Blackwater - The Levee Part 2

Oscar looked puzzled for a moment, then replied, "Well, you know, that's what I used to think. I mean, that's what I had always heard. But Elinor knows- I know she knows-she just won't tell me."

"Your wife has been manipulating one of your lower extremities, Oscar."

Oscar's curiosity was soon satisfied, for on the nineteenth of May, 1922, Elinor gave birth to a five-pound girl.

The doctor had left, and Roxie was downstairs washing the b.l.o.o.d.y linen, when Oscar said to Elinor, "Did you know it was gone be a girl?"

"Of course I did."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want you to be disappointed." She held out the baby for Oscar's inspection. "You probably wanted a boy, Oscar, but I knew once you had seen this little girl you would love her to death! That's why I didn't tell you."

"I do love her to death! I would have loved her anyway!"

"Well, then," said Elinor softly, putting the infant to her breast, "I was wrong about it. Next time I will tell you."

There was a sort of state visit that afternoon by 38.Mary-Love and Sister. Sister carried Miriam in her arms, and Oscar reflected somewhat uncomfortably that this was the first time his firstborn daughter had ever been inside her parents' house. After having peered curiously into all the rooms on the way up, exclaiming softly and disparagingly on what they saw, Sister and Mary-Love entered Elinor's bedroom and stood on opposite sides of the bed. As if at a prearranged signal, they bent down together and kissed Elinor on either cheek. Elinor pulled back the corner of the blanket that was wrapped about her new daughter, and said, "See? Now I've got one of my own." She looked at her first daughter, still in Sister's arms, and said, "Miriam, this is your sister Frances."

"Is that what we are calling her?" said Oscar.

"Yes," replied Elinor, then added after a moment, "it was my mother's name."

"It's a real pretty name," said Mary-Love. "Elinor, Sister and I don't want to tire you out, so listen, if there's anything you need, you just send Zaddie over, and we will drop everything and go out and get it."

"I thank you, Miss Mary-Love. Thank you, Sister."

"Mama, we ought to go. Early's gone wonder what became of us."

At the mention of the engineer's name, Elinor's polite smile froze. She didn't say another word to Sister or Mary-Love.

That night, while Elinor-remarkably recovered-was walking around and around the nursery with Frances, singing to the baby and holding it out to stare at it and make faces at it and grin at it and drawing it back in again to kiss and fondle, Oscar performed calculations on the birth of his daughter that weren't so casual. He worked back nine months from this date of Frances' birth-Leo Benquith had told him that the delivery and the pregnancy had 39.been normal in every respect-and came up with August 19, 1921.

That was the date they had moved into the new house. He certainly remembered that he and Elinor had made love that night, for it had been the first time in their own home-but what he also remembered, with not a little uneasiness, was that that was also the date on which, earlier in the evening, Elinor had announced her pregnancy.

The night of the birth of Frances Caskey, Elinor declared her intention of remaining in the nursery with her new daughter. Pleased that his wife was showing such interest and delight in her new child, in such sharp contrast to her treatment of Miriam, Oscar eagerly acquiesced. He lay in bed a long while, unable to fall asleep, thinking of Elinor, the pregnancy, and the peculiar coincidence of dates.

Next door, in Mary-Love's house, Early Haskew snored louder than he talked. Mary-Love tossed in her bed, pondering what effect the birth of Frances might have on things, fearing that the child might be the means by which Elinor gained an ascendancy acknowledged all over Perdido. And in her room, Sister thought alternately of Miriam, whom she loved very dearly, and of the man snoring in the room at the end of the hall, to whom she was not indifferent. Beside Sister in the bed, little Miriam Caskey dreamed her formless dreams of nameless things to eat and nameless things to pick up and nameless things to hide in the little box that Mary-Love had given her.

And in the next house, Grace Caskey tossed and turned and didn't even want to go to sleep, so excited was she by the birth of Frances. Grace envisioned a trio of cousins-herself, Miriam, and Frances- loyal and loving. James Caskey thought-or did he dream?-of the earth above his wife's grave, and 40.wondered whether it ought not to be planted over in verbena or phlox. Eventually all the Caskeys fell asleep, and all dreamed of whatever concerned them most.

That night while the Caskeys slept and dreamed, fog roiled up out of the Perdido River and spilled across the dry Caskey property.

Fogs were not uncommon in this part of Alabama, but they came only at night and were seen by few. This fog, thicker and darker than usual, rose up out of the river as a beast of prey rises up in the night after a long diurnal sleep, keen to slake its hunger. It wrapped itself around the Caskey houses, enveloping them in a silent, thick, unmoving mist. What before had been only dark was now black. It was so silent, so subtle, that its arrival waked no one at all. The river moisture pervaded, the houses and surrounded the sleepers with a suffocating dampness. Even Early Haskew's snoring was m.u.f.fled. Yet still none of the Caskeys woke, and if they struggled against it, they did so only in their dreams, dreams in which the oppressive fog had arms and legs that were slick and damp, and a mouth that exhaled mist and night.

Zaddie Sapp was the only one to know of it. She dreamed of the fog, dreamed that its moist fingers pulled back the sheet from her cot so that she grew chill, and dreamed that the fog awakened her and beckoned her to come out from the protection of her tiny closet behind the kitchen. The dream was so convincing that Zaddie opened her eyes to prove to herself that the fog was not there. But when she did so, and looked straight up at the ceiling, Zaddie saw thick wisps of the mist floating in her window. At the same time, very soft and m.u.f.fled, she heard the sodden creek of the hinges of the lattice-door at the back of the house. At first she disbelieved her ears, 41.the sound seemed so distant. Then she heard a step upon the stairs that led down to the back yard.

She sat up suddenly, and wisps of fog swirled into sudden turbulence before her eyes. Zaddie wasn't afraid of thieves, because nothing had been stolen in Perdido since "Railroad" Bill held up the Turk's mill in 1883, but with trepidation she peered out the window. Little could be seen through the fog, but when she squinted she could just make out a dark form moving carefully down those steps.

Zaddie knew that it was Elinor.

One step creaked. The form paused. Zaddie perceived that Elinor carried something in her cradled arms, and what did cradled arms usually hold but a baby?

Night air and fog just couldn't be good for a child that wasn't yet a day old! Clad only in her nightgown, and without thinking to put on shoes, Zaddie jumped quietly out of the bed, opened the door of her little closet, and stepped out to the latticed back porch. She pushed open the back door, softly but without trying to disguise the fact that she was there. She stood on the back steps, and shut the door behind her.

Elinor was off in the yard ahead, nearly invisible in the fog.

"Miss El'nor," said Zaddie softly.

"Zaddie, go back inside." Elinor's voice sounded dreamy and moist. It seemed to come from a great distance.

Zaddie hesitated. "Miss El'nor, what you doing out here with that precious baby?"

Elinor shifted the child in her arms. "I'm going to baptize her in the Perdido water, and I don't need you to help. So you go back inside, you hear? A little girl like you could get lost in this fog and die!"

Elinor's voice faded, as did her shape. She was lost in the fog. Zaddie ran forward, fearful for the safety 42.of the infant. "Miss El'nor!" Zaddie whispered in the inky darkness.

No answer came.

Zaddie ran forward toward the river. She tripped over the exposed root of one of the clumps of water oaks, and sprawled in the sand. She scrambled to her feet, and through a momentary thinning of the fog, could make out Miss Elinor's form at the edge of the water.

She again hurried forward, and grabbed her mistress's nightdress.

"Zaddie," said Elinor, her voice still distant and strange, "I told you to stay back."

"Miss El'nor, you cain't put that child in the water!"

Elinor laughed. "Do you think this river is going to hurt my little girl?" And with that, Elinor flung her newborn daughter into the swirling black current of the Perdido. She might have been a fisherman tossing a too-small catch back into the river.

Zaddie had long been fearful of the Perdido, knowing how many people had drowned in its unabating currents. She had heard Ivey's stories of what lived on the riverbed, and what things hid in the mud. But despite her fear, despite the fact that it was night and that the night was filled with fog, Zaddie rushed into the water in hope of saving the infant that, incredibly, had been tossed in by its mother.

"Zaddie," cried Elinor, "come back. You'll drown!"

Zaddie caught the child-or at least thought she caught it. Reaching down into the water, she had scooped up something. It felt very little like a baby! It was so slippery and unsoft, yet rubbery-a fishlike thing-that she very nearly let it go again. Zaddie shuddered with repulsion for whatever it was that she held in her hands, but she raised it up above the surface. She saw that she had caught hold of something black and vile, with a neckless head attached 43.directly to a thick body. A stubby tail that was almost as thick as the body twitched convulsively, and the thing was covered with river slime. In the air it struggled to get away, to return to its element. But Zaddie held it tight, closing her fingers into its disgusting flesh. From its fishy mouth emerged a stream of foamy water, and the thrashing tail smacked against Zaddie's forearms; dull, bulging eyes shone up into her face.

Elinor's hand closed over Zaddie's shoulder.

The girl stiffened, and looked around.

"You see," said Elinor, "my baby's fine."

In Zaddie's arms lay Frances Caskey, naked and limp, with Perdido river water dripping slowly from her elbows and feet.

"Come out of the water, Zaddie," said Elinor, drawing the girl out by the sleeve of her dress. "The bottom is muddy, and you could slide..."

Next morning, Roxie shook Zaddie out of her deep slumber, saying, "Child, you have not begun to rake this morning! What's wrong with you?" Zaddie dressed quickly, shaken but relieved that her previous night's adventure had been no more than a dream. She had wandered through a nightmare, reached safety, and been immediately overtaken with undisturbed sleep. It was unthinkable, in the light of morning, that Elinor would throw her newborn baby into the Perdido, and Zaddie didn't even allow herself to think of what she had caught in her arms in the dream.

She ran into the kitchen and gobbled a biscuit. Grabbing her rake from its accustomed corner, she flung open the back door. For a moment, the sound of those hinges brought back the dream; but Zaddie merely grinned at her own fear. She ran down the back steps-and stopped dead in her tracks.

There in the sand were four sets of footprints. Two 44.sets led down toward the river and two led back- and around the returning set were tiny circular depressions such as might be made where droplets of water dripped into the sand and dried.

With a heavy heart, Zaddie stepped off into the cool gray yard. With downcast eyes, she carefully obliterated those sets of footprints leading to and from the river, as if by that means she could blot out what had not been, after all, a dream. All the while she worked, she could hear Elinor on the second-floor sleeping porch. She was crooning a little tuneless song to her newborn baby.

CHAPTER 16.

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

About the time of the birth of her niece Frances, Sister Caskey became overwhelmed with a sense of powerlessness and inconsequence. Why she should be so affected now, when before she had always taken her condition so much for granted, she did not know. Perhaps it had something to do with Oscar's marriage to Elinor, and his escaping the house while she remained behind, serving as a sponge to soak up Mary-Love's resentment at her son's desertion. Perhaps it was something about Elinor herself, who was younger than Sister, but unquestionably more powerful-Elinor had fought as an equal with Mary-Love. Perhaps Sister was tired of her mother's mingy complaints against Elinor, against the town, and against Sister herself. Recently, Mary-Love had made her first attempts to take a greater share of 47.control over Miriam, whom she had always shared equally with her daughter. Sister thought she resented this most of all. She knew that soon Mary-Love would take the child away from her completely, and Sister would be alone again.

Although the Caskeys were better off than almost any other Perdido family, Sister had very little that was hers. She possessed no more than some odd stocks that had been birthday gifts and whose dividends were erratic and negligible. She remembered well enough the Caskey jewels, buried with Genevieve, which had so mysteriously appeared at the ceiling of the front bedroom of Elinor's house. But of that h.o.a.rd, Sister had nothing at all. Except for the black pearls that Elinor took, Mary-Love had kept everything for herself and Miriam. Sister began to believe that her opinion was never solicited about any matter of consequence. One morning in July she showed up at James's office at the mill and declared herself fit and ready for any task that might be a.s.signed to her. James looked at his niece in perplexity and misgiving, and said, "Lord, Sister, I cain't make heads or tails of this place myself, I don't know why you should be coming to me to tell you what you can do!" When she went to her brother with the same announcement, Oscar said, "Sister, there's nothing for you here, unless you can type-write or fix a broken-down chipper, and I know for a fact you cain't." Sister felt that the family was conspiring to keep her from the dignity and satisfaction of common human responsibilities.

She suggested to Mary-Love that she might open a store on Palafox Street to sell threads and b.u.t.tons, but Mary-Love said, "No, Sister, I'm not gone give you the money, because the place would close down in six months. What do you know about running a shop? Besides, I want you here at home with me." When her mother said that, Sister realized that "at 48.home" was exactly where she did not want to remain for the rest of her life.

Sister was weary of all of it, and Sister thought she saw a way out.

Her solution wasn't a new one; it was a remedy common all over the world. Procuring a husband would make all things right. As she began the task of looking about for likely candidates for the position, she discovered to her gratification that the most eligible man in Perdido-the one most exactly suited to her purposes-was also the handiest. He was the man whose snoring she heard at the other end of the hallway every night. Early Haskew.

Early was handsome, in a just-coming-in-out-of-the-sun sort of way. He was an engineer and looked to have a good future before him. All the Caskeys liked him. But none of this really mattered to Sister. What was most important about Early Haskew was that when the levee was finished, he would move away from Perdido. It was only to be a.s.sumed that if Early were married by that time, he would take his wife away with him.

Sister had no experience in even the simplest forms of flirtation and allurement, and in this matter she could scarcely go to her mother or her mother's friends for advice. Elinor was also out of the question. So Sister went where she had gone once or twice before, to Ivey Sapp, Mary-Love's cook and maid. She knew that Ivey's advice would be supernatural in its base-and in its execution-but she could see no alternative. So Sister, saying to herself, / have nowhere else to turn, went down into the kitchen one afternoon, and said to Ivey without preamble, "Ivey, you gone help me get married?"

"Sure will," said Ivey, without hesitation. "Somebody particular?"

Ivey Sapp had come to Mary-Love's house when 49 she was sixteen, about three years earlier. She was shiny black and plump. Her legs were permanently bowed from riding the Sapp mule round and round the cane crusher for sometimes twelve hours a day. Finally she had grown tired of the oppressive monotony of her existence at home, and longed for what her mother, Creola, contemptuously called "a life in the town." A kind of marriage had been arranged with Bray Sugarwhite, a man much older than Ivey, but he was kind and well situated in the Caskey household.

Ivey's princ.i.p.al fault-at least in Mary-Love's eyes-was a sort of rampant superst.i.tion that saw devils in every tree and portents in every cloud and dark meanings in every casual accident. Ivey Sapp slept with charms, and there were things on a chain around her neck. She wouldn't begin canning on a Friday, and would run off and not return for the rest of the day if she saw anyone open an umbrella in the house. She wouldn't carry out ashes after three o'clock in the afternoon lest there be a death in the family. She wouldn't sweep after dark because she'd sweep good fortune out the door. She wouldn't wash on New Year's day lest she wash a corpse in the ensuing year. She had many prohibitions and exceptions, and a little rhyme or saying for each, so that the days were scarce on which she performed without objection every task a.s.signed her. Mary-Love sometimes said she believed that Ivey made up half of it in order to shirk her duties, but Ivey had plenty of superst.i.tion that was in no way connected with work. Thus it was a disconcerting fact of life in the Caskey household that the most innocent gesture observed by Ivey or unthinkingly reported to her elicited a dire prediction: "If you sing before you eat, you cry before you sleep," for instance. Before Miriam was born, Mary-Love always declared herself glad that there were no children in the house, 50.because Ivey would have turned them into sniveling, frightened creatures, with her tales and warnings of things that waited for you in the forest and looked in your windows and hitched rides on the underside of your boat.

"So what am I supposed to do?" said Sister, having with some embarra.s.sment confessed to Ivey that she wanted to marry none other than Early Haskew.

Ivey sat down at the kitchen table and appeared to lose herself in thought and incomprehensible mur-murings as she began mechanically to snap the ends off a basinful of beans. Sister impatiently sat by, but dared not interrupt Ivey's reverie. Sister declared to herself that she put no faith in superst.i.tion or in Ivey's charms and rituals, but it was difficult to maintain that skepticism while Ivey sat before her in the midst of her incantatory monologue. After several minutes, Ivey's eyes fell closed; her hands dropped into her lap. She remained perfectly still for such a long time that Sister began to worry. Quite suddenly, Ivey's eyes snapped open, and she asked, "What's today?"

"Wednesday," replied Sister, quite as alarmed as if Ivey had said, I have seen the Lord of the Evil Angels.

"On Friday," said Ivey, "go out and buy me a live chicken."

Sister sat back, confused. "Ivey-"

"Don't buy it from a woman, make sure you buy it from a man. A chicken bought from a woman won't do us no good at all."

On Friday, Sister went downtown and loitered around Grady Henderson's store until Thelma Henderson left the counter to go into the back for something. Then Sister sprang out from behind a barrel, 51.and cried, "Grady, can you get me a chicken, please? I'm in a real hurry."

"Thelma'll be right back out, Miz Caskey. She'll take care of you."

"Oh, Lord, Grady, I just looked at my watch"- she wasn't wearing one, and the grocer could see that too-"and I am supposed to have been back at the house half an hour ago. You know what Mama's gone say to me?"

Grady Henderson knew Mary-Love and could just about imagine. "Which one you want?" he asked, going over to the gla.s.s case where the chickens lay in porcelain trays.

"I need a live one, can you get me one out back? I got to have a spring chicken-that hasn't laid an egg yet," she added anxiously and with some embarra.s.sment. "You've probably got one, haven't you?"

Grady Henderson looked at Sister closely, shrugged, and went out through a door in the rear. Sister followed him outside into a small dark shed that housed coops for fowl. "This one here," said Grady, pointing into a eoop that contained half a dozen dirty white chickens of various sizes and ages.

Sister nodded. "She looks young." Mr. Henderson opened the coop, drew the chicken out by its neck and threw it into a scales that was hanging from the ceiling. "Two and a half pounds, that's about forty-five cents. Here, I'll put her in a bag and you go on inside and give Thelma the money."

"No," cried Sister in alarm, pulling a dollar bill from her pocket. "I'll just give this to you, Grady. You keep the change-I got to get on back home!"

"Miz Caskey, there is something wrong with you today. You gave me a whole dollar. Let me give you another chicken."

"No, I just want this one!" she cried. She drew 52.back her shoulders and, more quietly, a.s.sured him, "I'll be all right."

Then, holding out before her the croker sack with the chicken inside, Sister ran home, sneaking in the back way so her mother wouldn't see her.

"Your Mama's gone out," said Ivey, peering into the sack. "She say she be back for supper, so we gone do this thing right now."

"Don't we have to wait till it's dark?"

"What for? Who you been talking to, Miz Caskey? I know what I'm doing." Then, with no mystic pa.s.ses or murmured incantations and with Sister still holding on to the sack, Ivey reached in and twisted off the head of the spring chicken. She pressed Sister's hands together and the top of the jerking sack closed. Sister held it at arm's length and watched with horror as spots of blood soaked through the burlap. When no motion could be detected, Ivey reached in and withdrew the body of the chicken. Its feathers were splattered with the blood that had poured out of its wrung neck. Holding the wretched fowl by the feet, Ivey slit open the breast of the chicken with a small knife, then pressed her pudgy fingers inside the carca.s.s, groped around for a moment and then brought out its b.l.o.o.d.y heart. This she dropped unceremoniously onto a saucer on the kitchen table: Leaving Sister to clean the kitchen of blood, Ivey buried the chicken and its head in a hole she had dug in the sand beside the kitchen steps. She folded the burlap and hid it beneath a stack of old newspapers on the back porch. Sister watched all this without daring to question what portion of this complex procedure was legitimate and necessary, and what part was only to keep the business secret from Mary-Love. Ivey motioned Sister to follow her back into the kitchen.

From a drawer of kitchen implements, Ivey took five skewers and laid them in a neat row on the 53.kitchen table. She then seated herself before them, picked up the saucer that held the chicken's heart, and offered it to Sister. Sister gingerly plucked the heart off the plate.

Ivey smashed the saucer on the floor of the kitchen and motioned for Sister to walk around the table.

Sister, half-embarra.s.sed, half-fearful, did so.

"Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," said Ivey.

"Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," repeated Sister. Following Ivey's silent directions, she paced around the table thrice, each time repeating that same incantation, the very familiarity of which was of comfort to Sister.

Sister ended her movement around the table standing beside Ivey's chair. The black woman then took up one of the skewers, handed it to Sister, and indicated a spot at the right side of the chicken heart that lay in Sister's outstretched hand. Sister had already understood that Ivey's directions were to be silent, except for the formulas, which Sister was to repeat verbatim. As Sister pierced the heart with the skewer and pressed it through, Ivey intoned, "As I am piercing the heart of this innocent hen, so will Early Haskew's heart be thrust through with love of me." Sister, with widened eyes, held the end of the skewer and repeated the words.

With the second skewer Ivey pointed a spot on the front of the chicken heart, and said, "This thrust will pierce Early's heart until the day he asks me to be his wife." Sister repeated these words as she pressed the skewer through.

The third skewer went from the back to the front, and Sister said, after Ivey, "For life and for death, Early Haskew, I belong to you."

The fourth skewer went from side to side, starting from the left. "What's mine is yours, what's yours is mine."

Ivey took up the last skewer and pressed a point 54.at the bottom of the heart. Sister pierced the heart from there, and the point of the skewer came out the top with a drop of blood on it. "Five wounds had Jesus, and by them will you be stricken unto death, Early Haskew, if we are not man and wife within the year. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen."

Sister was about to speak, protesting that she had no wish that the alternative to her marriage should be Early's death, but Ivey shook her head emphatically to enjoin, silence. Ivey rose from the table, then went over to the stove and opened the grate. Sister noticed for the first time that Ivey had kept the stove hot all afternoon.

Sister tossed the skewered heart inside, where it fell upon a bed of glowing embers and began to sizzle. Sister and Ivey peered in and watched as it glowed red, and then burned with a crimson flame. Soon nothing was left but the five glowing skewers, which finally dropped down onto the coals, still interwoven into a pentagon.

Ivey slammed the stove door shut. The two women stood up straight, and in unison repeated the incantation that no longer seemed so familiar and comforting to Sister. "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."