BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (42 page)

On their final evening together, James took his daughter to Nashville's best restaurant. He gave her an envelope stuffed with five-dollar bills, and said, "Darling, if you need anything, pick up the telephone and call me, you hear? Send a telegram. Whatever it is, I'll get it up here to you."

"When can I come home?"

"Anytime. I'll borrow Bray and he'll meet you in Atmore. You always keep enough money for a train ticket, you hear?"

"Daddy, I'm gone miss you so much!"

"You think I'm not gone miss you?"

"You said you weren't."

"I was lying. I don't know what I'm gone do without you. You're my baby. If I could I'd keep you with me, but that wouldn't do either of us any good. When I was your age, I was living with Mama. Daddy had already died, I didn't miss him at all. I loved Mama very much—but probably I shouldn't have stayed. I should have gone out on my own. If I had gone out on my own, I would have met somebody nice and married them. But look what happened, I stayed with Mama, and then when Mama died I went crazy out of my mind and I married Genevieve Snyder."

"Daddy, if you hadn't married Genevieve, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you."

"You sure?"

"Of course. What do you think? I'm Mama's girl. I'm not anybody else's daughter,"

"Then I suppose it was all for the good," sighed James Caskey. "Though it didn't seem much like it at the time."

"Daddy, you'll be fine. Everybody in Perdido knows I'm up here at Vanderbilt, and everybody in town's gone want to take care of you. Loneliness isn't gone be your problem. Well, for instance, just look at the number of Caskeys there are now! You know, when I was little, I was all by myself, I didn't have anybody to play with, I didn't have anybody to talk to. But good Lord, look what it's like now! Elinor came to town during the flood, and now there's Miriam and Frances, and Queenie showed up, and Queenie's got three children—"

"Don't forget Carl!"

"Wish I could! Anyway, Daddy, the town is full of family now. They snuck up on us. You will hardly notice I'm gone."

But a day or two following, while James Caskey was unwrapping the figurines, and ornaments, and plates he had purchased in Nashville, in his daughter's company and with his daughter's advice, it seemed as if each were a stone he was tossing down a deep, dry, black well that had opened itself wide at his feet.

Queenie Strickland worried that her children were too much exposed to their father's contaminating presence and conversation. She tried to keep them out of the house and removed from their father's baleful influence. She feared, however, that Malcolm was already lost. Carl had taken his elder son fishing on the upper Perdido, presented him with a gun on the first day of hunting season, had even allowed Malcolm to go with him to the racetrack in Can-tonement one Saturday afternoon. Malcolm was easily won over to his father's camp by these masculine blandishments. One day, in anger that his mother had denied him a trifling privilege, Malcolm declared that he loved Carl very very much, and that he hated Queenie's guts.

Carl tended to ignore his daughter, believing a little girl beneath his notice. He thought if Queenie taught Lucille to sew and cook and flirt, she would turn out well enough.

With Malcolm all but lost, and Lucille in little danger, it was of greatest importance for Queenie to keep her younger son free of his father's influence. As she explained to James Caskey, "That boy is not like Malcolm, and he's certainly not like his daddy. He's so quiet and shy! He doesn't like the way his daddy talks. He doesn't like the way his daddy acts. I wish... I just wish he didn't have to live in the same house with Carl."

"Well," replied James, as he sat down in a chair on the other side of Queenie's desk in the outer office, "I don't know that it's so much worse for Danjo than it is for you and Lucille."

"It is. I'm used to it. I don't like it, but I'm used to it. Carl doesn't bother Lucille so much, 'cause she's a girl. He won't take Lucille out with him, see. He won't take her hunting, he won't take her with him to the track. That's the difference. And Carl keeps on talking about getting a gun for Danjo. A gun, James! And that child is only five years old!"

The telephone rang, and the conversation was broken off, not to be resumed that day. The next morning, James was at work early. As soon as Queenie arrived, and before she had even arranged her desk, James tapped on the glass and signaled for her to come into his office.

"Morning, James."

"Morning, Queenie. How'd you sleep?"

"Nightmares."

"Me too. I always have nightmares in an empty house."

"Oh, I know you miss your little girl! Have you heard from her?"

"I have. She has sent me three letters, and I get a postcard near about every day. I've got an album to put 'em in, went out and bought it last week."

"So Grace is doing all right up at Vanderbilt?"

"She is making one friend after another. She says she is so happy up there she can hardly stand it. She says she wants me to write her some bad news so she can come down off cloud nine."

"James, did you have something to say to me?" said Queenie, having noted from the first a distraction in her brother-in-law's manner.

"I did. Sit down, Queenie. I've been thinking about what you said yesterday."

"About what?"

"About Danjo."

Queenie nodded.

"Things didn't get any better last night, did they?"

She stopped and considered the matter a moment. "I hate to say it, James, but I think I am getting sort of used to Carl's being back. I mean, he doesn't go out beating people up anymore. I don't think he's stealing. As long as he's in one room at night and I'm in another that's all right—or at least it would be if it weren't for Danjo."

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about. I was thinking maybe you should get rid of Danjo."

"He's my preciousest!"

"I know, but, Queenie, you don't want him contaminated! That's the word you used yesterday."

"I sure don't, but what am I supposed to do with him?"

"Give him to me."

"To you? You don't want him!"

"How you know that! I do want him!"

"He's so little! What would you do with a five-year-old, James?"

"I'd raise him up right. I've had experience. I raised Grace, and as you know, most of that time I was working pretty much on my own. Genevieve was mostly with you in Nashville."

"Well, I know all that. What I mean is, what about all your pretty things?"

"I don't mind. Danjo is careful. He's been in my house before. And if some things get broken, that's all right. I can buy others. I'm not poor. I can build high shelves. Danjo will be just fine. So why don't you go on and give him to me? Queenie, I'm so lonesome without Grace, I cain't hardly stand it. I was moping around last night, just thinking that what I could use most in the world was a little boy to keep me company."

"And you think Danjo will do?"

"Danjo would be the best, Queenie!"

"I'd hate to give him up."

"Queenie, it's not like I'd be taking him to a different town—you could come see him all the time. And look at it this way: I wouldn't be taking him away from you, I'd just be taking him away from Carl."

"I'd like that," Queenie admitted. "Carl will raise holy hell."

"What's he gone do about it?"

"Come and take Danjo back, that's what."

"I'll shoot him," James promised complacently.

Queenie beat her heel rapidly on the floor. "Let me think about it, James." She got up and returned to her own office. In five minutes she was back.

"Well?" asked James.

"I don't want to give him up, I really don't. But it just seems so selfish of me, when I've got three and you've just lost the only one you ever had."

"That's right, Queenie. It would be real selfish of you to keep Danjo all to yourself. So why don't you go on and give him to me?"

"All right, //"we can get him away from Carl."

Til speak to Carl."

"You gone offer him money?"

"I don't know. Maybe. How much you think he'd sell Danjo for? A hundred dollars a month?"

Queenie considered. "What about a new car?"

Queenie was right. In exchange for a new automobile—Carl's choice and costing twelve hundred dollars—Danjo was given over to James Caskey for safekeeping. Ostensibly, the exchange was temporary, but no one was deceived. The boy was not consulted, but Danjo was so meek a child that he would doubtless have acquiesced to any proposition. Danjo was put in the old nursery in James's house, which had been freshly wallpapered and given a set of furniture. The boy was bewildered to think that he wouldn't have to share it with anyone. He cried a little when he left his mother, but he stopped his tears when she assured him that she would see him all the time. He had thought that he was being taken away from her forever, and even at that he had ventured no vehement protest.

The first weekend that Danjo spent in his new home, he would not venture out of his room, and when James would peep in, his nephew would always be sitting very still on the edge of his bed. The boy appeared so constrained and unhappy that James forewent his usual reluctance to intrude, and finally ventured into the room. Leaning against a chifforobe just inside the door, he peered down at Danjo and said, "Am I gone have to send you back to your mama and daddy, Danjo?"

Danjo looked up, his eyes full of tears.

"I want you to stay, Danjo, but you're just not happy here, I guess."

"I am!"

James Caskey was puzzled. "You don't want to go home to your mama and daddy?"

Danjo considered this. "I miss Mama..." he ventured.

"But not your daddy?"

Danjo shook his head vigorously.

"Then why aren't you happier here with me? Why don't you run around and play? You used to play all the time. Do you miss Lucille and Malcolm?"

Danjo shook his head cautiously. "I don't want to break anything," he said in a low voice.

"Break anything? Break what?"

"Break your stuff."

James stared at the boy. "You mean you're not leaving this room 'cause you're afraid you're gone knock something over?"

Danjo nodded, and appeared very near tears again.

"Lord, Lord," cried James Caskey. "Don't you worry about that, Danjo!
I
don't care if you break something. How much stuff you suppose my girl Grace broke while she was growing up? How much stuff you guess Roxie breaks while she's cleaning this house? You think I can walk through a room without something falling to the floor and smashing? I cain't! And I don't expect you can, either. Danjo, I want you to be happy here. You know how much I've got in this house. You breaking something's not gone make one little bit of difference. I've got closets full of junk, and I'm gone be going out buying more anyway. Now, I don't want you to run out of here and start pitching things against the wall—"

Banjo's eyes widened in horror at the suggestion.

"—but I do want you to enjoy yourself here. I want you at your ease."

"You do?"

"I sure do. Danjo, do you know what I paid for you?"

"You bought Daddy a car?"

"I did. It cost me one thousand two hundred dollars. I've made a big investment in you, Danjo. And you got to help pay it back."

"How?"

"By having a good time. By letting me watch you enjoy yourself here. By keeping me company, and making me not feel so sorry for myself because my little girl's gone away. Will you do that?"

"I'll try!" cried Danjo, and he ran across the room and hugged his uncle.

Perdido claimed that it had never seen a family to match the Caskeys when it came to giving children up and taking children in, switching offspring around as if they had been extra turkey platters or other household items that there might be an excess of in one house and a lack of in the next. Carl Strickland made no secret of the terms of the deal by which James Caskey got custody of his Danjo. That was a sale that had all the force of a deeded exchange of land in the eyes of Perdido. Thenceforth, Danjo belonged to James Caskey, and Perdido thought it was wonderful of James that he allowed the boy's mother to visit her son whenever she liked.

It seemed a perfect situation. Carl Strickland had his new automobile. Queenie Strickland was assured of her boy's moral and financial future. James Caskey had a child to take the place of the one who had grown up and gone away. And no one was happier with the situation than Danjo himself.

Rather than taking it as an affront that he had been sold off for the price of a new automobile, Danjo was comforted by the binding aspects of that transaction. He was less likely to be snatched away and carried back across town to the house in which he was assaulted, in varying degrees and in varying ways, by his brother, his sister, and his father, and where his mother had been his sole but inadequate comfort. He loved James Caskey. He never got over a sense of privilege of having a room all to himself, of living in a house that was quiet and filled with beautiful things, of being kissed and hugged rather than pinched and punched. The boy's only agony, and he kept it a deep secret, was the fear that someday his uncle would trade him off in turn, in exchange for a diamond ring, perhaps, or a little girl. Where would Danjo end up then?

Ten years before, the Caskeys had appeared a barren family to the rest of Perdido. There had been only James's little daughter Grace, a pale, whining thing hardly worth the attention her effeminate father paid her. Later Elinor and Queenie produced five children between them and divided them among the wanting Caskey households. It was as if Mary-Love and James had looked up and cried, Good Lord, Elinor! For goodness' sake, Queenie! Y'all have got so many, and we don't have any, why don't y'all pass a couple of those children around so we can all enjoy them. It wasn't quite like that, of course, not in the Caskey family, where a favor done was no more to be tolerated than a slap in the face—but the children were distributed nonetheless, so that each household had at least one. In consequence, the very texture of the entire family was altered, and despite individual animosities, the Caskeys seemed a younger, more vigorous and happier clan.