CHAPTER 68

New Year’s

Though she was bone weary, Miriam was up late the night of her return from Texas. Sister wouldn’t let her go to bed. Sister was angry that Miriam had stayed away so long. Sister was mad that Miriam had telephoned so infrequently. Sister first wanted to hear Miriam tell one story, about her success with the oil companies for instance, but almost as quickly as Miriam had begun it, Sister interrupted with a demand for another tale altogether. “Tell me what you thought when you saw Malcolm standing at that stove in the barbecue restaurant, darling.” Sister’s mind wouldn’t stay fixed. One minute she would be demanding that Miriam walk across the room and hug her, and the next Sister would almost weep for her own unhappiness at being abandoned for such a protracted time.

“You know what happened to me when you were gone?” Sister said accusingly.

“What?” said Miriam wearily, sitting in a wicker chair next to the door, as if to make a very quick exit if Sister would ever let her go.

“You know who walked in this house right through the front screen door and nobody lifted a finger to stop him from doing it?”

“Who?”

“Early. Early walked right in the door in the middle of the night. Walked right in this room one night and said, ‘Sister, come back to Mobile with me.’ Tried to pull me out of the bed. I said, ‘Early, my legs will crumble right under me and you will have a mess on your hands.’ I told him, ‘Early, I’m a cripple.’ He said, ‘You’re not,’ and said, ‘When you get out of that bed, I’m coming to get you.’ ”

Miriam’s head lolled. She scarcely followed Sister’s report.

“So you know what that means?” cried Sister angrily.

“What?” murmured Miriam.

“It means I will never leave this bed again. That’s what it means.”

This did get Miriam’s attention, and she looked up. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do.”

“You are in that bed waiting for your leg to mend. You should have been up a month ago at the least.”

“I’m never gone leave this bed,” Sister repeated adamantly. “Not if Early Haskew is in his car parked out front looking in my windows with field glasses waiting to see me hobble down the hall so he can run in and get me.”

“Early’s not going to come and get you,” said Miriam. “He cain’t take you away if you don’t want to go.”

“We’re married!”

“Doesn’t make any difference,” said Miriam, shaking her head.

“Fix my pillows,” said Sister.

“I will not,” said Miriam, her strength returning with her anger. “If you think for one minute that you are going to lie in that bed and be waited on by all of us for the rest of your life, giving up our comfort and our free time in order to plump your pillows and empty your bed pans and bring you magazines, you are sadly mistaken, Sister.”

“My leg hurts so bad, Miriam! Why do you want to talk to me like that? Why do you want to say harsh words to an old crippled woman like me? An old crippled woman who cain’t even get out of the bed to go to the bathroom when she has to go?”

“You’re no more crippled than I am,” said Miriam, now totally revived. “If I were smart, what I’d do is drive you way out in the country, open the car door and push you out and make you walk back to Perdido.”

“You’d do it too, wouldn’t you!” cried Sister. “I bet you would, for meanness’ sake.”

“I’m not the mean one anymore,” remarked Miriam. “I’m not the one who makes Queenie stay over here with me seven hours a day when she could be doing whatever she wanted to be doing in her own house. I’m not the one who makes it impossible for Ivey to get any work done because she has to run upstairs every three minutes to do something for the cripple in the bed. I’m not the one who keeps somebody up far into the night, somebody who’s just come back from a long hard trip.”

“That’s me, I suppose. I suppose you’re talking about me.”

“I am,” declared Miriam, rising.

Sister picked up a magazine of crossword puzzles from her bedside table and flung it at Miriam. It sailed through the air and struck Miriam on the inside of her elbow.

“Good-night to you, too,” said Miriam and stalked out of the room.

Sister screamed out: “Miriam, wait! Wait!”

Miriam marched down the hall and turned back only when she had reached the door of her room.

Peering down to the end of the hall and in through the open doorway of Sister’s room, she saw Sister struggle to get out of the bed. She watched as Sister pushed aside the mountain of pillows on which she had rested for so long and with a loud groan turn herself sideways on the bed and force her legs off the side.

“Miriam!” Sister called.

“I’m here.”

Sister slid carefully off the side of the bed until her feet touched the floor. Gradually she increased her weight on them until she let go the bed, which she had been using as support.

“See!” cried Miriam. “You’re not a cripple.”

Sister took a step toward the hallway. Then another. Suddenly her left leg jackknifed and she dropped to the floor in a heap. Her pale brow hit the polished wooden floor with a resounding thud.

Miriam ran back down the hall and into the room. She gathered Sister up—it was no difficulty, as Sister was woefully thin—and lifted her back onto the bed. Then, one limb at a time, Miriam made Sister comfortable on the high mattress, arranging the covers over her and the pillows behind her. She wet a cloth in the bathroom and bathed the bump on Sister’s forehead.

“Fix my pillows,” Sister groaned. Miriam did so.

“Are you are all right now?”

“No,” said Sister. “You have just turned me into a living temple of pain.”

“Do you want me to call Leo Benquith?”

“What good could he do? Call Queenie.”

“Not at this time of night with Malcolm just back!”

“I know they’re up over there, they’re bound to be, with you bringing Malcolm back and all.”

“I’m not going to ask Queenie to come over here at one o’clock in the morning,” said Miriam.

“She’ll come,” said Sister confidently. “She always does.”

Miriam said nothing. She merely turned and walked out of the room.

Sister picked up the telephone, and while waiting for the operator to come on, she called out to the retreating Miriam, “See, I told you I was a cripple.”

Despite the lateness of the hour, as Sister had predicted, everyone in Queenie’s household was still up when Sister called. Queenie had taken Malcolm home, pushed him into the bedroom, pressed him into the bathroom, received his reeking clothes through the cracked door, shoved others in, and actually sat on the edge of the bed biting her fingernails while Malcolm bathed away the smell of grease and barbecue sauce and replaced it with the fragrance of the best of James’s scented soaps.

Afterward, with Malcolm squeezed tightly into a pair of Oscar’s trousers and one of his shirts, the reunited family sat in the living room staring at one another. Grace had taken Tommy Lee back to Gavin Pond Farm, but had left Lucille at her mother’s. “I want to hear what Malcolm has got to say for himself,” said Lucille. “Four years and not one word!”

Malcolm, it turned out, had little to say. He had been in the army, which they all knew. He had trained in North Dakota, fought in Italy, and been honorably discharged in Massachusetts. He had learned two skills: bricklaying and cooking for crowds. After leaving the army, he had laid brick sidewalks in Boston, but union difficulties had relieved him of that job. He had come south and found work with a contracting firm in Little Rock. Fired from a job the company was working on in Jackson, he had picked up work at a downtown diner. The barbecue restaurant had been his fourth position as cook.

“Doesn’t sound like you were building up much of a homelife,” remarked Lucille, to whom homelife had become important.

“I was not,” said Malcolm contritely.

“This is your home,” said Queenie.

Malcolm did not answer, but it appeared to his mother and sister that he was not denying the proposition. His silence implied he felt unworthy of his mother’s kindness.

“You think Oscar or somebody could find me some work around here?” he asked.

“Doing what?” Queenie asked.

“Cooking, maybe. Or laying bricks.”

“Which do you like better?” asked Lucille.

Malcolm shrugged. “Don’t much matter to me.”

“Lord,” said Queenie, “I’m sure they can find you something, Malcolm. I don’t know, maybe they’re gone want to brick in the levee or something. I just want to know, Malcolm—”

“What, Ma?”

“If we did find you something, would you stay around? And be good? And work at it, whatever it was?”

“Oh, Ma,” said Malcolm softly. “You don’t know me no more. See, what you remember about me is that trial and getting in trouble with Travis Gann and all that and almost going to jail. See, that’s what you think when you call me up in your mind. But that’s not me anymore. I wasn’t even twenty years old then. Now I’m almost thirty. I was in the army six years and four months. And I’ve been here and I’ve been there, holding down jobs, meeting people. Bricklaying’s all right when it’s nice out, but not in the sun. Cooking’s all right if you don’t mind smelling of grease and always being sweaty and dirty. There was times I got fired, and I got fired ’cause I got mad or somebody got mad at me and we got in a fight or something, but most of the time it wasn’t my fault. I’d tell you if it was, but it wasn’t. Ma, you probably think I was away ten years and I got to be just like Pa was. But I’m not like him. I never went to jail, I wasn’t arrested but once and that was up in Boston in a bar, and that wasn’t even my fight. That was somebody else’s fight and they just hauled us all off. That’s all that was. So I see y’all looking at me like ‘Who’s he gone beat up next?’ and ‘Who’d he kill last week?’ but that’s not it.”

Queenie, who had been sitting at the other end of the sofa from Malcolm, jumped suddenly closer and embraced him.

“I know it’s not! I always knew it wasn’t!”

Malcolm laughed. “No, you didn’t. Did she, Lucille? You thought I was wasting away in a state pen somewhere, that’s what you thought, wasn’t it, Ma?”

Queenie shook her head. “I thought you died on Iwo Jima.”

Sister called then, demanding Queenie’s presence. Queenie pressed her weary son into bed, and then went next door and heard Sister’s complaints until dawn.

The next day, Queenie took Malcolm to Pensacola and bought him new clothes. He was alarmed by the amount of money she spent on him and protested against such prodigality.

“Malcolm,” Queenie protested, “I’ve got the money. What better thing can I do with it than spend it on my children? Malcolm, you want me to buy you this whole store? ’Cause I could!”

At subsequent meals at Elinor’s, Malcolm’s future was discussed at length. Bricklaying and cooking for large groups were not skills demanded by Perdido, and anyway Queenie thought it was time Malcolm had a respectable job. Malcolm’s skills, though, were meager, employment was scarce, and nobody—it seemed for a time—had any use for him. The weeks went by, and time hung heavy on Malcolm’s hands.

When he was very busy, Billy Bronze would call up Malcolm and ask him to run down to Pensacola or Mobile and deliver papers or pick up papers or transact some small piece of business. Malcolm consented, and Queenie usually went along for the ride. Billy told Miriam about Malcolm’s usefulness, and she employed him in a similar manner to carry cash out to a farmer in Washington County who distrusted checks or to deliver a bushel of fresh corn from Gavin Pond Farm to the wife of the Representative to Congress.

Malcolm became known in the family for his willingness to perform these trivial but time-consuming and inconvenient errands. Soon he was doing jobs for Elinor and Sister as well. If a gutter came down in a storm, Malcolm arranged for someone to come and fix it. If a dress bought in Mobile was the wrong size, Malcolm returned it. If train tickets were needed, Malcolm drove up to Atmore and got the right ones. He kept the Caskey cars serviced and filled with gas. He made sure wood and coal were ordered, and he swatted the bats that sometimes flew down Elinor’s chimneys. He was unable to repair a carpet sweeper himself, but he could be certain that the job was done within the day. If anything went wrong in any of the Caskey houses, the Caskeys sat back and said, “Somebody call up Malcolm and tell him to take care of it.” By the end of the summer Malcolm was as busy as Miriam and Billy in their offices. He had become a sort of major domo to the Caskeys, and they began to wonder how they had ever done without him. Billy offered him a salary.

“But what is my job?” he asked. “I’m happy to do all these things, ’cause I’m really not doing anything else.”

“Keeping things going smoothly is worth money, Malcolm,” said Billy. “And we can afford to pay you. Take the money.”

The Caskeys scarcely remembered the old Malcolm with this new Malcolm before them. It was universally agreed that he must have had a difficult time away from Perdido. He was quiet, but he wasn’t meek; he was controlled. His temper remained, but when he felt it rising over some perceived slight or contretemps, he would walk away, fling large rocks at the nearest object unlikely to be injured by such an attack, slug down a bottle of warm beer from a case that he always kept in the back of the car, and soon he was placid again. At times his moodiness was of longer duration. He then kept to his room. Queenie would put food on a tray and leave it outside his door. No one attempted to coax him out, and afterward no one asked what the trouble was.

Miriam treated Malcolm as she treated everyone: offhandedly, impatiently, and with a sometimes grueling forthrightness. Queenie cringed at some of the things Miriam said to her son, but Malcolm defended Miriam: “What she says is right, Mama, and you know it.”

“She doesn’t have to say it out loud, though, Malcolm, and certainly not where other people can hear it.”

Miriam was busy. The oil companies had, with one exception, tele­phoned, asking for more information. The executives could scarcely believe that Miriam on the telephone from her office in Perdido was the same “hapless” lady in the feminine dresses who had sighed and protested in their offices in Texas and Oklahoma. To them all, Miriam said, “You’re not the only ones interested. Send a man out here to see me first, and I’ll show him what’s what. Then you can send somebody else to talk money.”

She wouldn’t listen to first offers of contracts for exploratory drilling. The men on the phone always attempted to persuade her: “Let us handle it all for you, Miss Caskey.”

“No, thank you,” Miriam would reply crisply. “If you’re really interested, send me a geologist, an engineer, an accountant, and a lawyer. And then we’ll talk some business.”

And so over the next few weeks, men of those professions began arriving in Perdido, at staggered intervals, and were put up at the Osceola Hotel. Miriam and Malcolm would drive them out to Gavin Pond Farm and introduce them to Grace and Lucille. In two small boats with motors, Malcolm and Grace guided the oil company men through the swamp. Miriam would sit in the prow of one boat and Lucille in the prow of the other, holding aloft paddles to beat off alligators and water moccasins. Miriam was no longer frightened of the swamp, because she perceived it to be in the interests of business.

Miriam knew these trips were unnecessary, because her own geologists’ and engineers’ reports were sufficient. She wanted, however, to find out something about the differences in the oil companies, and did not see a better way of doing this than by meeting their chosen representatives.

A month after her return from Texas, Miriam and the other Caskeys signed a preliminary contract allowing Texas National Oil to drill two exploratory wells in the swamp. Theirs was not the highest bid but, certain that there was oil beneath the swamp, Miriam had been more interested in contracting for favorable percentages after the oil had been found and extracted. Texas National raised the Caskey royalty schedule two points in exchange for Miriam’s agreement to bear the cost of one of the two exploratory wells. It was anticipated that six months’ time would be required to work out details and to transport the proper machinery to Florida, where no one had ever drilled before.

“Those things cost a lot of money,” said Oscar at supper the evening following the final signing of the papers. “Are you sure that was a smart thing to do?”

Miriam shrugged. “We’ll make it up in the first year from the percentage they’re offering.”

“If there’s oil,” Oscar pointed out.

“Elinor says there is,” said Miriam, glancing at her mother across the table. “And that’s what I’m going on. If we all end up at the poor farm, y’all can blame Elinor and not me.”

Because of the mill, the town bustled and thrived, while the Perdido and Black­water rivers flowed so peacefully and out of sight beyond the red levees. Frances Caskey swam in the Perdido every day—that was known in town, and a fact sometimes used as an argument by ten- and eleven-year-old boys whose parents had placed the river off-limits.

“Frances Caskey,” their parents pointed out, “was teaching swimming out at Lake Pinchona before you were born, and if her family wants to let her risk her life every afternoon, they can. But you, young man, are not going to be sucked down to the bottom of the junction. That is that.”

These parents didn’t know, however, of the time-honored custom among boys in Perdido of skinny-dipping in the river on New Year’s Day. The ritual was not exactly pleasant, for the water was cold at the beginning of January. Among the boys, however, this rite was both a statement of imagined independence and a kind of dare brought about by the experience and example of older brothers. A spot south of town, where the Perdido is wide and shallow, was usually chosen; not even ten-year-olds wanted to risk the danger of being sucked into the whirlpool at the junction. On New Year’s Day of 1948, seven young Perdido boys sneaked out of their houses at nine o’clock in the morning and variously made their way to the clandestine place. The day was overcast and chilly as they shucked their jackets, shirts, suspenders, trousers, and underwear. One by one they dived into the water, employing the broken-off trunk of a fallen tree for a springboard. The water was colder than any of them imagined, and the boys’ teeth chattered in the water even as they shouted for their reluctant companions to jump in. Finally, even the most timid boy had slipped down the muddy bank and flailed screaming into the cold muddy water. The seven boys swam around, bared their chattering teeth, dunked and splashed about, and eventually agreed that it was time to get out.

Six boys scrambled up the muddy bank.

The seventh—the younger Gully boy, whose father owned Perdido’s car dealership—was missing. His friends ran up and down the bank, calling his name frantically. They plied the water with long sticks; they screamed into the air imprecations against him for scaring them so; they stared helplessly at the swiftly flowing muddy water and swore a blood oath that none of them would reveal that they had been a party to the disappearance of their companion. They knew their parents would never allow them out of the house again. They crept home by various routes, ready with elaborate excuses—trembling victims of guilt.

By the end of that day, Mrs. Gully realized that her boy was missing. A great hue and cry went up. The other six boys, his friends, were questioned. Their teeth chattered as they spoke the lie, but each maintained he knew nothing at all. The missing boy’s clothing was found on the banks of the Perdido, and the Gullys were astonished that their son seemed to have gone swimming, alone, on New Year’s Day. The Gullys, who had lived in Perdido all their lives, knew how many children those red, muddy waters had swallowed already. They did not expect to see their son again. An old man with a grappling hook was sent out on the river for a few days, but that was only for form’s sake and the comfort of the grandparents in Mississippi. The Perdido, everyone knew, never gave up its dead.

New Year’s Day of 1948 was a Thursday. That evening at supper Frances Bronze had appeared troubled, and after the meal, when most everyone was in the front parlor, Elinor motioned to her daughter to follow her upstairs.

“What is wrong, darling?” said Elinor, as she ushered her daughter into her bedroom and closed the door. Frances sat on the edge of her parents’ bed and glanced out the window at the mass of water oaks.

“Little boy died today, Mama. Gully boy.”

“I heard they were looking for him,” said Elinor guardedly. “I didn’t hear they had found him.”

“They haven’t found him,” said Frances slowly. “They won’t.”

Elinor went to the window. “Nerita?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Frances.

When Elinor turned around, Frances was weeping softly.

“Darling,” said Elinor, “these things happen.”

“I told her not to do something like that! I told her never to go near people in the water. Why cain’t she just eat fish! She loves catfish.”

“Well,” said Elinor softly, “you cain’t make a whole diet out of catfish.”

“Mama!”

Elinor sat beside Frances and put her arm around her. “Listen, honey, you’ve got to remember. Nerita’s not like you and me. You and I can get along pretty well on Dollie’s beef and pork and veal—and Malcolm’s venison when he goes out in the woods and shoots a deer. But where is Nerita going to get pork and beef and veal and venison? She’s a big girl now, but she’s still growing. She probably thought she needed it—”

“Mama! What if they started hunting for her!”

Elinor smiled. “They couldn’t find her, darling. Nerita would just sit at the bottom of the junction until they went away. I’d like to see somebody try to pull anything up out of there.”

“Aren’t you upset about the Gully boy, Mama? You know that boy’s parents, and they’re real sweet. Queenie is always buying a new car from that man, and he’s always so polite to us.”

“Of course, I’m sorry for them,” said Elinor. “But there’s nothing we can do. And what was that boy doing in the river on New Year’s Day anyway? It’s cold out there!”

“Nerita said there were a bunch of them down there, below town. She said”—here Frances grimaced—“that she could have gotten them all if she had wanted to.”

Elinor smiled, and there was something of pride in it. She said, “There’s no stopping that girl, is there?”

“No, ma’am.”

Mother and daughter were silent for a few moments.

“There’s something else bothering you, isn’t there?”

Frances nodded.

“What is it?”

“I don’t think I want to tell.”

“But you’ll tell anyway, won’t you? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have come up here with me. You wouldn’t have told me anything, if you weren’t going to tell me everything. What is it?”

“Nerita didn’t eat all of the Gully boy.”

“No?” said Elinor.

“No, she saved me part.”