BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (89 page)

Malcolm, it turned out, had little to say. He had been in the army, which they all knew. He had trained in North Dakota, fought in Italy, and been honorably discharged in Massachusetts. He had learned two skills: bricklaying and cooking for crowds. After leaving the army, he had laid brick sidewalks in Boston, but union difficulties had relieved him of that job. He had come south and found work with a contracting firm in Little Rock. Fired from a job the company was working on in Jackson, he had picked up work at a downtown diner. The barbecue restaurant had been his fourth position as cook.

"Doesn't sound like you were building up much of a homelife," remarked Lucille, to whom homelife had become important.

"I was not," said Malcolm contritely.

"This is your home," said Queenie.

Malcolm did not answer, but it appeared to his mother and sister that he was not denying the proposition. His silence implied he felt unworthy of his mother's kindness.

"You think Oscar or somebody could find me some work around here?" he asked.

"Doing what?" Queenie asked.

"Cooking, maybe. Or. laying bricks."

"Which do you like better?" asked Lucille.

Malcolm shrugged. "Don't much matter to me."

"Lord," said Queenie, "I'm sure they can find you something, Malcolm. I don't know, maybe they're gone want to brick in the levee or something. I just want to know, Malcolm—"

"What, Ma?"

"If we did find you something, would you stay around? And be good? And work at it, whatever it was?"

"Oh, Ma," said Malcolm softly. "You don't know me no more. See, what you remember about me is that trial and getting in trouble with Travis Gann and all that and almost going to jail. See, that's what you think when you call me up in your mind. But that's not me anymore. I wasn't even twenty years old then. Now I'm almost thirty. I was in the army six years and four months. And I've been here and I've been there, holding down jobs, meeting people. Bricklaying's all right when it's nice out, but not in the sun. Cooking's all right if you don't mind smelling of grease and always being sweaty and dirty. There was times I got fired, and I got fired 'cause I got mad or somebody got mad at me and we got in a fight or something, but most of the time it wasn't my fault. I'd tell you if it was, but it wasn't. Ma, you probably think I was away ten years and I got to be just like Pa was. But I'm not like Mm. I never went to jail, I wasn't arrested but once and that was up in Boston in a bar, and that wasn't even my fight. That was somebody else's fight and they just hauled us all off. That's all that was. So I see y'all looking at me like 'Who's he gone beat up next?' and 'Who'd he kill last week?' but that's not it."

Queenie, who had been sitting at the other end of the sofa from Malcolm, jumped suddenly closer and embraced him. . "I know it's not! I always knew it wasn't!"

Malcolm laughed. "No, you didn't. Did she, Lucille? You thought I was wasting away in a state pen somewhere, that's what you thought, wasn't it, Ma?"

Queenie shook her head. "I thought you died on Iwo Jima."

Sister called then, demanding Queenie's presence. Queenie pressed her weary son into bed, and then went next door and heard Sister's complaints until dawn.

The next day, Queenie took Malcolm to Pensacola and bought him new clothes. He was alarmed by the amount of money she spent on him and protested against such prodigality.

"Malcolm," Queenie protested, "I've got the money. What better thing can I do with it than spend it on my children? Malcolm, you want me to buy you this whole store? 'Cause I could!"

At subsequent meals at Elinor's, Malcolm's future was discussed at length. Bricklaying and cooking for large groups were not skills demanded by Perdido, and anyway Queenie thought it was time Malcolm had a respectable job. Malcolm's skills, though, were meager, employment was scarce, and nobody—it seemed for a time—had any use for him. The weeks went by, and time hung heavy on Malcolm's hands.

When he was very busy, Billy Bronze would call up Malcolm and ask him to run down to Pensacola or Mobile and deliver papers or pick up papers or transact some small piece of business. Malcolm consented, and Queenie usually went along for the ride. Billy told Miriam about Malcolm's usefulness, and she employed him in a similar manner to carry cash out to a farmer in Washington County who distrusted checks or to deliver a bushel of fresh corn from Gavin Pond Farm to the wife of the Representative to Congress.

Malcolm became known in the family for his willingness to perform these trivial but time-consuming and inconvenient errands. Soon he was doing jobs for Elinor and Sister as well. If a gutter came down in a storm, Malcolm arranged for someone to come and fix it. If a dress bought in Mobile was the wrong size, Malcolm returned it. If train tickets were needed, Malcolm drove up to Atmore and got the right ones. He kept the Caskey cars serviced and filled with gas. He made sure wood and coal were ordered, and he swatted the bats that sometimes flew down Elinor's chimneys. He was unable to repair a carpet sweeper himself, but he could be certain that the job was done within the day. If anything went wrong in any of the Caskey houses, the Caskeys sat back and said, "Somebody call up Malcolm and tell him to take care of it." By the end of the summer Malcolm was as busy as Miriam and Billy in their offices. He had become a sort of major domo to the Caskeys, and they began to wonder how they had ever done without him. Billy offered him a salary.

"But what is my job?" he asked. "I'm happy to do all these things, 'cause I'm really not doing anything else."

"Keeping things going smoothly is worth money, Malcolm," said Billy. "And we can afford to pay you. Take the money."

The Caskeys scarcely remembered the old Malcolm with this new Malcolm before them. It was universally agreed that he must have had a difficult time away from Perdido. He was quiet, but he wasn't meek; he was controlled. His temper remained, but when he felt it rising over some perceived slight or contretemps, he would walk away, fling large rocks at the nearest object unlikely to be injured by such an attack, slug down a bottle of warm beer from a case that he always kept in the back of the car, and soon he was placid again. At times his moodiness was of longer duration. He then kept to his room. Queenie would put food on a tray and leave it outside his door. No one attempted to coax him out, and afterward no one asked what the trouble was.

Miriam treated Malcolm as she treated everyone: offhandedly, impatiently, and with a sometimes grueling forthrightness. Queenie cringed at some of the things Miriam said to her son, but Malcolm defended Miriam: "What she says is right, Mama, and you know it."

"She doesn't have to say it out loud, though, Malcolm, and certainly not where other people can hear it."

Miriam was busy. The oil companies had, with one exception, telephoned, asking for more information. The executives could scarcely believe that Miriam on the telephone from her office in Perdido was the same "hapless" lady in the feminine dresses who had sighed and protested in their offices in Texas and Oklahoma. To them all, Miriam said, "You're not the only ones interested. Send a man out here to see me first, and I'll show him what's what. Then you can send somebody else to talk money."

She wouldn't listen to first offers of contracts for exploratory drilling. The men on the phone always attempted to persuade her: "Let us handle it all for you, Miss Caskey."

"No, thank you," Miriam would reply crisply. "If you're really interested, send me a geologist, an engineer, an accountant, and a lawyer. And then we'll talk some business."

And so over the next few weeks, men of those professions began arriving in Perdido, at staggered intervals, and were put up at the Osceola Hotel. Miriam and Malcolm would drive them out to Gavin Pond Farm and introduce them to Grace and Lucille. In two small boats with motors, Malcolm and Grace guided the oil company men through the swamp. Miriam would sit in the prow of one boat and Lucille in the prow of the other, holding aloft paddles to beat off alligators and water moccasins. Miriam was no longer frightened of the swamp, because she perceived it to be in the interests of business.

Miriam knew these trips were unnecessary, because her own geologists' and engineers' reports were sufficient. She wanted, however, to find out something about the differences in the oil companies, and did not see a better way of doing this than by meeting their chosen representatives.

A month after her return from Texas, Miriam and the other Caskeys signed a preliminary contract allowing Texas National Oil to drill two exploratory wells in the swamp. Theirs was not the highest bid but, certain that there was oil beneath the swamp, Miriam had been more interested in contracting for favorable percentages after the oil had been found and extracted. Texas National raised the Caskey royalty schedule two points in exchange for Miriam's agreement to bear the cost of one of the two exploratory wells. It was anticipated that six months' time would be required to work out details and to transport the proper machinery to Florida, where no one had ever drilled before.

"Those things cost a lot of money," said Oscar at supper the evening following the final signing of the papers. "Are you sure that was a smart thing to do?"

Miriam shrugged. "We'll make it up in the first year from the percentage they're offering."

"If there's oil," Oscar pointed out.

"Elinor says there is," said Miriam, glancing at her mother across the table. "And that's what I'm going on. If we all end up at the poor farm, y'all can blame Elinor and not me."

Because of the mill, the town bustled and thrived, while the Perdido and Blackwater rivers flowed so peacefully and out of sight beyond the red levees. Frances Caskey swam in the Perdido every day— that was known in town, and a fact sometimes used as an argument by ten- and eleven-year-old boys whose parents had placed the river off-limits.

"Frances Caskey," their parents pointed out, "was teaching swimming out at Lake Pinchona before you were born, and if her family wants to let her risk her life every afternoon, they can. But you, young man, are not going to be sucked down to the bottom of the junction. That is that."

These parents didn't know, however, of the time-honored custom among boys in Perdido of skinny-dipping in the river on New Year's Day. The ritual was not exactly pleasant, for the water was cold at the beginning of January. Among the boys, however, this rite was both a statement of imagined independence and a kind of dare brought about by the experience and example of older brothers. A spot south of town, where the Perdido is wide and shallow, was usually chosen; not even ten-year-olds wanted to risk the danger of being sucked into the whirlpool at the junction. On New Year's Day of 1948, seven young Perdido boys sneaked out of their houses at nine o'clock in the morning and variously made their way to the clandestine place. The day was overcast and chilly as they shucked their jackets, shirts, suspenders, trousers, and underwear. One by one they dived into the water, employing the broken-off trunk of a fallen tree for a springboard. The water was colder than any of them imagined, and the boys' teeth chattered in the water even as they shouted for their reluctant companions to jump in. Finally, even the most timid boy had slipped down the muddy bank and flailed screaming into the cold muddy water. The seven boys swam around, bared their chattering teeth, dunked and splashed about, and eventually agreed that it was time to get out.

Six boys scrambled up the muddy bank.

The seventh—the younger Gully boy, whose father owned Perdido's car dealership—was missing. His friends ran up and down the bank, calling his name frantically. They plied the water with long sticks; they screamed into the air imprecations against him for scaring them so; they stared helplessly at the swiftly flowing muddy water and swore a blood oath that none of them would reveal that they had been a party to the disappearance of their companion. They knew their parents would never allow them out of the house again. They crept home by various routes, ready with elaborate excuses—trembling victims of guilt.

By the end of that day, Mrs. Gully realized that her boy was missing. A great hue and cry went up. The other six boys, his friends, were questioned. Their teeth chattered as they spoke the lie, but each maintained he knew nothing at all. The missing boy's clothing was found on the banks of the Perdido, and the Gullys were astonished that their son seemed to have gone swimming, alone, on New Year's Day. The Gullys, who had lived in Perdido all their lives, knew how many children those red, muddy waters had swallowed already. They did not expect to see their son again. An old man with a grappling hook was sent out on the river for a few days, but that was only for form's sake and the comfort of the grandparents in Mississippi. The Perdido, everyone knew, never gave up its dead.                    ~~

New Year's Day of 1948 was a Thursday. That evening at supper Frances Bronze had appeared troubled, and after the meal, when most everyone was in the front parlor, Elinor motioned to her daughter to follow her upstairs.

"What is wrong, darling?" said Elinor, as she ushered her daughter into her bedroom and closed the door. Prances sat on the edge of her parents' bed and glanced out the window at the mass of water oaks.

"Little boy died today, Mama. Gully boy."

"I heard they were looking for him," said Elinor guardedly. "I didn't hear they had found him."

"They haven't found him," said Frances slowly. "They won't."

Elinor went to the window. "Nerita?" she asked.

"Yes," said Frances.

When Elinor turned around, Frances was weeping softly.

"Darling," said Elinor, "these things happen."

"I told her not to do something like that! I told her never to go near people in the water. Why cain't she just eat fish! She loves catfish."

"Well," said Elinor softly, "you cain't make a whole diet out of catfish."

"Mama!"

Elinor sat beside Frances and put her arm around her. "Listen, honey, you've got to remember. Nerita's not like you and me. You and I can get along pretty well on Dollie's beef and pork and veal—and Malcolm's venison when he goes out in the woods and shoots a deer. But where is Nerita going to get pork and beef and veal and venison? She's a big girl now, but she's still growing. She probably thought she needed it—"