Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga by Michael McDowell Page A

as bad off as anybody in this town—in fact, worse than most!”
    “I know it,” said Oscar softly. “I cain’t understand why Mama took such a whole-cloth disliking to her. Makes things hard.”
    “Mary-Love doesn’t want me to do anything,” James agreed, tapping a bony finger against Oscar’s pillow next to Oscar’s nose. “Mary-Love doesn’t want me to address another word in Miss Elinor’s direction.”
    “But you are gone do something, aren’t you, James?”
    “Of course, I am! I’m gone get her a job. She’s gone be teaching in September. In fact, she may have to start as soon as we get the school back open, because I don’t think Byrl and Edna McGhee are even gone try to clean up their house, though I don’t think there’s probably more than two feet of mud on their kitchen floor. If they go—and Edna’s got people in Tallahassee who’ll take her and Byrl in right now—then Miss Elinor can start at the school right away.”
    “Well, that’s good,” said the younger man, and looked over his uncle’s shoulder at the rising moon through the window. “But where is she gone live? She cain’t go back to the Osceola—they charge two dollars a day. A fourth-grade teacher doesn’t make that kind of money—not two dollars a day and having to buy food, too.”
    “I’ve already thought about it, Oscar,” said James. “And what I’ve decided is—she’s gone stay with Grace and me.”
    “What?” Oscar exclaimed so loudly that the Driver boys paused in their snoring as if to hear more or perhaps in order to incorporate the exclamation into their dreams. “What?” Oscar repeated in a far softer voice when the boys’ snoring had resumed.
    “When we get the house cleaned up, I mean,” said James. “Grace loves Miss Elinor to death, and hasn’t known her since yesterday morning.”
    “She’s gone live with you!”
    “We got room,” said Oscar. “There’s Grace, that loves her.”
    “James, what about Genevieve? What you imagine Genevieve is gone say when she comes back from Nashville and sees Miss Elinor sitting on the front porch with Grace in her lap?”
    James Caskey turned over, away from his nephew. He didn’t answer.
    “What you gone say to Genevieve, James?” demanded Oscar in a whisper. “And for that matter, what you gone say to Mama?”
    “Lord!” said James after a time, stretching his feet against the iron bars at the foot of the bed, “aren’t you tired, Oscar? Aren’t you worn out? I am. I got to get to sleep or I’m not gone be able to get up in the morning at all!”
    . . .
    The sun shone bright and hot all day Easter and for the next three days. The floodwaters evaporated or they ran down to the Gulf of Mexico or they sank into the sodden earth.
    The inhabitants of Perdido came down from high ground into the town and slogged up to the doors of their homes to find that the mud had got inside, that their heaviest and best pieces of furniture had floated up to the ceiling, and later when the water receded, had been left in broken heaps on the floor. Mortar had washed out of brick foundations, and every board that had lain underwater was warped. Porches had collapsed. The rigid limbs of pigs and calves stuck out of the muck in everyone’s front yard. There were drowned chickens on the stairs. Machinery of all kinds was clogged with sludge, and though patient little colored girls were set to the task of cleaning, all the mud was never to be got out again. Gas tanks and oil drums had floated out of the mill storage yards and smashed through the windows of houses, as if on purpose to wreak the greatest damage possible. Half the stained-glass windows of the churches had been broken. Hymnbooks in their racks on the backs of pews had become so saturated with water that they had, in their expansion, split the wood. The works of the new pipe organ at the Methodist church were filled with mud. There wasn’t a single shop on Palafox Street that didn’t lose its