BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (22 page)

That evening, while Oscar was at the meeting of the town council, Elinor sat with her sewing on the upstairs porch. Zaddie joined her there, and told about the strange thing that had happened to her that afternoon at Miss Mary-Love's.

"Why she want me to meet that man?" asked Zaddie curiously and with complete confidence that Elinor would be able'io supply the answer.

Elinor had put down her sewing. Her mouth had tightened. She stood and went over to the porch railing. Her pregnant belly created only a little sway and awkwardness in her purposeful walk. "Don't you know, Zaddie?"

"No, ma'am."

Elinor turned and with barely suppressed anger said, "She wanted you to meet that man so you would come back here and tell me about it, that's why!"

"Ma'am?"

"Zaddie, you know Miss Mary-Love won't give me the time of day—"

"No, ma'am!" agreed Zaddie emphatically, as if that state of affairs had been reached only through some cunning stratagem of Elinor's.

"—but she wanted me to know that that man was back in town."

"You mean, Mr. Skew?"

Elinor nodded grimly.

"Why Miss Mary-Love want you to know that?"

"Because she knows how much I hate Early Has-kew, that's why. She did it to perturb my mind, Zaddie. And I'll tell you something, it does perturb my mind!"

"Why?"

"Zaddie, don't you know? Don't you have any idea?"

"No, ma'am."

"You know what that man wants to do? He wants to dam up the rivers. He wants to build levees all around this town to keep the rivers from flooding."

"Miss El'nor, we don't want no more floods," said Zaddie cautiously. "Do we?"

"There aren't going to be any more floods," said Elinor emphatically.

"Ivey say there might be. Ivey say it all depend on the squirrels."

"Ivey doesn't know what she's talking about," said Elinor. "Ivey doesn't know anything about floods." She paced quickly back and forth along the long porch railing glancing now at Mary-Love's house, now at her splendid grove of water oaks, but staring mostly down at the muddy red Perdido flowing swiftly and silently behind the house. Zaddie stood quite still with one raised hand grasping the swing chain as she watched Miss Elinor.

"None of them knows about floods or anything about the rivers, Zaddie. You'd think they'd have learned something, wouldn't you, living so long around here, where every time they look out the window they see the Perdido flowing by, where every time they go to work or go to the store they have to cross a bridge and see the water flowing under it, where they catch their fish for supper on Saturday night, where their oldest children get baptized, and where their youngest children drown. You'd think they'd know something by now, wouldn't you, Zaddie?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Zaddie quietly, but Miss Elinor did not even turn around to look at the black girl.

"They don't though," said Elinor bitterly. "They don't know anything. They're going to hire that man to build levees, they're going to pretend that the rivers aren't there anymore. And, Zaddie, Miss Mary-Love's going to see to help this project along, even if she has to take money out of her own purse to do it. And do you know why?"

"Why?"

"To spite me. That's why she's doing it, and for no other reason in the world. Lord, that woman despises me!" Elinor turned suddenly back, strode forward and threw herself into the swing. She looked at Zaddie, who had seated herself cautiously in the swing beside Elinor. With one swift kick Elinor propelled the swing into motion. She pressed both hands against her belly, and when she spoke her words seemed to join in rhythm with the jerking chain.

"Zaddie, do you know what we're going to see a few months from now when we sit in this swing?"

"No, ma'am. What?"

"We're going to be looking at a pile of dirt. That man is going to block our view of the river with a pile of dirt. And Mary-Love is going to be out there with a shovel helping. She'll do it to make me mad. And she'll put a shovel in Sister's hands. And she'll have Miriam out there in a baby carriage, and she'll lean over and she'll say to Miriam, 'Oh, you watch, child, you watch me ruin your mama's view! You watch me raise up earth in front of your real mama's eyes!' Oh, I hate it, Zaddie! I hate it all like hell!"

Elinor rocked in the swing and stared out at the Perdido. Her breath was harsh and uneven.

"Miss El'nor, can I ask you a question?" said Zaddie timidly.

"What?"

"What if they don't put up the levee? Won't there be another flood? Sometime, I mean? Miss El'nor, people died in that flood!"

Elinor put her foot down sharply and the swing stopped with a jerk, nearly pitching Zaddie out onto the floor. Elinor turned and looked directly into the black girl's face.

"Zaddie, you listen to me. That levee—if it ever gets built—is not going to do this town one bit of good."

"What you mean?"

"I mean that while I am alive and while I am living in this house, whether there's a levee or not there will be no flood in Perdido. The rivers will not rise."

"Miss El'nor, you cain't—"

Elinor ignored the protest. "But, Zaddie, when I am dead—whether there's a levee or not—this town and everybody in it will be washed off the face of the earth..."

CHAPTER 15
THE BAPTISM

When Zaddie went to Elinor with news of the arrival in town of Early Haskew she had not known that this man was to live in the house right next door. Mary-Love would have given much to see Elinor's face when she learned that Early was to sleep in the bed in the room that Elinor herself had occupied not so many months before. Oscar, not anticipating his wife's reaction, had mentioned this only in passing that evening. The following evening Oscar and his wife were walking past Mary-Love's house on the way to the Ritz and saw Early sitting on the porch with Sister. Elinor stopped in her tracks, turned and marched home, and wouldn't speak a single word to Oscar for the rest of the night. She strung a hammock on the upstairs porch and slept within sight of the river.

Calmer next morning at the breakfast table, she said to Oscar, "Your mama wants me to lose this baby."

Oscar raised his eyes in astonishment. "Elinor, what do you mean to say!"

"I mean to say Miss Mary-Love wants me to miscarry. She wants Miriam to be an only child so she can lord Miriam over me and you."

Oscar had never before heard Elinor speak of their daughter, and now that she had, he was dumbfounded by the perversity of her attitude.

"Elinor," he said earnestly, "that is just wrong. Why would you think a horrible thing like that?"

"There is no other reason for her to have asked that man into her house."

"Mr. Haskew?"

"That man is sleeping in your room, Oscar."

"I know it. And I think Mama is doing a fine thing. I think she looks on it as something she is doing for the benefit of Perdido, providing a pleasant place for Mr. Haskew to do his drawings. Did you know she bought him a table that put her back sixty-five dollars? And a chair with a swivel seat that was fifteen dollars more? Mama was looking out for Mr. Has-kew's well-being."

Elinor turned away and stared out the window at Mary-Love's house. "It just makes me ill to sit here and look at that house and to know that man is sitting inside it with a pencil and a ruler, drawing up the levee."

Oscar thought he began to understand. "Now, I sort of remembered that you didn't take to Mr. Haskew when he was here a year or so ago—"

Elinor looked at her husband with a countenance that seemed to say, That is an Alabama understatement.

"—but I thought it was just because you didn't take to him, you know, the way I don't take to okra.

But it wasn't, was it? It was just because he was coming here to build the levee, and you don't like the levee."

"That's right. I don't like the levee, Oscar. This town doesn't need it. There won't be any more floods."

"Elinor, you just cain't be sure of that. We cain't afford to take chances. Even if I were sure nobody was gone die, I'd try to push it through. Do you know how much lumber we lost in 1919? Do you know how much money we lost? And we were lucky. Poor old Tom DeBordenave hasn't recovered yet, and I'm not sure he ever will. That flood could come again next year, and then if any of us recovered I'd be mighty surprised."

"There won't be any high water next year," said Elinor calmly.

Oscar regarded his wife with a baffled face. "Elinor," he said at last, "you just cain't let Mr. Haskew upset you. He is a very nice man and I'm sure he doesn't want to hear that he is distressing a pregnant woman in the next house over."

"Miss Mary-Love did this on purpose," Elinor repeated.

They were back where they had begun. Oscar sighed, got up from the table, and prepared to leave for work. He knew that Elinor's view was as distorted as the image of an object observed through ten feet of flowing river water. But that afternoon when he dropped by his mother's house on the way home, in the middle of a discussion about how things were going at the mill, Mary-Love said, "Oscar, does Elinor know that Mr. Haskew has taken up residence here with us?"

"She knows it," said Oscar shortly. After the sudden introduction of a new subject into the coversa-tion, it was best to say as little as possible in reply.

A man never knew what someone wanted to get out of him.

"Well, what did she say?"

That river water wasn't flowing as quickly anymore. Oscar was beginning to see what rested on the shifting bed so far below the surface.

"She didn't say much, Mama. Elinor doesn't think this town needs a levee. Elinor doesn't think there's going to be another flood. So I suppose she thinks that Mr. Haskew is wasting his time and that we are wasting our money."

Mary-Love snorted in contempt. "What does Elinor know about floods and levees? What does Elinor know about people's houses and businesses getting washed away in rising water?"

"Well," Oscar pointed out, "she got trapped by the water. If you recall, Bray and I found her stranded in the Osceola Hotel."

Mary-Love said nothing, but her face was so expressive of the delicate wish that Elinor Dammert had remained stranded until she starved or perished of damp ennui that Oscar responded as if the remark had been made aloud. "Mama, if I hadn't rescued Elinor and then married her, you wouldn't have Miriam."

"That is true," admitted Mary-Love. "T. will always be grateful to Elinor for giving me her little girl. Her first child. She didn't have to do it. So, Elinor didn't say anything about Mr. Haskew? Did you tell her we had given Mr. Haskew your old room? And that he is sleeping in the bed that she gave birth in?"

Oscar was surprised into silence for a few moments. He was shocked that his mother had given herself away so easily. He could see quite clearly through the river water now, and he realized that Elinor had understood from the beginning. Mary-Love's invitation to Early Haskew had been made precisely to aggravate Elinor, though Oscar wasn't convinced that Mary-Love was seeking to induce a miscarriage. The acknowledgment of this meanness in his mother—there was no other word for it— turned Oscar firmly to his wife's side on the issue. He would have had his tongue ripped out of his throat rather than say to Mary-Love that Elinor was distressed by the proximity of the engineer. In fact, he went so far as actually to mislead his mother by remarking, "Elinor is glad you've got somebody to keep you company. She figures you may have been lonely since we moved. That house is so big, Mama, and it takes so much time and effort just to keep it going that Elinor doesn't get over here as much as she would like."

Mary-Love looked uncertainly at her son—whose face was quite blandly pleasant—as if she were trying to determine whether or not he was playing a role, or whether he spoke—as men in Perdido, and probably men everywhere, tended to speak—without any regard for the effect of his words.

At supper that evening Oscar told Elinor exactly what he had said to his mother, and Elinor, listening to that straightforward recital, had no doubt that Oscar understood the importance of his speech. She gave him far more credit than did his mother. Elinor smiled and said, "See what I told you, Oscar?"

"You were right about Mama, though I wouldn't have thought it of her. But, Elinor, I have got to say..."

"Say what?"

"That I am gone be supporting Mr. Haskew in his work. I think there's gone be another flood sooner or later, and I think the levees are gone have to be built. I know you don't like it, but I have got to do all I can to protect this town and the mills."

"All right, Oscar," said Elinor with surprising calmness. "You have started to see some things cortimes Bray drove him out deep into Baldwin and Escambia counties to look over quarries of various sorts. He'd come back covered with mud. After he'd bathed and changed clothes, bits of red Alabama clay were still wedged in the creases of his face and beneath the nails of his large hands. Miriam loved him, and in the evening he'd bounce her up and down on his knee to her delight for as long as she wanted it.

Because of him, commerce between Mary-Love's and Oscar's houses very nearly ceased altogether. There were no more small gifts of fruits or preserves sent over with Zaddie; Oscar did not come as frequently as formerly. Even the sisters Zaddie and Ivey seemed to have dissolved their kinship. Mary-Love satisfied herself with the thought that she had embedded a large thorn in the side of her daughter-in-law. One day, seeking to probe that wound, Mary-Love remarked to her son, "Oscar, we don't see much of Elinor anymore. Is she doing all right? We have been worried."

Oscar replied, "Well, Mama, it's getting 'long about that time, you know, and it wouldn't do for Elinor to tire herself out with constant visiting. In fact," he joked, "I keep her locked in her room all the time now. I have Zaddie standing outside the door, reading to her through the keyhole."

Oscar said this in order to deprive his mother of the satisfaction of any information about just how upset Elinor continued to be. But what he said regarding his wife's pregnancy was quite true; it was getting along about that time. In fact, by Oscar's casual calculation, the baby—Elinor still hadn't told him whether it was to be a boy or a girl—was already overdue.