Part 2 (2/2)
”Come and take Danjo back, that's what.”
”I'll shoot him,” James promised complacently.
Queenie beat her heel rapidly on the floor. ”Let me think about it, James.” She got up and returned to her own office. In five minutes she was back.
”Well?” asked James.
”I don't want to give him up, I really don't. But it just seems so selfish of me, when I've got three and you've just lost the only one you ever had.”
”That's right, Queenie. It would be real selfish of you to keep Danjo all to yourself. So why don't you go on and give him to me?”
”All right, //”we can get him away from Carl.”
Til speak to Carl.”
”You gone offer him money?”
”I don't know. Maybe. How much you think he'd sell Danjo for? A hundred dollars a month?”
Queenie considered. ”What about a new car?”
Queenie was right. In exchange for a new automobile-Carl's choice and costing twelve hundred dollars-Danjo was given over to James Caskey for safekeeping. Ostensibly, the exchange was temporary, but no one was deceived. The boy was not consulted, but Danjo was so meek a child that he would doubtless have acquiesced to any proposition. Danjo was put in the old nursery in James's house, which had been freshly wallpapered and given a set of furniture. The boy was bewildered to think that he wouldn't have to share it with anyone. He cried a little when he left his mother, but he stopped his tears when she a.s.sured him that she would see him all the time. He had thought that he was being taken away from her forever, and even at that he had ventured no vehement protest.
The first weekend that Danjo spent in his new 38.home, he would not venture out of his room, and when James would peep in, his nephew would always be sitting very still on the edge of his bed. The boy appeared so constrained and unhappy that James forewent his usual reluctance to intrude, and finally ventured into the room. Leaning against a chifforobe just inside the door, he peered down at Danjo and said, ”Am I gone have to send you back to your mama and daddy, Danjo?”
Danjo looked up, his eyes full of tears.
”I want you to stay, Danjo, but you're just not happy here, I guess.”
”I am!”
James Caskey was puzzled. ”You don't want to go home to your mama and daddy?”
Danjo considered this. ”I miss Mama...” he ventured.
”But not your daddy?”
Danjo shook his head vigorously.
”Then why aren't you happier here with me? Why don't you run around and play? You used to play all the time. Do you miss Lucille and Malcolm?”
Danjo shook his head cautiously. ”I don't want to break anything,” he said in a low voice.
”Break anything? Break what?”
”Break your stuff.”
James stared at the boy. ”You mean you're not leaving this room 'cause you're afraid you're gone knock something over?”
Danjo nodded, and appeared very near tears again.
”Lord, Lord,” cried James Caskey. ”Don't you worry about that, Danjo! / don't care if you break something. How much stuff you suppose my girl Grace broke while she was growing up? How much stuff you guess Roxie breaks while she's cleaning this house? You think I can walk through a room without something falling to the floor and smas.h.i.+ng? I cain't! And I don't expect you can, either. Danjo, I want you to be happy here. You know how much I've 39.got in this house. You breaking something's not gone make one little bit of difference. I've got closets full of junk, and I'm gone be going out buying more anyway. Now, I don't want you to run out of here and start pitching things against the wall-”
Banjo's eyes widened in horror at the suggestion.
”-but I do want you to enjoy yourself here. I want you at your ease.”
”You do?”
”I sure do. Danjo, do you know what I paid for you?”
”You bought Daddy a car?”
”I did. It cost me one thousand two hundred dollars. I've made a big investment in you, Danjo. And you got to help pay it back.”
”How?”
”By having a good time. By letting me watch you enjoy yourself here. By keeping me company, and making me not feel so sorry for myself because my little girl's gone away. Will you do that?”
”I'll try!” cried Danjo, and he ran across the room and hugged his uncle.
Perdido claimed that it had never seen a family to match the Caskeys when it came to giving children up and taking children in, switching offspring around as if they had been extra turkey platters or other household items that there might be an excess of in one house and a lack of in the next. Carl Strickland made no secret of the terms of the deal by which James Caskey got custody of his Danjo. That was a sale that had all the force of a deeded exchange of land in the eyes of Perdido. Thenceforth, Danjo belonged to James Caskey, and Perdido thought it was wonderful of James that he allowed the boy's mother to visit her son whenever she liked.
It seemed a perfect situation. Carl Strickland had his new automobile. Queenie Strickland was a.s.sured of her boy's moral and financial future. James Caskey had a child to take the place of the one who had 40.grown up and gone away. And no one was happier with the situation than Danjo himself.
Rather than taking it as an affront that he had been sold off for the price of a new automobile, Danjo was comforted by the binding aspects of that transaction. He was less likely to be s.n.a.t.c.hed away and carried back across town to the house in which he was a.s.saulted, in varying degrees and in varying ways, by his brother, his sister, and his father, and where his mother had been his sole but inadequate comfort. He loved James Caskey. He never got over a sense of privilege of having a room all to himself, of living in a house that was quiet and filled with beautiful things, of being kissed and hugged rather than pinched and punched. The boy's only agony, and he kept it a deep secret, was the fear that someday his uncle would trade him off in turn, in exchange for a diamond ring, perhaps, or a little girl. Where would Danjo end up then?
Ten years before, the Caskeys had appeared a barren family to the rest of Perdido. There had been only James's little daughter Grace, a pale, whining thing hardly worth the attention her effeminate father paid her. Later Elinor and Queenie produced five children between them and divided them among the wanting Caskey households. It was as if Mary-Love and James had looked up and cried, Good Lord, Elinor! For goodness' sake, Queenie! Y'all have got so many, and we don't have any, why don't y'all pa.s.s a couple of those children around so we can all enjoy them. It wasn't quite like that, of course, not in the Caskey family, where a favor done was no more to be tolerated than a slap in the face-but the children were distributed nonetheless, so that each household had at least one. In consequence, the very texture of the entire family was altered, and despite individual animosities, the Caskeys seemed a younger, more vigorous and happier clan.
CHAPTER 31.
Displacements
The stock market crashed on October 29, 1929, but no one in Perdido realized what effect that distant event-that strange crisis of faith and paper-would bring to bear upon each of them. The Caskeys, who perhaps might have had at least a crinkled brow or two of worry for what it would all mean to family and to the town, were occupied at that time with a more immediate matter: the day the stock market crashed, Carl Strickland attempted to murder Queenie.
Unpremeditated a.s.saults rarely occur in the morning. Violent pa.s.sions are most often engendered by acc.u.mulated heat, by alcohol, by weariness of the body-elements whose effects are generally felt most strongly in the evening or late at night. But Queenie Strickland raised her husband's ire at the breakfast table by refusing to give him fifteen dollars to visit the track. His unpredictably savage reaction only showed Perdido how close to the edge 43.the man had always been, even when he appeared to live quite peaceably in their midst.
”Queenie, you've got the money!” he shouted across the kitchen table.
”Course I got it, but I'm gone spend it on food! How much you suppose I make?”
”I suppose you make plenty, that old man pays you plenty!”
”He doesn't! I make enough to feed this family, and that's all! Do you see me in new dresses? Where are Malcolm's new shoes? Is Lucille taking piano lessons? Do you hear a piano every afternoon when you come back from the track? If you need money so bad, why don't you go get yourself a job?”
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