BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family by Michael McDowell Read Free Book Online Page A

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 of Palafox Street that didn't lose its entire stock. And there wasn't a square foot of property in the entire town that didn't stink—of river mud and dead things and rotting clothing, rotting wood, and rotting food.
    The National Guard and the Red Cross had arrived before the floodwaters had receded, bringing blankets and cans of pork and beans and newspapers and medicine to the encampments that surrounded the town. The National Guard remained a week longer than the Red Cross and assisted the mill workers in clearing away the largest pieces of wreckage. It was estimated by James Caskey, Tom De-Bordenave, and Henry Turk that the three mills combined had lost a million and a half board feet of pine—warped, washed down to the Gulf, or simply come to rest and rot in the submerged forest around Perdido.
    The worst-hit portion of town was Baptist Bottom. Half the houses had been totally destroyed; the remainder were severely damaged. Those blacks who had had so little before the flood now possessed nothing at all. These unfortunate householders were the first assisted. Mary-Love and Sister and Caroline DeBordenave and Manda Turk spent all day at the Bethel Rest Baptist Church feeding colored children rice and peaches, when they might have been at home superintending the cleaning of their own houses.
    The homes of the workers were water-damaged, but for the most part intact. The homes of the shopkeepers, dentists, and young lawyers had fared best, for they had been built on the highest ground in Perdido, and some had escaped with no more than a foot of water on the carpets—not enough even