BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (25 page)

The first sawmill in Perdido had been built by Roland Caskey in 1875. The old man subsequently gained cutting control of eighteen thousand acres of timberland in Baldwin and Escambia counties. By 1895, when he died, the Caskey mill was producing twenty-five thousand feet of lumber a day. The cut-down trees that his Perdido mill couldn't handle were branded with a trefoil and sent down the Perdido to his backup mill at Seminole. Roland Caskey remained illiterate to his death, but he could look at a two-acre stand of timber and tell, within twenty board feet, how much lumber it would produce. He had had, moreover, the sense to marry a smart woman. Elvennia Caskey bore him two sons and a daughter. The daughter died, bitten by a water moccasin that one day slithered up the lawn out of the Perdido, but the two sons grew up strong and fine. Because of their mother's efforts they were well-educated, well-mannered, and emotionally sensitive. Indeed, Roland complained of "the stamp of femininity" placed on his elder son James, which would render him soft and womanly.

When Roland Caskey had settled in the area, Baldwin and Escambia counties were wildernesses of pine, and it seemed inconceivable that the forests could ever be depleted, yet only three mills working at capacity began to accomplish this depletion. Expanding uses for resin and turpentine only made matters worse, for thousands of trees were "bled" by impoverished poachers. Once bled, a tree wasn't worth cutting. The forest retreated around Perdido and the barrens farther out grew less dense, as bled trees died and toppled in the first spring storm. Roland Caskey complained bitterly when the Secretary of the Interior proposed strict laws for the preservation of the forests and demanded rigid enforcement of earlier legislation.

Roland Caskey's will divided his holdings equally between his wife and his younger son Randolph, leaving only a small annual maintenance income to the other son James. He had dictated in the preamble of the document that "he would not be able to sleep in his grave knowing that he had turned over the operation of his woodland empire to a man "with the stamp of femininity upon him." The day after the will was probated, however, Elvennia Caskey signed over her half to the disinherited son. But it was not for this generosity alone that James Caskey remained with his mother until her death, nursing her with unwavering filial affection through years of senility and physical helplessness. The idea of marriage never occurred to him without a concomitant sensation of having put something nasty into his mouth.

When James and Randolph, in concert rarely found among brothers, took over the operation of the Caskey mill, they began buying up all the land they could around Perdido. Their father and the other millowners had thought that the purchase of timber land was a wasteful expenditure of capital; it was much cheaper to pay landowners for the right to cut the timber. James and Randolph's policy was universally wondered at and ridiculed, but they persisted. Having bought the land, they systematically began to cut what was on it, and replanted immediately. Within five years the wisdom of their course was acknowledged and imitated by the Turks and the DeBordenaves. The old Puckett mill in Perdido was eventually forced out of business altogether, for there was no more standing timber for Mr. Puckett to buy.

The DeBordenave and Turk mills for twenty years ranked second and third to the Caskeys'. Sometimes the DeBordenaves had a better year than the Turks, and vice versa, but only the millowners themselves really knew which company was worth more. The Caskeys owned the most land, however, and had never ceased buying it up whenever the opportunity presented itself. Randolph Caskey died when his son Oscar was away at the University of Alabama. James ran the mill ineffectually for two years before Oscar returned to Perdido to accede to his father's place. Oscar and James, prodded by Mary-Love, would not hesitate to purchase two acres of slash-pine surrounded by Turk forest. The smaller mills now worked the second and third growths of their land, but the Caskeys had some virgin forest, a rare thing in those parts.

Mary-Love and James Caskey owned the mill and the land, but Oscar ran the operation. James went to his office every day and occupied himself one way or another, principally in correspondence, but much of that effort was dispensable; the work could have been done by a man hired at two thousand dollars a year. But the company could not have functioned without Oscar. For all his effort and long hours, though, he had no more money than poor old Sister, and as everybody knew, Sister had nothing at all.

People in town who didn't know anything about the family's situation looked at the three Caskey houses and drew their own conclusions from the fact that Elinor and Oscar lived in the biggest and the newest. Since it was also thought that without Oscar the mill would slip into insolvency within a few weeks, everyone naturally imagined that Oscar possessed a substantial portion of the Caskey treasure. That was not so. Oscar and Elinor didn't even own the house they lived in. It had been Mary-Love's gift, but Mary-Love had never put herself to the trouble of actually signing over the deed. Once when Elinor prodded Oscar to remind his mother of that omission, Mary-Love grew huffy and said, "Oscar, do you and Elinor imagine that you are in danger of being thrown out onto the street? Who do you think I am going to put in there instead of you? When you two were living right down the hall from me, and I didn't want you to leave then, do you think I am gone let you go farther away from me than right next door?" Oscar returned to Elinor and told her what his mother had said, but Elinor was not to be put off quite so easily. She sent Oscar back, and this time he got an even angrier reply from his mother: "Oscar, you and Elinor are gone get that house when I die! Do you want me to show you the will? Cain't you even wait till I am dead?" Oscar refused to broach the matter again, but Elinor was not satisfied.

Perdido residents would have been surprised at the modest size of Oscar's salary. Oscar once ventured to complain to James, who pleaded the case to his sister-in-law. Mary-Love said, "What do they need? Tell me, James, and I will go out and buy it. I will have Bray put it right on their front doorstep."

"Mary-Love, it's nothing like that," James replied. "They don't need new furniture or a new car or anything, but Elinor needs money to buy food every week. They need money to pay the coalman in winter. Oscar ordered a new set of ivory dominoes last week, and when they came in he had to borrow ten dollars from me to pay for 'em. Mary-Love, I say we give old Oscar a little bit more money. You know he earns it."

"You tell Oscar to come to me," said Mary-Love. "I will give my boy whatever he wants. You tell Elinor to knock on my front door. She will have her heart's desire."

Mary-Love liked to see herself as the family cornucopia, dispensing all manner of good things, un-stintingly, unceasingly. She considered herself amply rewarded by her children's gratitude, and if she perceived that her children were not sufficiently grateful, she could make something of that, too. There was no difficulty in keeping Sister in a position of servile dependence, because, Mary-Love was certain, she had no prospect of marriage and no money of her own. Sister would never leave Perdido, her mother's house, or Mary-Love's fervid embrace. Oscar, though, had thrown himself into the bonds of matrimony with Elinor, and had thus weakened the emotional cords that had bound him to Mary-Love. The financial ties between mother and son, however, remained strong, or at least they would as long as Mary-Love had anything to say about it. Lady Bountiful had no intention of allowing Oscar to escape her boons.

Elinor understood all this and explained it to her husband.

Oscar replied, "You're probably right, Elinor.

That's probably how Mama does it. It makes me sorry for poor old Sister, too. But what am I gone do?"

"You can fight her. You can tell her you're going to leave that old mill high and dry if you don't get some decent money out of it. You can tell her that you and I are going to pack our bags and move to Bayou le Batre next Tuesday, and let her know that I'll be back in another month to pick up Miriam. That's what you can do."

"I cain't do that. Mama wouldn't believe me. Mama would call my bluff. What would you and I do in Bayou le Batre, that old place? I don't know anything about shrimp boats!"

"If James and your mama did right by you," Elinor went on, "they would give you a one-third interest in that mill. They would sign over to you one-third of all the Caskey land."

Oscar whistled at the very thought. "They won't do it, though."

"Maybe not right now," said Elinor thoughtfully, "but, Oscar, if you're not going to do anything, then it looks like it's going to be up to me..."

"What you thinking about doing?" Oscar asked uneasily.

"I don't knew yet. But, Oscar, let me tell you something. There is no sacrifice I would not make to put you where you are supposed to be."

"Elinor, you shouldn't have to go out of your way for me. We get along pretty well, it seems to me."

"Not as well as we could, Oscar. I didn't marry just anybody, you know. My daddy used to say he'd like to see the man I'd marry. My mama used to say he'd have to be mighty powerful or mighty rich."

Oscar laughed. "I guess you proved your mama and daddy wrong. I'm not powerful, and I'm certainly not rich."

"Mama and Daddy weren't wrong," said Elinor. Those words somehow didn't seem at home in Elinor's mouth; certainly she wasn't in the habit of speaking of her parents. "In fact, I have every intention of proving them right. Oscar, let me ask you something. What in the world would have been my purpose in coming to Perdido at all, if it wasn't to marry the best man in town?"

"You mean you married me because you thought I was rich and powerful?" He didn't seem in the least disturbed by the idea.

"Of course not. You know why I married you. But, Oscar, I have no intention of allowing you to continue to wear yourself out down at that mill just so James can buy crystal and silver and Miss Mary-Love can fill her safety-deposit box with diamonds while we are poor as poverty."

"Well, Elinor, you just tell me what to do, and I'll do it. I wouldn't mind having a lot of money."

"Good," replied his wife. "So when I tell you to jump, you'll jump?"

"Right over the roof!"

Recently, a mania for the game of dominoes had infected the male population of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Perdido had not been immune. The malady took hold with virulence, and in the first hectic flush of fever there had been domino parties every night throughout the town. Now that first unhealthy spasm had subsided, but many men continued to play regularly. Among these were the men of the 3 mill families, James Caskey, Oscar Caskey, Tom DeBordenave, and Henry Turk.

Every Monday and Wednesday evening at six-thirty they gathered at the square red table in Elinor's breakfast room, joined by three others: Leo Benquith, Warren Moye, and Vernell Smith. Leo Benquith was the most respected doctor in town. Warren Moye was a dapper little man who stood behind the desk of the Osceola Hotel every day; he always brought with him a cushion, which he transferred from chair to chair to ease the pain of his everlasting hemorrhoids. Vernell Smith was rather in the character of a dwarf jester at the Spanish court; he was young and desperately ugly, with a long face that reminded farm folks of the head of a stillborn calf, except that Vernell's had a number of large moles with long hairs in them.

On Mondays and Wednesdays, Elinor took special care to keep the doors to the breakfast room closed all evening long, for every one of those men smoked cigars or cigarettes and the smoke could fill the house. Every Monday and Wednesday afternoon Zaddie took down the curtains in that room so that they would not become impregnated with the odor of tobacco. During the game, the countless cigar and cigarette butts were thrown into a glass cistern of water the size of a fishbowl. After a couple of hours, the room was always so filled with smoke that Zaddie could not come in to empty the cistern without her eyes immediately watering. And the room was noisy. The men growled and slammed their ivory dominoes down on the square table. The shuffling was thunderous and could be heard all over the house. There was no cursing, except an occasional "damn." With the exception of Vernell Smith, all these men went to Sunday school. The stories and the tales traded over that red table in the course of the evening were not so different from the stories and tales that Per-dido ladies told over their afternoon bridge games.

On these evenings, Elinor and Zaddie sat on the front porch or on the porch upstairs. Elinor sewed and Zaddie read. Soon it became the custom for one of the other domino wives to come over with her husband and spend the evening with Elinor or to call and talk to her on the telephone. Whenever the visitor was Manda Turk or Caroline DeBordenave, Elinor showed an uncommon and insatiable interest in the details of their husbands' mills, soaking up every detail of the lumber business that those two women could summon up from minds untrained to such matters. Manda and Caroline agreed that Elinor must have a motive for the acquisition of this information, though Elinor declared that it was only curiosity. When the domino party finally broke up, the domino wife had already gone home alone and Elinor and Zaddie had gone to bed.

As Oscar saw his friends out the front door and the men spoke their good-nights, each one—except modest James Caskey—would relieve himself against one of Elinor's newly planted camellias. Then Oscar would wander back into the house and call out loudly, "Zaddie, get up and lock the doors!" Oscar was a kind man and a good one, but he had been trained to laziness by his mother, and if there was anything he could get a woman to do for him, he wouldn't hesitate to ask her to do ik As Oscar trudged upstairs, Zaddie would open the windows of the breakfast room, pour the cistern of butts out into the sandy yard, lock the front door, turn out all the lights, return to her own closet, and with eyes still smarting from the smoke, lie down upon her cot and drift into sleep.

One Monday evening, while the men played downstairs, Elinor Caskey and Caroline DeBordenave sat on the porch upstairs. Frances's crib had been brought out and placed so that as the two women rocked in the swing they could peer over at the child. Elinor as usual had brought up the subject of the lumber business, and Caroline—knowing her hostess's interest in the topic by this time—had come prepared with information. She had questioned her husband to some extent at supper, and though he was surprised by his wife's sudden interest in what had never seemed to matter to her before, he answered all her questions in detail.