"Was Miriam good to you on your trip?" Oscar asked.

"Yes, sir..." replied Frances slowly.

"Really and truly?" her mother prompted.

"Well; she was a little short with me now and then, 151.

but I didn't care. She was probably just worried about Grandmama."

Oscar and Elinor exchanged glances.

"Miriam," said Miriam's father, "may need a little talking to."

"Miriam wants to know where Grandmama's rings are, Mama."

"She said something about that to you?"

"At the funeral."

"What did you say?"

Frances hesitated.

"Frances, what did Miriam say about the rings?"

"She said they were hers and that you stole them. She said Grandmama gave them to her for her safety-deposit box in Mobile."

Elinor said nothing, but her expression was hard.

"Elinor, Miriam's bound to be upset. You know how she loved Mama. Lord, she lived with Mama all her life, she-"

"It's all right, Oscar. I'm not upset. One way or another, Miriam and I will be able to work things out."

CHAPTER 41.

Mary-Love's Heir

With Mary-Love dead, the complexion of the Caskey family was greatly altered. Mary-Love had been its head, its guiding force, its princ.i.p.al source of rebuke, and the measure by which all its achievements, delights, and unhappinesses were judged. She was gone, and the Caskeys looked uneasily about them to see who might move into the vacant position. James was eldest, but frail, retiring, and without a calling to leadership. Oscar was Mary-Love's male heir, but the Caskeys were used to a woman at the helm, and Oscar might well have to prove himself fit for such a place. Sister lived away; Grace was completely involved with her life at the Spartanburg girls' school. Queenie wasn't really a Caskey. The burden seemed to be poised above Elinor.

Because the Caskeys began to look upon her as the intuitive choice, they now sought reasons to make her the logical choice as well. She was wife to the man who ran the mill, source of all the Caskey power 153.

and prestige. She had status of her own in Perdido. She kept up the largest house in town. She had proved her worth by a willingness to do battle with Mary-Love. Who else had done that except when they hadn't been driven to it in absolute desperation?

It was odd, but Elinor seemed to have changed in recent years. The change had been slower but no less radical than the transformation that James underwent on the day that Mary-Love had died. James Caskey had received more than an intimation of his own mortality: he had seen its very pattern in the wicker casket bathed in colored light. Frances's three-year illness seemed to have accomplished something similar with Elinor. Her single-minded and constant nursing of Frances had almost seemed to suggest that Elinor felt she was capable, alone, of curing her child. As those days of nursing had lengthened into weeks, and the weeks into months, Elinor's resolve to prove her healing prowess had grown. When Frances was finally well again, after three years of suffering, it had been impossible for anyone to say whether the cure had been effected by Elinor's baths, Dr. Benquith's medicine, or by some stray trigger accidentally pulled in Frances's system. Elinor seemed to have been humbled by her daughter's bout with the crippling disease and by her own failure to cure it easily and quickly. During the course of Frances's illness, Elinor had not fought with her mother-in-law. Now that Mary-Love was dead, a chastened Elinor Caskey stood before the family, solemnly prepared to receive the Caskey crown.

The more they all thought of it, the clearer it became that Elinor was to be the new head of the family. There was no actual delegation to inform her of the choice, but there might as well have been. Her opinion was solicited on every matter great and small. Her decision was always acceded to without objection. Her house became the focus of family activity. The hub of the Caskey universe, with a little grind- 154.

ing of gears and spinning of wheels, slipped twenty yards to the west.

Though the Caskeys watched carefully, few alterations in management were apparent. In the first week of mourning for Mary-Love, there was little activity. The Caskeys kept to themselves. Early Has-kew had come and gone, leaving behind his wife and tobacco-juice stains on the glossy leaves of Mary-Love's prize camellias. Miriam remained with Sister in Mary-Love's house.

"When are we gone go send for Miriam?" Oscar asked his wife.

"I don't want to uproot her yet," said Elinor. "She's attached to Sister, and when Sister goes back to Chattanooga, that'll be time enough."

"When is Sister planning on going back?"

"She's waiting for the reading of the will, I suppose. I don't know what else could keep her here."

There was some speculation among the Caskeys about the contents of Mary-Love's will. It was a.s.sumed in the town that Mary-Love would divide her substantial fortune between her two children, Oscar and Sister. Oscar would at last be rewarded for his many years of service to the mill; Sister would never have to worry about Early's ability to scratch work out of a depressed economy. Doubtless some special provision would be made for Miriam, for the child had been very dear to Mary-Love. Perdido could not imagine that the dead woman had done anything different.

The Caskeys, however, knew to what lengths Mary-Love would go to thwart happiness and dampen expectations. It was not inconceivable, for instance, that she would have left everything to James, who was old and didn't need it; or to Miriam, who was young and couldn't handle it. Elinor, in particular, was anxious for the will to be read. She wanted Oscar to get the money as quickly as possible so that he would be able to purchase Henry Turk's final tract 155.

of land. She was fearful another buyer might step forward in the interim. "Just go to Henry, Oscar, and tell him not to sell it to anybody else. Tell him we'll buy it up just as soon as Mary-Love's will is read."

"Elinor, we've just got to wait. We're not sure yet who Mama left her money to. And even if I get half and Sister gets half, it's still gone be a while before the thing's probated. It's gone be six months at least before I see a single dime of Mama's money."

"Then borrow the money from James. We just can't let that Escambia County land get away from us."

"Why are you so all fired up to buy land in Florida? We've never seen fit to cross a state line before."

"That's good land over there, Oscar."

"It's just like it is over here, same old trees, same old creeks, same old Perdido River flowing alongside it. Only n.o.body lives there, and it's hard to get to. Henry Turk never made a crying dime off the land, and that's the reason he's still got it-n.o.body in his right mind wants that land. Henry was able to get rid of everything but that. And you know if we got it, we'd have to learn all about Florida laws and Florida taxes."

"You'll be sorry if we don't buy it up."

"Why?"

"I know that land," returned Elinor. "Someday it will make us more money than you ever dreamed of."

Oscar was mystified by this remark. As far as he knew, his wife had never crossed over into any part of Escambia County, Florida. How could she know anything of those empty quadrants of pine, ribbed with the creeks and branches that emptied into the lower Perdido?

The will was brief. Two thousand dollars went to Ivey Sapp and Bray Sugarwhite, to build themselves a new house on higher land than Baptist Bottom, 156.

and five hundred dollars went to Luvadia Sapp. Seven hundred dollars bought a new window for the Methodist Church attended by the family, and three hundred dollars bought a new baptismal font for the Methodist Church in Baptist Bottom. Ten thousand dollars to the Athenaeum Club established a scholarship for a deserving Perdido girl to attend the University of Alabama.

The Caskeys nodded approval of these small bequests. They showed, everyone thought, a sense of community responsibility in the dead woman.

The bulk of her fortune-her half of the Caskey sawmill and allied industries; the holdings of land and leasing rights; the stocks and bonds; the mortgages and liens upon other properties in Baldwin, Escambia, Monroe, and Washington counties; the savings accounts in the Perdido bank, three Mobile banks, and two Pensacola banks; and the investments in Louisiana and Arkansas-were to be divided equally between her beloved son Oscar and her devoted daughter Elvennia Haskew.

To her granddaughter, Miriam Caskey, Mary-Love left her house, its contents, and the land on which it stood; all her jewels, precious and semiprecious stones-mounted or loose; all silverware and objects of virtu; and the contents of four safe deposit boxes in various banks.

There was enormous relief in the family. Mary-Love had done what everyone thought to be right and proper. She had not sought to perpetuate her animadversions from the grave. The malice of her cloying love apparently had been dampened when she had contemplated her own death in the writing of her testament.

Miriam was sixteen, but she seemed grown-up. And she thought she had reason to seem so. After all, she was an heiress in her own right. She had cases of jewels in her room, and she had safety- 157.

deposit boxes of diamonds and rubies and sapphires in four different banks in Mobile. She was no one's daughter. Mary-Love had died and left her as alone as if she had been abandoned in the midst of the pine forest. She didn't belong to her parents, for they had given her up when she was a baby. Despite their proximity during the intervening years, they remained little more than strangers. They were rather like cousins, once or twice removed, whom one didn't particularly care for, though they bore one's name and one's likeness. She wasn't Sister's either, though once she had been. Sister had gone off and married Early Haskew, whom Miriam deprecated for his coa.r.s.e country ways and his chewing tobacco.

Sister and Miriam sat at the supper table together a few hours after the will was read. Sister had helped raise Miriam when she was a baby, but after Sister's marriage, Miriam had become Mary-Love's child alone. Sister and Miriam had not exactly become strangers, but there was now a certain distance between them.

"It's funny," said Miriam.

"What is?"

"To think that this whole house is mine now, and everything in it."

"I'm glad Mama left it to you," said Sister. "That way you can sell it and put some money in the bank. That'll send you to school."

"I don't intend to sell it."

Sister looked up, surprised. "You're gone let it sit here empty? You shouldn't, you know. Rats take up in empty houses. Squirrels will break in through the roof."

"I'm gone live here," said Miriam.

Sister was more surprised than ever. "You're not coming back to Chattanooga with me?"

"I hate Chattanooga."

"You've never even been there. What do you think you'd hate about it?"

158.

"Everything."

"That's no answer."

"Do you really want an answer, Sister?"

"Yes, of course I do."

"I wouldn't be comfortable," said Miriam.

"Comfortable?"

"Around Early."

"You don't like Early?"

"I'm not comfortable around him, that's all. He's too... country. I'm not used to being around country people."

Sister flushed. "That school you go to is filled with boys and girls who are a lot more country than Early."

"But I don't have to live with them."

Miriam and Sister then pa.s.sed plates around for second helpings. Ivey came out of the kitchen and poured more iced tea.

"Ivey's already said she would stay on with me."

"Yes, ma'am," said Ivey to Sister. "I did say it."

Sister shook her head. "What's your mama gone say?"

"You mean Elinor?"

"Yes, of course I mean Elinor. If I go off back to Chattanooga and don't take you with me, Elinor's gone say that you got to move in with her and Oscar over there."

"I wouldn't move in with them if they threw a rope over my neck and dragged me across the yard."

"Elinor might do it. Elinor wants you back. She's spoken to me about it."

"What did she say?"

"She said, 'Sister, don't try to take Miriam back to Chattanooga, because I want her over here with me.'"

"She can't have me!"

"You're her daughter, Miriam. That's what it comes down to."

They were silent for a while longer. Ivey cleared 159.

away and brought out dessert. It was Boston cream pie, Sister's favorite.

"I don't want to go to Chattanooga," said Miriam to Ivey.

"No, I know you don't," said Ivey in mild confirmation.

"And I certainly don't want to move in with Elinor and Oscar."

"No, ma'am, I know you don't want to do that."

"I want to stay right in this house."

"You love this house," said Ivey with pride. "Miss Mary-Love wanted you to have it to live in."

"Then what do I do? How do I get to stay on here?" Miriam looked to the black woman for an answer. Sister, as if she knew exactly what that answer was going to be, continued eating her pie.

"Miss Miriam, why don't you ask Sister to stay on here with you?"

Miriam looked surprised. "But what about Early?"

"Mr. Early's got his jobs here, there, everywhere," said Ivey. "Sister, you want another piece of pie?"