Candles Burning

Thirty-six

“CALLEY Dakin! Calley Dakin!”

The echo of my name condensed out of my oblivion: Miz Verlow, calling me. My eyes opened to a darkened day: Twilight had come on, cooler and quieter and more desolate. Yet even in the thickening shade of the tall grasses I saw as well as if it were noon. Better, without the glare.

A mouse crouched very close, right next to my face against the sand. It licked the side of my mouth with its very tiny tongue. Its eyes were brilliant in their blackness, and the beat of its heart a tiny paradiddle.

“Calley Dakin!”

For fear of frightening the mouse, I did not move.

The mouse gave the corner of my mouth a final lick and sat back for a second. It looked almost satisfied.

Miz Verlow advanced upon me from the back of the dune as surely as if she had a map of where I was. The swishing of the tall grasses announced her approach.

The mouse jumped. It seemed to unzip the sand with its tiny paws. The dimple filled at once behind it, and the sand became as seamless as sand can’t help but be.

Miz Verlow looked down at me. “I won’t ask if you heard me calling.”

My mouth was dry. I could manage no more than a mumble. “I was asleep.”

“Evidently.”

I scrambled to my feet. “I saw a mouse! It was white!”

“Of course it was. That’s the color of the beach mice here. You are late for supper.”

She spun right around and set off toward the house. I lunged after her, then paused to glance back at where I had been, in my nest in the grass. The sea oats, the panic grass, the grasses whose names I did not yet know, thousands of them, scratched against beach and sky, were all the same, like the grains of sand heaped up to make the dunes and washed down to make the beach, like the drops of water poured together to make the Gulf. My heart sank; I would never find it again. With a catch in my throat, I scrambled after Miz Verlow.

I feared needlessly, as one so often does. Over the years, the moon showed me that self-made hollow anytime I looked. Only on the night of the new moon was it hidden from me. No mouse ever showed itself to me there again, though I saw the beach mice off and on in other locations, but I watched the phases of the moon there. There, I made pets of raccoons, training them to bring me oysters to trade for kitchen leftovers. From there, I spied upon the sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs and bury them. When sea oats flagged out in seed, I shook out their heads to feed the birds, coaxing them to perch on my fingers. By night, I watched the night-dark waters roil and dash into lacings of spray, or in a quieter mood, rising and falling as smoothly as the breast of a sleeper, under clouds visible even in the dark.

But on that night, after washing and putting on a dress, I was that much later arriving at the table. My plate was cold but not unappetizing, at least to me, as my stomach had woken and was yowling that it had not been fed since breakfast.

Mama spared me an irritated glance that foretold a tongue-lashing later on. Cleonie’s arrival at Mama’s right shoulder with a plate of lemon meringue pie distracted her. But only for a few seconds, before Mama returned to making quick anxious glances at Mrs. Mank.

Miz Verlow sat at Mrs. Mank’s right. To Mrs. Mank’s left was a woman whom I had never seen before. Every week so far had brought guests unknown to me, occasionally even at midweek. The only distinction the woman held for me at that moment was her position so close to Mrs. Mank. No one bothered to introduce me and she paid me no mind.

The unnamed visitor was a big coarse woman, weighing closer to two hundred pounds than to a hundred-and-fifty. Her dress, in bright shades of yellow and chartreuse, strained at the seams. She had chosen a clashing red for her lipstick and applied it outside the lip line, a strategy I had seen before—Mama had explained it was an attempt to give fullness to narrow lips. It did not, of course, and was ridiculous, but hardly uncommon, and if I ever asked a woman directly about her lipstick again, Mama would slap me silly. Penciled black lines arced well above the normal position of eyebrows, making the woman’s tiny blue eyes seem perpetually surprised. Her hair, shellacked in tight waves, was of a color Mama called cow-pie copper.

Cold mashed potatoes, gelid gravy and warm fried chicken absorbed my total attention for some time, until people began to push back their chairs and take their coffee or tea to a parlor or the verandah.

I caught Mrs. Mank’s gesture to Mama, who hurriedly rose to follow her. The four women carried their coffee to the verandah in polite silence.

Curious as I was, I started from my chair, only to have Cleonie take a firm grip on my shoulder.

“Not so fast,” she said. “Who be’s washin’ up?”

Then she laughed at my expression and pinched my cheek. She handed me a tray, with a fresh carafe of coffee and cream and sugar on it. “Gone, now. Miz Verlow be’s wantin’ this.”

Miz Verlow evidently wanted me to follow. I made haste and found the ladies settling into chairs circled in a quiet alcove, at a discreet distance from a few other guests also enjoying the spring evening on the verandah.

At this narrow waist of the island, and at an angle to the house, the alcove provided a view from bayside to Gulf. The moon, just off the full, was close to rising; its light was already glowing toward the east, at the lumpy horizon of bay and hummock. That skim-milk luminescence diluted the darkness of the night and picked out ghostly curds of foam on the black water of the Gulf.

“Calley,” Miz Verlow said as I hove into sight, “come put that down right here.”

I placed the tray on the small table at the center of the group.

“Thank you, my dear,” Miz Verlow said. “Now scoot. Those dishes in the kitchen won’t wash themselves.”

Furious with frustration, I raced back through the house, through the dining room and butler’s pantry to the kitchen. My step stool was drawn up at the sink that Cleonie had already filled. She and Perdita were seated at their little table, absorbed in their own suppers. I shot past them and out the kitchen door. The startlement in their faces gave me an unexpected kick.

Their chairs scraped as they jumped up but before they could look out the door, or come out onto the kitchen porch, I was under the lattice skirt of the verandah. I scooted along in a crouch toward the alcove but stopped short of it, to catch my breath. Creeping the last few yards, I curled up under the floor of the alcove.

Mama was sitting forward intently in her chair. Alone of the four women, she wore high-heeled pumps, to show off her ankles. To be sure, Miz Verlow, Mrs. Mank and the stranger, not a one of them, could show off their ankles to any advantage. I peered up through the gaps in the wood at Mama’s pointy soles.

“Do you know, Miz Starret, if my darling mama is still alive?” Mama said, all solemn and hushed as if she were at a funeral.

“I am sorry to have to tell you that she is deceased,” the strange woman who must be Miz Starret said. She didn’t sound particularly sorry.

Mama jumped up. “Miz Verlow, I must have the keys to my car. If I leave now, I can lay flowers on my mama’s grave at dawn!”

Miz Verlow said nothing. Mrs. Mank sniffed.

“All right,” said Miz Starret. “Before you go, would like to hear how your mother died and why you weren’t told anything about it?”

Mama had expected someone to try to talk her out of her resolve. Her sails suddenly slack, she paused uncertainly.

“You might also want to know where she’s buried,” Miz Starret went on, “otherwise you will be running from pillar to post all over Tallassee.”

Mama was rocked. “Why? She must be in the family plot. In the Tallassee cemetery. We’ve always been buried there—the Carrolls I mean. Are you saying Mama wasn’t buried there?”

Miz Starret shifted in her chair; she was reaching into the pocket of her tight dress.

With some difficulty, Miz Starret withdrew a folded sheaf of tiny lined note pages.

“Your mother,” she said, flipping open the notebook as if to consult notes, “was buried in the Last Times Upon Us Church Cemetery.”

Mama shrieked in rage. Then she remembered her role, and sank back into her chair in more genteel shock.

“Forgive me, this is such a dreadful surprise.”

I had to repress a snicker. Mama was telling the truth for once.

She covered the unfamiliar crisis by groping for her handkerchief.

“My poor mama is surely spinning in her grave. Why was my mama buried in a snake-handlers’ cemetery?”

“It’s the only place that would have her.” Miz Starret’s voice was distinctly flavored with the moldy taste of smuggery. “Even at that, Mr. Weems had to pay twice the usual fee to the Last Times Upon Us Church. The elders said the Lord enjoined them as Christians to judge not, so they would provide Mrs. Carroll with a plot, but it would cost them some to conduct special rituals to keep their own hallowed dead safe from any demons that the corpse might yet be hosting.”

Mama gave a little moan and shudder at the thought of being lorded over by snake-handlers.

And then Adele Starret told her, in outline, of my very dream of Mamadee’s death.