Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga (60 page)

Frances swam farther out where the fish were even larger. They moved lazily away at her intrusion. She perceived the undertow Miriam warned her against, yet somehow she did not feel she was in any danger. She let herself be pulled out farther. She now saw that the pier was no more than a dark line jutting into the water, and her sister was not visible at all. She realized that she was probably too far out, but still she was undisturbed. As she lazily swam back in toward shore she realized she had never been less than fully confident of her ability to do so.

“I thought you had drowned,” said Miriam calmly, looking up from her book as Frances once again stood by her towel on the beach, dripping wet. “I looked up and you had disappeared. You must have gone out too far.”

“No, no...”

“It’s time to go home.”

Frances glanced at her sister, puzzled. “It cain’t be time to go home yet. We just got here.”

Miriam looked up, shading her eyes. “How long do you think you were out in the water?”

“Twenty minutes? Half an hour?”

Miriam pointed up into the sky. “Look at the sun,” she said. “Straight overhead. It’s almost noon. You were in the water for over three hours!”

Frances looked up into the sky, then turned and gazed once more into the warm blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

. . .

Miriam was silent on the drive home, but Frances didn’t mind. Miriam steered with one hand on the wheel and stared pensively at the road through her dark glasses. Frances lay with her head back, limp but not exhausted. As they neared Perdido, Frances tried to think of a way to thank her sister for the surprising invitation, an invitation that had unexpectedly provided a mysteriously important event for her. When they pulled up before Miriam’s house, however, Frances had not yet found the courage to speak.

They got out of the car. “Thank you,” said Frances meekly, troubled by the inadequacy of her words.

“You better go buy you some lotion this afternoon,” said Miriam. “I cain’t keep on letting you use mine.”

Frances stopped dead in her tracks and considered this. “You mean we’re going back tomorrow?” she asked cautiously.

“I go every day,” said Miriam, not quite answering the question.

“And you’re inviting me to go again?”

Miriam wouldn’t go so far as to admit that. “I leave at five-thirty every morning, and there’s room in the car. But I never wait for anybody.”

Frances grinned and ran home. She told her astonished parents about the morning.

“Are you going again?” her father asked.

“Of course!” cried Frances. “I had a wonderful time!”

“You’re burned, darling!” said Elinor. “When you’re down there, I want you to spend all your time in the water. That way the sun won’t be so bad on your skin.”

“Oh, Mama! I love that water so much! I can hardly wait till tomorrow!”

Elinor Caskey seemed to take particular delight in this announcement, and for weeks thereafter was not heard to speak a word against Miriam, who had provided Frances with a way that she could swim in the Gulf every day.

. . .

The pattern for the entire summer was set that first trip. Every sunny morning of the week Miriam and Frances drove down to Pensacola Beach. Miriam rarely spoke to her sister, other than to say, “Are you ready?” or “Did you bring money for the toll bridge?” Miriam lay on her blanket, reading, napping, her skin growing ever darker and darker. Frances swam in the Gulf, sometimes breasting the waves, sometimes swimming in the calm water yards below the surface, sometimes lazily allowing herself to be dragged along by the undertow. Once she discovered herself so far out that a school of leaping porpoises passed around her. She threw her arms about one of the smaller ones and was pulled through the water for several miles at a pace faster than any she had ever known before. Another time she dived deep into the water in order to avoid being seen by the workers on a passing shrimp boat, and she narrowly escaped being caught in their trawling nets. When the boat was gone, Frances wondered why she had deliberately and instinctively avoided being seen. Then she realized that to be discovered so far from the beach would excite suspicion. The fishermen would not believe that a sixteen-year-old girl was not in danger bobbing in the water five miles from shore.

Something about the hours spent in the Gulf reminded Frances of the time of her sickness, and of even more vague and distant times before that. She seemed to lose consciousness the minute she breasted the first wave of the morning—or rather she seemed to lose her identity as Frances Caskey. She became someone—or something—else. She could swim from before seven o’clock when she and Miriam arrived at the beach, until eleven, without touching bottom, without feeling fatigue or fear of undertow, sharks, jellyfish, cramps, or loss of direction. When it was time to come in, she did not say to herself,
Miriam is getting ready to go.
Rather, she simply found herself walking up through the waves and onto the beach. The sensation was akin to her recollection of the baths her mother had given her during the course of her illness three years earlier. Frances remembered nothing about them except the moment that her mother took her beneath the arms and lifted her from the water. In that motion her identity, temporarily lost in the water, had come back to her. Rising through the breaking surf, feeling the sand and bits of shell beneath her feet, Frances’s old identity returned to her, and she forgot all that she had felt and experienced so far from the shore.

Miriam always made some remark to Frances that went something like: “I looked up for you once or twice, but I could never see you. Sometime I’m going to tell Oscar how far out you go. One day you’re going to drown, and everybody’s going to blame
me.
”

On the always wordless drive back to Perdido, Frances tried to remember exactly how she had spent those hours in the water; tried to recall how far out she had gone, how deep she had dived, what fish she had seen. But the sun beat against her eyelids, and she could fetch back nothing more than a vague impression of having plunged so deep that the sunlight produced only a dim sea-green radiance. Or she could summon up only a hazy recollection of having sat cross-legged on the undulating sandy bottom four miles out, or of having stalked and devoured sea trout and crabs that came temptingly near her. All these things were dreams, doubtless, for how could they have been real? Though Frances had spent four hours in the water, and had had no breakfast, she was never the least bit hungry when she trod up the sand toward the blanket on which Miriam lay sunning. At home her father urged her to eat just a little dinner, but her mother always said, “If Frances says she’s full, then we ought to leave her alone, Oscar. When she wants food, I guess she knows where to find it.”

One cloudless pink dawn in September 1938, Frances Caskey was sitting on the front porch of her family’s house with her towel draped over her shoulder and a bathing suit on under her dress, waiting for Miriam to emerge from the house next door. No one in the family had been able to determine just why Miriam took Frances to the beach with her every day. It might have been to allay any suspicion that she was meeting a boy in Pensacola, it might have been that Miriam was surreptitiously glad of her sister’s company, but whatever the reason Frances was happy to be taken along. On this particular morning, however, Frances waited but Miriam did not come. Although the two sisters had gone to the beach nearly every day for the past two months, they had spoken little, and Frances did not feel assured enough of their relationship to be able to knock on Miriam’s door.

Elinor was surprised to find her daughter still sitting on the porch when she came down to breakfast about an hour or so later.

“What happened to Miriam?” Frances’s mother asked.

“I don’t know. Do you think she’s sick?”

“I’ll send Zaddie over to speak to Ivey,” said Elinor. “Ivey’ll know.”

Zaddie returned in a few minutes with alarming news. “Miss Miriam packing up! Miss Miriam going away for good!”

At the moment this information was delivered, there was the sound of a door slamming, and Frances, Elinor, and Zaddie turned in time to see Miriam with two suitcases marching out the front door and down the sidewalk toward her roadster. Frances, bewildered, called out to her sister, “I guess we’re not going to Pensacola this morning.”

“I guess we’re not,” returned Miriam. “Do I look like I’m dressed for the beach?” She wore a white dress buttoned up the front and low-heeled red shoes. “Do I usually carry suitcases to Santa Rosa?”

“No,” said Frances. “Where are you going?”

Miriam had already turned back toward the house. She spoke over her shoulder: “I’m going to college!”

No one had anticipated it. Not even Sister had an inkling of Miriam’s plans. Sister stood nervously on the front porch with a cup of coffee, watching as Miriam, now being assisted by Bray, carried bags and packages out to the car. James Caskey came out onto his porch, having sensed that something was up. Sister called over to him, “Miriam’s going off to college this morning!”

“No!” cried James Caskey. “Where’s she going?”

At that moment Miriam emerged with three hatboxes.

Sister replied to James pointedly, “I don’t know. She hasn’t told us yet where she’s going.”

All three Caskey households watched Miriam’s roadster fill up with boxes and suitcases. Frances had gone to her room and changed out of her bathing suit and was now once again on the porch. Danjo phoned Queenie, who arrived in haste. When finally the roadster would hold no more, Miriam turned at the end of the sidewalk and faced her assembled family.

“If y’all must know, I’m enrolling this morning at Sacred Heart in Mobile.”

“But that’s a
Catholic
school,” ejaculated Queenie.

“I’m converting,” snapped Miriam, climbing into the roadster. She started the engine, put the car in gear, and without further word pulled away from the curb. As she was turning the corner, she waved her hand once in an offhanded and general farewell to the open-mouthed Caskeys.

. . .

Everyone was stunned, particularly Sister. They had become so accustomed to Miriam’s daily trips to the beach and to her ever-deepening tan that they had forgotten all about the question of whether or not she was to go to college. Now, however, they agreed that it had been very much in character for Miriam to have done it the way she did.

“That girl,” said Elinor, “had rather slit her throat than tell you the time of day.”

“Here are the keys to the car,” said Oscar to his daughter. “You go on down to the beach alone.”

Frances shook her head. “It wouldn’t be the same.”

Though the dust raised by Miriam’s roadster still lingered in the air above the road, Frances already missed her sister. The weeks of driving together to and from Pensacola Beach had convinced Frances that her sister’s taciturnity, her impatience, her curt manner of speaking were only part of Miriam’s essential character.

After breakfast, Oscar went over and visited Sister. They sat on the side porch in the swing. “I suppose this was as much of a surprise to you as it was to the rest of us,” Oscar said.

“It was,” said Sister desolately. “I always wondered why Miriam would never let me pick up the mail at the post office, why she insisted on going by herself. It must have been because she didn’t want me to see any letters that were coming to her from Sacred Heart.”

“I don’t think I know anybody who ever went there,” said Oscar. “Why you suppose she picked
that
school?”

Sister shrugged. “Oscar, I long time ago gave up trying to figure out why Miriam said or did anything at all. I love her, but I don’t understand her.”

“She sure is like Mama,” said Oscar, shaking his head.

“Except she’s young,” Sister pointed out, “so it’s worse.”

“What are you gone do?”

Sister glanced quickly at her brother. “What do you mean?”

“Now that Miriam’s gone. Now that you don’t have to stay here and take care of her anymore—not that Miriam ever
needed
much taking care of. You going back to Early? Where
is
he these days, anyway?”

“Ohio,” said Sister vaguely. “Or Kentucky. Or somewhere.”

“You going back up to Chattanooga?”

“Oh, I thought I’d stay around here for a little while. I’m sure Miriam forgot something or other and is gone want it sent down. I guess I better wait around to see what it is.”

“Elinor could do that if you wanted to get on back to Early.”

Sister didn’t reply.

“Well?” said Oscar after a few moments.

“Oscar,” said Sister, rising in haste, “you stop going on about this, you hear? You let me do what I want!”

“All right,” said Oscar, confused and abashed by his sister’s vehemence. “I just thought—”

“You thought wrong,” said Sister in a low voice. “This house belongs to Miriam, and she said I could stay on as long as I wanted. I would appreciate it if you would not come over here early in the morning and try to sweep me out of it!”

“Sit down, Sister. I didn’t mean to get you upset.”

Sister sat down again, but crossed her legs, put her elbow on her knee, and cradled one cheek in her turned-up hand. She was the very picture of a southern spinster of the patrician variety—tall, slender, with prematurely wrinkling parchment skin that was powdered with the scent of roses. When not pinched in a scowl, the intrinsically fine features of her face drooped. Although her expression lacked both robustness and determination, she very much resembled her dead mother. Mary-Love would have been proud. This lack of strength was the result of all the years of Mary-Love’s taunts and slights and domination.

“Sister,” said Oscar softly, “see, I just didn’t know you were having trouble with Early...”

Sister sighed. “It’s not trouble, Oscar. It’s just that I don’t particularly care to go back to him right now.” Oscar said nothing, and Sister continued tentatively, “Early travels, he’s always on the road. So many places are raising up levees, you’d think the whole world was in danger of flooding. Or maybe it’s just that there’s somebody up in the CCC that likes Early a whole lot, and gives him work. I don’t want to go with him to all those old places.”