Free BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family by Michael McDowell

that Oscar's scandalous behavior shouldn't be talked of at all, but her curiosity overcame her misgivings about sanctioning the episode with her questions.
    "I took her out to the Sapps and we bought some cane juice. You know they got a three-year-old girl running that press now? She is so small that they have to lay her on her stomach on that old mule's back and tie her on with a rope."
    "Those Sapps!" cried Sister. "I declare we are gone end up hiring every one of those nine children just to keep 'em from getting worked to their deaths."
    "So," said Mary-Love, "you went out to the Sapps and you came right back. That took you three hours and thirty-five minutes?"
    "We stopped in and spoke to Miz Driver, that's all, and Miz Driver gave us some of her early watermelon. We wouldn't have stopped I think except that Oland and Poland—or it might have been Roland— ran out and stopped the wagon. Those boys think the world of Miss Elinor. You know that those three boys eat watermelon with pepper instead of salt? I had never even heard of that, but Miss Elinor had. Mama, Miss Elinor is smarter than you give her credit for."
    And next door, at the table, Miss Elinor told the same story for Grace and James Caskey.
    "But you had a good time," said James Caskey.
    "Oh, yes," said Miss Elinor, "Mr. Oscar was very good to me."
    "Well, as long as you had a good time," said James Caskey, "that's all that matters."
    Eight days after the planting of the water oak acorns, Elinor Dammert attended morning service in Perdido for the first time. Previously, after Sunday school, Elinor had returned home with Grace, who was thought too little to sit through a sermon. But suddenly Grace had gotten older or was better-behaved—or perhaps Elinor Dammert had a particular wish for wanting to go to church. At any rate, next to Elinor sat Oscar Caskey, and when they rose to sing hymns, he held the book open for her as she lifted little Grace in her arms.
    Mary-Love didn't like it, but between stanzas Sister whispered, "Mama, you cain't expect her to hold Grace and the hymnbook too!"
    When they all returned from church that morning, Buster Sapp was waiting on the front steps of James Caskey's house. He ran up to Miss Elinor, grabbed her hand, and dragged her around to the back.
    When the others followed, wondering at Buster's even being awake at that hour of the morning and even more at his failure to finish his raking on one side of the house, they saw Miss Elinor standing near the back parlor windows. She was smiling broadly. Right beside her, wide-eyed and still astonished, Buster Sapp rocked back and forth on his haunches. With a quivering finger he pointed at a little foot-high oak sapling. The acorn from which it had sprung lay split and rotted and loosely covered with coarse gray sand. And as James Caskey and Mary-Love and Sister and Oscar looked on with astonishment equal to Buster's, the black child rose and rushed all over the yard, and pointed out seventeen more water oak saplings that had raised themselves overnight in the sterile sandy earth.
    CHAPTER 4
The Junction
    What was known for certain about Elinor Dammert's life in Perdido could be easily summed up: she had been plucked from the Osceola Hotel on Easter morning by Oscar Caskey and Bray Sugarwhite; she lived with James Caskey and took splendid care of his small daughter Grace; she was to teach fourth grade in the fall; and she was being courted by Oscar Caskey whose mother didn't like it one little bit.
    But everything else was a mystery, and seemed likely to remain so. Elinor Dammert was not unfriendly—she always spoke on the street, had a memory for names, and was polite in all the stores— but she didn't go out of her way to join in the life of the community. In other words, she didn't gossip— about herself or about others. Nor did she do much that was out of the ordinary—except to live apparently without care that Genevieve Caskey was bound to return someday and raise holy