BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (47 page)

"You sure?"

"They not never gone find him."

"I wish I could be sure!"

"Miss Queenie, you stand up here, and you throw those quarters in the river. That'll keep down his bones."

With Ivey's assistance, Queenie stood from her chair and flung the coins into the muddy red water.

CHAPTER 35
The Test

Carl Strickland's two attempts to murder his wife had overshadowed, in Perdido's view, Wall Street's accumulating disasters. The stock market had crashed, but who in Perdido besides the mill owners had had much anyway? So no one paid much attention to the stock market business, but everyone in town breathlessly waited to see what would become of Queenie Strickland. She returned to her job at the mill. She flung open the doors of her house and never locked them at all now. She took her Malcolm and Lucille to the Ritz Theater every time there was a change in the bill and seemed to have as much fun as if she were a child herself, released from school a week early in May.

Queenie's recovery was rapid. The day after she certified her husband's death by flinging the two coins into the water, she returned to her own home. This evacuation was fortunate, for when Frances waked in Zaddie's bed the day after Carl had shot at the house, she had developed a sort of palsy of the hands and feet—uncommon in a seven-year-old— that Dr. Benquith diagnosed as incipient arthritis. Frances was out of school for a month. During that time her mother nursed her constantly without complaint. Queenie was certain that it had been brought on by Carl's attack on the house. Most of Perdido agreed with this, ignoring Dr. Benquith's assertion that arthritis was not brought on merely by an unpleasant experience.

More than a year passed, and Queenie's happiness became as conspicuous to the residents of Perdido as her troubles had been before. Now, however, that crisis of paper and faith in New York was beginning to have repercussions in Perdido. No one, not even the foresighted Caskeys, had anticipated how great and unsettling those effects were to prove.

The bank closed during Christmas week of 1930. Every white man and woman in town lost money.

Despite the fact that demand for wood and wood products was down, the mills continued to operate. There were no layoffs, though some days there wasn't enough work to be parceled out to the yard hands at the mills, and often the lumber business seemed no more than a charitable exercise on the parts of the Turks and the Caskeys.

Perdido seemed to suffer less than many parts of the country. Or perhaps it just seemed that way; Perdido was, after all, accustomed to hardship. The prosperity of the twenties had made only mincing steps toward rural Alabama, and when she whirled about and fled with a flash of skirts from the rest of the country, Perdido had enjoyed so little of her company that it scarcely missed her. The privations of the Civil War seemed recent, and there were old black men and women in Baptist Bottom who had been born slaves. Mary-Love Caskey and Manda Turk both had been born during the humiliating privations of Reconstruction. But, certainly there was less to go around now. Grady Henderson's "fancy goods store" dwindled to a simple grocery, and Leo Ben-quith bartered chickens, pork loins, and quarts of shelled peas for his services as a physician. At the school there was a greater incidence of ringworm and rickets. Ample and decent food soared beyond the means of poorer families. Several downtown shops closed, and the Osceola Hotel would have shut its doors had not Henry and Oscar lent the Moyes enough money to keep it going. The Osceola was needed by the mills for the housing of the few buyers who came in from the hard-hit North. Collections in the churches were sparser than in previous years, though attendance was up. Perhaps for the same reason, the Ritz Theater—including the colored folks' balcony— was filled nearly every night.

Yet the Caskeys remained solvent. Oscar's diversification of the operations of the mill insured that some portion of the enterprise remained profitable. Mary-Love's money had fortuitously been invested in things that were not so much affected by the Depression. There were, however, no more jaunts to Mobile and Birmingham for the purchase of new tablecloths and dresses. Mary-Love wore her old outfits, or commissioned straitened Miz Daughtry to make her new ones. Oscar hung about the mill all day with very little to do.

James Caskey suffered more than Mary-Love. Most of his stocks had lost much or all of their value, and the company yielded almost no return at all. Despite the unaccustomed financial ills, he was happy again. At sixty, he actually enjoyed the slower pace of the mill, which rolled along with very little help from him. He and Queenie were fast friends now. They lunched together every day at his house and spent the afternoon talking in the office. He quietly spent his evenings at home, listening to the radio. Danjo often sat on the sofa next to him, looking through books and asking his uncle's help with difficult words. James's wants were few, and it was his delight to take care of those who needed taking care of. When Roxie went for groceries, he made certain she bought enough to feed not only himself and Danjo, but her husband and her four children as well. Queenie received a raise almost every month and was always paid in cash out of James's pocket. Every week at Vanderbilt, Grace's female chums gasped in astonishment as another sheaf of five-dollar bills arrived in a plain envelope. James did almost nothing for himself, and scarcely could be persuaded to buy himself a new suit at Easter. He made no more purchases of porcelain figures or sterling silver cake-servers, saying—reasonably enough—that his house was full of such stuff anyway.

Only Oscar and Elinor encountered real difficulties. Oscar was still in debt on the land he had purchased from Tom DeBordenave, and because there was so little cutting, his income from the land was severely reduced. His meager return went to the bank in Pensacola. Oscar and Elinor still lived on Oscar's salary alone.

In the spring of 1931, the bank called in Oscar's loan. That afternoon, without saying a word to anyone, Oscar drove to Pensacola and obtained an interview with the president of the bank. Oscar was told that the bank itself was in difficulties. The loan had been called in as a measure against an involuntary closing. However, the Caskeys had done a great deal of business with the institution over the years, so it was therefore agreed—after a hurried meeting of the trustees—that only half of Oscar's outstanding debt need be brought in.

That evening Oscar visited his mother. Closeted in her room with the door closed, he asked her to lend him one hundred and eleven thousand dollars to preserve his investment, his financial well-being, the honor of the Caskey name, and the future of the mill. She wouldn't do it.

"Oscar, I told you not to buy that land."

"You didn't, Mama," replied Oscar calmly. "You didn't even find out about it until later."

"If you had had the courtesy to speak to me about it beforehand, I would have told you not to buy it. I'm glad that the bank is doing this. You have no business being saddled with all that land."

"Mama, it's got trees on it. Every single acre has been planted with yellow pine."

"Oscar," she said, "James and I own two hundred thousand acres of land in Escambia County, Monroe County, and this county. Every one of those two hundred thousand acres is planted with yellow pine, and longleaf pine, and slash pine. And when was the last time we had order for ten board feet of lumber? Was it day before yesterday, or was it three weeks ago? Lord, Oscar, we cain't even begin to harvest what we've got now!"

"Mama, are you deliberately misunderstanding me?" Oscar asked. He glanced out his mother's bedroom window at his own home next door. He could see his wife and daughter sitting on the swing on the sleeping porch. They sat beneath a red-fringed lamp, and Elinor was reading to Frances in a soft voice he could hear as a murmur.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I am asking you to lend me the money for my own sake, not for the mill's. That land is all I've got in the world. If I lose it then I don't have anything."

"You have your house."

"Mama, that house belongs to you. You have never given me the deed," replied Oscar sadly.

"You have your work at the mill."

"Yes, I do," returned Oscar. "And I have near about worked myself to death for that mill. Every penny of the money I've made has gone to you and James— now wait, I'm not complaining, I was glad to do it. It's the Caskey mill, and I'm a Caskey, but, Mama, it sure looks to me like you might give me a little something to pay me back for making life so easy for you in these hard times."

"I don't call a hundred and eleven thousand dollars 'a little something.'"

"Mama, you've got the money. I know you have. I know you've got it, because I made that money for you. I wrote the checks and put it in your account in Mobile."

"I'm not gone throw good money after bad. Oscar, you don't need that land. Let it go. Let the bank take it back. They had no business lending you money for it in the first place. I'd even like to hear what you used for collateral. You give 'em Frances maybe? The way you gave Miriam to me in exchange for your house?"

Oscar felt embarrassed for the cruelty in his mother's words.

"All right, Mama," he said, rising. His voice and his face were stony.

"You let that land go, you have no business owning property."

"Whatever you say, Mama."

He stood still, looking at her, where she sat in a rocker by the window. Over her shoulder, he could see Elinor and Frances in the soft light of the lamp. He could hear Elinor's voice with that of his daughter blend, as together they read a poem out of the book. The evening wind was damp and cool. The water oak branches creaked high above the ground. Mary-Love Caskey grew restive beneath her son's gaze.

"Only reason you're doing this is 'cause of Elinor," she said. "If it wasn't for Elinor, you'd be perfectly happy doing what you've always done. She's the one made sure you went over your head in debt for that land that's not ever gone do you one bit of good."

"Mama, is that what you really think?"

"It is. And it's the truth."

"Do you really hate Elinor that much?"

"Shhh! She's gone hear you."

"Do you hate Elinor, Mama, hate her so much you'd send me into bankruptcy just to hurt her?"

"You're gone be all right, Oscar. You think I'd let you starve?"

"No, I don't," said Oscar. "But I do think you'd like to see Elinor and Prances and me kneeling on your back steps, waiting for Miriam to bring us a plate of food."

For a moment, Mary-Love was silent. Her son had never spoken to her in such a manner, and yet there was no anger or emotion in his voice.

"Oscar," she went on as if he had said nothing, "all this is gone teach you a lesson."

"Bankruptcy?"

"It's gone teach you not to try to do things over your head."

Oscar laughed one brief, mirthless laugh. "Mama, I'm not going into bankruptcy. I'm gone keep that land."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that if you won't help me, James will."

"He won't!"

"Mama, James co-signed the loan. If I default, the bank will go to him for the money. You know that if that happens, James will sell everything he owns to pay it off. It'll be hard for him, and I hate to put him through it, but he'll see that the bank is paid. Then I'll owe him the money instead of owing it to the bank."

"Lord, Oscar, if this is true, then why in the world did you come to me?"

"Because you're my mama and you're rich and I have worked for you all my life. I made you rich, and it was time that you did a little something to help me."

"I'll help you, Oscar, I'd help you with anything."

"No, Mama," said Oscar. He had gone to the door, and leaned his back against it, twisting the knob in his hands. "You wouldn't. You just said you wouldn't. You just said you had rather send me into bankruptcy than help me out—even though, in the end, you'd be hurting the mill and James and yourself. You'd do all that just to spite Elinor and spite me for marrying her."

"You did this as a test, Oscar! You didn't have any intention of trying to borrow from me, you just wanted to see if I'd give in, that's all! That's despicable of you, that's—"

"No, Mama," said Oscar, shaking his head, and his soft voice overcame her angry tone. "I really needed you this time. James had helped me before, and now I wanted you to help me, but you wouldn't do it. That makes me real sad, Mama..."

"What are you gone do, Oscar?" Mary-Love asked, in a low, mistrustful voice. The test might not be over yet.

"I'm gone borrow the money from James. I told you that."

"Are you sure he's got it? Are you sure he'll give it to you?"

"Yes," said Oscar. "I'm sure he will. Nobody's gone default. I'll come through it, and someday I'll pay James back. And the Caskey mill will come through, and Mama, you're just gone get richer and richer. And when you die, we're gone fill your coffin with hundred-dollar bills, and we're gone put you in the cemetery right next to Genevieve—and I guess you'll have the time of your life, with Genevieve to keep you company and all that money to keep you warm."

After her son had gone home Mary-Love sat in her darkened room and looked out of her window. She saw Oscar appear on the screened porch next door, saw him kiss Elinor and take up Frances. She heard his murmuring voice as he read to his daughter.

• • •

The next day Luvadia Sapp knocked on Elinor's door. "Morning, Luvadia," Elinor said in greeting. "Is there something you need?"

"Miss Mary-Love tell me to give you this," replied Luvadia, holding out a folded document with a red seal. That morning in the office of the clerk of probate, Mary-Love had signed over the house to Oscar and Elinor.

CHAPTER 36
At the River's Source

In dealing with her son's request for a loan, Mary-Love had not understood that there are some acts that are unforgivable. Oscar had been only half right in telling his mother that she wanted him to go bankrupt to spite Elinor; she also wanted to make certain that her son would always remain dependent. If Mary-Love had realized that James would lend Oscar the money—and she should have realized that—then she would not have had a moment's hesitation in helping out her son. In that way, she also realized later, she might have maintained her position as the Caskey cornucopia.