Blackwater - The Levee Part 7

And then there was Miriam to consider; the child belonged to Mary-Love and Sister jointly. It was inconceivable that Sister would attempt to take the child away with her-and almost as difficult for Mary-Love to imagine how she could manage the child on her own. The only solution, it seemed to Mary-Love, was that Sister and Early should remain in the house. Therefore, while Sister and Early were away on honeymoon, Mary-Love drove down to Mobile and picked out the most expensive suite of bed- 122.

room furniture she could find. She moved Sister's furniture out of the front bedroom and repainted the walls. She installed a new carpet, then filled the room with the vast new suite. She even went so far as to knock on Elinor's door and ask if Elinor might consider running up a new set of draperies for Sister's homecoming. Elinor, to Mary-Love's considerable surprise, agreed readily. She even offered to purchase the fabric, but Mary-Love had already taken care of this.

The draperies were sewn that evening and hung the next day. Mary-Love thanked Elinor, and accepted her daughter-in-law's invitation to take supper with her and Oscar. For the first time, Mary-Love ate a meal in the house she had built for her son and his wife. Miriam, nearly two, was placed in a high chair brought over earlier by Zaddie, and throughout the meal eyed her real mother with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion.

A few days later, Sister and Early returned. She kissed Mary-Love h.e.l.lo, and before she had even taken off her hat she exclaimed, "Mama, I smell new furniture! Have you been down in Mobile again?" Then Mary-Love took her upstairs and showed her what had been accomplished in her absence.

Early, a simple man, remembered that Sister had said that very little would give her greater pleasure than to leave her mother high and dry. He had therefore a.s.sumed that upon their return from honeymoon, they would find another place to live. This newly furnished room puzzled him, as did the expression on Sister's face.

"It's real pretty, isn't it, Early?" Sister asked.

He nodded, asking, "Is this where we're gone be living?"

Sister looked at her mother. "For the time being,"

123.

Sister said. "Mama, it's real pretty, you went to a lot of trouble."

Mary-Love now knew several things. First was that, despite "for the time being," Sister had no intention of leaving the house; and second, that she never had such an intention, the appearance she had given of having decided to leave her mother had been merely a feint. In this, Mary-Love thought she saw a little too much of herself. Sister knew what she was doing, and it was to an equal that Mary-Love replied, "Of course I went to some trouble, Sister! I had to do something to keep you with me! What would I have done if you and Early had wanted to find someplace else to live? What would we have done with poor old Miriam? Would we have cut her in two with a sword? Would we have given her back to Elinor?"

"Couldn't give up Miriam! But, Mama," warned Sister, unwilling completely to give up the edge she had attained, "don't go getting too used to having Early and me around. You never know when we'll up and leave you high and dry!"

"Oh, you wouldn't do that to your poor old mama," said Mary-Love softly, then left them to unpack.

Several contractors to whom Early had spoken the month before submitted sealed bids for the construction of the levee, and Early's choice for the job, Morris Avant, had the next-to-lowest. On Early's recommendation, Avant was awarded the first part of the contract.

But a great deal had to be accomplished before actual work on the levee could begin. The construction would require the services of between one hundred fifty and two hundred men, and though some might be unskilled and drawn from the unemployed ranks of Baptist Bottom, most were going to have to be imported. When the water pumping 124.

station had been built the year after the flood of 1919, twenty-five workers had been brought in. The foremen had stayed at the Osceola Hotel and the lower-paid workers had camped out on the stage of the school auditorium and been fed in the school kitchen on weekdays and at the Methodist Church on Sat.u.r.days and Sundays. This arrangement was hardly sufficient or appropriate for a near-army of men. Someone suggested housing the men in the schools, but depriving the schools of the use of the buildings for nearly two years wasn't really to be thought of seriously. So in a field just south of Baptist Bottom, the Mines brothers went to work putting up two large buildings for the accommodation of white workers, one a dormitory, and the other a kitchen and dining room.

Perdido citizens began to realize to what extent the levees would alter the aspect of their town. In the short term, it would mean the influx of workers and the expenditure of money, which was bad enough; but now they began to think about what it was going to be like to be hemmed in with walls of dirt for the remainder of their lives; to look out their windows and see not the rivers flowing past but only red walls of clay higher than their houses, wide and stolid and unhandsome. Some remembered how Elinor Caskey had spoken out against the levees, saying just some such thing, and had spoken even though her own husband was one of the prime movers in the business.

People now began to ask Elinor's opinion of the plans that had been made, and the preparations that were afoot, but Elinor would only say, "I told everybody what I thought. I still think it. By the time the levees are finished-if they are ever finished-it will be like living in an old clay quarry. Levees can wear down, and levees can wash away. Levees can spring holes, and levees can crack wide open. There's 125.

nothing that's ever going to stop the flow of a river when it wants to flow down to the sea, and there's nothing that can keep water from rising when it wants to spill over the top of a mound of clay."

Elinor wasn't to be meddled with during these days. There was something volatile in her temper, in her manner, and in her opinions. Her supper invitation to Mary-Love was not repeated, and though she had made curtains for Sister and Early's marriage chamber, she never even so much as welcomed them back from their honeymoon.

One day when Mary-Love was visiting Creola Sapp, down with some sort of winter fever, she found Creola's youngest child crawling about the floor wearing a dress that she, Mary-Love, had made for Miriam a year earlier. The garment had been one of the many articles of baby clothing that she had turned over to Elinor for the use of Frances, and which Elinor had accepted with apparent grat.i.tude.

"Oh, yes, ma'am," said Creola, when questioned, "Miss El'nor good to me, bring me out a whole box of things for Luvadia. Prettiest things you ever saw!"

"Ill say they are, Creola. I'll just say they are!" murmured Mary-Love, furious that Elinor would give all those fine things away to Creola Sapp. She was even more distressed about Elinor's action because it had been discovered by merest accident- that is to say, it had not been done simply for effect. To Mary-Love, to do a thing not merely for effect argued a perversity in Elinor's character. It quite took away Mary-Love's breath.

Mary-Love rushed home and ran upstairs to Sister, who was in the nursery with Miriam. Mary-Love waxed indignant over the notion of those fine clothes going directly from their precious Miriam, two years old, and she cried unless there was a tiny diamond bracelet clapped around her wrist, to Luvadia Sapp, a fat grinning morsel of alligator bait crawling 126.

around on the splintery boards of a crumbling shack in the piney woods. "I cain't understand why Elinor would do a thing like that!" cried Mary-Love, but included in her frustration was her inability to understand anything her daughter-in-law did.

Sister's teeth went clack-clack. She said, "Mama, Elinor is upset." , "What have I done now?"

"Elinor's not upset because of you, Mama. She's upset because they have started to work on the levee, and she hates that levee the way you and I hate h.e.l.l and the Republicans."

Mary-Love looked first at Sister, then out the window at Elinor's house as if that facade, perhaps in the configuration of draperies opened and draperies closed, might provide confirmation of Sister's thesis. Then she glanced down at Miriam toddling gravely across the rug, and said, "Sister, I think you may be right about that."

Frances caught a bit of a cold late in February, a little cold that Roxie said was no more than any child could suffer at that time of the year and at her time of life. Dr. Benquith saw the child and agreed with Roxie. Despite the rea.s.surances, Elinor insisted that the child was in danger of her very life. She told Oscar that for the time being she would sleep in the nursery in case the child should experience difficulty in breathing. Oscar, who could scarcely bring himself to argue against the well-being of his daughter, acquiesced to this. A cot was set up in the nursery and Elinor abandoned her husband's bed.

Frances, to all appearances, soon got over the cold, but Elinor continued to stay with her day and night. Mary-Love and Sister next door speculated that Elinor remained as close to the child as she did not for Frances's protection and comfort, but rather so that no one might discern that the child was totally 127.

recovered. In any case, Frances's illness, whether supposed or real, went on and on, and it kept Elinor indoors. Her only foray into Perdido society was her Tuesday bridge games, and these she insisted be held, ignoring rotation, in her own home for the duration of the child's danger.

Queenie Strickland saw more of Elinor than anyone else. Queenie believed in Frances's illness, mainly because it seemed politic to do so. She frequently pa.s.sed on to Elinor magazine articles that gave precise instructions for the care of ailing infants. She purchased little bottles of quackery at the pharmacy, tied the necks with pink ribbons, and waved them like a pendulum in Frances's face. She came daily to ask after the child, and to relate to Elinor the progress of the levee. From Queenie alone did Elinor accept such news, and as the two women sat in the swing on the second-floor porch, Elinor gazed out through the screens at the Perdido and listened tight-lipped as Queenie spoke: "Yesterday afternoon Sister was down in Baptist Bottom, and on the spot she hired three colored women to work in the kitchen. They gone get two dollars a day and not gone do nothing in this world but cook for seventy-five men. I wish / got paid like that for cooking for Malcolm and Lucille! Then over at the mill, they tore down those 'little store-buildings that are right on the edge of the river, and some other men were there building 'em right back up again except thirty feet back, and this time they are putting in windows 'cause those buildings are so hot in the summer that the men cain't hardly stand to go in there. And Mr. Avant and Early rode out to Mr. Madsen's-where Mary-Love gets her potatoes?-and told him they'd pay him two dollars for every wagonload of dirt they took out from behind his house. Y'see, he's got this mound right in back of his house-they say it's Indian burying ground and some old Indian bones are 128.

laying at the bottom of it pro'bly, and Mr. Madsen says if they find the bones they got to take them away with everything else. He says he was planning to clear it off and plant potatoes back there anyway, but he'll take the two dollars if they offer it to him, he's not proud..."

Because Elinor never objected to hearing these things, and because she had once cautioned Queenie not to tell anyone that she listened to them, Queenie understood that it had become her duty to find out everything there was to know about the building of the levee and to report it directly to Elinor. It was as if Elinor had been a proud sovereign, and the levee builders of Perdido had been her subjects raising earthen barricades and fomenting rebellion. Queenie was the loyal spy who reported every movement of the rabble so that her sovereign might know everything and yet still maintain the appearance of being above such small considerations.

The Hines brothers continued work on the dormitory and dining room for the expected workers. Early and Sister went around Baptist Bottom knocking on doors looking for people in need of employment. Every Thursday the Perdido Standard was filled with long articles detailing the preparations under way for the construction of the levee, always including at least one photograph of Early Haskew. In general, the town wound itself up very tightly in preparation for the very first wagonload of dirt to be spilled out onto the bank of the Perdido River. As all these events were rumbling along with ever-increasing speed and ever-increasing noise, Elinor Caskey kept more and more to her own house, and was never seen anywhere near the construction.

CHAPTER 23.

Queenie's Visitor

Work on the levee began on the Baptist Bottom bank of the Perdido south of the junction. Early hired men in Pensacola, Mobile, Montgomery, and even from as far away as Tallaha.s.see, to come and live for a year or so in the dormitory. Quarries in three counties were widened and deepened as stone and earth were extracted and loaded onto trucks or mule wagons. Every morning these vehicles lumbered into town along each of the three roads by which Perdido was accessible to the rest of the civilized world. A few small houses had been razed in Baptist Bottom and the first loads of dirt dropped there, the loose earth packed and molded by an army of colored men with spanking-new shovels. This first wall of clay seemed no more than a child's mud castle raised to enormous and ridiculous size, so that everyone won- 131.

dered if so fragile-seeming an embankment could hold against the river if it took it in its mind to rise?

Every day the local colored population gathered and watched for hours with never-failing interest as the same actions and motions were performed over and over again: a wagon pulled up, dirt and clay were unloaded, dirt and clay were raised to the top of the mound under the direction of an overseer, dirt and clay were tamped into place. On the other side of the river, in the field behind the town hall, an equal number of idle white people gathered and gawked equally hard. Both groups of spectators declared that it was such a slow and such a ma.s.sive job that there could be no hope of its being finished within their children's lifetimes. Perhaps Early Has-kew was a great confidence man and nothing more. Hadn't they better stop the business right now?

A month or so later, one of the early morning gawkers behind the town hall looked across the Per-dido and seemed to see the earthwork with new eyes. Previously, the mound of earth on the Baptist Bottom sh.o.r.e had seemed shapeless and amorphous to this man; but this day, in the morning air, without much actual change from the morning before, it seemed a gaudy vision of what the whole rampart would eventually be. This man, astounded by his sudden visionary extrapolation, pointed out what he saw to the next gawker. The second man was even more astonished, for he saw it too, and he had been one of the levee's most vociferous detractors. The word-or rather the vision-spread, from man to man and from woman to woman throughout Perdido, and everyone went over to Baptist Bottom and looked at the thing up close, and actually applauded Early Haskew when he drove up in his automobile. Suddenly the levee had become a great thing in Perdido.

This remarkable rampart was twenty-five feet 132.

wide at its base, about twenty-two feet high-depending upon the part of town-and about twelve feet broad at the top. With every fifty feet or so of the levee that was completed, a layer of topsoil was added to the top and sides, and immediately planted with gra.s.s. Black women in the community made forays into the forests and dug up smilax, small dogwoods, hollies, and wild roses, which were also planted in the red clay walls. Further to guard against erosion, Early had slips of kudzu placed at the base of the levee on both sides in great holes filled with pulverized cow manure. He had been a.s.sured that no amount of fertilizer could burn the roots of that rampaging vine.

Early and Morris Avant conferred every day, and Morris pointed out that the speed with which the levee could be built was in direct proportion to the number of men they had working on it. Early did a little figuring and a little more talking with Morris Avant and his foremen, then went back to the town council and asked whether they wouldn't authorize money for the building of another dormitory to house more workers. The cost would be offset by the overhead expenses saved in the quicker completion of the project. Early was told to do whatever he saw fit, and the Hines brothers went to work the next day.

Early did not worry about finding workers now to fill that dormitory, for it had become known all over south Alabama, south Mississippi, and the Florida panhandle that wages, room, and board were to be had in Perdido. So when the Hines brothers finished the second dormitory, and two more colored women had been hired on to help in the kitchens, every man in search of work on the levee was accommodated. They drifted in from G.o.d-knew-where, appearing suddenly out of the forest or entering town on the buckboard of a wagon bringing in clay or simply trudging in on the road from Atmore. They 133.

all went by nicknames, and none seemed to possess a history entirely unblemished.

These men worked so hard all day that it was a wonder that they had the energy, after the sun went down, to sit up for their meals in the dormitory kitchen. But the men ate voraciously, and seemed not to know the word "weariness." At night, even more so than during the day, Perdido seemed to have been invaded by these men; people now locked their doors. The levee-men were rowdy, and they consumed vast quant.i.ties of the liquor brewed up on Little Turkey Creek. Two little Indian girls on a swayback mule brought in ten gallons of the stuff each day and sold it at the dormitories every morning before school, entrusting the proceeds to their teacher until school was over. A gambling den run by Lum-mie Purifoy opened in Baptist Bottom; his ten-year-old daughter Ruel pa.s.sed her evening serving rotgut liquor by the tin-cupful. Two white women, it was whispered, had been driven up from Pensacola by a colored man in a yellow coat. They were the very lowest sort of white women, and actually rented a house in Baptist Bottom. The door of that house, it was said, was never closed to a man who knocked on it with a silver dollar in his fist. Perdido's three policemen tried to stay away from these purlieus of the levee-men at night; even with their pistols, they were no match for one hundred and seventy-five powerful, brawling drunks. It was a mercy that, after dark, these men tended to keep to themselves. Only occasionally might three or four of them be seen reeling up Palafox Street, leaning against store windows with closed drunken eyes; and once in a while they made nuisances of themselves in the audience at the Ritz Theater with rude noises and obscene commentary on the movies. Very occasionally a black man would have to bar his door and plead 134.

pitifully for the purity of his daughter while the daughter ran deftly out the back way.

Yet the white workers-no-good, unpleasant, and possibly dangerous-were a, necessary evil. They would go away after a year or so, but the levee they built would protect Perdido for an eternity.

It was the summer of 1923, and the whole town seemed to stink with the sweat of the levee-men. The construction on the eastern bank of the Perdido had been finished. Two sets of concrete steps had been built into the aides of the levee, and a track had been beaten into the earth along the top. This was a favorite promenade of the colored population after church on Sunday, and colored children played there all day. From the windows of the town hall, the levee was a bright red wall, and after a rain it became s.h.i.+ning red and was a dominant feature of the landscape.

Work had begun just behind the town hall now, and before long it would seem as if the Perdido below the junction were flowing meekly through a deep red gully. Already the river seemed to have surrendered much of its former belligerence and pride.

Beneath the constant heat, the workers were wearier than before, but instead of dampening their spirit at night, the warm weather seemed to cause them to drink more and to carouse with greater vehemence and noise. On these summer nights, when respectable Perdido sat on its porch for air after supper, the racket made by the workers on the far side of the river was a distant but very audible roar, punctuated occasionally by a coherent shout. Perdido rocked grimly, and fanned its face, and said in a low voice, / sure will be glad when those men have gone back to wherever it was they came from. And to be on the safe side, hunting guns that usually weren't taken out until deer season were cleaned and loaded 135.

and propped in the corner behind the front door. The unspoken fear was that the two white women from Pensacola who had taken up scandalous residence in Baptist Bottom would prove insufficient for the "needs" of the workers.

One night, in the midst of the heat-and the rocking, and the fanning, and the worry-the telephone rang in Oscar Caskey's house about ten o'clock, an advanced hour for the call to be anything but an emergency. Oscar and Elinor were sitting on their upstairs porch as usual and Oscar went to answer it. He came back in a few moments and said, a little uneasily, "It's Florida Benquith, she sounds worried."

Elinor got up and went to the telephone. Oscar hung about and listened to his wife's end of the conversation. This wasn't much, for Florida was a great talker and on this occasion she had more than usual to say.

"Listen, Elinor," she began without preamble, "I'm sorry to call you like this, but I thought you ought to know what happened-or what we think has happened, because we're not sure yet. I've just now sent Leo on over there."

"Are you talking about Queenie?" asked Elinor calmly.

"Of course I am! I was standing in my kitchen, Elinor, putting away plates. My window's open for a little breath of air and suddenly I hear all kinds of carrying-on coming from Queenie's house-and it's not Queenie going on after those two children either, it's Queenie's voice and a man's voice and who is Queenie arguing with? is all I can think. So I turn out the light and step out on the back porch so they cain't see me-I didn't want 'em to think I was spying, and anyway I wasn't, I just wanted to make sure Queenie was all right-and I'm listening but I cain't tell what anybody is saying but they keep 136.

on with it. Then I hear Queenie holler 'No!' and then I don't hear anything else. Elinor, I tell you, I was starting to get worried."

"What'd you do?" said Elinor.

"I run to get Leo. He's in the living room, reading. I bring him out on the porch and I tell him what I heard and we just stand there listening, but we cain't hear much. We cain't hear anything at all, in fact, and I tell him what I heard before and he says, 'It's probably James Caskey over there telling Queenie she's spending too much money down at Berta's, that's probably what you heard.' I say to him, 'If it's James Caskey visiting over there, then why are all the lights out?' And he doesn't know. So we just stand there in the dark, and then I say to Leo, 'Leo, maybe I ought to give a call over there and make sure she's all right.' And Leo says, 'That's a good idea,' and I'm just about to go inside and pick up the telephone when Leo whispers to me, 'Stop.' So I stop and I look out across the yard and there is somebody coming out of the back door of Queenie's house and it's a man."

"What man?" asked Elinor.

"That's just it, we have no idea what man. But, Elinor, both Leo and I were almost positive it was a levee-man. He snuck around the front of the house and looked around and then he took off like lightning. I know it was a levee-man, I just know it and I think something happened to Queenie, so I sent Leo right over there. I told him don't even knock, just go on in, and he did it. So he's over there now and I'm on my way over and, Elinor, I think you better come too."

Florida hung up and Elinor turned to her husband and said: "Well, Oscar, it looks like one of your levee-men has gone and raped Queenie Strickland."

In the darkened room Queenie sat weeping on the edge of the bed. She had pulled on a skirt, but hadn't 137.

bothered to b.u.t.ton it. Her underslip was soiled and torn, and she had drawn a house jacket around her bruised shoulders. Florida had made some of Elinor's special Russian tea and taken it to her, but the cup sat untasted on the small table beside the bed. Elinor and Oscar arrived, and Florida said immediately, "Well, Elinor, you've just got to talk to her. She won't let us call Mr. Wiggins." Aubrey Wiggins was the chief of the three-man Perdido police force.

Leo Benquith came in from the kitchen.

"Is she all right, Dr. Benquith?" Elinor asked.

Dr. Benquith shook his head. "Elinor, what happened here tonight..."

"I know, I know," said Elinor soothingly as she sat down on the bed and put her arm about Queenie's shoulder.

Oscar, standing ineffectually by, could only think to say, "Queenie, did you have your door locked?"

Queenie paid no attention to anyone, but continued to sob convulsively.

"Where are the children?" asked Oscar.

"They slept through everything, thank the Lord," said Florida. "So I sent them over to my. house. They're fine."

"You didn't tell those children what happened, did you?" asked Elinor sharply.

"'Course not!" replied Florida. "But, Elinor, we got to do something. That levee-man walked into this house, and he"-out of consideration for Queenie she did not finish the sentence; but then she went on quite as if she had-"and so we got to call up Mr. Wiggins."

Queenie reached over and squeezed Elinor's hand pathetically, as much as to say, Don't...

"No," said Elinor. "Don't call Mr. Wiggins. We don't want to say anything. And, Florida," Elinor went on, turning to Florida and eyeing her with pur- 138.

pose, "you are not to say anything to anybody, you hear?"

"Elinor-" began Oscar, but was interrupted by Leo Benquith.

"This could happen to other people, Elinor. We got to find the man who did this and string him up on the nearest tree. Or buy him a ticket on the Hummingbird-or something. Queenie, you think you could recognize the man who came in here tonight?"

Queenie drew in her breath sharply and held it. With weary eyes she looked around the room and held each person's gaze for a moment. She swallowed back another sob and then said in a low voice, "Yes. I know the man who did it."

"Well, then," said Leo Benquith, "we ought to get Wiggins over to that dormitory right now and drag that man down to the jail. Soon as you feel-"

"No!" cried Queenie.

There was a moment's silence, then Elinor asked, "Who was it, Queenie?"

Queenie sat very still and tried to control her shaking. She closed her eyes and then said, "It was Carl. That's who it was. It was my husband."

Nothing was to be done, then. Leo and Florida Benquith went home; there wasn't any danger that the doctor would say anything, for doctors, after all, held many confidences. Both he and Elinor extracted ironbound oaths from Florida that she would say nothing to anyone. Leaving Malcolm and Lucille with the Benquiths, Elinor and Oscar took Queenie home with them. They went very quietly into the house, hoping to escape the eagle notice of Mary-Love next door.

Upstairs in the bathroom Elinor stripped off Queenie's clothes and set her in a bathtub filled with hot water and sweet-smelling salts. Queenie sat un-moving as Elinor washed her all over. That night 139.

Queenie and Elinor slept together in the large bed in the front room.

The next morning, as Queenie picked at her breakfast, Elinor sat by the window and cut up all the clothing that Queenie had worn the night before. She made Queenie watch as she tossed the sc.r.a.ps into Roxie's stove.

Somehow, Carl Strickland had found Queenie out. Probably it hadn't been difficult, for the Snyders- Queenie's family-were nearly all dead, and the ones that weren't dead were dirt poor. It could only have been logical to look for Queenie in Perdido, where her rich brother-in-law owned a sawmill and forest land that a million birds could nest in. Penniless, indigent, forsaken by what little respectability his wife had afforded him, Carl b.u.mmed his way down from Nashville. He had been casually offered employment on the levee. He took it, worked part of one day, and found out the whereabouts of his wife that very evening. He cajoled his way into her house and demanded money and support. Fighting with her when she refused him, he hit her, ravished her, and slipped away into the darkness.

Early next morning, Oscar drove down to a work site near the town hall where he knew the most inexperienced men had been set to work and without any difficulty found Carl sullenly helping to turn over a wagonload of clay. Carl was tall and thin, with a coa.r.s.e face that showed in every crease the man's ill-humor toward the world. Oscar casually called him over and said, "You're Carl Strickland. I believe I met you at Genevieve's funeral."

The easy tone of his voice made Carl grin, for he knew all of Queenie's in-laws were rich, and he somehow had it in his mind that they would just as soon a.s.sist him as not. "That's right. I 'member you, too. You're Mr. Caskey, you're old James's nephew, 140.

right? Genevieve sure had it easy, living with a man like that. You got as much money as him?"

Oscar smiled, looked around curiously at the work progressing about them, glanced down at his shoes, then up at Carl again, and said, "Mr. Strickland, I got a little something to say to you..."

"What?"

"You better pack your portmanteau and hop on the back of the next conveyance out of this town."