BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (23 page)

But overdue or not, the baby held off another four weeks. Oscar became truly worried. Elinor was not feeling very well and she took to her bed. Dr. Ben-

rectly, but you don't see everything right yet. The time will come when you will learn the error of your ways...."

Mary-Love had at first considered Early Haskew merely a goad to her daughter-in-law, but he quickly came to be more than that. He was a pleasant man, kind and gentle, and she soon grew used to his loud voice and his habit of eating peas with a knife. His countrified roughness wasn't totally unpleasant in a man so young and handsome, even though Mary-Love was certain that passing years would coarsen Early. Sister, too—or rather Sister, especially— liked him, for she had never spent any time at all around a man who wasn't close family.

Early sat in his sitting room all day working at the drafting table. Sister supplied him with cups of coffee and her own cookies. When the day was hot she got him iced tea, and when there wasn't anything more that she could get for him she went quietly into his room with a book and sat in a chair turned toward his profile.

"You worry him!" cried Mary-Love.

"I do not!" protested Sister. And if she did, he showed no sign of it. He must have said thank you to Sister eighty times a day, and that thank you was always cordial and sincere. When Mary-Love insisted that Sister leave the engineer alone and sit with her on the side porch with another quilt that they were piecing together, Sister fidgeted until Mary-Love gave reluctant consent for her to return to her place beside Early's drafting board.

Occasionally, when he'said his eyes were weary, he'd come down and sit on the porch with Sister and Mary-Love and rock in the swing with his eyes closed and talk in a moderate voice. He went for long walks about town, particularly along the banks of the rivers, looking at soil and formations of clay. Other quith came to examine her and afterward he told Oscar, "She's in discomfort."

"Yes, but is the baby all right?"

"It's kicking. I felt it."

"Well, tell me, is it gone be a boy or a girl?"

Leo Benquith looked strangely at Oscar, and didn't reply for a moment.

"I bet this one's gone be a boy," said Oscar. "Am I right?"

"Oscar," said Dr. Benquith slowly, "you know, don't you, that there's no way in the world to tell if it's gone be a boy or a girl?"

Oscar looked puzzled for a moment, then replied, "Well, you know, that's what I used to think. I mean, that's what I had always heard. But Elinor knows— I know she knows—she just won't tell me."

"Your wife has been manipulating one of your lower extremities, Oscar."

Oscar's curiosity was soon satisfied, for on the nineteenth of May, 1922, Elinor gave birth to a five-pound girl.

The doctor had left, and Roxie was downstairs washing the bloody linen, when Oscar said to Elinor, "Did you know it was gone be a girl?"

"Of course I did."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want you to be disappointed." She held out the baby for Oscar's inspection. "You probably wanted a boy, Oscar, but I knew once you had seen this little girl you would love her to death! That's why I didn't tell you."

"I do love her to death! I would have loved her anyway!"

"Well, then," said Elinor softly, putting the infant to her breast, "I was wrong about it. Next time I will tell you."

There was a sort of state visit that afternoon by Mary-Love and Sister. Sister carried Miriam in her arms, and Oscar reflected somewhat uncomfortably that this was the first time his firstborn daughter had ever been inside her parents' house. After having peered curiously into all the rooms on the way up, exclaiming softly and disparagingly on what they saw, Sister and Mary-Love entered Elinor's bedroom and stood on opposite sides of the bed. As if at a prearranged signal, they bent down together and kissed Elinor on either cheek. Elinor pulled back the corner of the blanket that was wrapped about her new daughter, and said, "See? Now I've got one of my own." She looked at her first daughter, still in Sister's arms, and said, "Miriam, this is your sister Frances."

"Is that what we are calling her?" said Oscar.

"Yes," replied Elinor, then added after a moment, "it was my mother's name."

"It's a real pretty name," said Mary-Love. "Elinor, Sister and I don't want to tire you out, so listen, if there's anything you need, you just send Zaddie over, and we will drop everything and go out and get it."

"I thank you, Miss Mary-Love. Thank you, Sister."

"Mama, we ought to go. Early's gone wonder what became of us."

At the mention of the engineer's name, Elinor's polite smile froze. She didn't say another word to Sister or Mary-Love.

That night, while Elinor—remarkably recovered—was walking around and around the nursery with Frances, singing to the baby and holding it out to stare at it and make faces at it and grin at it and drawing it back in again to kiss and fondle, Oscar performed calculations on the birth of his daughter that weren't so casual. He worked back nine months from this date of Frances' birth—Leo Benquith had told him that the delivery and the pregnancy had been normal in every respect—and came up with August 19, 1921.

That was the date they had moved into the new house. He certainly remembered that he and Elinor had made love that night, for it had been the first time in their own home—but what he also remembered, with not a little uneasiness, was that that was also the date on which, earlier in the evening, Elinor had announced her pregnancy.

The night of the birth of Frances Caskey, Elinor declared her intention of remaining in the nursery with her new daughter. Pleased that his wife was showing such interest and delight in her new child, in such sharp contrast to her treatment of Miriam, Oscar eagerly acquiesced. He lay in bed a long while, unable to fall asleep, thinking of Elinor, the pregnancy, and the peculiar coincidence of dates.

Next door, in Mary-Love's house, Early Haskew snored louder than he talked. Mary-Love tossed in her bed, pondering what effect the birth of Frances might have on things, fearing that the child might be the means by which Elinor gained an ascendancy acknowledged all over Perdido. And in her room, Sister thought alternately of Miriam, whom she loved very dearly, and of the man snoring in the room at the end of the hall, to whom she was not indifferent. Beside Sister in the bed, little Miriam Caskey dreamed her formless dreams of nameless things to eat and nameless things to pick up and nameless things to hide in the little box that Mary-Love had given her.

And in the next house, Grace Caskey tossed and turned and didn't even want to go to sleep, so excited was she by the birth of Frances. Grace envisioned a trio of cousins—herself, Miriam, and Frances— loyal and loving. James Caskey thought—or did he dream?—of the earth above his wife's grave, and wondered whether it ought not to be planted over in verbena or phlox. Eventually all the Caskeys fell asleep, and all dreamed of whatever concerned them most.

That night while the Caskeys slept and dreamed, fog roiled up out of the Perdido River and spilled across the dry Caskey property.

Fogs were not uncommon in this part of Alabama, but they came only at night and were seen by few. This fog, thicker and darker than usual, rose up out of the river as a beast of prey rises up in the night after a long diurnal sleep, keen to slake its hunger. It wrapped itself around the Caskey houses, enveloping them in a silent, thick, unmoving mist. What before had been only dark was now black. It was so silent, so subtle, that its arrival waked no one at all. The river moisture pervaded, the houses and surrounded the sleepers with a suffocating dampness. Even Early Haskew's snoring was muffled. Yet still none of the Caskeys woke, and if they struggled against it, they did so only in their dreams, dreams in which the oppressive fog had arms and legs that were slick and damp, and a mouth that exhaled mist and night.

Zaddie Sapp was the only one to know of it. She dreamed of the fog, dreamed that its moist fingers pulled back the sheet from her cot so that she grew chill, and dreamed that the fog awakened her and beckoned her to come out from the protection of her tiny closet behind the kitchen. The dream was so convincing that Zaddie opened her eyes to prove to herself that the fog was not there. But when she did so, and looked straight up at the ceiling, Zaddie saw thick wisps of the mist floating in her window. At the same time, very soft and muffled, she heard the sodden creek of the hinges of the lattice-door at the back of the house. At first she disbelieved her ears, the sound seemed so distant. Then she heard a step upon the stairs that led down to the back yard.

She sat up suddenly, and wisps of fog swirled into sudden turbulence before her eyes. Zaddie wasn't afraid of thieves, because nothing had been stolen in Perdido since "Railroad" Bill held up the Turk's mill in 1883, but with trepidation she peered out the window. Little could be seen through the fog, but when she squinted she could just make out a dark form moving carefully down those steps.

Zaddie knew that it was Elinor.

One step creaked. The form paused. Zaddie perceived that Elinor carried something in her cradled arms, and what did cradled arms usually hold but a baby?

Night air and fog just couldn't be good for a child that wasn't yet a day old! Clad only in her nightgown, and without thinking to put on shoes, Zaddie jumped quietly out of the bed, opened the door of her little closet, and stepped out to the latticed back porch. She pushed open the back door, softly but without trying to disguise the fact that she was there. She stood on the back steps, and shut the door behind her.

Elinor was off in the yard ahead, nearly invisible in the fog.

"Miss El'nor," said Zaddie softly.

"Zaddie, go back inside." Elinor's voice sounded dreamy and moist. It seemed to come from a great distance.

Zaddie hesitated. "Miss El'nor, what you doing out here with that precious baby?"

Elinor shifted the child in her arms. "I'm going to baptize her in the Perdido water, and I don't need you to help. So you go back inside, you hear? A little girl like you could get lost in this fog and die!"

Elinor's voice faded, as did her shape. She was lost in the fog. Zaddie ran forward, fearful for the safety of the infant. "Miss El'nor!" Zaddie whispered in the inky darkness.

No answer came.

Zaddie ran forward toward the river. She tripped over the exposed root of one of the clumps of water oaks, and sprawled in the sand. She scrambled to her feet, and through a momentary thinning of the fog, could make out Miss Elinor's form at the edge of the water.

She again hurried forward, and grabbed her mistress's nightdress.

"Zaddie," said Elinor, her voice still distant and strange, "I told you to stay back."

"Miss El'nor, you cain't put that child in the water!"

Elinor laughed. "Do you think this river is going to hurt my little girl?" And with that, Elinor flung her newborn daughter into the swirling black current of the Perdido. She might have been a fisherman tossing a too-small catch back into the river.

Zaddie had long been fearful of the Perdido, knowing how many people had drowned in its unabating currents. She had heard Ivey's stories of what lived on the riverbed, and what things hid in the mud. But despite her fear, despite the fact that it was night and that the night was filled with fog, Zaddie rushed into the water in hope of saving the infant that, incredibly, had been tossed in by its mother.

"Zaddie," cried Elinor, "come back. You'll drown!"

Zaddie caught the child—or at least thought she caught it. Reaching down into the water, she had scooped up something. It felt very little like a baby! It was so slippery and unsoft, yet rubbery—a fishlike thing—that she very nearly let it go again. Zaddie shuddered with repulsion for whatever it was that she held in her hands, but she raised it up above the surface. She saw that she had caught hold of something black and vile, with a neckless head attached directly to a thick body. A stubby tail that was almost as thick as the body twitched convulsively, and the thing was covered with river slime. In the air it struggled to get away, to return to its element. But Zaddie held it tight, closing her fingers into its disgusting flesh. From its fishy mouth emerged a stream of foamy water, and the thrashing tail smacked against Zaddie's forearms; dull, bulging eyes shone up into her face.

Elinor's hand closed over Zaddie's shoulder.

The girl stiffened, and looked around.

"You see," said Elinor, "my baby's fine."

In Zaddie's arms lay Frances Caskey, naked and limp, with Perdido river water dripping slowly from her elbows and feet.

"Come out of the water, Zaddie," said Elinor, drawing the girl out by the sleeve of her dress. "The bottom is muddy, and you could slide..."

Next morning, Roxie shook Zaddie out of her deep slumber, saying, "Child, you have not begun to rake this morning! What's wrong with you?" Zaddie dressed quickly, shaken but relieved that her previous night's adventure had been no more than a dream. She had wandered through a nightmare, reached safety, and been immediately overtaken with undisturbed sleep. It was unthinkable, in the light of morning, that Elinor would throw her newborn baby into the Perdido, and Zaddie didn't even allow herself to think of what she had caught in her arms in the dream.

She ran into the kitchen and gobbled a biscuit. Grabbing her rake from its accustomed corner, she flung open the back door. For a moment, the sound of those hinges brought back the dream; but Zaddie merely grinned at her own fear. She ran down the back steps—and stopped dead in her tracks.

There in the sand were four sets of footprints. Two sets led down toward the river and two led back— and around the returning set were tiny circular depressions such as might be made where droplets of water dripped into the sand and dried.

With a heavy heart, Zaddie stepped off into the cool gray yard. With downcast eyes, she carefully obliterated those sets of footprints leading to and from the river, as if by that means she could blot out what had not been, after all, a dream. All the while she worked, she could hear Elinor on the second-floor sleeping porch. She was crooning a little tuneless song to her newborn baby.