Rain (13 page)

"Your mama," said Elinor, turning over on her other side, away from Oscar, "always did think that she was right, and that everybody else was wrong. Well, Oscar, sometimes Mary-Love was right about things."

S
o, without telling Oscar, Elinor made the appointment with the doctor at Texas A&M Hospital, and one day in February she said to her husband, "Oscar, pull on your pants, we're going for a ride." While Oscar was dressing, Elinor and Zaddie stripped the bed. Sammy Sapp and Malcolm took Oscar's five feather mattresses and his four favorite pillows and somehow fitted them into the trunk and the back seat of the Lincoln Continental, leaving enough room for Elinor to squeeze in the back.

"We're just going to Pensacola for supper," Oscar called out to Miriam and Malcolm, who, as Sammy whispered to him, were standing on the front porch of their house. "But y'all don't wait up."

Every ten miles Oscar turned and asked, "Elinor, are we in Pensacola yet?"

"Not long, Oscar. Sammy, what does that sign say just ahead?"

"'Pensacola. Ten miles.'"

"Be patient, Oscar, we'll be there before you know it."

This obvious game tickled Oscar, and he kept it up at wearisome length all the way to Texas. Elinor had booked the largest suite in the biggest hotel in Houston, and Sammy and three bellboys carried up the mattresses and put them in the place of the regular ones. Elinor made up the bed herself, and informed the maids that she would continue to do so.

Oscar saw the doctor the next day, and the doctor pronounced him worse. An operation was more dangerous now than it would have been years before, the chances of total blindness greater. On the other hand, Oscar was nearly blind now, and the operation could not therefore be regarded as much of a gamble.

"He'll do it," said Elinor, and Oscar nodded reluctant agreement.

The operation was performed a week later. Oscar and Elinor and Sammy meantime remained in the hotel, none of them happy to be away from Perdido for so long. The operation was performed, and Oscar emerged from it totally blind.

The mattresses were put back into the car, and Oscar and Elinor, with Sammy behind the wheel, headed back to Perdido. "That supper in Pensacola disagreed with me, Elinor," was all that Oscar said.

As Elinor led Oscar up the sidewalk to the house, she said to him, "We're not going to keep this a secret, Oscar. You know that."

Oscar nodded. "When people see me fall headlong down the town hall steps, they're just gone know."

But things were better for Oscar after that, as it turned out. No vision at all was only a little less than what he had got along with before, and at least now there was no disheartening deterioration. He no longer had to make any pretense about his need for help about the house. He had an excuse not to talk to visitors. All his subterfuges and fictions were laid aside with his thick-lensed eyeglasses; he had need of none now. He didn't come down to dinner at all anymore, but remained in his sitting room with Zaddie for company.

Elinor did not seek to halt Oscar's withdrawal into his own world. A week might pass without his leaving the bedroom or his sitting room. The rest of the house grew unfamiliar to him, and to go through other rooms was as trying an adventure for him as attempting to walk down to the Ben Franklin store without a guide. That suite of rooms at the back of the second floor began to smell of Oscar as Sister's bedroom had smelled of her. On fine days, Zaddie would walk him out to the car, and Sammy would drive him around town and then out to the Lake Pinchona Country Club. Sammy would park the Continental next to the golf course and Oscar would sit very still, smelling the newly mown greens and listening with pleasure to the thwacking of the balls and the intermittent cursing of the players. They'd call out to him as they'd pass by, "Hey, Mr. Caskey, don't you want to get out of that hot car and come join us?"

"Who is that calling to me?" Oscar would cry in return.

"It's Fred Jernigan and Roscoe."

"Fred, Roscoe, sure, I'll come out there, if you boys will promise to play with your eyes shut tight."

"We promise," Fred and Roscoe would always laugh, and then move on to the next hole.

Billy Bronze was of some comfort to Oscar in the evenings, for Billy would listen to the ball games with him. But for the other members of the family, Oscar had little patience. Miriam sometimes came to visit for a few minutes—with Malcolm in tow— and would spill out a little news of the mill. Oscar, however, had lost all interest in the Caskey businesses, and only wanted to know what they heard from Lilah, whether she was married yet, if she was seeing people, or if she was interested in any one particular boy. Grace and Lucille and Tommy Lee came much more rarely to Perdido now that Queenie was dead. When they did come, they all paid a visit of respect to Oscar, but had little to say to him. On one such visit, Oscar turned to Tommy Lee and asked, "Tommy Lee, you got any little girlfriends yet?"

"Don't you speak to him of girlfriends, Oscar," Grace snapped. "We don't want him starting to bring home girls we don't approve of, girls we don't know anything about. When Tommy Lee wants to get married, he'll come and tell his farm mamas that he's ready, and Lucille and I will comb the countryside till we find the right one. Isn't that right, Tommy Lee?"

"That's right, Grace," Tommy Lee agreed passively.

"Tommy Lee can marry when Grace and I are dead," said Lucille complacently. "There's no need for him to think about it before then. Tommy Lee is rich," she added, though it wasn't exactly to the point of argument, "and he can have anybody he wants."

"I don't want anybody," said Tommy Lee. "Except Lilah, maybe."

"Well," said Grace, "if Miriam could marry Malcolm, then Lilah could certainly marry you."

"That's what I thought," said Tommy Lee, who had a fairly accurate image of himself and his capabilities. "And that's what I told her."

"And what "did Lilah say?" asked Oscar.

"She said, 'Not in a million years.'"

"Grace, speak to Miriam about this," Oscar suggested. "Maybe Miriam could talk some sense into that girl. Tommy Lee, if you and Lilah got married this year, you could start having children before I die."

"I sure would like to oblige you, Oscar," said Tommy Lee.

"I'd rather you gave me a little baby for Christmas than those damned old pajamas."

Zaddie, who had been sitting silently by throughout this little audience, indicated by a motion of her hand that Oscar was weary. Grace, Lucille, and Tommy Lee stood up at that moment, and with only perfunctory ceremony, took their leave.

The winter of 1968 was particularly cold and wet in south Alabama. Everyone suffered through days of freezing rain, high winds, and cloudy chill evenings, imagining that the next day would dawn clear and warm. It rarely did. Out at Gavin Pond Farm, Lucille was worried about some new, small, and very rare camellias she had just set out in the fall. She looked at them carefully every day, and every day grew glummer and glummer, for the expensive plants looked as though they were dying. She went out in the rain every day, shoveled new soil around their roots, carefully covered them with plastic, and constructed small protective fences about them. Toward the end of February, when warmer weather was sure to come at last, Lucille's efforts proved a auccess, and the rare camellias gave every indication of survival. Lucille, however, was now laid up in bed with what seemed to be a severe cold. This, after hanging on for a week, was diagnosed as pneumonia, and she was placed in Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola. Grace, Tommy Lee, and Elinor worked out a schedule to spend alternate days with her so that she would never lack for company.

Oscar complained to Elinor about being left alone. "Let Grace or Tommy Lee go. I need you here, Elinor."

"Grace has a lot to do at the farm, Oscar. And Tommy Lee has plenty to keep him busy. I'm glad to go, and I have to do it. Lucille would fret if there wasn't somebody by her bedside. And I don't know what you mean by being all alone anyway. Isn't Zad-die in here every minute of the day when I'm not? Besides, they shoo us out of that hospital at eleven, so I can be home at midnight."

Visiting hours were over much earlier in much of the hospital, but Lucille had a private room, and in any case the Caskeys were a well-known family in the area. There was no trouble made about these quiet visits beyond the stated times.

On these evenings when Elinor was away at Lucille's bedside, Oscar was at a loss. Football season was over, and he was no aficionado of basketball, and so the radio was of no use to him. He pouted at being alone. He'd tell Miriam and Malcolm and Billy to go out somewhere and eat. If Elinor wasn't going to be around, he didn't want any of them. Zaddie brought up his dinner, and then sat with him through the evening news, but directly afterward Oscar sent her down with the tray. "Come back up and turn down my bed, Zaddie. I've got weary bones today."

"It's the rain, Mr. Oscar," said Zaddie comfortingly. "It's the rain makes you tired all the time."

"Maybe. Maybe it is," said Oscar, listening for a moment to the sound of the rain beating against the sill of the sitting room window. "Where'd they go out to dinner? You know?"

"They all went out to the farm, Mr. Oscar. Tommy Lee shot some birds, I guess."

"Not hunting season, though. That's boy's gone get in trouble one of these days. So they've left us all alone, Zaddie."

Zaddie did not go downstairs with the tray, for Oscar seemed disposed to talk. She went into the bedroom and turned his bed down as he liked it.

"That was a good supper, Zaddie!" he called out.

"Glad you liked it," Zaddie called back.

"Just you and me here tonight, Zaddie. You and me and the rain."

"Yes, sir."

"Elinor tells me the rain has beat down all the azaleas this year."

"Yes, sir. Not much left."

"That's too bad. Elinor's always been proud of her azaleas."

Zaddie came back into the sitting room. "You going right to bed, Mr. Oscar?"

"I think I will. All this rain is making me sleepy."

"Me too, Mr. Oscar. You need any help in getting in your pajamas?"

"No, I'll be all right. You go on downstairs. You got a little Sapp down there to help you clean up?"

"I sure do. I got two of them sitting there in the kitchen watching the television."

"All right. I tell you what, Zaddie. You go on down there and get things cleaned up, then come on back up here and just check and make sure I'm all right."

Oscar didn't want Zaddie's help in getting undressed —that would have been humiliating. On the other hand, he almost always now needed Elinor's help to untie his shoes, unbuckle his belt, and find the pajamas he liked best. He wasn't so certain that he could manage all that by himself.

"You need the light, Mr. Oscar?" Zaddie asked as she picked up the tray.

"Light's not gone do me much good, Zaddie," Oscar replied in a low, weary voice. "You go on downstairs."

"I'll be back up in a little while and make sure you're comfortable, Mr. Oscar."

Zaddie went downstairs, leaving Oscar in the darkness of the second floor. The rain had increased in intensity in the past half hour. Feeling his way from the sitting room into the bedroom, he passed by the window and was splashed with water. He jerked his arm away, then squeezed his wet sleeve around his wrist. He seated himself on the edge of the bed, and pulled his shoes off without bothering to untie them. He removed his socks, and then went carefully to work on his belt. After a few moments, he was relieved to hear it unbuckle. He removed his pants and his undershorts, then undid the cuffs of his shirt, allowing the links to drop to the floor. He took off his shirt and his undershirt and then shuffled to the dresser. He opened one drawer and felt about for his underwear; but that drawer seemed to have nothing but socks. He opened the drawer below that, and found a pair of pajamas. He put them on, but something about their feel and their odor convinced him that this was not one of the two pairs that he was most used to. He went by slow steps back to the bed and climbed in, pulling the covers up to his chin. Had it not been for the unfamiliar pajamas, he would have been very content. Elinor had made the bed that morning just the way he liked it; Zaddie had turned it down, fixing the pillows just as he always wanted them.

It was still early in the evening, but because the noise of the rain kept him from hearing—as he might have heard—Zaddie and the young Sapp girls in the kitchen, it seemed very late. Oscar felt that he could have fallen asleep immediately, had it not been for the unfamiliar pajamas. These were probably a pair that Tommy Lee had given him the Christmas before. Tommy Lee, Oscar reflected yet once again, always gave him pajamas, and always the wrong kind. He wondered how many pairs of his wrong kind of pajamas had burned up in James's house. Hundreds, probably. Dressersful, trunksful of pajamas, still in their cellophane packages, still bearing shreds of paper and tape and ribbon.

But not even the feel of the unfamiliar, wrong sort of pajamas was enough to overcome the soporific influence of the be'ating rain, and Oscar Caskey soon fell deeply asleep.

He awoke sometime later—how much later, he had no way of knowing. It was still raining. The house still felt empty; Elinor was not yet in bed beside him. He sighed, and now wished he hadn't gone to bed so early. He wondered if Zaddie had come back upstairs to check on him. He wished he knew what time it was. One of the problems about being blind was that you never knew what time it was. You lost your ability to gauge passing hours by changes in shadow and light. And now the pajamas felt more uncomfortable than before. Pajamas ought to be made out of cotton, pure cotton, and nothing else, Oscar thought. These were obviously something else; they would keep him awake all night. The more he thought about the pajamas, the more convinced Oscar became that he would have to get up out of bed and find one of the right pairs. Ones that were all cotton, that hadn't been starched, that had been worn in this bed before. While he lay in the bed wondering whether he should get up that very moment or wait for a little bit, he began to think that he heard voices underneath the rain. Perhaps Elinor had returned, and was talking to Zaddie downstairs. The sound of the rain was loud, however, and he couldn't even be certain that his ears weren't playing tricks on him.