Blackwater - The Levee Part 1

BLACKWATER.

THE LEVEE.

by Michael McDowell.

CHAPTER 13.

The Engineer.

"Oh, Lord, protect us from flood, fire, maddened animals, and runaway Negroes."

That was Mary-Love Caskey's prayer before every meal, learned from her mother who had hidden silver, slaves, and chickens from the rapacity of starving Yankee marauders. But in these days, safety from a fourth danger was silently appended both in her own mind and in Sister's: Oh, Lord, protect us from Elinor Dammert Caskey.

Elinor, after all, was a woman to be feared. Into the well-regulated lives of the Caskeys of Perdido, Alabama, she had brought trouble and surprise. Having mysteriously appeared in the Osceola Hotel at the height of the great flood of 1919, she had cast a spell first over James Caskey-Mary-Love's brother-in-law-and then over Oscar, Mary-Love's son. She

had married Oscar much against Mary-Iiove's desire. Elinor had hair that was the muddy red color of the Perdido River, but no family connections or financial portion. And in the end, she had taken Oscar away from Mary-Love, carried him to the house next door, and left her own child in payment for the right to take departure. That, Mary-Love considered, only showed Elinor to be a woman for whom no sacrifice was too great on the field of battle. She was a formidable adversary to Mary-Love, who had never before had anyone question her sovereignty.

If Mary-Love and Sister had been protective of the infant Miriam before, how close did they hold her now! Two weeks had pa.s.sed since Elinor and Oscar had moved out, and as yet Elinor had shown no sign of repenting of her bargain. Mary-Love was fifty-one and would never have another child of her own. Sister was just under thirty, and had no prospects of marriage; it was unlikely she would possess a daughter other than the one her sister-in-law had given up to her .'They wouldn't leave the child alone for an instant, for fear that Elinor-watching from behind one of the newly hung curtains of her back parlor- would rush over, swoop the child into her arms, and carry her back in sneaking triumph. Neither of these women intended to relinquish Miriam even though all the world and the law should demand it of them.

Mary-Love and Sister, in the beginning, had steeled themselves against what they imagined would be constant visits from Elinor. They were certain she would make suggestions for a better way to do this or that for the child, would burst into tears and beg to have Miriam for only an hour every morning, would moon over her daughter's crib, and would endlessly seek opportunities to s.n.a.t.c.h her away. But Elinor did none of those things. In fact, Elinor never came to see her daughter at all. She rocked placidly on the front porch of her new house, and corrected the p.r.o.nunciation of Zaddie Sapp, who sat at her feet with a sixth-grade reader. Elinor nodded politely to Sister and Mary-Love when she saw them, or at least when it was impossible to pretend that she had not seen them, but she never asked to see the child. Mary-Love and Sister-who had never before been so united upon any issue whatsoever-conferred and tried to puzzle out whether Elinor ought to be trusted or not. They decided that, for safety's sake, her aloof att.i.tude should be considered a tactic to put them off their guard. So their vigilance was maintained.

On Sundays, Mary-Love and Sister took turns staying home with the child during morning service. One or the other would sit in the same pew with Elinor, nod politely to her, and speak if the occasion allowed. But then Mary-Love suggested, as a taunt to Elinor, that she and Sister should both attend church. Elinor, seeing them there together, would realize that little Miriam was alone, protected only by Ivey Sapp-but she would not be able to escape the service and fetch her daughter out. Sister and Mary-Love were always careful never to leave the house on Sunday morning until they had seen Oscar and Elinor drive off to the church together, for fear that one day Elinor might remain behind and purloin her daughter before the first hymn had been sung.

One Sunday, however, Mary-Love and Sister both happened to be away from the front window when Oscar drove off. They a.s.sumed that Elinor had gone with him. At church they discovered, to their terrible dismay, that Elinor had remained at home, to tend Zaddie through the mumps. Their voices trembled through the hymns, they heard not a word of the sermon, they forgot to rise when they ought to have risen, and remained standing when they ought to have sat down again. They rushed home, and discovered Miriam sound asleep in the crib that was 11.

kept on the side porch. Ivey Sapp crooned a wordless song above her. Next door, Elinor Caskey sat on her front porch with the Mobile Register. Nothing in the world could have been easier than for Elinor to walk right across and up onto the porch, hold off Ivey with a stern word, lift Miriam out of her crib, and march straight back home with her. But Elinor had done no such thing.

Elinor, Sister and Mary-Love concluded, did not want her daughter back at all.

Convinced as they were that Elinor had in truth given up her daughter-though at a considerable loss to understand how she could have done such a thing-Sister and Mary-Love began to wonder what Oscar thought of the business. Oscar did sometimes visit his mother and sister, though he never took meals with them, and, as Sister pointed out, he never entered the house, but confined his visits to the side porch. Sometimes in the late afternoon, if he saw them on the porch, he'd come across and sit in the swing for a few minutes. He'd speak his greeting to his sister and his mother, then would lean over the crib and say, "How you, Miriam?" quite as if he expected the six-month-old child to answer him in kind. He didn't seem particularly interested in his daughter, and would merely nod and give a little smile if Sister described some surprisingly advanced or fascinatingly comical event in Miriam's development. And soon taking his leave with the excuse that Elinor would be wondering where he was and what he was doing, he would say, "So long, Mama. Bye-bye, Sister. See you later, Miriam." By the repet.i.tion of this pattern, which served only to emphasize the slightness of the hold their company and proximity held over him, Sister and Mary-Love came to understand that in gaining Miriam and jettisoning Elinor, they had also lost Oscar.

12.In the great new house on the town line Oscar and Elinor rattled about in their sixteen rooms. In the evening, he and Elinor sat down at the breakfast room table and ate the cold remainder of that afternoon's dinner. The kitchen door was propped open so that Zaddie, who stood at the counter and ate her own identical meal, should not feel lonely. Every other evening, when the bill changed, Oscar and Elinor went to the Ritz. Even though admission was only, five cents, they always gave Zaddie a quarter to get into the colored balcony, whether she went or not. When they got home, they sat out in one of the four swings on the upstairs sleeping porch. In a bit, as Oscar desultorily rocked the swing with the toe of one shoe, Elinor would turn and lay her head in his lap. Together they would stare through the screen at the moonlit Perdido, flowing almost silently behind the house. And if Oscar talked at all, it was of his work, or of the valiant progress of the water oaks-which, after only two years of growth, were now nearly thirty feet high-or of what gossip he had heard related that morning at the barber shop.

But he never mentioned their daughter, though the window of Miriam's room was visible from where they rocked in the swing, and that window was sometimes lighted, and Mary-Love or Sister sometimes briefly appeared moving purposefully about, tending to the daughter who was as lost to him as if she had been stolen by gypsies or drowned in the river.

Elinor was again expecting a child, but it seemed to Oscar that this pregnancy was much slower than the first. His wife's belly seemed to swell less-and later in her term-and he urged her to visit Dr. Benquith. Elinor did so and returned with the report that all was well. However, she acceded to Oscar's wish that she not return to teach that fall, and rather to Oscar's surprise, Elinor seemed content to remain 13.

all day in the house. Also, for propriety's sake and for Oscar's ease of mind, she gave up her morning swims in the Perdido. Nevertheless, despite his wife's precautions and Dr. Benquith's rea.s.surances, Oscar remained unsatisfied and uneasy.

Mary-Love Caskey would have liked Perdido to acknowledge that she had won the battle with her daughter-in-law. And how could Perdido not think so, when Mary-Love was in possession of the spoils? Even if baby Miriam had been won at the expense of her son's affection, Oscar was bound to have gone off somewhere, with someone, sooner or later. Besides, what son ever remained permanently estranged from his mother? There was no question in Mary-Love's mind but that Oscar would someday return to her, and then her conquest of Elinor Caskey would be sweet and complete indeed!

But Perdido, to Mary-Love's consternation, didn't see things that way at all. What Perdido saw was that when the smoke had cleared, Elinor Caskey was sitting at the top of the hill, waving an untattered and unbloodied flag. She had given up her only child, but from all appearances she didn't seem to care one way or the other.

And more importantly, Elinor Caskey wasn't acting like a defeated woman. If she never paid visits to her mother-in-law and her sister-in-law and her abandoned daughter, in public she was never anything other than pleasant and friendly to them. Nothing in her tone savored of irony or sarcasm or the heaping-on of burning coals; she was never heard to speak a word against either Mary-Love or Sister. Nor had she sought to suborn Caroline DeBordenave or Manda Turk into rebellion against Mary-Love by establishing an intimacy either with the women themselves or with their daughters.

Elinor never objected to Oscar's visits to his 14.mother's house, and never made him feel guilty about having gone. She sent Zaddie over with boxes of peaches and bottles of blackberry nectar she had put up herself. But she never once set foot in Mary-Love's house and never asked after her daughter's health and never invited Mary-Love or Sister over to see what the new house looked like all furnished and decorated.

Thus, once convinced that there was to be no attempt to reappropriate Miriam, Mary-Love decided that Elinor had not been sufficiently humbled, and began to look about for a way to crush her daughter-in-law.

A year and a half before, on the day after Elinor had announced her first pregnancy, there had arrived in Perdido a man called Early Haskew. He was thirty years of age, with brown hair and brown eyes and a thick brown mustache. He had a sunburned complexion, strong arms and long legs, and a wardrobe that seemed to consist entirely of khaki trousers and white shirts. He had gone to school at the University of Alabama, and had been superficially wounded on the bank of the Marne. And he had learned, during his tenure in France, everything there was to know about earthworks. Earth, in fact, seemed to pervade his consciousness, and he was never really comfortable except with both his large feet firmly planted on solid ground. There seemed, moreover, always to be earth beneath his fingernails and in the creases of his sunburned skin; but no one looking at him ever thought this attributable to a relaxation of personal hygiene. The dirt seemed only to be a part of the man, and wholly un.o.bjectionable. He was an engineer, and he had come to Perdido to see whether it might be possible to protect the town from future flooding by the construction of a series 15.

of levees along the banks of the Perdido and Black-water rivers.

With the help of two surveying students from Auburn Polytechnic, Early Haskew plotted out the town, plumbed the depths of the rivers, measured heights above sea level, examined records at the town hall, and noted the fading high-water marks left by the flood of 1919. He talked with the foremen of the mills who used the rivers for the transport of logs, took photographs of the sections of town that lay near the banks of the rivers, dispatched letters of enquiry to engineers in Natchez and New Orleans, and drew a salary that was, unbeknownst to any but members of the town council, paid entirely by James Caskey. At the end of eight weeks, during which he seemed to be everywhere, with his maps, instruments, notebooks, cameras, pencils, and a.s.sistants, Early Haskew disappeared. He had promised detailed plans within three months, but James Caskey received a letter a short time after his departure, announcing his inability to meet that deadline, owing to some army work required of him over at Camp Rucca. Early Haskew was still in the reserves.

But now he was finished with the reserves, and was returning to Perdido with the intention of completing his plans as quickly as possible. Who knew how soon the waters might rise again?

Early Haskew had lived with his mother in a tiny town called Pine Cone, on the edge of the Alabama Wiregra.s.s area. She had died recently, and Early had seen no necessity of returning to Pine Cone. He sold his mother's house, and wrote to James Caskey asking if the millowner would be so kind as to find him a place to live. Early hoped not only to provide the plans but to supervise the building of the levee- if the town council were pleased to judge him fit for the work-so he might be in town for as long as two 16.years. And two years was enough time to justify the purchase of a house.

James Caskey mentioned this news at Mary-Love's one evening. James had thought it a piece of information of interest, but of not much importance, so he was startled by the vehemence with which Mary-Love Caskey seized upon it.

"Oh, James," she cried, "don't you let that man buy a house!"

"Why not?" said James mildly. "If he wants it, and he has the money?"

"Wasting his money!" said Mary-Love.

"Well, what do you want the man to do, Mama?" asked Sister, who was sitting sideways in her chair at the table and bouncing Miriam up and down on her knee while nine-year-old Grace, sitting beside her, held out a finger for the baby to hold for balance and security.

"I don't want him to waste his money," said Mary-Love. "I want him to come here and stay with us. We have that extra room that used to be Oscar's. It's got a private bathroom and a sitting room he can set up a drafting table in. I think I might go out and get one of those tables myself," she mused, or appeared to muse. "I have always wanted one."

"You have not," said Sister, contradicting her mother as she might have said, "Pa.s.s the peas, please."

"I have!"

"Mary-Love, why do you want Mr. Haskew staying here?" asked James.

"Because Sister and I are lonely, and Mr. Haskew needs a place to stay. He doesn't want to live all by himself. Who'd cook for him? Who'd wash his clothes? He's a nice man. We had him over to dinner one day when he was here before, remember? James, write to that man and tell him he can stay here in this nice big house with us."

17.

"He ate his peas on a knife," added Sister. "Mama, you said you had never seen a decent man do that in public. You wondered what kind of home he came from. I was the only one in this house who was nice to him. One evening Mr. Haskew came by to speak to Oscar, and Elinor got right up out of the chair and walked away and wouldn't even let herself be introduced to him. Never saw anything so rude in my life."

"Why do you suppose she did that?" asked James, who now suddenly had an inkling what Mary-Love's energetic and unexpected proposal was all about.

"I don't know," said Mary-Love quickly^ "What I do want to know is, are you gone write that letter, James, or am I?"

James shrugged, though he didn't know what was to come of it. "I'll write it tomorrow at the office-"

"Why not tonight?"

"Mary-Love, how do you know that that man's gone say yes? He may not want to live here."

"Why wouldn't he?" demanded Mary-Love.

"Well," said James after a moment, "maybe he wouldn't want to be in the house with a tiny baby, that cries."

"Miriam doesn't cry," said Sister indignantly.

"I know she doesn't," returned James, "but babies tend to, and you cain't expect Early Haskew to realize he's dealing with a special case here."

"Well, you tell him he is," said Mary-Love, and James agreed to write the letter that very night.

"And James," said Mary-Love in a whisper as she saw her brother-in-law out the door that evening, "one more thing. Not a word to Oscar about this and not a word to Elinor, either. I want it all set up before we say anything-I want it all to be such a surprise!"

CHAPTER 14.

Plans and Predictions

Early Haskew received letters from both Mary-Love Caskey and her brother-in-law, James, offering the hospitality of Mary-Love's home and Mary-Love's table for the duration of the engineer's stay in Per-dido. Early wrote back .a roughly worded but polite refusal, stating that he did not wish to take advantage of the town and the one family in particular that was to provide him lucrative employment for an extended period of time. Two more letters were fired off; James stating that Mary-Love's offer was made wholly without prejudice or prompting and that-since no house was available to purchase- it would be a solution that seemed best all around, and Mary-Love complaining that she had just purchased a drafting table and what on earth was she to do with that if Early Haskew took up residence 19.in the Osceola Hotel. Weakened by this second volley, Early Haskew made a polite capitulation. The surrendered man, however, insisted upon paying ten dollars a week for his room and board.

The engineer came to Perdido in March 1922. Bray Sugarwhite fetched him in Mary-Love's automobile from the Atmore station, and he arrived at Mary-Love's house in time for dinner that Wednesday afternoon.

Sister was immediately shy about the man, who was large and handsome and unselfconscious in a way that was not at all characteristic of the male population of Perdido. Early Haskew was certainly different from Oscar, who was quiet and-in his way-subtle. And the man seemed nothing at all like James, whose quietness and greater subtlety were distinctly tinged by femininity. There was nothing quiet or subtle or feminine about Early Haskew. At dinner that night, his plate was several times nearly upset onto the tablecloth, he rattled his silverware, tea sloshed out of his gla.s.s, his napkin was in use constantly. Three times Ivey was called to replace his fork that had dropped, again, to the floor. When he mentioned, in the course of conversation, that his mother had been almost stone-deaf, his habit of speaking loudly and of overenunciating his words seemed satisfactorily accounted for. He also explained that he had come by his unusual Christian name from the fact that his mother had been born an Early, in Fairfax County, Virginia. With all his large gestures, and the little accidents that befell him at the table, he made the room seem a little small for comfort, as if the giant in a circus sideshow had been compelled to take up residence in the little people's caravan.

In Sister's memory, such a man had never before been found at Mary-Love's table. Mary-Love Caskey was genteel to the points of her teeth. Sister won- 20.dered at her mother's forbearance of Early's gau-cheries, and at Mary-Love's sincere hospitality toward the engineer. "I hope, Mr. Haskew," said Mary-Love with a smile that might have been described only as gleeful, "that you intend to save me and my family from the floodwaters,"

"I intend to do just that, Miz Caskey," replied Early Haskew in a voice that would have reached her had she been sitting at the table in Elinor's house. "That's why I'm here. And I sure do like my room upstairs. I just wish you hadn't gone to the expense of that drafting table!"

"If that drafting table can save us from another flood, it's gone be worth every penny I spent on it. Besides, I don't believe you would have come to live with us if I hadn't had that thing ready waiting."

After dinner, when James had returned to the mill and Mary-Love and Sister and Early were sitting on the porch with gla.s.ses of tea, they noticed Zaddie Sapp pa.s.sing by, evidently off on some errand for Elinor. Quickly, and in a low voice, Mary-Love said, "Sister, tell Zaddie to come up on the porch for a minute."

Zaddie rather wondered at the summons, for she was Elinor's acknowledged creature and as such hardly welcome in Mary-Love's house-or even on that porch. Zaddie still raked Mary-Love's yard every morning, but Mary-Love could scarcely bring herself to nod a greeting to the twelve-year-old.

"Hey, Zaddie," said Mary-Love, "come on inside. There's somebody I want you to meet."

Zaddie came through the screen door and onto the side porch. She stared at Early Haskew, and he stared at her.

"Zaddie," said Mary-Love, "this is Early Haskew. This is the man who's gone save Perdido from the next flood."

"Ma'am?"

21."Mr. Haskew is gone build a levee to save Per-dido!"

"Yes, ma'am," said Zaddie politely.

"How you do, Zaddie?" shouted Early Haskew, and Zaddie blinked at the force of his voice.

"I'm fine, Mr. Skew."

"Haskew, Zaddie," corrected Sister.

"I'm fine," repeated Zaddie.

"Thank Mr. Haskew, Zaddie, for saving you from the next flood," instructed Mary-Love.

"Thank you, sir," said Zaddie obediently.

"You're welcome, Zaddie."

Zaddie and Early Haskew looked at each other in some puzzlement, for neither had arty idea why this meeting should have been brought about. Zaddie wondered why she had been called over to be introduced to a white man when only that morning she had been shooed away when she tried to peek into Miriam's carriage. And Early wondered if it were Mary-Love's intention to introduce him to every man, woman, and child-white and colored and Indian-whose life and property would be protected by the levee he intended to build around the town.

Sister thought she had the answer. In the dissemination of information Zaddie was as efficient as a telegraph, and Elinor would learn of Early Haskew's presence in Mary-Love's house as surely as if a Western Union man came to the door and handed over the message in a yellow envelope.

Mary-Love said to Zaddie, "We have kept you, child. Weren't you on an errand for Elinor?"

"Yes, ma'am," replied Zaddie. "I got to go fetch some paraffin."

"Then go do it," said Mary-Love, and Zaddie ran away.

Mary-Love turned to Early and said, "Zaddie belongs to Elinor and Oscar. You've met my son."

22."Yes, ma'am."

"But you haven't met his wife Elinor, my daughter-in-law?"

"No, ma'am."

"I suppose you will," said Mary-Love offhandedly. "I hope you have the chance, that is. They live next door in that big white house. I built that house for them as a wedding present."

"It's a fine house!"

"I know it. But you'll see, Mr. Haskew, when you've been here a little longer, that there's not much back-and-forthing between these two houses."

"No, ma'am," said Early Haskew politely, quite as if he understood all about it.

"Well..." said Mary-Love hesitantly, then abruptly concluded, "that's all."

The town council meeting that evening was attended not only by the directly elected members of the board-Oscar, Henry Turk, Dr. Leo Benquith, and three other men-but also by James Caskey and Tom DeBordenave as vitally interested parties and as millowners. Before these men Early Haskew presented a rough plan, timetable, and schedule of expenses for the construction of the levees.

The levee was to be in three parts. The largest and most substantial portion would be raised on either side of the Perdido below the junction. This would protect downtown and the area of mill workers' houses to the west of the river and Baptist Bottom to the east. The bridge over the Perdido just below the Osceola Hotel would be widened and raised to the height of the levee, and gentle approach ramps constructed. In large measure, this was a munic.i.p.al levee, for it protected the greater part of residential and commercial Perdido. A second levee, half a mile long and connecting with the first, would be raised on the southern bank of the 23.Blackwater River, which came from the northeast of town from its source in the cypress swamp. This levee would protect the three sawmills. The third portion of the levee was shortest of all; it would run along the southern bank of the Perdido above the junction, and would protect the five homes belonging to Henry Turk, Tom DeBordenave, James Caskey, Mary-Love Caskejvand Oscar Caskey. This levee would end a hundred yards or so beyond the town line. When the rivers rose again, as was bound to happen in the course of things, the levees would protect the town, and only the uninhabited lowlands directly south of Perdido, along the course of the river, would be flooded.

In four months, Early would have detailed plans. Construction of the levee could begin immediately thereafter. The work would take at least fifteen months for the double levee along the lower Perdido, and six months each for the secondary levees. The cost he estimated to be about one million one hundred thousand dollars, a sum which momentarily staggered the town council.