mary-Love told Sister it was absolutely scandalous that when James finally
did
go away he consigned his daughter to the care of the redheaded stranger, while his sister-in-law and his niece had stood in plain sight! “Mama,” said Sister, “you look at Grace, she won’t leave Miss Elinor alone! Miss Elinor has got a friend for life!”

Mary-Love, who had exhibited no desire to become intimate with Miss Elinor the previous evening or earlier that morning, now could hardly be brought to speak to the young woman—and wouldn’t have allowed Sister to do so either, had not the desire for concrete information regarding Miss Elinor’s antecedents and intentions been of overwhelming moment. When Sister brought her mother the news (obtained in one corner of the church, and delivered in another) that James was going to try to get Miss Elinor a place in the school, Mary-Love sighed deeply, and sat down on the hard bench with the air and the motion of a fighter who has just had all the wind knocked out of him in a single cruel blow. “Oh, Sister,” said Mary-Love in a low moaning voice, “I knew she would do it...”

“Do what, Mama?”

“Worm her way in. Bore her way in. Dig right down in the mud of Perdido until she couldn’t be dragged out again by seventeen men pulling on a rope that was tied around her neck—and I just wish it were!”

“Mama,” cried Sister, looking around to where Elinor sat—quite demurely—talking to Miz Driver and still holding Grace Caskey upon her lap, “you are being hard on her, and I don’t think she deserves it!”

“Just wait, Sister,” said Mary-Love, “just wait and tell me that again in six months.”

That night—not late, for when there was so much to do during the daylight that could not be accomplished in darkness, everyone went to sleep early—Oscar Caskey and his uncle James lay together in the bed that was usually occupied by Annie Bell Driver and her insignificant spouse. The Driver house was crowded with men, colored and white, very well-off and very poor, very old and quite young (although the youngest remained with their mothers in the church), so that every chamber was filled with mattresses and snoring.

Two of Miz Driver’s sons slept on the floor at the foot of their parents’ bed breathing noisily through their mouths, so when Oscar raised himself on his elbow and spoke to his uncle it was in a whisper.

“What are you gone do about Miss Elinor?” Oscar asked. “Mama told me you spent the morning with her. The
whole
morning, Mama said.”

“Well, she’s a nice girl,” remarked James. “And I feel bad about what happened to her. Trapped in the Osceola, her bag gone, no money, no certificate, no job, no place to go. She is as bad off as anybody in this town—in fact, worse than most!”

“I know it,” said Oscar softly. “I cain’t understand why Mama took such a whole-cloth disliking to her. Makes things hard.”

“Mary-Love doesn’t want me to do anything,” James agreed, tapping a bony finger against Oscar’s pillow next to Oscar’s nose. “Mary-Love doesn’t want me to address another word in Miss Elinor’s direction.”

“But you are gone do something, aren’t you, James?”

“Of course, I am! I’m gone get her a job. She’s gone be teaching in September. In fact, she may have to start as soon as we get the school back open, because I don’t think Byrl and Edna McGhee are even gone try to clean up their house, though I don’t think there’s probably more than two feet of mud on their kitchen floor. If they go—and Edna’s got people in Tallahassee who’ll take her and Byrl in right now—then Miss Elinor can start at the school right away.”