BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (41 page)

"I cain't desert my family, Queenie. What kind of man you take me for?"

"I don't intend to argue," said Queenie with weariness and despair pervading her voice. "I just want you to go away from this town and never come back again."

"Oh, Queenie, you cain't get rid of me. I'm your husband. I got legal rights. I got my children here that need me. That Malcolm's a fine one, I tell you. That Lucille's a little doll! And this boy Danjo, I'm gone help you bring him up right."

Queenie stood and headed toward the door. Carl rose quickly and followed her.

"Unhook the screen," Queenie said to Malcolm. She was carrying Danjo and shifted him in her arms.

"I don't want him in here!" screamed Lucille.

"Baby girl!" cried Carl.

"Unhook the screen," Queenie repeated.

Malcolm sullenly did so. Queenie slipped inside; Carl followed her in.

"Have you got a bag?" Queenie asked.

"Out on the porch, Queenie. Didn't you see it?"

"I saw it." She reached in her purse and took out five dollars. "Go take it over to the Osceola."

He snatched the five dollars from her. "I can use this, but I tell you, I ain't gone waste it on no hotel. I'm gone stay right here."

"No," said Queenie.

"Yes," he said, taking her arm and squeezing it hard.

Queenie's neck stretched with the pain, but she said nothing.

Carl slipped the five dollars into his pocket and let go of his wife's arm. "Queenie, I sure am thirsty," he said in a light, conversational voice. "You think you could fix me some iced tea?"

Carl sat down on the sofa and motioned his children over to him. Queenie looked at her husband, but there was no intelligible message in her gaze. She went into the kitchen, calling after her, "Lucille, I need some help."

While Malcolm and Danjo sat uncomfortably on either side of their father and answered the questions put to them, Queenie in the kitchen whispered to her daughter, "Go out the back way. Run over to Elinor's and tell her your daddy has come back. She'll know what to do."

Lucille took off immediately, allowing the back door to slam shut behind her. A moment later Carl pushed open the kitchen door. "Was that my baby girl going somewhere?"

"I sent her to tell the Caskeys that you'd come back."

"So they can come greet me, tell me how glad they are to see me back in Perdido."

"No," said Queenie. "So they can get you out of town. On a rail. Tied to the back of a mule. Floating down the river on the back of a log."

"They got me out once, sugar, but I wasn't smart. I learned me a few things in the Tallahassee pen. Now I turned smart. I'm your lawful wedded husband, Queenie, and I'm gone stay around and help raise up my precious babies. I sent that boy Malcolm out on the porch and he's gone bring in my bag. Those Caskeys aren't gone be able to do a thing. I'm here to stay, Queenie. I look around, what do I see? I see a nice house. I see my babies and my wife. I see plenty to eat. Is there one reason on earth why I should go away?"

Queenie didn't reply. She handed him a glass of iced tea and walked out of the kitchen and back into the living room. Danjo sat on the sofa, weeping softly.

But it wasn't all that easy to get rid of Queenie's husband. Oscar went over to speak to Carl and Carl said, "Who's gone throw me out of town? Where's your gun? You gone shoot me? Where's your lawman? He gone arrest me for visiting my wife? He gone put me in jail for bouncing my little boy up and down on my knee?"

Aubrey Wiggins had been sheriff the first time Carl Strickland had showed up in Perdido. Wiggins assisted Oscar in driving the unwanted man out of town. Now Aubrey was dead, and his place had been taken by Charley Key. Charley was Perdido's youngest sheriff ever. He was hotheaded and quick to take offense. He was particularly chary of doing favors or of having favors done for him. It was thought generally that in a few years he would see the light and then things would be accomplished with the ease and smoothness that had characterized his predecessor's administration. But for right now, Sheriff Key wasn't listening when Oscar came to him and said, "Mr. Key, I need you to back me up with Queenie Strickland's husband. He's no good and he ought to be run out of town."

"What's he done?"

"He's bothering her."

"How's he bothering her, Mr. Caskey?"

"He's moved in on her."

"Aren't they married?"

"They are."

"Then what's to stop him? A husband and a wife ought pretty much to be together. That's about the way I've always heard it."

"James and I want him to leave. He's making Queenie unhappy, and we care a great deal for Queenie, Mr. Key."

"I know Queenie Strickland," replied the sheriff. "What I know of her, I like. I haven't met her husband. Where's he been?"

"Florida pen," said Oscar in a low voice. This wasn't general knowledge in Perdido, and his tone of conspiracy was a plea for the sheriff to keep the information to himself.

"What for?"

"Don't know. But probably just about anything you care to name."

"Is he out free and clear?"

"He says he is."

"Then there's nothing I can do."

"He's making Queenie real unhappy, Mr. Key."

"Lots of unhappy marriages. I cain't always be stepping in between a husband and a wife. Tell you what I will do, though. I'll call up Tallahassee and make sure he hasn't escaped. If he's escaped from the pen, then I'll go after him. If he hasn't, then there's not one thing in the world I can do, Mr. Caskey."

Sheriff Key wanted to show Oscar and the other Caskeys that their prominence in Perdido brought them no special treatment from the forces of order and justice. This Oscar understood, but he knew it was Queenie who would suffer on account of the sheriff's procedural niceties. Oscar decided not to argue with the sheriff any longer. He returned home to where his wife and Queenie were waiting on the porch and related the disappointing news.

Elinor was incensed, but her anger could not persuade Mr. Key, and without Mr. Key nothing at all could be done.

Queenie said to Oscar and Elinor: "That man made my life miserable in Nashville, and he's gone ruin my life here, too. You know what it's gone be like to come home from work every day just knowing he's sitting there on the porch, wanting to know what I'm gone fix him for supper?"

"Oscar," said Elinor, "why don't you just run over there with your gun and shoot him? Queenie and I will wait here till you get back."

"Elinor, I'm not gone shoot Carl Strickland. Queenie, you think if I offered him money, he'd go away? That must be why he's here, right? 'Cause you've got a job and a house and all?"

"Won't work," sighed Queenie. "James offered him two hundred dollars a month if he'd go live two states away. Carl wouldn't take it. Carl said he wanted to be near his 'darling babies.' I tell y'all, I am afraid for those children. It hasn't been easy raising them on my own. Poor old Malcolm sure hasn't come out the way I wanted him to. He gets in a lot of trouble already. I hate to think what Carl is gone do to "em!"

"Oscar, I really do think you ought to go over and shoot that man!"

"You want me in jail, Elinor? That's where I'd be. You'd have to come visit me up in the Atmore pen. I'd be out in the hot sun digging potatoes all day. That's what murderers do up there in Atmore."

Nothing could be done. Oscar's threats remained vague without the force of the law behind them. Carl had served his sentence in full for holding up a pharmacy in DeFuniak Springs and pistol-whipping the proprietor. He could now be accused of doing nothing that was against the law. He wasn't working. What need had he of employment when his wife worked and pulled down good money, when the house was hers free and clear, and when there was food on the table and clothing on his children's backs?

Queenie was miserable. Whenever James came into her office, he'd find her attempting to cover up the fact that she'd been crying. Kindly, he always attempted to persuade his distraught sister-in-law that Carl's residence was only temporary. "When the time comes, I'll up my offer. And one day, I'll name his price. Soon enough, Queenie, he'll be moving on."

Carl had taken over his wife's bedroom. Queenie slept on the sofa in the living room or sometimes with Lucille.

How Carl spent his days no one was certain. After James picked Queenie up in the morning, Carl often took his wife's car and drove off somewhere. Someone told Elinor she had seen him at the racetrack in Cantonement. Someone else saw him lunching off oysters in a restaurant on the Mobile pier. He was seen on the front porch of the house with the red light in Baptist Bottom. But he was always found sitting on the front porch by the time that Queenie returned from work, saying, "Hey, Queenie, what's for supper? I'm starved to death!"

One evening Queenie came home to discover that Carl had a large bruise around his left eye. She didn't ask how it had come about, uttered no word of sympathy, didn't warn him against becoming involved in possibly more serious altercations. "I bet you wish I'd gotten my whole head knocked off, don't you?" said Carl with his customary leer. "I bet that, on the whole, you wouldn't much mind the state of widowhood, would you?"

"I think I could bear up," replied Queenie blandly.

"I bet you've got my coffin all picked out!"

Queenie reached into the pocket of her dress and drew out two coins.

"You see these quarters?" she asked.

"I see "em."

"They're for you."

"Give 'em here, then." He reached out for the coins, but Queenie snatched them away.

"No. They're special."

"How special?"

"Ivey Sapp gave 'em to me when I was over at Mary-Love's yesterday."

"That fat nigger girl? Why was she giving you money?"

"She told me she got 'em special for me," Queenie went on with a smile that was very rare to her since Carl had come back to town. "She told me to save these quarters for the ferryman."

"What ferryman?"

"Ivey told me to always keep 'em with me. So when you're laid out dead and cold, I've got these two silver quarters to close your eyes with. And that's what you'll have to buy your ticket to hell with."

Carl's grin faded. He reached out and swiped for the coins, but wasn't quick enough and Queenie dropped them, with a little metallic clatter, back into her pocket.

CHAPTER 30
Danjo

In the eight years since the death of Genevieve Gas-key, the widower James Caskey and his daughter Grace had remained in perpetual harmony in the house next door to Mary-Love. It was wondered in Perdido whether any father and any daughter, anywhere on the face of the earth, got along as well as did James and Grace. James would have done anything to make his little girl happy. Grace had declared, as a high school senior, that she would never, under any circumstances, be persuaded to leave her father's roof.

"No!" he cried. "You cain't stay here with me and rot, darling. You got to go to school!"

"I don't," returned Grace. "I know plenty. I'm gone be salutatorian this year, Daddy."

"Doesn't matter. You ought to go away to school. You ought to get out of Perdido for a while."

"I'm happy here. I'm perfectly happy, Daddy. I've got all my friends here." Grace ran with a pack of girls in her class and the class behind hers. They were all on terms of great intimacy, and they never had fights. "Besides, Daddy, who would take care of you?"

"About fifty million people would take care of me. Are you forgetting Mary-Love next door? Are you forgetting Elinor? Have you thought of Queenie? You think Queenie would let anything happen to me?"

"Queenie has her hands full with Carl," Grace pointed out. "And Elinor and Miss Mary-Love spend all their time raising little girls and fighting with each other."

"The point is," her father went on, "you ought to go to school. You ought to get out in the world, and meet the man who's gone make you happy."

"He doesn't exist!"

"He does. There's somebody for everybody, sweetheart! There's some man just waiting out there to fix you up with a perfect marriage."

"I don't believe it. I look around me, Daddy, what do I see? I see you and poor old Mama—"

"That was my mistake."

"—and I see Queenie and Carl. You think I'm gone start looking under bushel baskets for a husband?"

"What about Elinor and Oscar? They're happy."

"They're the exception, Daddy."

"Well, you could be an exception too, darling. I'm sure you would be. So I'm just not gone let you stay in Perdido, thinking you are doing me one bit of good. Darling, I love you to death, but let me tell you something—"

"What?"

"—I've had just about as much of your company as I can take!"

Grace laughed aloud at her father's patent lie.

"I want you out of this house!" His attempt at sternness was belied by seventeen years of singular indulgence.

"What if I say no?"

"I will have Roxie sweep you'out. I will hook the screens behind you. If you don't go away to college, Grace, I'm not gone love you anymore."

Each was determined to make sacrifices for the other's benefit and comfort. Though Grace desperately longed to attend college, she told her father her sole desire was to remain with him in Perdido. Though James knew he would be desolate without her, he told his daughter he was weary of her company, and only wished she would go to Tennessee. For several weeks, father and daughter continued to argue until at last Grace gave in. She realized what pleasure would accrue to her father in being abandoned in the cause of her personal happiness. So Grace made plans, though convinced that without her, James would be lonely and miserable. She was to attend Vanderbilt in September.

And so, during the hottest part of August of 1929, Grace and James drove up through Alabama to Nashville, Tennessee, looked over the campus, were introduced to the president of the college, and chose the room Grace would 'inhabit. They went shopping for Grace's wardrobe, and purchased enough to clothe the entire co-ed freshman class. They went around to all the jewelry, gift, and antique shops, and James indulged himself in the purchase of any number of fragile, pretty, utterly useless items that would be jammed into bursting closets back home.