BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family Read Online Free PDF

did what you could."
    "Oh, thank you, Miz Caskey, I don't want to say nothing to her..."
    He pulled away from the tree against which he had been leaning and went hurriedly down the track. The three women looked down at Elinor Dammert's remaining bag—a weathered black leather case with straps going all around it—and then went inside the church.
    It didn't matter to Elinor Dammert, evidently, that one of her bags had been lost. She didn't blame Bray; she didn't suggest that he had dropped the bag into the water and then lied about it; she didn't wonder if someone else in a rowboat might have passed the hotel, reached in and filched it; she didn't seem to upset herself over the loss of half of what little she had in the world. She said merely, "It had my books in it. And my teacher's certificate. And my diploma from Huntingdon. And my birth certificate. I'll have to write for duplicates. Does that take long?" she asked Sister. Sister had no idea, but supposed that it might.
    "I'd like to wash up and change my clothes," Elinor said.
    "There's nowhere for that," said Sister. "We bring water up from the branch."
    "Oh, of course," said Miss Elinor, quite as if she knew every foot of its watery length.
    "The branch down behind the church," said Caroline DeBordenave, as if Miss Elinor had asked What branch?—as she ought to have. "You cain't see it 'less you know where to look."
    "Didn't it flood, too?" Elinor asked.
    "No, ma'am," replied Miz Driver. "Land back of here slopes off quickly. All the water runs right down to the Perdido. That branch is clean and clear."
    "Good," said Elinor, "then I'll go down and bathe."
    She got up immediately, and Sister would have shown her the way, but Elinor assured her that she would be able to find it without assistance. Elinor stepped quietly among the still-sleeping children and walked out the back door carrying her weathered black bag with her.
    Manda Turk and Mary-Love and Caroline DeBordenave fell upon Sister.
    "What'd she say?" demanded Manda, speaking for all.
    "Nothing," said Sister, realizing in a sudden moment of shame that she had failed in what these three women evidently considered to be her duty. "I told her about the school and about Perdido. She was asking about the flood, you know, and the mills, and who everybody was and so forth."
    "Yes, but what did you ask her?" demanded Caroline.
    "I asked her if she thought she was gone drown."
    "Drown?" said Mary-Love. "Sister, you are impossible!"
    "Drown in the Osceola," said Sister defensively. She was sitting on the end of the bench, and the three women stood ranged before her. "She said she wasn't scared, not a bit—that she wasn't gone drown ever in her life."
    "And that's all you found out?" cried Manda.
    "That's all," said Sister, cringing. "What was I supposed to find out? Nobody told me—"
    "You were supposed to find out everything," said her mother.
    Caroline DeBordenave shook her head slowly. "Don't you see, Sister?"
    "See what?"
    "See that there's something peculiar."
    "See that there's something wrong," Manda amended.
    "I don't!"
    "You must," said Mary-Love. "Just look at her hair! You ever see hair that was that color? Looks like she had it dyed in the Perdido—that's what it looks like to me!"
    Annie Bell Driver knew what was going on. She had watched the three richest women in Perdido surround Bray and question him closely about the black bag he had carried; she had seen them turn their questions on poor meek Sister. She also knew where those questions tended. While Sister was vainly attempting to justify her failure to have found out anything of substance as a reluctance to pry, Annie Bell Driver slipped out the back door of the church, and with something in her head that wasn't as clearly defined a motive as "curiosity," she picked her way carefully down the slippery slope of pine needles, grabbing for balance at one resinous pine trunk after another. Steam rose here, too—in wisps from the ground, from the