BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (67 page)

One evening in the autumn of 1942—a few hours after Billy Bronze had returned to Eglin—Frances begged a private conference with her mother. "Very private, Mama," she said. Elinor took her daughter down the long second-floor hallway, through the door with the stained glass at the end, and out onto the harrow front porch where no one ever sat. Mother and daughter took adjoining rockers. The evening was dark. Crickets chorused in the orchard across the road. Elinor rocked steadily in her chair.

"I bet I know what you want to ask me about," she said.

"You do?"

"You want me to tell you about husbands and wives."

Frances blushed in the darkness.

"No, ma'am, not that."

Elinor paused in her rocking. "What then?"

"Dial Crawford."

Elinor laughed. "Dial Crawford? What on earth have you got to do with that old man? Poor old Dollie Faye. She told me Dial hasn't been right in his head for twenty years, and he's no more help to her than a three-year-old."

"He washes windshields."

"And not much else," confirmed Elinor. "What about Dial, darling? What on earth do you want to know about him?"

Frances began hesitantly: "I... stop out at Miss Dollie Faye's for gas about twice a week, on my way to school, and Mr. Crawford always washes the windshield. He always speaks, but he has such a funny voice that it was always hard for me to understand what he was saying. For a long time, I had no idea what he was talking about, but in the past month or two, it seems like I got used to the way he sounds, and I can understand him. So we always speak. Some days, even when I'm not stopping, I see him sitting out in front of the store and he stands up and waves. So I wave back. I guess he knows the car, and knows what time I'm gone be coming past."

"Well? He probably doesn't have much to occupy him."

"Mama, that's five o'clock in the morning!"

"Country people get up early. Anyway, go on, Frances."

"Yesterday morning, I had plenty of gas so I wasn't gone stop. But there was Mr. Crawford, standing on the side of the road, waving me down. So I stopped the car, and I said, 'Is there something wrong, Mr. Crawford?' So, Mama, he looks at me, and he says, 'Black water.'"

"Black water?" echoed Elinor, with the same inflection.

"He said, 'Black water, that's where you came from. Black water, that's where you're going back to.'" Frances glanced at her mother in the darkness, but could not determine her expression. Elinor had stopped her rocking.

"What else did Dial say, darling?"

"He said something else..."

"What?" prompted Elinor with some impatience.

"He said, 'Your mama crawled out of the river.' He said, Tell your mama to crawl back in and leave me alone.'"

Elinor laughed. "I didn't know I had been upsetting Dial Crawford. Maybe I ought to stay away from there from now on, and let Queenie do all my shopping for me."

"Mama, what did he mean, that you crawled out of the river?"

"Frances, Dial is a crazy old man. He doesn't know what he's saying, and Dollie Faye ought to teach him to keep his mouth shut." Frances didn't reply. "Darling, do you think I crawled out of the river?"

"No, no," returned Frances hastily. "Of course not. It's just that sometimes..."

"Sometimes what?"

"Sometimes I think you and I are different—different from everybody else."

"How do you mean?"

"I don't know how I mean, Mama. It's just that sometimes I feel like I'm not all here, not the way Miriam is, not the way Daddy and Sister and Queenie and everybody else is. I feel like part of me is somewhere else."

"Where is that somewhere else?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure." Frances paused. "I do know where else. The river, the Perdido. Just like Mr. Crawford said, black water, flowing out there behind the levee. And, Mama," Frances said very softly, "when I'm there, you're there too."

For a few minutes, Elinor said nothing. Then she asked, "And does this bother you?"

"No, not until yesterday, when Mr. Crawford sort of put his finger on it. When he said what he said, I realized what I had been feeling all these years."

"If you've been feeling it all these years, what difference does it make now?"

Frances didn't answer.

Elinor took her daughter's hand and squeezed it. "I know why," she whispered. She raised Frances's hand to her lips and kissed it. "It's because of Billy, isn't it, darling?"

"Yes, ma'am," replied Frances in a timid voice. "I just wanted to know if it would make a difference. If I ever wanted to get married, or anything. And the problem is, I don't even know what 'it' is."

Elinor did not reply immediately. After a few moments' silence, she said to her daughter, "Frances, I'm going to answer your question and I'm going to tell you the truth. But when I do that, I don't want any more questions, you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then the truth is that someday, in your lifetime, it will make a difference. It won't make a difference now. You go ahead and do whatever you want to. Someday, Frances, I'm going to be the proudest woman in town, 'cause I'm going to watch my little girl get married to a man who will make her happy. And someday my little girl is going to give me some grandchildren."

"Mama, you think so?"

"I don't think so, I know it." Elinor laughed then. She still had hold of Frances's hand, and she squeezed it again. "And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to steal one of those children, just like Mary-Love stole Miriam from me. Then everybody in this family can rant and rave and say that I'm just as bad as Mary-Love ever was. But I'll have me a little girl..."

"How do you know it'll be a girl?"

Elinor didn't answer. She seemed only happy in anticipating the stealing of a grandchild. She reassured Frances: "I don't want you to be thinking about what Dial Crawford said to you, you hear? It's not going to make any difference for a long, long time."

"But someday it will?"

"No questions, I told you! But someday... yes, it will. Darling, I promise you Til be there when that time comes. And when the time comes, I'll tell you what you need to know. You believe that?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You trust me, Frances?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You are my little girl. Miriam isn't. Even if I hadn't given Miriam away to Mary-Love, and had kept both of you, you'd still be my daughter in a way that Miriam is not."

Frances was obediently silent, and asked no further questions.

Elinor's voice grew faraway. "I had a sister. Bet you didn't know that..."

"No, ma'am. You've never mentioned her," said Frances cautiously. Hoping that they did not constitute forbidden questions, she asked: "Is she still alive? What was her name?"

"My mama had two daughters. My sister was just like my mama, but I wasn't anything like my mama. My mama said to me, 'Elinor, you're so different, you go off and do whatever you want. I have'"—Elinor paused as if her sister's name had escaped her memory. In a moment she resumed—'"I have Nerita, and Nerita is just like me in every way.' So Mama got rid of me, the way I got rid of Miriam. And Mama and Nerita were alike the way you and I are alike, do you understand that?"

"I think so."

"You see," Elinor went on, "as soon as Miriam was born, I saw that she wasn't anything like me. She was a Caskey baby, and that's why I gave her up to Mary-Love and Sister—because she belonged to them anyway. But when you were born, I saw right away that you were my baby, and that's why I will never give you up. I will always be here for you."

"Mama," cried Frances, "I love you so much!"

"You are my precious girl!"

Frances stumbled out of her rocker and fell at her mother's feet. She grasped her legs and squeezed them tight. Elinor leaned over and kissed her daughter's head. "Darling," she whispered in Frances's ear, "crazy old men like Dial, sometimes they know more than everybody else put together. Sometimes they speak the truth."

CHAPTER 51
THE PROPOSAL

As Danjo prepared to go away for basic training at Camp Blanding on the Atlantic coast of Florida, James fussed about the boy relentlessly, wanting him in sight every minute. Most boys Banjo's age would have quickly resented an old man's worrisome solicitude, but Danjo bore with it. The last few days when he ought to have been going around town paying farewell calls, Danjo was allowed only to sit on the front porch with James and listen to the old man sigh and say things like: "I sure hope I'm alive when you get back, Danjo. I sure hope there's somebody here to open your letters when you write home."

The unhappy day of departure came at last. James had wanted Bray to drive him and Danjo the four hundred miles to Camp Blanding so that he could hug his boy at the front gate, but Danjo drew the line at this. "I'm taking the bus, James, just like everybody else does. You want to do something for me, you get Elinor to make me some candy to take along and remind me of Perdido."

The box of candy, cookies, and cakes Elinor prepared for Danjo under James's supervision weighed nearly as much as all the boy's luggage.

On the afternoon of the day before Danjo was to leave, James and his daughter sat on the front porch of their house. "Daddy," said Grace, "why are we just sitting here moping? Why don't we at least go on over to Elinor's where there's some people?"

"Grace, you go on. This afternoon, I want you to let me mope in peace."

"I don't know if I ought to point this out, Daddy, but you are making me feel real bad, going on about Danjo like this."

"Why, darling?"

"Because you act like you're left all alone. But you're not. I'm here, and haven't I sworn up and down the churchyard steeple that I'm never gone get married or leave you?"

"You have."

"Then why do you act like you are all alone in the world?"

The afternoon was hot, and James sat in his shirtsleeves. His chair was placed in the shadows of the porch so that no one passing by chance in front of the house should see him in such dishabille. He fanned himself with a paper fan. Grace sat beside him, full in the sunlight, with her arms turned outward for an even tan. Across the road, the cows in the orchard lay in the shade of the pecan trees, swishing their tails against flies.

"Let me ask you, darling," said James. "You remember how you loved all those girls who used to come and visit you here in the summers?"

" 'Course I do."

"You remember, though, when you went off to Spartanburg, you sort of got to love one girl special?"

"I do, and then she up and married and I never want to hear her name spoken aloud by you or anybody else in this town!"

"I'd never do that," returned James calmly. "Well, that's how I feel about Danjo, darling, that's how much I love that boy. I love you too, of course, I always have loved you, but Banjo's been something special to me, 'cause he was the only thing I ever had that was all my very own."

"What about me?"

"You belonged to Genevieve some. Genevieve could have taken you away from me if she had wanted to. Nobody was gone take Danjo away, not after Carl died, anyway. Are you mad at me for feeling like this?"

Grace laughed. Her eyes were closed against the sun. "Of course not, Daddy! I was just trying to get you upset, that's all. I know how you care about Danjo, and I'm not jealous. Danjo's the sweetest boy in the world, and there's nothing more to be said about him! I just hope you're not gone try to send me away."

"I wouldn't send my little girl away, not for the world!"

Contrary to James Caskey's doubts, Danjo Strickland was assigned to Eglin Air Base at the end of his basic training. James knew of many families who had sent their sons off with every expectation of Private X seeing two years of duty behind the information desk at the Arlington National Cemetery, only to discover that the War Department conceived that the only place for Private X was stoking the boiler of a destroyer in the western Pacific. But in Danjo's case, things worked out as planned, and after basic training, Danjo Strickland was sent to Eglin. He was able to visit his uncle two or three times a week.

Billy Bronze got all the credit for Banjo's assignment so close to home. It was true that Billy had asked his commanding officer if anything might be done, but he had no way of knowing whether his request had had anything to do with the matter. Danjo trained as a radio engineer and, as such, was under Billy's supervision. When Billy drove from Eglin over to Perdido, he often managed to bring Danjo with him, and thus his arrival in Perdido was now doubly welcome. Billy wasn't loath to accept the thanks of the Caskeys. He intended to ask Frances to marry him, and he didn't think it would hurt his cause to have the family think he had done them all a great favor.

Billy Bronze was a handsome, intelligent man, whose one desire in life was to be comfortable and to be taken care of. His father was rich, but the old man had anything but a loving disposition, and Billy had never had much comfort or care as a child. He had been packed off to military school at the age of eight. Unlike most of his young classmates, he had never allowed himself to suffer a moment of homesickness, and had never once looked forward to a holiday.

Now, years later, he was grateful for having fallen in with the Caskeys. Men at Eglin occasionally chided him for courting an heiress, and Billy, because he himself was heir to a substantial fortune, did not bridle at the accusation. He was fascinated by the Caskeys, and by the women particularly. Billy had been around few women. His mother had been a browbeaten invalid. Billy had seen her leave her shuttered room only once, and that was when she was taken from it in her coffin. His father's servants had all been men except for the cook in the kitchen, where he was never allowed. At military school he had met one woman, the wife of the commander, and one girl, the commander's daughter. Billy was one of three hundred boys, and that didn't lend itself to intimacy with those two females.

But not only were there a great many Caskey women, the women were in control of the family. Billy had never seen anything like it, and the whole notion fascinated him. He loved being around the Caskeys, and had grown very quickly to love them all. With equal delight he attended to Queenie's detailed gossip, Miriam's snide remarks, Frances's shy speech, Grace's masculine banter, Lucille's flirtatious coyness, and Elinor's commanding pronouncements. Even the servants seemed to have been affected by the Caskey women's assumption of power. Zaddie, Ivey, Roxie, and Luvadia did and said what they saw fit to do and say. In contrast, Oscar seemed rather put upon, and might have been utterly powerless if he had not enjoyed at least superficial control of the mill. James Caskey had abdicated his rights entirely, and had become a kind of woman himself. Danjo was a strong, masculine boy, but one trained nevertheless to believe that real power and real prestige lay with women and not with men. Billy, a year before he had come to Eglin, would never have believed that such a family existed. Now, he wanted never to leave them.