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

well do you think you would be able to read if you had spent three years of your life on the back of a mule going round and round a cane-grind?" Abashed, Grace would button her lip and hand the book sheepishly to Zaddie, who quivered with the sense of privilege at being defended by so august a being as Miss Elinor. Miss Elinor, Zaddie never tired of repeating, was the only person in Perdido—man or woman— who could paddle a boat right past the junction.
    CHAPTER 5
Courtship
    By September, the three sawmills of Perdido were back in operation, and the exigencies laid upon James and Oscar Caskey lessened. When Oscar saw that Miss Elinor sat on the front porch every afternoon from three-thirty until dark, he took to coming home earlier from the mill.
    He would park his automobile on the street, get out, and start up the walk toward his own house, then turn aside after ten steps or so as if with sudden inspiration. He would walk across the yard toward James's house, obliterating some of Zaddie's careful work and speak first to the black girl, who with Grace beside her, was always to be found at Elinor's feet. "So, Zaddie, how much did the water oaks grow today?"
    "Grew some, Mr. Oscar," she invariably replied.
    Everyone in Perdido had heard of the unrelenting vigor of Elinor's trees, had passed by the houses to see them, and had talked of them to an extent that rendered them old news indeed. No one had any explanation for the extraordinarily rapid growth, and all that remained was for Zaddie every day to ascertain that the grove of trees had gained another inch or so in the night.
    After a little exchange with Zaddie on the progress of the trees, Oscar would turn to his cousin Grace, and remark something like, "I heard at the barbershop this morning that you and your little friends tied up your teacher and threw her off the top of the school auditorium. Was this true?"
    "No!" Grace would cry indignantly.
    "How you, Miss Elinor?" Oscar asked then, turning to her as if he had come across the yard expressly to speak to Zaddie and Grace, and now that he had done so, was free to see who else was about. "How were your Indians today?"
    Oscar referred to all the students of the grammar school as "Indians."
    "My Indians kept me hopping," said Elinor with a smile. "It's my boys, though. My girls would do anything for me. Take a seat, Mr. Oscar. You look tired on your feet."
    "I am, I am," said Oscar, taking the rocking chair next to hers, quite as if she hadn't made the same invitation, and he accepted it, every day for the past two weeks.
    "Your mama," said Elinor, "is peering at us through the camellia bushes."
    Oscar stood out of his chair and called out, "Hey, Mama!"
    Mary-Love, discovered, stepped from behind the cover of camellias.
    "Oscar, I thought that was you!" she called from the porch.
    "Didn't you see the car, Mama?" he called out. He looked down at Miss Elinor. "She saw the car," he said, in a voice his mother couldn't hear.
    "Tell her to come over here and sit with us," said Elinor.
    "Mama! Miss Elinor says come over here and sit awhile!"
    "Tell Miss Elinor thank you, but I've got peas to shell!"
    "She doesn't!" cried Zaddie indignantly to Grace. "I shelled ever' one of them peas this morning!"
    "Tell your mama," said Elinor politely, though she had certainly heard Zaddie's contention that Mary-Love's excuse was empty, "that if she'll come over here, Zaddie and I will help her with her shelling."
    "All right, Mama!" cried out Oscar, not bothering to perpetuate the deception by straining his voice. He sat down again. He smiled at Elinor. "Mama does not want me over here," he remarked.
    "Why not?" demanded Grace, as she watched Mary-Love disappear behind the camellias again.
    "Because of me," said Elinor.
    "Because of you?" cried Grace, not even beginning to comprehend how anyone could object to Miss Elinor.
    "Miss Mary-Love thinks Mr. Oscar should be sitting on her front porch talking to her, and not sitting on this front