BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (52 page)

"Are you sick?" asked Miriam apprehensively. She had been looking forward to this trip, and wanted nothing to interfere with her pleasure in it.

"No, I've just got a headache. Sister, is everybody ready to go?"

"Yes, ma'am—"

Before Sister could continue, Mary-Love sank onto the bench and raised her hand to her rapidly paling face.

"I don't know what's wrong with me," she gasped.

The adults gathered around her. Malcolm and Lucille stood to one side and drew on sullen faces in preparation for some great disappointment. Frances and Miriam looked toward their grandmother with some misgiving. She looked very ill.

Ivey moved forward and felt Mary-Love's forehead. Already her hair lay in damp waves over her prickled scalp.

"Miss Mary-Love, you hot?"

"Ivey," she whispered, "I'm just burning up!"

Ivey turned to the others and said, "She got a bad fever. She ought to be at home in bed right this very minute. Y'all back off some." She took a kerchief from her pocketbook and handed it to Miriam. "Go get this wet."

Miriam hurried off to the ladies' room. The rest of them talked in low voices, glancing at Mary-Love. Her head lolled on her shoulders as Ivey sat beside her, unbuttoning her blouse, and wiping the perspiration from her forehead.

"She's real sick," said Florida. As the wife of a doctor, her opinion carried some weight.

"I know," said James, "but will she be all right?"

"Once she gets home, probably," replied Florida. "Leo ought to look at her. I never saw anybody get so sick so fast."

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, then Sister's teeth went clack-clack and she said, "All right, then, I'll say it."

"Say what?" asked James weakly.

"What are we gone do? Are we gone go back to Perdido and sit around for five more years before we ever get out of town again?"

"Mary-Love looks so bad!" said James.

"Florida and I will take care of Mama," said Oscar. "The rest of y'all ought to get on that train. We got to think of the children. They'll be so disappointed if y'all turned around now."

"I know," sighed James. "But it just doesn't seem right to leave like this."

"Probably she would want you all to go on and have a good time," suggested Florida. "I don't think she would want to ruin everything for everybody."

Sister laughed. "Florida, don't you know Mama better than that? Nothing would make her well sooner than to know that we had canceled the entire trip because of her."

"Sister!" cried James.

"Well, I'm sorry, but that's the truth," said Sister, "but we have been planning this for months, and it's the first real chance I've had to go anywhere or do anything since I got married. I don't intend to give it all up just because Mama comes down with a summer cold."

"It looks worse than that," Queenie said. "But I agree with Sister, James. The children are excited— we're all excited. The tickets are paid for, the hotel reservations have all been made. And what would we say in Perdido, that all ten of us turned right around and came back when we weren't fifty miles out of town, just because Mary-Love came down with a little headache and temperature?"

"I suppose you're right," said James.

"Of course they're right," said Oscar energetically. "We'll put Mama in the back seat of the Packard and have her home in bed before y'all get to Greenville. As soon as she's well, we'll pack her up and send her on to meet you."

"Then it's settled," said Sister quickly. This seemed the solution that would do the least damage to their original plans, and she wanted to make it firm before James, in his charity to Mary-Love, could change anyone's mind. "Somebody should go speak to the children and tell them what's been decided."

Mary-Love Caskey sat and moaned and sweated profusely on the hard wooden bench in the stifling Atmore station. She could not speak an articulate word. Beside her, Ivey Sapp mopped her brow, squeezed her hands, and whispered, "Miss Mary-Love, Miss Mary-Love, what you been eating? What you been drinking? D'you get hold of something that wasn't good for you? You been drinking down some bad water?"

CHAPTER 39
The Closet Door Opens

Elinor was sitting on her front porch when Bray drove up. As if she had known that Mary-Love lay feverish across the back seat of the car, she stood up and walked out to the street and peered in. "Bray," she said, "I've got the front room all ready for her."

"Miss El'nor," said Bray, puzzled, "did Mr. Oscar call you on the telephone to say we was coming?"

Elinor, appearing preoccupied, did not answer.

Oscar had driven up right behind Bray and had heard what his wife had said. "Elinor," he said, "you sure you want this responsibility? I was thinking we maybe should put her in the hospital."

"Did Ivey look at her?"

Bray nodded. "Ivey say she ought to be at home in her own bed."

"That's not the hospital," Elinor pointed out. "Zad-die and I will take perfectly good care of her."

Bray lifted Mary-Love out of the car and quickly carried her into Elinor's house, up the stairs and down the corridor, placing her on the bed in the front room.

Elinor followed them in, calling Zaddie up.

"All of you go away, now," said Elinor, closing the door of the room against them. "Zaddie and I are going to change her clothes and give her a sponge bath. She'll be cooler and more comfortable then. Oscar, you better call Leo Benquith and get him over here."

Everyone did as they were told. Dr. Benquith arrived to find Mary-Love looking very weak and very ill, propped up on the pillows in the front room. She appeared now, however, to have some awareness of where she was. She was so little her old self that she did not even object to being placed in the care of her daughter-in-law. Elinor and Zaddie stood at the foot of the bed as Leo Benquith examined her.

"It's a fever," he said with a shrug. "Just what everybody said it was. And, Elinor, you did exactly the right thing. Miz Caskey," he said, addressing Mary-Love—rather loudly, as if deafness were also her infirmity, "Elinor's gone take good care of you till you get well."

Mary-Love's eyes closed and she sighed heavily.

That evening at supper, Oscar said to Elinor, "You sure we shouldn't put Mama in the hospital?"

"You heard what Leo Benquith said," replied Elinor. "I know what to do—and Leo will drop by every afternoon. Miss Mary-Love would hate the hospital—all those strangers. And, Oscar, when they start calling from Chicago, you tell them she's doing just fine, but doesn't want to talk on the telephone. If they think she's still sick, they'll all pack up and head right back. Your Mama has this family trained."

"Don't you think people should be here?"

"I do not. I think they'd only disturb her. I'm going to shoo away all her visitors until she can get well. By the time they all get back, your mama will be up and complaining how they all left her high and dry. She's never going to let them hear the end of it."

Mary-Love was nursed by her daughter-in-law. Elinor sat with her in the front room all day long. All visitors were stopped at the door downstairs by an unbribable, unmovable Zaddie. Only Leo Ben-quith was allowed inside the house, and he came once a day, right after the noontime meal. He examined Mary-Love in Elinor's presence, went downstairs, and always accepted a glass of iced tea from Zaddie who was waiting for him with it. He sat out on the front porch and told Oscar what he thought.

What he thought was not very encouraging.

"Oscar," said Leo, "I don't know what's wrong with your mama. She has some sort of fever, and she cain't seem to get rid of it. She's gone have to lie real still up there for some time to come."

"Maybe we should take her to Pensacola to Sacred Heart..." Oscar suggested tentatively.

"Well," said Leo. "I wouldn't recommend it. I would let her keep to her bed. I would let Elinor stay right there by her all the time. Here she can have the food and drink that she's used to. That's what I would do."

"Leo, what is it she's got, anyway?"

"Like I said, it's some kind of fever. Like a swamp fever. Sort of like malaria—but of course it's not malaria. Honest to God. Oscar, I don't know what it is. Your mama been out fishing lately?"

"It's hard to imagine Mama fishing. Why you ask something like that?"

" 'Cause I remember a long time ago an old colored man—don't even remember his name—came down with the same thing, or same thing near as I can make out. He was one of Pa's cases, I was just itty-bitty, but I remember, 'cause I was going around with Pa in those days. That old cplored man was a fisherman, used to fish on the Perdido a few miles up above here, I guess."

"That was before my time, 'cause I don't remember him. But he had the same thing?"

"I think it was. Said he fell in the water, swallowed some, and nearly drowned. Came back home and crawled into bed."

"Great God in the morning, Leo! If you could catch something out of Perdido water, don't you think we'd all be dead by now? Elinor, especially. She swims in that old river all the time. Always has. And she hasn't been sick a day since we were married in James's living room. What happened to that old colored man anyway?"

"Oh, Oscar, that was so long ago! That old man's been dead twenty-five years!"

"What'd he die of, though?" Leo Benquith looked closely at Oscar, but didn't answer. "That old colored man died of the fever he caught in Perdido water, isn't that right?" Oscar shook his head ruefully. "Leo, I'm sorry. It's not that I don't think you're the best doctor in three counties, it's just that lately Mama and I haven't been getting along so well."

"So Florida told me."

"And if anything happened to her right now, I think I'd just die! Listen, Leo, you think if I went up there and apologized, Mama would hear me and understand what I was saying?"

"She might."

"Would it be all right to do that?"

"As long as you don't badger her into answering you, 'cause I'm not so sure she can. Oscar, I tell you what. You wait awhile, let her get over the excitement of my being here this afternoon, then go up and ask Elinor if it's all right. She'll know."

"Elinor's a good nurse for Mama!" Oscar exclaimed with pride.

"She sure is," agreed Leo. "I think Elinor knows as much about Mary-Love's illness as I do."

Accordingly, an hour later, after he had drunk two more glasses of iced tea and walked around the house a couple of times and poked a stick into the kudzu at the base of the levee looking for stray snakes and called for Zaddie to let him in the back way, Oscar went upstairs and knocked on the door of the front room.

Elinor opened the door softly and stepped out into the hallway.

"How's Mama?"

"She's the same."

"Elinor, can I speak to her?"

"About what?"

"About... things," he said vaguely and uneasily.

"Are you gone yell at her?"

"No, of course not! I'm gone ask her to forgive me."

"Forgive you for what?"

"For not coming to see her for the past five years."

"Oscar, that was Mary-Love's fault. That wasn't yours."

"I know, but I shouldn't have done it anyway. Mama's always been that way, and I knew it. Maybe if I said, 'Mama, will you forgive me?' it'd make her feel better. You think?"

Elinor paused and considered. At last she stood aside and said, "All right, Oscar. Go on in. But keep your voice down. And don't keep asking her to say yes and no and shake her head and kiss you."

"I won't. But will she hear me? Will she understand what I'm saying?"

"That I don't know. Oscar, I'm going to speak to Zaddie for a few minutes and then I'm coming right back up and throw you out. So you'd better get to it."

Elinor went quietly down the hallway toward the stairs as Oscar hesitantly entered the front room.

The room was dark and airless, though outside the sun shone brightly and a stiff breeze from the Gulf kept the afternoon heat at bay. Across the windows the shades had been pulled, the Venetian blinds closed, and the lined draperies drawn. A thin line of dim light along the baseboard below the windows was the only indication that it was not black night outside. The room was overwhelmed with the unmistakable odor of illness, as if the sickness had infected the bedclothes, the furniture, and the very walls and floor of the room. On a table laden with medicines was an oscillating fan. Its labored turning was a result of mechanical difficulty, but it almost seemed to Oscar that its problems might have been caused by the density of the air it had to reckon with. An extra carpet had been put down on the floor; cushions had been put on all the chairs, and cloths had been laid over every surface to guard against obtrusive noise. A single low-watted bulb shone dimly behind a shade of crimson silk. Oscar looked about and no longer wondered that his daughter had been afraid to sleep in this room. The walls were dark green, but they seemed no brighter than the black cast-iron chandelier suspended near the middle of the ceiling. He had rarely been in this room. With the door closed, the light shut out, and all outside sound muffled, it didn't seem like a part of the house at all.

In the same way, his mother, lying in the bed, seemed no longer a part of his life. She was not the woman who figured in his memory and thought. Mary-Love lay unmoving, breathing stertorously, in a thick linen nightdress, propped up on pillows. The sheets, spread, and coverlet had been impeccably arranged; they covered Mary-Love almost up to her neck. Her hands, white and frail, lay atop the folded-back sheet.

Mary-Love's eyes were open, but they were not focused on her son. Experimentally, he moved a few feet to the left. Her eyes did not follow him. Oscar placed himself in her line of vision.

"Mama?" he said.

He listened and wondered if he did not detect a slight momentary alteration of her breath. It was difficult to tell over the distracting noise of the fan.

"Mama, I came to visit you for a minute."

He moved to the table and turned the fan off. For the first time he detected the unsettling raspiness in his mother's breathing.