BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (72 page)

In the middle of August, when the house was finally judged ready, Queenie drove her daughter down to Pensacola to a beauty parlor. Lucille's hair was cut short and then dyed black. They came back to Perdido only after night had fallen. From there Lucille and Grace drove off with half a dozen suitcases in the back seat. The Caskeys remained inside their houses as the car pulled away from James's house, and Lucille crouched low in the seat as they drove through downtown Perdido, crossed the bridge over the river, and went through Baptist Bottom on the road that led eastward to Florida. Lucille wept.

Babylon in 1943 was a tiny place, smaller than Perdido, without a mill or any other major business to make it profitable, and nothing to distinguish it but the three young men who in the past three years had all gone on to play professional baseball. The Caskey property lay five miles south of town, out a gravel road through the colored section. Two pebbly ruts led away from that road through a hardwood forest; half a mile farther along this track they came to the clearing with the farmhouse in it. Behind the farmhouse was the cattle pasture, where only deer had grazed for twenty years, and the pecan orchard with a little stream running through it. The orderly rows had been disturbed by oak saplings growing up anarchically in their midst. Beside the house was the fishing pond, filled with fish that had fed and grown and multiplied for undisturbed generations. The. pond was bordered by dark, moss-hung cypresses. All this, of course, was not apparent in the deep night of Grace and Lucille's arrival. They saw only the ruts of the track, the trunks of trees, and the lowest clapboards of the house in the wavering lights of the headlamps.

The modest house had two rooms up and two rooms down, with a pantry and bath on the first floor. Elinor had run up curtains for the windows. The floors were hardwood, and Zaddie and Luvadia had scrubbed them. None of this operation had been kept secret from the Sapps. They would have found out anyway, and the Caskeys considered them all family, trusting them as they trusted themselves. But despite all these small attempts to make the place seem comfortable and familiar, Lucille thought she had never been in a place so removed and lonely in her life. All the windows looked out on blackness.

Lucille clung to Grace. "I'm scared."

"We'll go upstairs," said Grace, "and I'll show you our bedrooms."

Lucille turned to Grace in terror. "I cain't sleep by myself. Not way out here!"

The bedrooms upstairs were square and unadorned, a bed, a dresser, a vanity, and a hooked rug in each. In the day they might be cheerful enough, with sunlight beating in through the high windows, but at night they were stuffy with the day's heat. The single overhead bulb in each room lighted the rooms poorly, casting harsh shadows, and picking out the dead flies that littered the windowsill and the wasps' nest in the corner of the ceiling of Grace's room.

"I hate it here," said Lucille.

"Tomorrow I'll take you fishing," said Grace. "We'll have the time of our lives."

Lucille shook her head doubtfully. Neither that night nor the nights that followed would Lucille permit Grace to sleep in her own room. She insisted that they share the same bed. Lucille was frightened of the dark and the overwhelming quiet outside. The silence was broken only by the occasional plop of a fish in the pond, or the crackle of breaking twigs as animals roamed through the forest. When she looked out she saw only the cold moon over Babylon reflected in the water of Gavin Pond. On the other side of the pond was a tiny graveyard with a dozen tombstones under which were buried all the members of the family who had built the farmhouse, and who had slept in the room she slept in now. No, Lucille wasn't sleeping by herself. All night long she cowered in Grace's arms, despite the heat and the closeness of the room. She was never certain in what her fear was centered, whether it was the quiet and the dark, or the pond and the graveyard and the moonlight—or whether it was the thing that was expanding inside her belly.

Things were better during the day. The house had cooled off somewhat during the night. The disposition of the trees kept sunlight off the roof until late afternoon, but then the place quickly heated up. Lucille listened to the radio and played records, sat in the boat and slapped at mosquitoes while Grace fished, wandered in the pecan orchard with a big stick poised to beat off snakes, and sometimes did a little sewing. "I keep wanting to do something for the baby," she confessed to Grace, "and then all of a sudden I remember I'm not gone keep him. I bet it is a him and not a her."

They weren't as lonely as Lucille had anticipated on the night of their arrival. The Caskeys came out to see them, sometimes James and Queenie, sometimes Elinor and Zaddie, sometimes Sister alone. The visitors sat in chairs placed out by the pond, and everyone would say how pleasant it was, and it was just a wonder they hadn't thought of fixing up this place before. It was much nicer than the beach. Twice Oscar drove out in the middle of the day, saying he had just had to get away from the mill; all that business was driving him crazy. Only Frances and Miriam did not come. Once, when they were out on the pond fishing, Lucille asked Grace why she thought her cousins stayed away. Grace at first didn't answer. Then after a few moments she said, "They think you and I are in Nashville."

"You mean everybody's keeping this a secret, even from them?"

"They're too young. They might let it out, without intending to," explained Grace.

For some reason, this depressed Lucille. She seemed to see in Frances and Miriam's ignorance of her plight the rteal extent of her shame. She cried, "It's not my fault! I didn't ask that man to jump on top of me in the bathhouse!"

Grace pulled a fish into the boat. She was about to give up the fishing—in such a pond as this, it was no sport at all. Besides, something in the water gave the fish a rancid taste, no matter how soon they were cooked, as if they had fed ofi only the dead fish that had sunk to the bottom. "Of course it's not your fault, Lucille. Who said it was your fault?"

"Then why am I being punished?"

"You call a vacation like this punishment?"

"I do, when I cain't even go into Babylon with you."

"How often do I go in? Once a week, maybe. Queenie brings us food. I don't even like to go in town."

"I feel like I'm in jail. Nobody asked me what
I
wanted to do about all this."

Grace looked up in surprise. "Did you want to keep this child? When you knew that its father was that no-good Travis Gann? Let's just hope Frances is right and those alligators out at Lake Pinchona did eat him up!"

Lucille looked away. "I don't know what I wanted to do. I wasn't thinking straight. I'm not thinking straight now."

"Pull down your hat," said Grace. "You're getting too much sun on your face."

"Why are we out here?" demanded Lucille suddenly. "Why cain't we let anybody know?"

"For one simple reason," returned Grace. "We don't want anybody to know what happened to you. And the reason for that is not 'cause we're ashamed, but because of what would happen to you if everybody did find out. Travis Gann jumping on top of you is not your fault, you're right, but if it comes out that he did it. and you got pregnant, everybody's gone look at you different. And they'd certainly treat that little baby different. I'd be surprised if you could ever get married after that. Perdido's mean about things like that. People everywhere are, I guess. Men don't want to marry damaged goods, and that's what you'd be, if anybody found out. Damaged goods."

"I don't care!" cried Lucille. "I don't want to get married. Not ever."

Grace laughed. "Lucille Strickland! I have seen you flirt with every man who came within a three mile radius of that candy counter at the Ben Franklin. I have seen you try on your mama's wedding ring time and time again just to see what it looked like! Don't tell me you aren't interested in getting married."

"I'm not, though." She looked around, at the pond, at the graveyard, at the house, at the sky, as if in puzzlement that such a decision had been made in her mind without her having had a single thing to say in the matter. "I'm not, though," she repeated softly. "Maybe this place isn't so bad after all. It's just a little lonely out here, that's all."

"You sound just like Daddy," said Grace. "Y'all act like I wasn't even around to keep y'all company. I think I'm gone pick this fish up and wave it in your ungrateful face!"

As she did so, Lucille laughed and squealed, and cried, "No, don't do it! Please don't do it, Grace!"

CHAPTER 55
TOMMY LEE BURGESS

Three times Lucille was taken to see a doctor in Pensacola, and every time was assured that the pregnancy was proceeding in perfect order. The doctor predicted that the child would be healthy and—considering the size of Lucille's belly—large. Elinor and Sister had quietly expected that through impatience and loneliness Lucille would give up their careful charade and return to Perdido, pregnant and unmarried, leaving Queenie to bear up under the scandal. Queenie secretly expected that, too. Yet, as the family made its visits to Gavin Pond it became apparent that Lucille was settling in, that she was not the girl she had been, and that her life had altered in unforeseen ways. She was becoming content with her straitened lot in the remote farmhouse south of Babylon.

During that autumn Lucille did not chafe at her loneliness. She did not pine for the company of young Air Corps men, or for her female chums at the Ben Franklin and Lake Pinchona. She seemed content to sit in the house all day, embroidering pillowcases and nightgowns while Grace explored the property she had come to feel was hers. Each thought the company of the other was sufficient. Queenie, Elinor, and Sister sometimes felt they were an intrusion on the cherished solitude of the cousins.

Who had ever known Lucille to do anything so painstaking and sedate and long-lasting as embroidery? Next, wonder of wonders, she took up dressmaking. She asked her mother once if they could afford a sewing machine. The next day James and Bray brought a Singer in one of the mill trucks. The Perdido visitors always brought Lucille lengths of fabric and a new dress pattern, in her size or in Grace's. Lucille was filling the closets of the farmhouse with homemade dresses.

Grace said she wished she had lived in the country all her life. When her birthday came up in January, James had asked his daughter what she wanted. Grace replied, "A tractor." He bought her one, and Grace set about restoring the pecan orchard to its former splendor. One afternoon in February, Bray drove James and Queenie out to Gavin Pond, and they sat in the living room of the farmhouse talking with their respective daughters. Grace had constructed her cousin an adjustable embroidery frame. In the advanced months of her pregnancy, Lucille had found it difficult to sit up for long periods of time. She lay on one of the sofas in the room, with the frame tilted' at just the right angle over her extended belly, so that she could continue her work without strain. To Queenie and James's astonishment, Grace talked of the time—after the arrival of the baby—when she and Lucille would drive over to Georgia and buy a few head of cattle. Grace was certain that within a year she could turn Gavin Pond—as the entire tract of land was, imprecisely, called—into a paying proposition.

"Grace," cried Queenie, "you mean you are thinking of living out here!"

"We love it here," said Grace. "And after all this work..."

"James," put in Lucille, "do you have an old rug you don't want? Something for this room? I was thinking..."

"Blue," said James. "It'd have to be blue."

"Wait a minute," said Queenie. "James, don't start putting rugs in here until we get all this straight."

"Get what straight, Mama?" Lucille asked.

"Do you like it here, darling?"

"Mama," said Lucille contentedly, slipping her needle into the fabric she was working on, "we just love it."

"Don't you miss the town?"

Lucille shook her head. "We've got the radio, and that's all there is to do in Perdido anyway. After the baby comes, Grace said she'd take me over to DeFuniak Springs to the movies any time we wanted to go. If I went back to Perdido I'd have to go back to work at the Ben Franklin. I've got lazy. I don't want to work. James, next time somebody comes out here, can you send that rug with them?"

"Lucille is dying for that rug, Daddy."

"What else would you like to have?" asked James. "I guess you want to fix this place up nice, don't you?"

This abrupt change in Lucille Strickland was only a two-hours' wonder in the Caskey family. No one thought it strange that Grace and Lucille should take up housekeeping together, and each be perfectly happy in the sole company of the other. It was only thought peculiar that they should want to keep house at Gavin Pond. No Caskey had ever lived in the country.

"My little girl," said James, "wants to be a fanner. More power to her."

"And my little girl," said Queenie, "wants to be a farmer's wife. Who would have thought it?"

"I guess," said Sister, "that when the baby comes, and they give it away, then we can just tell everybody that Grace has bought a farm out in the country and that Lucille is out there keeping her from getting lonesome."

"And everybody will think they're both out of their minds," sighed Elinor.

No one in the family dissuaded Grace and Lucille from their course. Every time someone went over to visit, he took some household object with him: a lamp, or small table, or a box of books. "First thing we are gone do is fix up the guest room," said Lucille once when her mother had come for a visit, "so that anytime any of you wants to stay overnight you can."

Queenie looked up, surprised, and said, "But there are only two bedrooms in this house, one for you and one for Grace. Where is the guest room?"

"Oh, Mama," laughed Lucille. "Grace and I sleep together! You don't think I'd sleep all by myself way out here in the country, do you? You know how scared I get."

The Caskeys absorbed this somewhat startling information too. Everyone remembered that as a child, Lucille had suffered from recurrent nightmares.