Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga (65 page)

Frances was delighted with the offer. She had thought of the plan herself, but had not dared put the question to Miriam for fear of an abrupt refusal. Elinor and Oscar were pleased. They still thought of their daughter as frail and dependent. It would be a comfort to them to know that in her first difficult years at college France would have Miriam so near. Oscar was a little uneasy that Frances might not withstand conversion to Catholicism as Miriam had, but Elinor assured him that Frances would hold on staunchly to her Methodist principles. Frances applied to Sacred Heart and was accepted. In the autumn of 1940, the roadster’s passenger seat was occupied each day by Frances.

It was odd to Frances that, while it was always over the same route, their journey to Mobile in the mornings should be so different from the late afternoon trip home. Leaving Perdido, the road first wound through pine forest—much of it owned by the Caskeys themselves—and then into Bay Minette, the county seat of Baldwin County. The highway led on down to Pine Haven and Stapleton, bleak hamlets occupied mainly by pecan and potato farmers, and then across to Bridgehead. Then there was a wondrously long, straight causeway on either side of which lay marshes, rivers, and islands, all fading imperceptibly one into the other in the early morning light. Rivers were a mile wide here, their sources no more than ten miles upstream. There were vast islands of grass scarcely two feet above the level of the water, where fishermen often disappeared. On both sides of the blacktopped road were vistas of nothing but pink sky, blue water, and green marsh grass. The Blakeley River faded into Dacke Bay which in turn became the Apalachee River. The boundaries were nebulous between all these bodies of water—Chacaloochee Bay, the Tensaw River, Delvan Bay, and the Mobile River.

On those rides to Mobile, begun before either of the sisters was well awake, Frances stared at the water and the sky and the grass, and was reminded not only of the summer she and Miriam had spent on the beach at Pensacola, but of earlier times, hazy times in her past and in her childhood, and of times that, impossibly, lay even further back, before there
was
a Frances Caskey. The top of the car was always down, and the loud wind prevented conversation. The smell of the salt marsh, where all these rivers, estuaries, and streams emptied into the great maw of Mobile Bay, filled Frances’s brain. Without actually sleeping, she seemed to dream. The pink sky was bright and empty. The water below was blue and torpid. The wind became a song, without notes or melody or words, but with pitches and rhythms that were wholly familiar to her.

In her dreams, Frances saw the secret things that swam out of sight below the surface of the bright water and stared greedily up at the automobile passing along the causeway. Frances dreamed of what hid in the low grass of the insubstantial marshy islands, and what dead things lay twisted and broken in the ancient mud. She dreamed of what bones were buried in hummocks, saw what tore fishermen’s nets, and understood why fishermen themselves sometimes disappeared.

She woke—or ceased to dream—when the roadster emerged from the tunnel that ran beneath the last tendril of the segmented Mobile River. She turned and smiled, and always said, “Oh, we’re here already...”

The return trip to Perdido late in the day was different. Clouds defiled the purity of the sky, already darkening in the east ahead of them. The marshes, bays, rivers, and hummocks of grass seemed dirty and sodden. The small towns of Baldwin County were crowded, noisy, and crass. Even the pine forest was dusty and wearying. On the trip home Frances never dreamed, and never remembered what she had dreamed in the morning.

In the evenings she always felt that something was missing, and she longed for the hours to pass, and for dawn to come again. Then in the morning, as Miriam drove over the causeway, Frances would again dream of what lay beneath the surface of the blue trembling water.

Perdido gave scant thought to the war in Europe; the town was for the Allies, against the Axis, and that was that. Perdido was preoccupied with the upward struggle from the severe and repeated assaults of the Depression. Then, like the stunning surprise of a blow to the back of the head, the National Guard was mobilized in November of 1940. One hundred and seventeen young Perdido men were notified that they might be instantly called away. One of the old dormitories below Baptist Bottom that had been used to house levee workers was quickly converted into an armory, and those one hundred and seventeen mill workers, layabouts, and high school seniors congregated there every morning in expectation of marching orders. Christmas and New Year’s passed, but no orders came.

Oscar was grateful that no call for the men had yet come; he needed his workers. During the Depression he had provided employment in Perdido that was far beyond the actual manpower needs of the Caskey mills and factories. In recent months, however, activity had picked up sharply. The War Department had placed orders for vast quantities of lumber and posts. Oscar learned that the new Camp Rucca was being built in the Alabama Wiregrass. He heard that Eglin Field, the air base over the Florida line, was tripling its size. Oscar placed notices in the Perdido
Standard
and in the newspapers of Atmore, Brewton, Bay Minette, Jay, Pensacola, and Mobile offering work to those men not yet put on active alert. Some came, but not as many as he had hoped. Many Baldwin and Escambia county boys had already been sent away. Every morning, as he was shaved in the barber’s chair, Oscar considered what he could do: hire high school boys in the afternoon, employ women in the lighter jobs that before had been held by men, and promote colored men into jobs that were presently denied them. These strategies were not yet necessary, and only Oscar anticipated a time when they
would
be required.

Oscar had lost some of his buoyancy. The death of Mary-Love and the retirement of James had placed the management of the mill squarely and exclusively upon his shoulders. He had at once to deal with an expanded operation and declining receipts. He was no longer youthful, for that matter, nearly forty-five now, with two daughters in college, and the responsibility for an industry on which the well-being of the entire town was dependent. He had settled into a narrow, strictured life, hemmed in by his family and by the mill. He loved his family, and he was proud of the mill, but sometimes he looked about and wondered. Sometimes his eyes fell upon his wife, and he thought,
Who is she?

Elinor had changed, most noticeably since the death of Mary-Love. She was a good deal calmer now, less prone to fits of anger; she seemed less dangerous. She hadn’t the destructive instincts he had seen in her before. There had been times, Oscar knew, when his wife had been motivated by a kind of unselfish greed—that is, greed for his and Frances’s sake, more than for her own. The wellsprings of that loving avarice seemed to have lost some of their strength recently. Oscar occasionally thought of the future of the mill as he and Elinor lay in bed at night, and he would ask Elinor’s opinion. He wanted to know what she would do in his place; he wanted to hear what people in town thought about this and that. But Elinor’s interest in such conversations had waned. In fact, her interest in nearly everything had diminished to such an extent that Oscar became alarmed, and he suggested that she visit Leo Benquith and get a prescription. He was certain that something was the matter with her.

“Elinor,” he asked one night, turning toward her in the darkness. “Tell me something. How old are you?”

“You have never asked me that question before,” returned Elinor. “Why are you asking me now?”

Oscar hesitated. “You’ve been acting so funny, I thought you were pregnant.”

Elinor laughed, but her laugh was small and weak.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Elinor.

It suddenly occurred to Oscar that his wife had only been waiting for such a question from him to enable her to speak about something that had oppressed her spirit for some time.

“Thinking about what?” her husband asked gently.

“I was thinking about Miriam and how homesick she got when she first went away to school.”

“She sure did. And she didn’t let on, either.”

“I’m homesick, too, Oscar,” said Elinor in a small voice, and wound her arms around her husband’s neck in a kind of cold desperation.

“Elinor,” he cried in surprise, “I don’t believe you have mentioned Wade once in fifteen years.”

Elinor paused. “I’ve thought about it a lot, though.”

“Do you have any people who are still alive? I know you never hear from them.”

“There’s not many of us left, that’s true. And we never were big on letters or the telephone.”

“Then why don’t you just drive on up there and visit with them a spell?”

“I think I might do just that,” said Elinor.

“It might do you some good to get away from here. I think you’ve been cooped up. Perdido’s so small. And it’s been so long since you were home...”

“It has been,” sighed Elinor. “I miss it too. I’ve been feeling tired lately, peaked, and maybe all I need to get my strength back up is to go home for a little while.”

“I wish I could go with you—”

“You can’t, Oscar, you’re too busy with the mill,” said Elinor hastily.

“I know, so take somebody else. Take Sister or Grace or James. I know we’d all like to meet your family. You never talk about them, so I just always forget that you have a family. Somehow I had it in my head that they were all dead.”

“As I said, there are some left,” said Elinor. “But I think I want to go up there alone.”

“You want to get away from us all, don’t you? I don’t blame you one little bit for that. We’re all pretty wearing, aren’t we?”

Elinor laughed, and hugged her husband close. There wasn’t as much desperation in her embrace now, but her arms around him still felt damp and cold.

. . .

Next morning at the barbershop, Oscar thought not about the mill but about his wife. He was pleased to think he had pressed the trigger of her secret—her homesickness for Wade in Fayette County. Of all things that might have depressed or saddened Elinor, absence from her family and early home was the last he would ever have considered. He would see that she got away soon, because he wanted no delay in the recovery of her spirits and energy. When he went home for dinner at noon, he thought, he would encourage her to leave that very week; there was nothing keeping her in Perdido.

When he reached home at noon, he was startled to discover that, without a word, Elinor had already left. Zaddie said, “She got out a suitcase, that small one. She sent Bray off to fill up the car with gas. She told me what all to do while she was gone. And then she took off. I said, ‘Miss Elinor, don’t you want some chicken?’ and she said, ‘Zaddie, I’m just
dying
to get home.’ She wasn’t gone wait for nothing, Mr. Oscar.”

“I cain’t believe it,” said Oscar in amazement. “She didn’t even say goodbye.”

Zaddie repeated her story for the other members of the family as each arrived for the noontime meal. The Caskeys were perplexed, and every few moments Zaddie was called into the dining room to answer another puzzling question.

“Zaddie, did she call up to Wade first to see if anyone was gone be home?” asked Queenie.

“Did she leave a number where we can get in touch with her?” asked Grace.

“Or an address, so we could send a telegram?” queried James.

“Or did she even say what the people’s names were?” wondered Oscar. “I guess maybe they’re Dammerts, but I don’t think I ever even heard Elinor say for sure. They could be her mama’s people, and we never would know how to get in touch with them.” He looked around the table. “Has anybody ever been to Wade?”

The Caskeys all shook their heads.

“I never even heard of the place till Elinor said she came from there,” said James. “And I had forgot all about it till just now. Who would have thought that Elinor still had any family to go and visit? I don’t believe she has mentioned them even once in the past twenty years.”

“All I can say,” said Sister, “is that she must have been awfully anxious to get up there if she left without saying goodbye to anybody but Zaddie. Oscar, you sure she didn’t stop by the mill on her way out of town?”

“I’m sure she didn’t,” said Oscar.

“She went in the other direction,” said Zaddie from the kitchen. “Out toward the Old Federal Road.”

Everyone was astounded. “That won’t take her anywhere!” cried James. “I hope she had a map with her, ’cause that Old Federal Road just fades out...”

. . .

No one could make anything of it. They had no way of getting in touch with Elinor should an emergency arise, and they had no idea of when she intended to return. She had given no indication of the length of her stay. Every day the Caskeys hoped for her reappearance, and nightly Oscar went to bed alone and disappointed. After a week, Grace volunteered to drive up to Wade—wherever in the world it was—and find Elinor, but Oscar said, “No, I don’t want you to do that. Elinor’s all right, I’m not worried about her. She wanted to get away from us for a bit. After twenty years, I don’t hold that against her. We’re not gone go traipsing up there and drag her back like we cain’t do without her.”

“I
cain’t
do without her, Daddy,” protested Frances. “I miss her so much!”

“I know, darling, and so do I,” Oscar sighed.

. . .

In the middle of the second week of Elinor’s absence, during an unseasonably warm week in January of 1941, the National Guardsmen received word that in two days more they would be sent down to Camp Blanding on the Atlantic coast of Florida for basic training. The boys and men had two days to put their affairs in order, to say their goodbyes, and to go out and get good and drunk.

On the afternoon of the day before they were to go off at six the following morning, two high school seniors, next-door neighbors and friends all their lives, who were now being plucked from the middle of their schooling and their infatuations with girls, drove over the Florida line, and with a one-dollar bribe, purchased a case of twenty-four bottles of Budweiser beer.