Blackwater - The Levee Part 3

CHAPTER 17.

Dominoes

The first sawmill in Perdido had been built by Roland Caskey in 1875. The old man subsequently gained cutting control of eighteen thousand acres of timberland in Baldwin and Escambia counties. By 1895, when he died, the Caskey mill was producing twenty-five thousand feet of lumber a day. The cut-down trees that his Perdido mill couldn't handle were branded with a trefoil and sent down the Perdido to his backup mill at Seminole. Roland Caskey remained illiterate to his death, but he could look at a two-acre stand of timber and tell, within twenty board feet, how much lumber it would produce. He had had, moreover, the sense to marry a smart woman. Elvennia Caskey bore him two sons and a daughter. The daughter died, bitten by a water moccasin that one day slithered up the lawn out of the 57.Perdido, but the two sons grew up strong and fine. Because of their mother's efforts they were well-educated, well-mannered, and emotionally sensitive. Indeed, Roland complained of "the stamp of femininity" placed on his elder son James, which would render him soft and womanly.

When Roland Caskey had settled in the area, Baldwin and Escambia counties were wildernesses of pine, and it seemed inconceivable that the forests could ever be depleted, yet only three mills working at capacity began to accomplish this depletion. Expanding uses for resin and turpentine only made matters worse, for thousands of trees were "bled" by impoverished poachers. Once bled, a tree wasn't worth cutting. The forest retreated around Perdido and the barrens farther out grew less dense, as bled trees died and toppled in the first spring storm. Roland Caskey complained bitterly when the Secretary of the Interior proposed strict laws for the preservation of the forests and demanded rigid enforcement of earlier legislation.

Roland Caskey's will divided his holdings equally between his wife and his younger son Randolph, leaving only a small annual maintenance income to the other son James. He had dictated in the preamble of the doc.u.ment that "he would not be able to sleep in his grave knowing that he had turned over the operation of his woodland empire to a man "with the stamp of femininity upon him." The day after the will was probated, however, Elvennia Caskey signed over her half to the disinherited son. But it was not for this generosity alone that James Caskey remained with his mother until her death, nursing her with unwavering filial affection through years of senility and physical helplessness. The idea of marriage never occurred to him without a concomitant sensation of having put something nasty into his mouth.

58.When James and Randolph, in concert rarely found among brothers, took over the operation of the Caskey mill, they began buying up all the land they could around Perdido. Their father and the other millowners had thought that the purchase of timber land was a wasteful expenditure of capital; it was much cheaper to pay landowners for the right to cut the timber. James and Randolph's policy was universally wondered at and ridiculed, but they persisted. Having bought the land, they systematically began to cut what was on it, and replanted immediately. Within five years the wisdom of their course was acknowledged and imitated by the Turks and the DeBordenaves. The old Puckett mill in Perdido was eventually forced out of business altogether, for there was no more standing timber for Mr. Puckett to buy.

The DeBordenave and Turk mills for twenty years ranked second and third to the Caskeys'. Sometimes the DeBordenaves had a better year than the Turks, and vice versa, but only the millowners themselves really knew which company was worth more. The Caskeys owned the most land, however, and had never ceased buying it up whenever the opportunity presented itself. Randolph Caskey died when his son Oscar was away at the University of Alabama. James ran the mill ineffectually for two years before Oscar returned to Perdido to accede to his father's place. Oscar and James, prodded by Mary-Love, would not hesitate to purchase two acres of slash-pine surrounded by Turk forest. The smaller mills now worked the second and third growths of their land, but the Caskeys had some virgin forest, a rare thing in those parts.

Mary-Love and James Caskey owned the mill and the land, but Oscar ran the operation. James went to his office every day and occupied himself one way or another, princ.i.p.ally in correspondence, but much 59.of that effort was dispensable; the work could have been done by a man hired at two thousand dollars a year. But the company could not have functioned without Oscar. For all his effort and long hours, though, he had no more money than poor old Sister, and as everybody knew, Sister had nothing at all.

People in town who didn't know anything about the family's situation looked at the three Caskey houses and drew their own conclusions from the fact that Elinor and Oscar lived in the biggest and the newest. Since it was also thought that without Oscar the mill would slip into insolvency within a few weeks, everyone naturally imagined that Oscar possessed a substantial portion of the Caskey treasure. That was not so. Oscar and Elinor didn't even own the house they lived in. It had been Mary-Love's gift, but Mary-Love had never put herself to the trouble of actually signing over the deed. Once when Elinor prodded Oscar to remind his mother of that omission, Mary-Love grew huffy and said, "Oscar, do you and Elinor imagine that you are in danger of being thrown out onto the street? Who do you think I am going to put in there instead of you? When you two were living right down the hall from me, and I didn't want you to leave then, do you think I am gone let you go farther away from me than right next door?" Oscar returned to Elinor and told her what his mother had said, but Elinor was not to be put off quite so easily. She sent Oscar back, and this time he got an even angrier reply from his mother: "Oscar, you and Elinor are gone get that house when I die! Do you want me to show you the will? Cain't you even wait till I am dead?" Oscar refused to broach the matter again, but Elinor was not satisfied.

Perdido residents would have been surprised at the modest size of Oscar's salary. Oscar once ventured to complain to James, who pleaded the case to his sister-in-law. Mary-Love said, "What do they 60.need? Tell me, James, and I will go out and buy it. I will have Bray put it right on their front doorstep."

"Mary-Love, it's nothing like that," James replied. "They don't need new furniture or a new car or anything, but Elinor needs money to buy food every week. They need money to pay the coalman in winter. Oscar ordered a new set of ivory dominoes last week, and when they came in he had to borrow ten dollars from me to pay for 'em. Mary-Love, I say we give old Oscar a little bit more money. You know he earns it."

"You tell Oscar to come to me," said Mary-Love. "I will give my boy whatever he wants. You tell Elinor to knock on my front door. She will have her heart's desire."

Mary-Love liked to see herself as the family cornucopia, dispensing all manner of good things, un-stintingly, unceasingly. She considered herself amply rewarded by her children's grat.i.tude, and if she perceived that her children were not sufficiently grateful, she could make something of that, too. There was no difficulty in keeping Sister in a position of servile dependence, because, Mary-Love was certain, she had no prospect of marriage and no money of her own. Sister would never leave Perdido, her mother's house, or Mary-Love's fervid embrace. Oscar, though, had thrown himself into the bonds of matrimony with Elinor, and had thus weakened the emotional cords that had bound him to Mary-Love. The financial ties between mother and son, however, remained strong, or at least they would as long as Mary-Love had anything to say about it. Lady Bountiful had no intention of allowing Oscar to escape her boons. - Elinor understood all this and explained it to her husband.

Oscar replied, "You're probably right, Elinor.

61.That's probably how Mama does it. It makes me sorry for poor old Sister, too. But what am I gone do?"

"You can fight her. You can tell her you're going to leave that old mill high and dry if you don't get some decent money out of it. You can tell her that you and I are going to pack our bags and move to Bayou le Batre next Tuesday, and let her know that I'll be back in another month to pick up Miriam. That's what you can do."

"I cain't do that. Mama wouldn't believe me. Mama would call my bluff. What would you and I do in Bayou le Batre, that old place? I don't know anything about shrimp boats!"

"If James and your mama did right by you," Elinor went on, "they would give you a one-third interest in that mill. They would sign over to you one-third of all the Caskey land."

Oscar whistled at the very thought. "They won't do it, though."

"Maybe not right now," said Elinor thoughtfully, "but, Oscar, if you're not going to do anything, then it looks like it's going to be up to me..."

"What you thinking about doing?" Oscar asked uneasily.

"I don't knew yet. But, Oscar, let me tell you something. There is no sacrifice I would not make to put you where you are supposed to be."

"Elinor, you shouldn't have to go out of your way for me. We get along pretty well, it seems to me."

"Not as well as we could, Oscar. I didn't marry just anybody, you know. My daddy used to say he'd like to see the man I'd marry. My mama used to say he'd have to be mighty powerful or mighty rich."

Oscar laughed. "I guess you proved your mama and daddy wrong. I'm not powerful, and I'm certainly not rich."

"Mama and Daddy weren't wrong," said Elinor. Those words somehow didn't seem at home in Eli- 62.nor's mouth; certainly she wasn't in the habit of speaking of her parents. "In fact, I have every intention of proving them right. Oscar, let me ask you something. What in the world would have been my purpose in coming to Perdido at all, if it wasn't to marry the best man in town?"

"You mean you married me because you thought I was rich and powerful?" He didn't seem in the least disturbed by the idea.

"Of course not. You know why I married you. But, Oscar, I have no intention of allowing you to continue to wear yourself out down at that mill just so James can buy crystal and silver and Miss Mary-Love can fill her safety-deposit box with diamonds while we are poor as poverty."

"Well, Elinor, you just tell me what to do, and I'll do it. I wouldn't mind having a lot of money."

"Good," replied his wife. "So when I tell you to jump, you'll jump?"

"Right over the roof!"

Recently, a mania for the game of dominoes had infected the male population of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Perdido had not been immune. The malady took hold with virulence, and in the first hectic flush of fever there had been domino parties every night throughout the town. Now that first unhealthy spasm had subsided, but many men continued to play regularly. Among these were the men of the 3 mill families, James Caskey, Oscar Caskey, Tom DeBordenave, and Henry Turk.

Every Monday and Wednesday evening at six-thirty they gathered at the square red table in Elinor's breakfast room, joined by three others: Leo Benquith, Warren Moye, and Vernell Smith. Leo Benquith was the most respected doctor in town. Warren Moye was a dapper little man who stood behind the desk of the Osceola Hotel every day; he 63.always brought with him a cus.h.i.+on, which he transferred from chair to chair to ease the pain of his everlasting hemorrhoids. Vernell Smith was rather in the character of a dwarf jester at the Spanish court; he was young and desperately ugly, with a long face that reminded farm folks of the head of a stillborn calf, except that Vernell's had a number of large moles with long hairs in them.

On Mondays and Wednesdays, Elinor took special care to keep the doors to the breakfast room closed all evening long, for every one of those men smoked cigars or cigarettes and the smoke could fill the house. Every Monday and Wednesday afternoon Zaddie took down the curtains in that room so that they would not become impregnated with the odor of tobacco. During the game, the countless cigar and cigarette b.u.t.ts were thrown into a gla.s.s cistern of water the size of a fishbowl. After a couple of hours, the room was always so filled with smoke that Zaddie could not come in to empty the cistern without her eyes immediately watering. And the room was noisy. The men growled and slammed their ivory dominoes down on the square table. The shuffling was thunderous and could be heard all over the house. There was no cursing, except an occasional "d.a.m.n." With the exception of Vernell Smith, all these men went to Sunday school. The stories and the tales traded over that red table in the course of the evening were not so different from the stories and tales that Per-dido ladies told over their afternoon bridge games.

On these evenings, Elinor and Zaddie sat on the front porch or on the porch upstairs. Elinor sewed and Zaddie read. Soon it became the custom for one of the other domino wives to come over with her husband and spend the evening with Elinor or to call and talk to her on the telephone. Whenever the visitor was Manda Turk or Caroline DeBordenave, Elinor showed an uncommon and insatiable interest 64.in the details of their husbands' mills, soaking up every detail of the lumber business that those two women could summon up from minds untrained to such matters. Manda and Caroline agreed that Elinor must have a motive for the acquisition of this information, though Elinor declared that it was only curiosity. When the domino party finally broke up, the domino wife had already gone home alone and Elinor and Zaddie had gone to bed.

As Oscar saw his friends out the front door and the men spoke their good-nights, each one-except modest James Caskey-would relieve himself against one of Elinor's newly planted camellias. Then Oscar would wander back into the house and call out loudly, "Zaddie, get up and lock the doors!" Oscar *was a kind man and a good one, but he had been trained to laziness by his mother, and if there was anything he could get a woman to do for him, he wouldn't hesitate to ask her to do ik As Oscar trudged upstairs, Zaddie would open the windows of the breakfast room, pour the cistern of b.u.t.ts out into the sandy yard, lock the front door, turn out all the lights, return to her own closet, and with eyes still smarting from the smoke, lie down upon her cot and drift into sleep.

One Monday evening, while the men played downstairs, Elinor Caskey and Caroline DeBordenave sat on the porch upstairs. Frances's crib had been brought out and placed so that as the two women rocked in the swing they could peer over at the child. Elinor as usual had brought up the subject of the lumber business, and Caroline-knowing her hostess's interest in the topic by this time-had come prepared with information. She had questioned her husband to some extent at supper, and though he was surprised by his wife's sudden interest in what 65.had never seemed to matter to her before, he answered all her questions in detail.

"No, Elinor," said Caroline shaking her head, "it's just not going well for Tom. Now, I'm sure I'm not telling you anything new, because Tom said that both Henry Turk and Oscar knew about his trouble. It's strange, Tom never told me. I was so surprised! The flood did it. Tom lost all his records. He says he remembers that he had almost a hundred thousand dollars..." Caroline paused, unable to remember the precise term her husband had employed.

"In uncollected bills?" suggested Elinor.

"That's right," said Caroline complacently. Her tone suggested that she was gossiping about some small matter that was of no possible consequence to her, and indeed it seemed to Caroline as if it were not. The mills were matters for men. She a.s.sumed that nothing could or ever would interfere with the money Tom gave her every month to run the household and buy clothes; with her needs taken care of, Tom could do what he pleased with all the rest. "See, Elinor, the problem is, he not only lost all that money, but he lost all the lumber that was stored at the mill and all the lumber that he took out to Mr. Madsen's place, because Mr. Madsen's barn washed away too. Then most of the machinery got filled with mud and that had to be replaced, and now there's no money. Tom says he doesn't know how he's going to be able to go on."

"Can't he borrow?" asked Elinor.

"Well, not much," said Caroline, with a little pride that she had taken care to ask her husband this question. "He went to the bank in Mobile and went down on twenty knees in front of the president asking for money to build the mill back up, but the president of the bank said, 'Mr. DeBordenave, how do we know there's not gone be another flood?'"

"Because there's not!" said Elinor, definitely.

66."Well, I certainly hope not," returned Caroline. "Even my best rugs had to be just thrown out. I was never so unhappy in all my life. Anyway, Tom said the bank wouldn't lend him any money because they thought that another flood was gone come along and wash everything away a second time."

"So he can't get the money?"

"Well, maybe he can and maybe he cain't. The banks say that they will lend money after the levee's built, but not before. So Tom is real anxious to get that thing put up. He just hopes he can hold out long enough. I hope he can, too," Caroline concluded reflectively. "When Tom is worried about that old mill, he doesn't pay one bit of attention to anything else in the world."

After Caroline had gone home, Elinor remained on the porch with Frances, and, against her custom, waited up for Oscar. When he came up the stairs she called him out onto the porch and said, "Oscar, Caroline was telling me Tom is having trouble borrowing from the banks."

"Well, yes," replied Oscar hesitantly. "Fact is, we all are. n.o.body's gone lend us any money to build up again until the levee goes up."

"What would happen if the levee never got built?"

Oscar sat down beside his wife. "Are you really interested?"

"Of course I am!"

"Well," said Oscar, sitting back and folding his hands behind his head, rocking the swing lightly, "old Tom would fold up his tents, I guess."

"What about us?"

"Well, we'd go along all right for a while. We'd get by, I guess."

"Just get by?"

"Elinor, what we're trying to do right now is build back up what we lost in the flood. But then if we really want to get the place going, then we've got to 67.expand. We cain't do that without borrowing the money. There's not a bank in this state-or out of it for that matter-who's gone lend us money till the levee's built. That's why we're working so hard on this business. You see now?" Elinor nodded slowly. "I am dead on my feet," said Oscar. "You want to come to bed?"

"No," said Elinor, "I'm not tired yet. You go on." Oscar rose, leaned down over the crib to kiss sleeping Frances, and went inside the house.

Long after Oscar had undressed, knelt at the side of his bed to pray, lain himself down and fallen as deeply asleep as his daughter, Elinor remained awake. She sat in the swing, rocking slowly and staring out into the darkness. In the black night, the water oaks swayed in the slightest wind. A few rotted branches, covered with a dry green fungus, dropped twigs and leaves, or sometimes fell whole, with a crack and a thump, on the sandy ground. Beyond, the Perdido flowed, muddy and black and gurgling, carrying dead things and struggling live ones inexorably toward the vortex in the center of the junction.

CHAPTER 18.

Summer

Summer came to Perdido. Elinor continued to ponder about her husband's minuscule salary and the Gas-keys' substantial wealth. Sister pushed, open the back door every morning to stare at the barely discernible mound beneath which the eviscerated chicken lay buried and wondered when Early Haskew was going to propose, or, conversely, when he was going to die. James Caskey sighed and looked about and counted off his loneliness on his ten fingers-it seemed as substantial as that! Mary-Love greedily watched the engineer's daily progress on the plans for the levee, antic.i.p.ating with great satisfaction the effect the construction would have on her daughter-in-law. And every morning Zaddie's patient rake still made patterns in the sandy yards around the three Caskey houses.

69.Only children really loved the summer, for of course there was no school. The days were long, unbroken by hours and tasks and bells. It was odd, to Grace Caskey, how each summer was different and possessed its own character. Last summer she had played with the Moye children constantly, and now this summer she saw them only once a week at Sunday school. Every day the previous summer, Bray had driven her out to Lake Pinchona, where a swimming pool with concrete sides was fed by the biggest artesian well in the entire state. A monkey in a wire cage nipped at her fingers when she stuck them through the mesh. This summer she hadn't been out there once, even though they had begun to build a dance hall on stilts out over the muddy, shallow lake. The owners had imported alligators from the Everglades to stock Lake Pinchona, both for picturesque effect and in order to discourage bathers from swimming anyplace other than the easily policed concrete pool.

This summer of 1922 was given over to Zaddie Sapp. Grace was entranced by Zaddie. Grace wors.h.i.+pped the thirteen-year-old black girl and everything about her. Grace followed Zaddie around all day, and would scarcely let the black girl out of her sight. In the morning, she would help Zaddie rake in those portions of the yard invisible to Mary-Love's windows; Mary-Love didn't approve of Grace's helping servants. When Zaddie had finished work, Grace would go over to Elinor's house and Roxie, on temporary loan from James, would fix them dinner. Grace thought it a huge privilege to be allowed to eat in the kitchen with Roxie and Zaddie, and scorned a place at the dining room table with Elinor and Oscar. After dinner, Oscar gave each of the girls a quarter and told them to go down to the Ben Franklin and pick out whatever they wanted. The girls walked downtown hand in hand and roamed the 70.aisles of the dime store. They pointed at everything and looked at everything with such intensity that they grew more familiar with the stock than the man who owned the store. Each purchased three small items with that quarter and tumbled them together in one sack. At home they took out their purchases and examined them minutely. Trading them back and forth, they wrapped the best one in colored paper and presented it to the other, and finally laid them all away with another hundred similar fragile happinesses in a hinged wooden box on the back porch of Elinor's house.

This unscreened porch, which was long and high-ceilinged and always shadowy and cool even in the hottest weather, was called the lattice, because of its crisscrossed woodwork. Like the rest of the house, it was raised high above the level of the yard outside, so that the infrequent breezes blew beneath it and through it. One of the windows of Zaddie's tiny room opened onto this lattice. The children could crawl in and out, with the aid of Zaddie's cot on one side and an old broken chair on the other.

On this cool lattice Zaddie and Grace invented, perfected, and played a hundred different games, the complex rules of which pertained only to themselves and to the geography and furnis.h.i.+ngs of the lattice itself. Grace took so many meals there and spent so much time with Zaddie, that Mary-Love began to complain to James that Grace had moved in to Elinor's, was bothering Elinor, and was always waking up Frances. How she could know this, when there was virtually no communication between the households, Mary-Love did not explain. James simply said, "Grace is still lonely with her mama dead, and I am not about to interfere in anything that makes her happy."

That her niece should find such profound pleasure in the company of a thirteen-year-old black girl- 71.and, more to the point, always within the precincts of Elinor's house-was a slap in Mary-Love's face. She decided, without saying anything more to James, to wreck Grace's perfection of happiness. Grace would learn that she, Mary-Love, was the source of all felicity within the Caskey family.

Tom and Caroline DeBordenave had two children. The elder was a girl, fifteen, pretty, popular, and smart. Her name was Elizabeth Ann. The boy, four years younger, was called John Robert, and he was a problem. John Robert was thought fortunate to have been born into a family who would always be able to take care of him, for it was obvious he would never be able to take care of himself. He was a sweet, quiet child, but simple. In school, he was three grades behind, which is to say that he generally spent two years in any one grade, and even so he was always far behind his cla.s.smates. Promotions were granted not because he deserved them, but because it would have been cruel to keep him back longer. He sat at the back of the room, and was allowed to draw on tablets throughout the school day, no matter what the rest of the cla.s.s did. He wasn't called on to answer questions or to read aloud, and when the others took tests, John Robert turned over the page of his tablet, bent down over it, and pretended that he too was in the way of being examined. At recess, John Robert didn't play organized games with the boys because he never quite managed to get the rules straight in his clouded mind, and he hadn't the coordination to jump rope with the girls. Every morning, however, Caroline DeBordenave filled his pockets with candy, and for a few minutes at the beginning of morning recess John Robert was very popular. Boys and girls surrounded him, tickled him, called out his name, and rifled his pockets until there was not a single piece of candy left. Then all the children went away 72.to their games, and John Robert sat sighing on the bench next to his teacher, or on favored days, beat erasers against the side of the building until he and the bricks were white with chalk dust.

In school John Robert was happy, for if he didn't partic.i.p.ate in the activities of his bustling schoolmates, the crackling industry of study and play surrounded him constantly. If he might sometimes be lonely, he was never alone. In the summers, however, no one thought of him. His mother still filled his pockets with candy, but that weight dragged on him through the day. By suppertime, the chocolate and the peppermint had melted into one sticky and unappetizing ma.s.s. Elizabeth Ann sometimes read to him. She rocked in a chair on the front porch, while he stood beside her with his elbow on the arm so that one whole side of his body moved up and down with the motion. Elizabeth Ann's voice was comfortingly near, but the meaning of the words she read was far away from John Robert.

He was lonelier this summer than ever before. Elizabeth Ann had been given a bicycle for Christmas and every day rode out to Lake Pinchona and took lessons in diving from a boy who was old enough to join the army. She also fed the monkey, and sometimes leaned out the windows of the dance hall and dropped hunks of stale bread down among the blooming water lilies below, hoping to attract the notice of the alligator that swam lazily among the pilings.

But John Robert wasn't permitted to ride a bicycle for fear he would be run down, and he wasn't allowed to go to Lake Pinchona for fear he would fall into the swimming pool and drown or lean too far out the dance hall window and drop down among the lily pads, where the alligator waited for choicer morsels than Elizabeth Ann's stale bread. So John Robert sat on the front steps of his house blinking at the sun, with his pockets filled with melting candy, for- 73.ever in disappointed expectation of some child running up, calling his name, tickling his ribs, and rifling his pockets.

One day Mary-Love Caskey telephoned Caroline DeBordenave and said, "Caroline, your little boy is lonely. I see him sitting for hours and hours on your front steps, lonesome as an old country graveyard. I am gone send James's Grace over there and keep that child company."

"I wish you would," sighed Caroline. "John Robert doesn't know what to do without school. The summer takes the heart right out of John Robert. Some people are just sensitive to heat, I suppose." Caroline DeBordenave's way of dealing with John Robert's mental infirmity was not to deal with it at all, outwardly. She would attribute his silence, his vacancy, his manifold incapacities to anything but an incurably feeble intellect. But even if she always seemed to deny her son's handicaps, there was a reason that she filled his pockets with candy every day.

So the next morning, just as Grace and Zaddie were beginning their day's elaborate games on Elinor's lattice, the telephone rang in the house, and Elinor appeared a minute later and said, "Grace, Miss Mary-Love wants you over at her house right away."

And Grace went-in a sort of perplexed daze, for it wasn't easy to remember the last time she had been so summoned. Mary-Love sat in the front parlor, and of all surprising things to see on the sofa beside her, there sat John Robert DeBordenave in a new yellow playsuit with half a dozen sticks of peppermint candy protruding from the breast pocket.

"Grace," said Mary-Love, "here is John Robert who I have invited over here to play with you."

"Ma'am?"

"You and John Robert are gone have a good time for the whole summer, I know it."

74.Grace looked with some misgiving at John Robert, who was smiling timidly and alternately picking first at a b.u.t.ton and then at a scab on his knee, about to dislodge both.

"You don't seem to have the little friends around this summer that you had last summer, Grace, and when I mentioned that to Caroline DeBordenave, she said to me, 'Goodness gracious! John Robert is all alone, too.' So Caroline and I have decided that you and John Robert are gone spend the rest of your summer together. You will have such fun!"

Grace began to understand. "I have friends," she protested. "I have Zaddie!"

"Zaddie is a little colored girl," Mary-Love pointed out. "It's all right to play with Zaddie, but she's not your real friend. John Robert can be your real little friend."

Grace thought she began to detect some small piece of injustice here, but before she could put her finger upon what it was exactly, Mary-Love went on: "Now I want you two to go and start playing together. I'll send Ivey to get you when it's time to eat. You and John Robert are gone have dinner with me every day."

It wasn't that Grace disliked John Robert. She felt sorry for him, and1 always in school went out of her way to be nice to him, always asking permission before she ransacked his pockets for candy. He was a boy, though, and his mind wasn't right. She would never love John Robert DeBordenave the way that she loved Zaddie Sapp.

"All right, Aunt Mary-Love," said Grace slyly, "I'll take John Robert over to Elinor's and we'll play on the lattice."

"No, you won't," said Mary-Love. "You can play in this house or you can play in John Robert's house. You cain't play in Elinor's house because I don't want 75.you bothering Elinor and I don't want you bothering Elinor's baby."

"Well, can we play in my house?"

"May we play," corrected Mary-Love. "No, you may not. There is n.o.body to watch you over there."

"I don't need to be watched!"

Mary-Love sat silent and glanced at John Robert. Grace understood perfectly well what that silence and that glance meant, but she refused to be drawn into her aunt's conspiracy.

"All right, ma'am" said Grace sullenly, "but I got to go tell Zaddie I'm not coming back this morning."

"No, you don't," said Mary-Love. "There is no reason for you to explain yourself to a little colored girl who is hired to do something else besides play on a lattice porch all summer long. So, John Robert, what do you think you and Grace would like to do this morning?"

John Robert looked about the parlor astonished, realizing for the first time-and still dimly-that the new playsuit, this enforced visit, Grace's presence, and the conversation between her and Miss Mary-Love, all had something to do with him. Mary-Love could have broken up Zaddie and Grace's friends.h.i.+p that summer if she had mounted a campaign of eternal vigilance, but she hadn't the time or the inclination for such warfare. She chose, rather, to imagine that she had crushed the enemy in a single blow, but Mary-Love did not take into account the depth of Grace's attachment to Zaddie. Grace found ways around Mary-Love's prohibition against having anything to do with the black girl, and ways to make the eternal presence of John Robert DeBordenave less onerous.

First, Grace went to Elinor and told her what had happened. Elinor said nothing at first, but by the expression on her face, her sympathies clearly lay 76.with Grace and Zaddie. "You can come over here as much as you want this summer, Grace," said Elinor. "And you bring the DeBordenave boy over here too. -Though I must say that I think it is a mistake for Caroline DeBordenave to give a ten-year-old girl charge of her child, who is not right in the head."

So Grace's afternoons with Zaddie continued, but they were no longer perfect, because of the presence of John Robert DeBordenave. Previously both girls had been good to John Robert, and on several occasions Zaddie had been called over to the De-Bordenaves' to watch him on Monday afternoons when Caroline was at bridge. Now, however, the two girls grew to resent John Robert because his company was forced upon them every day-and for so many hours. His conversational ability was limited almost entirely to pantomimic actions and an occasional word, which he always had to repeat at least three times before he could be understood. And he hadn't the remotest notion of what Zaddie and Grace's complex games were all about, but would blunderingly attempt to join in all the same. From resentment, there was only a short step to cruelty.