BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (71 page)

Frances's gaze, which had turned glassy, hardened into focus. "Yes, ma'am," she said quietly.

Elinor sighed, dropped the washcloth, and embraced her naked daughter. "I'm so sorry, darling. I'm so sorry it had to happen this way!"

Frances was stiff in her arms. When Elinor let go, Frances said, "It did happen, though, what I really remember."

Elinor nodded.

"Stand out of the bathtub, darling, and let me dry you off."

Frances did so. She said, "It was horrible, Mama."

Elinor, who had taken a fresh towel from the rack, looked at Frances in surprise. "No, it wasn't," she said. "You just say that now. But were you hurt? Were you frightened? Were you ever in danger?"

"I don't remember..."

Elinor shook her head. "You weren't, darling, not for one minute." She placed the towel around Frances's shoulders and began to rub. "That old Travis Gann could never have hurt you, not when you were..."

"Were what?"

"Were the way you were when you got out in the water."

"It didn't happen in the water, Mama. It happened in the bathhouse, right after I found Lucille."

Elinor nodded. She dropped to her knees again and continued to towel Frances dry. "That's because you were upset. You were upset on Lucille's account. I don't blame you, either. Not one little bit."

"Mama, is this ever gone happen again?"

Elinor didn't answer. She stood up, tossed the towel into the corner of the bathroom, and took a robe from a hook on the door. "Put this on. Let's go in the other room and let me brush your hair."

"Mama," said Frances calmly, as she allowed herself to be lead into the next room, "you got to tell me this time. You cain't keep on putting me off and putting me off when I ask you about things. Not after what happened tonight. I killed somebody," she whispered.

Oscar and Billy were sitting on the screened-in porch, onto which opened the window of Frances's room. Oscar, when he saw the light come on, came over to the window and peered in. "Elinor," he said, "is she all right?"

"She's fine," returned Elinor, guiding her daughter to the vanity. Frances sat woodenly on the wicker seat before the triptych mirror.

"What the hell happened out there?"

"Travis Gann," said Elinor.

"Are we gone have to call the police?"

"No!" said Elinor sharply. "Oscar, will you just let Frances and me alone for a while? I will come out there a little later and tell everybody what happened and explain what we're going to do. Don't you trust me?"

Oscar shrugged. "Billy and me are sitting here on our hands and we just don't know what to do next."

"Fine," said Elinor, "you just continue with that." Despite the heat of the evening, Elinor pulled down the window in her husband's face and snapped the curtains shut. She returned to her daughter. Frances sat with her hands in her lap, blankly staring at her triple reflection in the mirrors. Elinor picked up a brush and began pulling it through the thick ropes of her daughter's damp hair.

"Frances," said Elinor quietly, smiling down at her daughter's reflection as she brushed, "what you've got to do is calm down, because in just a little while you and I are going to have to go out on the porch and talk to Oscar and Billy and Queenie. You're going to have to tell them what happened out at the lake. They're going to expect you to be a little upset, but they're not going to want to listen to any wild stories."

"Mama," sighed Frances, looking neither at herself nor at her mother, but staring instead at the little lamp with the fringed shade, "you don't think I'd go to anybody with a story like that, do you?"

"I hope not. Who'd believe you? Nobody would.
I
wouldn't even believe you." Elinor gave a little laugh.

"Mama, it's not funny."

"Frances, darling, you act like this has never happened before—that's what I can't understand."

Frances looked up at her mother's reflection in astonishment.

After a few moments, Elinor said quietly, "I see what it is. You don't remember..."

"Don't remember?"

"The other times."

"What other times, Mama?"

"The other times when you went out in the water."

"You mean," said Frances hesitantly, "I had that change... ?"

Elinor nodded. "Of course. When you used to go down to the Gulf with Miriam, and you'd swim and swim for hours and hours—you don't think a sixteen-year-old girl could swim out that far, do you? A sixteen-year-old girl who had spent three years of her life in that bed right over there, not even able to move her legs when she wanted to? You remember when you were little and you and I used to go swimming in the Perdido together, and we wouldn't let anybody else go with us? Remember that?"

"A little," admitted Frances. "I don't remember that anything happened, though, I just remember..."

"What?"

"Nothing, Mama. That's just it, I can't remember anything about it. Just that everything was different."

Elinor nodded sagely.

"That's it, then," said Frances mournfully. "When I'm in the water, and I can't remember things, that's what happens to me?"

"That's right."

"But tonight I remembered more."

Elinor shrugged. "More things happened, and you were upset. And also you're getting older."

"Then this is all gone happen again?"

Elinor only went on with her brushing. She didn't answer.

After a moment, Frances said delicately, "Mama?"

"Yes?"

"Mama, not everybody is like this..."

"No, darling, just you and me."

"Not Miriam?"

Elinor shook her head. "Remember when I said that you were my real little girl? That's what I meant."

Frances sat very still and stared at her visage in the mirror. She raised her arm and turned it in the light, inspecting it.

"You won't see anything, darling," said Elinor.

"What about Billy?"

"What about him?" asked Elinor. She put aside the brush and opened a little gilt box with bobby pins inside. She pulled back a thick wave of Frances's hair and reached for a pin. Frances held the wave in place until her mother had secured it.

"Can I still marry him?"

"Of course! I married your father, didn't I?"

Frances shrugged. "What do I tell him?"

"Don't tell him anything!" cried Elinor. "What do you imagine you would say to him?"

"I don't know!" exclaimed Frances helplessly. She spun around on the wicker seat and looked at her mother directly. "Mama, I don't understand any of this, and you've got to help me! You've got to tell me what to do!"

Elinor took Frances's shoulders, squeezed them, and said, "You're doing everything just right. If you have any problems, you come to me. That's all. Now turn around and let me finish doing your hair. They're waiting for us!"

"Why fix it at all?"

"Because when we go out on the porch, and you see Billy again, I don't want him to remember anything of what you looked like out at the lake. I just want him to see my pretty, pretty little girl."

"Mama, does Daddy know?"

"Know about what?"

"About me?"

"No."

"About you?"

Elinor paused. "Oscar knows more than he's willing to say. Your daddy is a good man, darling, and he's very smart. Your daddy knows when to be quiet. Billy is just like him, don't you think?"

Frances didn't answer. Another question already occupied her mind.

"What about children?"

"What about them?" asked Elinor, looking this way and that at Frances's reflection, checking her hair.

"Will they be like us?"

Elinor smiled. "You're all done," she said, "and you've asked enough questions for one evening. Let's go out on the porch and get this business over with."

CHAPTER 54
LUCILLE AND GRACE

Lucille stayed in bed a week after her rape, nursed by all the Caskey women. Townfolk were told that at Lake Pinchona, in the dark, Lucille had tripped over the root of a cedar tree, fallen, and cut herself on a nail sticking out of a post.

The owner of the recreation facilities at Lake Pinchona and his wife had their suspicions, of course, but they had no interest in spreading news of a rape. If it had become known that a local girl had been attacked by an Air Corps man—it was bound to have been a soldier, since for the past year it was mostly soldiers who had come to the lake—there would have been hell to pay. The lake might have been put off limits by the commander at Eglin, and where would the couple's comfortable profits have gone?

Another waitress was hired, a girl from Bay Mi-nette who wasn't nearly so pretty as Lucille and had never learned to dance. After she had recovered from her "fall," Lucille wasn't at all interested in returning to her former position.

No trace of Travis Gann ever turned up in the lake or on its shores. Perdido assumed that Travis, in the due course of justice, had been released from Atmore prison and had simply disappeared. Perdido was glad that he had taken up residence someplace far away.

A couple of months later, Queenie found that the full force of her old bad luck had come upon her again. Lucille was pregnant. On Elinor's advice, Lucille had been examined not by Dr. Benquith next door but rather by a man in Pensacola. The Caskeys hadn't wanted their friend Leo to know what had occurred out at Lake Pinchona. "I know pregnancy when I see it," said Queenie. "In another couple of months she'll start to show."

One evening at James's there was a conference of the Caskey women, with only Frances and Miriam excused. Lucille was brought over to the house, but relegated to Grace's bedroom with the door closed. The question "What do we do?" was what the women had gathered to decide.

Grace looked around with pleasure. This was her first major family conference; she was proud to have been admitted to it. Here she might give her maiden speech, and she wanted the family to remember- it. "Let me take her away," said Grace.

"Take her where?" said Sister.

"It doesn't matter. Miami, maybe, or Tennessee. It doesn't really matter where. Tell people she's visiting relatives, or she's keeping me company on a tour of the national parks, something like that."

"You can't travel around much," Elinor pointed out, "remember there's a war going on."

"Then we'll sit in one place," said Grace. "A place where nobody knows us."

"For nine months?" said Queenie. "You'd stay with Lucille for nine months?"

"It wouldn't be nine, it'd be more like seven."

"What would you do with the baby when it's born?" asked Sister.

Grace shrugged. "I don't know. She cain't keep it, I guess. Then there'd be no reason to go away and keep it a secret. Put it up for adoption, I suppose."

"I wish we could keep it..." sighed Queenie. "Maybe we could give it to James."

"James is too old," said Elinor, not unkindly, "to care for a baby. And if we were to keep it, everybody would know where it came from. We'll have to give it away."

Grace soon understood that they had accepted the wisdom of her proposal and that she would take Lucille away for the duration of the pregnancy. She said then, "We can decide about the baby later. First we have to decide how Lucille and I are gone get out of town without anybody suspecting anything. See, first she's gone have to quit that job at the Ben Franklin..."

It was arranged that evening. Lucille was informed and acquiesced in everything. She was a changed girl since the rape; not dour, but distracted. She no longer lied because there didn't seem to be anything in life worth lying for. She no longer whined to get her way. She looked at Grace and said, "Are you gone take care of me?"

"Yes," said Grace. "Where had you rather go, Nashville or Miami?"

Lucille shrugged.

"Nashville, then," said Grace. "We can tell everybody we're visiting your relatives, Queenie."

"They're all dead," said Queenie.

"All the better," said Grace. "Then we won't be disturbed."

Perdido heard only that Grace and Lucille, who had never been close before, were going off to Nashville for an indefinite stay. There was something mysterious in this, if only because it seemed so unlikely that Grace would leave her father completely alone in Perdido, when James was still grieving in the wake of Banjo's absence. Perdido learned nothing except that questions were unwelcome.

James demanded a single alteration in the plan. He would not hear of his daughter going so far away as Nashville. He wanted Grace and Lucille hidden away a little closer to home. Oscar, thinking the matter over, said, "You know what? Right after Mama died and we bought all that land over in Es-cambia County—y'all remember? Elinor had me buy up a little piece of property that had been foreclosed on. It's maybe five, ten miles south of Babylon, off this little road that doesn't go anywhere at all. You never saw anyplace so far away from anything in your life. Elinor, you and I drove over there one day, remember?"

Elinor remembered it well. "The place is called Gavin Pond," she said. "There's an old farmhouse next to a fishing pond. Plenty of artesian water around there. It's got a pasture and a pecan orchard, and five, six hundred acres of decent timber. The Perdido River is the western boundary of the property."

"Y'all never even mentioned this place before," said James.

Oscar said, "After Mama died and left us her money, Elinor and I were buying up property right and left. Well, it looks like it might come in handy now. Gavin Pond—I'd even forgot the name of it."

"How long does it take to get there from here?" asked Grace.

"Half an hour, maybe," said Elinor. "Take the road over to Babylon, and then south, that's all."

"Daddy," said Grace, "you and Queenie would be able to come see us all the time. Elinor, what shape was that old farmhouse in last time you were there?"

"It was all right," said Elinor. "But by now it could probably use some work. I'll drive over tomorrow, and take Bray along and see what all needs to be done before you can move in."

Elinor and Bray began work the next day. In the following week, Bray killed a family of squirrels in the second-floor bedrooms and repaired a hole in the roof. He put new steps on the back, and shored up the narrow front porch. Meanwhile, early every morning, before the rest of Perdido was awake, Elinor and Sister tied furniture to the back of a small mill truck and had Bray drive it out to the place. It had been decided that the purchase of new furniture—either in Perdido or Babylon—would have excited too much local curiosity. Queenie went to the Crawford's store, filled her car with groceries, and stocked the kitchen. The Caskeys visited the house by ones and twos and nobody in Perdido learned anything of it, or suspected the Caskeys' scheme. Lucille quit her job at the Ben Franklin, and was not sorry to do so. She no longer had any interest in flirting with the servicemen who wandered in for a bag of peanut clusters or a Mounds bar.