BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (87 page)

"Oh, Mama, I sure do! You know she can put her entire head inside my mouth!"

There was a little knock at the bathroom door and Zaddie's voice came timidly through: "Miss Frances?"

"What is it, Zaddie?" Elinor asked.

"Your baby's crying out here. I think she's hun-gry."

"Well, Mama," said Frances with a resigned sigh as she stepped out of the bathtub, "go on and bring her in. I guess I'll feed her before Daddy gets home."

Gathered for supper that night, the Caskeys wondered at the alteration in yet another family member—this time in Frances. It was a marked change not only from the despondency she had apparently felt since Billy had left on his trip, but from the general malaise of spirit that she had exhibited from the beginning of her pregnancy almost a year before. In fact, no one who saw her at table that night and listened to her voluble chatter and witnessed her grinning at nothing and eating an enormous plateful of food could remember a Frances to match this one.

"You must have bought out a store this afternoon!" exclaimed Queenie, to whom buying things was the pinnacle of happiness.

"Didn't spend a penny," laughed Frances. "Spent the whole afternoon with my baby."

"I thought you went out!" said Oscar.

Frances just laughed and shook her head.

And the wonderment of the family continued, because after that Frances left every afternoon, leaving Lilah napping in her basinet. No one knew where she went. No one saw her leave the house. No cars were taken. Elinor said only, "Frances can't stay cooped up all day. I imagine she goes for .walks in the woods."

Zaddie, who ought to have known something, said only, "I got enough to do around this house without tying a string to Miss Frances's belt."

Frances appeared deliriously happy these days. She seemed to miss her husband not at all, nor did she appear to be in the least disappointed when Miriam telephoned saying that she and Billy would be gone for another three days in order to visit Tulsa, as well. Lilah was a fretful baby and Frances seemed impatient with her, nursing her only when the child's cries grew troublesome or her own breasts became heavy with milk. She otherwise took little notice of her little girl, Frances seemed quite happy to turn Lilah over to anyone who wanted to pet the baby, whether it was Zaddie or Elinor or Queenie.

"I think," said Queenie confidentially to Elinor, "that being without Billy has driven Frances crazy. I have never seen her act this way before. And I have known her since she was a baby in her crib."

Elinor defended her daughter, making excuses for her near neglect of Lilah, saying, "Frances is just being sweet to me. She knows how much I love this little girl. I have already asked Frances to give her up to me, but Frances says I have to get Billy's permission before she'd sign any deed."

Getting into bed a week and a half after his remarks to his wife about Frances's sad mood, Oscar ventured to complain that Frances's high spirits were getting on his nerves, Elinor punched his arm with her fist: "Oscar Caskey, ten days ago you were complaining to me that Frances was so low. Can't you make up your mind? Can't you be satisfied? Isn't it enough that your little girl has found happiness?"

"What 7 don't understand is," said Oscar, "where is she finding it?"

CHAPTER 67
The Prodigal

Oscar Caskey greatly missed his daughter Miriam during the time that she was away in Texas attempting to lure the oil companies to the swamp south of Gavin Pond Farm. He discovered, in her absence, how responsible she was for the day-to-day running of the mill, and how much of the weight of the business she had taken from his shoulders.- The plethora of small- and medium-weight decisions he was being forced to make was staggering, and he wondered how Miriam did it all. This recognition of his daughter's abilities and energy made him feel even older and more tired than he actually was at the end of each day; he understood now that Miriam was not simply an assistant to him. His daughter worked in the mill office so that he could spend mornings either in the forests or in the yard and his afternoons at home on the upstairs porch. It became clear that Miriam was now responsible for the success of the Caskey mills; Oscar was the assistant, the appendage, the helper operating at Miriam's convenience.

This revelation did not embitter Oscar. It only made him all the more anxious for Miriam's return.

Early one morning when Miriam and Billy had been gone a little over two weeks, the telephone rang. Oscar jumped out of bed and answered it, certain it was Miriam.

"Oscar," Miriam said, "Billy and I are starting home in two minutes."

"Oh, that's wonderful," sighed Oscar, "when do you think you'll get here."

"Maybe tomorrow."

"How'd it all go?"

"Tell you when we get there. I'm not going to say anything important over the telephone. Goodbye."

"Goodbye, sweetness. We all miss you."

Oscar went downstairs. "She's on her way," he said.

Elinor immediately telephoned both Queenie and Sister; the information was a great relief to everyone.

Billy Bronze, on the drive home, thought about how successful the trip had been. While he had gladly agreed to accompany Miriam, he had been certain that she had been going about the matter in an entirely incorrect manner. One did not simply show up at the corporate headquarters of an oil company with surveyors' maps and geologists' reports. Somehow— and Billy wasn't quite sure how—the oil companies discovered potential oil-bearing property, and came to you. When Billy ventured, on the way to Houston, to tell this to Miriam, she replied, "Of course that's how it's done, normally. I know that. But I'm doing it differently."

They had stopped for a day in New Orleans. They had eaten lunch in a fine restaurant owned by the father of one of Miriam's former roommates at Sacred Heart, and after the meal Miriam had gone to the most expensive dress shop in town and bought eight hundred dollars' worth of new clothes. Billy sat in the shop in amazement as Miriam tried and bought one outfit after another. Miriam purchased clothes with all the excitement with which a vegetarian mother purchases red meat for her carnivorous family, and Billy couldn't understand why she did it. When they reached Houston, he learned.

They had been unceremoniously directed to the offices of an assistant manager for development for one of the major oil companies. Despite the obvious brush-off from the main office, Miriam waltzed in with her maps and her surveys and her reports under her arm. Her hair had been done at the hotel that morning, she was lushly perfumed, and she wore the first of her new outfits. She smiled as Billy had never seen her smile before. To the assistant manager she self-depreciatingly laughed at her inability to interpret any of this business for herself, and could he please help her? She introduced Billy as her brother-in-law who didn't know any more about it all than she did; he was just along to protect her in the big city.

Knowing Miriam, Billy was shocked that the man did not immediately see through her guile, but he did not. He was charmed, and saw before him only a soft, pretty young woman, helplessly ignorant of business and the proper way of doing things. Billy sat uncomfortably through this imposture. The assistant manager looked through the documents cursorily at first, then with increasing interest. He asked a few questions about the property south of Gavin Pond Farm, and five times he had to be told that yes, it was in Florida. He took up the report and the maps and said, "I'll be back in just a few minutes." He was back in twenty. Not once in that absence, even with Billy and Miriam alone in the office, did Miriam drop her role, or speak one word out of her assumed character.

The assistant manager returned with a superior—two steps above, Billy conjectured. The superior smiled at Miriam, who beamed back and said, "Pleased to meet you. Will you please tell me the truth? Have Mr. Bronze and I been making fools of ourselves, coming here like this?"

The superior assured Miriam that they had not made fools of themselves, and that he would have been pleased to see them even if they had not brought such interesting papers along with them. The man wanted to know if they could possibly leave the maps and the reports with him for a few days. Miriam, who had carefully seen to the preparation often sets of the documents, hesitated, and then replied, "Well, if y'all promise me y'all will be real careful with them, and not get them mixed up with anybody else's."

The man promised.

Miriam gave him a calling card with her office telephone number written on it in a feminine script in violet ink on the reverse. "Billy," she said, "you give him one of yours, too."

Billy did so, but scarcely trusted himself to speak for fear he would laugh.

"We just had them made up last week," said Miriam engagingly. "Aren't they adorable! Mama told me nobody would take us seriously unless we had calling cards."

The man promised to telephone soon. After shaking Miriam's limp hand and Billy's sweating one, he hurried off with the maps and reports clutched tightly in his hand.

Billy did not realize until they had left the office that his shirt was wet through with perspiration.

"Hell," he whispered to Miriam as they were going past the secretary's desk.

"Shhh!" whispered Miriam, and to the secretary, said, "Bye-bye, honey."

In the hallway, elevator, and lobby Miriam maintained her assumed identity, but once out on the street, crowded with businessmen and secretaries on their way to lunch, exploded, "Oh, Lord, Billy, get me back to the hotel and out of this damned dress."

The oil company visits were accomplished with a precision and similarity that astonished Billy. Every morning Miriam wore a different outfit. Every morning they were admitted to the office of a man on the low end of the corporate echelon dealing with development. Every morning they were subsequently introduced to his superior, and after every meeting Miriam rushed back to the hotel to change out of those chafing, feminine clothes, and into pants, or even overalls. The afternoons were rough going for both Miriam and Billy in Houston—and later in Dallas and Tulsa—for there was nothing for them to do, and both were used to hard work. At first they had maintained separate rooms, but after the first night they had decided to share a room. It wasn't that they needed to save money, but they hated waste.

The question of seduction had been set aside by Miriam's matter-of-factness when she said after the first night in Houston: "You see what they're charging us for these rooms, Billy? And my room's got two beds. You come on in here tonight, and let that other room go. No sense in our taking fifteen dollars out of our pockets to put in theirs." That night, on the telephone to her father, Miriam said, "If Frances needs to speak to Billy, tell her that's he's staying here in my room. This hotel charges fifteen dollars a night, and we decided we were damned if we were paying for two rooms."

"Miriam," said her father, "do you know that Billy snores?"

Billy was embarrassed at first that Miriam dressed and undressed right in front of him, until he realized that she never bothered to draw the shades either. She wasn't trying to seduce him or excite voyeurs in the neighboring buildings, she was simply unself-conscious and naturally immodest.

As he lay in bed that night, with Miriam asleep and snoring herself in the other bed, Billy wondered why he had chosen Frances rather than Miriam. It was an acknowledged fact in the family and in Per-dido that Miriam was prettier. She was capable and smart, and Billy enjoyed her company. But she was like a sister to him, and Frances was definitely a wife. It was, he decided before he drifted off, another of those mysteries of the Caskey women.

In only one company out of the eight they visited were Miriam and Billy received with anything less than courtesy and interest. She let each of them know that she and Billy could be reached in about ten days or so in Perdido, but that they would be doing a little traveling until then.

"Let them stew," said Miriam.

At the end of their mission, she and Billy drove from Tulsa to Little Rock on the first day. On the second day, starting very early, they made it to Jackson, Mississippi, before stopping at noon for something to eat. They turned in at a dilapidated barbecue restaurant with fragrant smoke coming out of a wide chimney. Both ordered pork ribs, French-fried onions and a beer.

After their meal they walked to the cash register and Billy paid their check. While he was waiting for his change, he was astonished to hear Miriam addressing the cook at the stove.

"What the hell are you doing back there?" she demanded in a sour voice.

Billy looked up. At the grill in back was a man about thirty, handsome in his way, but greasy and splattered with barbecue sauce, wearing a filthy apron and a dingy white shirt beneath that.

He had turned to Miriam with surprise and begun to reply automatically, "Hey, ma'am, I'm—" when he broke off, and exclaimed, "Miriam!"

"Get out from behind there," commanded Miriam. "This minute."

"Miriam," Billy said in a low voice, "who—"

"Now just a second," said the manager at the cash register, holding up a coarse fleshy hand.

The cook put down his spatula and came forward.

"Miriam?" he said again.

"Do you know who this is?" said Miriam angrily to Billy, paying no attention to the manager.

"Lord, no!" exclaimed Billy. "I have no idea in the world, Miriam."

"This is Malcolm. Malcolm Strickland, Queenie's son. Lucille's brother. Malcolm Strickland, what the hell do you think you're doing back there?"

"He's cooking for me!" said the manager indignantly, stretching out his hand to push Malcolm back toward the stove. "And there are people waiting, Strickland."

"Queenie thinks you are dead!" cried Miriam.

"She don't!"

"She does, 'cause you haven't written her in I-don't-know-how-many years. She thinks you probably got yourself killed in the Pacific somewhere. She looks at that picture of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima, and she says, 'I wonder if one of those poor boys is Malcolm.' Why the hell haven't you picked up the telephone and called her?"