Free Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga by Michael McDowell

grass. The river had deposited over the ground half a foot or more of sopping red mud. Every day, Mary-Love and Sister watched for blades of grass to sprout through the red soil, but every day they watched in vain.
    The DeBordenave and Turk yards, which had suffered equally, had been dug up and reseeded, and the mud from the Perdido seemed to have brought with it a great number of nutrients, for their lawns sprang up sudden, green, and splendid, growing more lushly and certainly faster than ever before. But next door at James Caskey’s, the yard was a flat expanse of dark mud. And at Mary-Love’s place it was the same. After a few weeks the sun dried out that dark river soil and left a layer of gray sand two inches deep, with the reddish river soil packed beneath that. Sister picked up a fistful of this sand and let it drift through her fingers. Mixed in with the sand were the desiccated grass seeds that Bray broadcast every Friday afternoon. The destruction of the Caskey lawns was a subject for comment in Perdido, for the little plague of sterility was confined only to the Caskey lots. The DeBordenaves were not affected at all, the sand stopping in a straight line at the end of the Caskey property and the grass beginning immediately on the other side. The sand continued to the edge of Mary-Love’s deeded property, at the town limit, where the pine forest began with its dense and prickly underbrush. By the end of June, Mary-Love and James had given up hope of ever growing grass again, and Mary-Love hired little Buster Sapp to come every morning at six-thirty and rake patterns in the sand with a leaf broom. By the end of the day most of Buster’s careful work had been obliterated by footsteps of servants and visitors and the inhabitants of the houses, but Buster was always there first thing the following morning to renew the artificial symmetry and texture he gave to the injured Caskey demesne. The expanse of sand—somewhat more than two acres in all—was a depressing sight when one remembered the fine gardens and lawn that had surrounded the houses. Only Buster’s rigorous patterning made it bearable. So despite talk, Buster worked even on Sundays (for which he was paid double). The households quickly grew accustomed to waking to the sound of rake on sand. Buster was a small, sleepy, infinitely patient child—who moved slowly about, producing an impromptu map of concentric circles and elongated spirals. He plied his rake with a rhythm as inexorable as that of a pendulum. And perhaps it was that indication of time passing that made the sound of the rake on the sand so suggestive of death.
    Each morning at six o’clock, before he began his work, Buster’s sister fixed his breakfast in Mary-Love’s kitchen. Buster was finished by ten, and at that time James Caskey’s cook Roxie Welles made him a second breakfast. Then he took a pillow and went down to the mooring dock and took a nap until it was time for the midday meal. In the afternoon he ran errands for the two households. Sometimes he was paid by Mary-Love and sometimes by Miss Elinor—and sometimes he was inadvertently given money by both.
    For several months Buster Sapp was practically the only line of communication between the two households, which formerly had been greatly intimate. Mary-Love Caskey didn’t approve of Elinor Dammert’s living with her brother-in-law and she didn’t allow her daughter to approve of it either. James Caskey knew how his sister-in-law felt, but he was too pleased with Elinor’s being in the house with him to argue with Mary-Love about the matter. After all, if he got into an argument with Mary-Love, Mary-Love would probably win it, and if Mary-Love won it, Elinor would have to go—and that was exactly what James Caskey did not want.
    Elinor took care of him in the way that Genevieve might have if Genevieve had been a real wife. Elinor had supervised the cleaning and repair of the house. Each day in his absence she ordered