Michael McDowell - Candles Burning

“Because there won’t be as many people coming to gawk!” cried Mamadee. “Because you know what will happen if you have it here in Montgomery or in Tallassee? You might as well rent a circus tent! And all those Dakins will turn up and remind the whole world how low you married!”

“Mama,” Mama said in a suffering voice, “Joseph’s funeral will be at St. John’s. The governor and his wife and a director of the Ford Motor Company will be in attendance. And so will a whole gaggle of Dakins and the only thing to do is pretend that they are as good as anybody else. Did you ever hear that some mothers actually try to comfort their children in their times of need?”

“I’ve heard some children speak with respect and gratitude to their mother,” Mamadee retorted.

Mama tossed back her veil, opened her pocketbook—the brown Hermès Kelly bag—poked around in it, fished out her cigarettes and lighter and lit up. The smoke exited her tremulous nostrils in a furious stream.

From time to time I glanced across the footlocker at Ford. He stuck his tongue out at me once. Another time he put his hands up to the sides of his head as if they were ears, to flap at me. Then he turned his face to stare blindly out the window. When I saw his reflection in the window, I realized he was looking at himself.

Mamadee ground the Cadillac up the driveway of our home and clashed to a halt in the turnaround. A silence settled on us as we looked at the house. It was a fine Big House, one of the best in Montgomery, Mama always said. I remember enormous trees, tall pillars, deep porches and inside, rooms with high ceilings and sun-struck chandeliers.

A sawhorse stood at the bottom of the front steps, with a sign on it.

The words at the bottom said something about by order of somebody or someone.

An orange garland of tape hung around the pillars and there was another sign on the front door. I could make out the letters of POLICE LINErepeated on the tape, just like decorations I had seen repeating HAPPY BIRTHDAYor MERRY CHRISTMAS.

“Why did you bring me here?” Mama asked in a choked voice. “You should have told me!”

“You think I knew?” Mamadee said. “I would hardly drive out of my way, would I?”

None of us believed her. Nothing was more characteristic of Mamadee than driving out of her way to kick someone near and dear in the gut.

“I caint believe the police have searched my home. Or was it the FBI?”

“Both. You caint stay here.” The note of triumph in Mamadee’s voice was barely repressed. “You will have to come stay with me at Ramparts.”

Mama sank back in the seat and lowered the veil over her face.

“Yes, Mama. Yes, Mama. Yes, Mama. Yes, Mama. Are you satisfied?”

Mamadee turned to her. “Why, Roberta Ann Carroll Dakin, whatever do you mean? How could I possibly derive satisfaction from the plight of my widowed child and her orphaned children?”

Mama made no answer. I could see that she had decided she was not gone talk to Mamadee any more, at least for a while.

“What about Portia and Minnie and Clint?” I asked.

Portia was our cook, Minnie cleaned the house, and Clint did the chores.

“Be quiet, Calley Dakin,” Mamadee snapped. “The help is none of your business. I am certain sure, however, that given the way colored people gossip, they knew before you did that Joe Cane Dakin was dead. I fired the lot of them as soon as I got back from New Orleans!”

Mama’s cigarette smoke spurted even more violently at Mamadee’s high-handedness.

I knew, of course, that the colored servants had nothing more important to do than gossip about their white employers—it was a very popular topic with Mamadee, Mama, and all their female friends. The ladies were all still seething about the bus strike when the colored help all walked to work rather than take the bus on account of Miss Rosa Parks. Miss Parks refused to ride in the back, for which she was arrested and all the colored people threw a hissy fit. Most of the maids and cooks and chauffeurs and yardmen were late to work every day for months and talked back something terrible whenever they were chastised. Now they could all ride in the front of the bus, but everybody was still riled and hardly speaking.

I remembered what Daddy said to Mama’s lamentations when it started: “Well, darling, that egg’s cracked, and the chick’s not gone get back into it.”

I remembered what Daddy said because Mama fired Ida Mae Oakes the very next day.

RAMPARTS loomed over the small town of Tallassee from nearly its highest point. The house was surrounded by several acres of big old live oaks festooned with Spanish moss. For all intents and purposes, Ramparts was the Carroll Museum, dedicated to the eternal glorification of the Carrolls. There was hardly a wall without a portrait of some Carroll or other, or Carrolls in multiples: Judges Carroll, State Senators Carroll, State Representatives Carroll, a U.S. Congressman Carroll, a Lieutenant Governor Carroll, a State Attorney General Carroll, a General Carroll and three Captains Carroll.

I expect all those old Carrolls were like other people, each a mix of good and bad, of strength and weakness. For a fact, most of them had owned slaves and all of them had been good segregationists—the sort of moneyed white who secretly supported or ignored the Klan and its terrorism. They were hypocrites, I mean, like most of us.

I never knew my granddaddy, Robert Carroll Senior, because he died before my birth. Captain was his commissioned rank during WWI and Mamadee always referred to him that way, as Captain Carroll. Mama used to say that the town was too small and everybody knew each other too well for Mamadee to call him General Carroll, but that she would have if she could. Robert Carroll Senior had been the sole inheritor of the Carroll Trust Bank and some other Carroll properties—once upon a time, there were plantations and a couple of mills of one kind or another. In fact, there was even a Carrollton in western Alabama, but if there were any Carrolls living in it, Mamadee was not on speaking terms with them.

Though the Carroll Trust Bank never went bust in the Depression, the Carroll fortune suffered, or so Mamadee claimed in her most penurious moments. Captain Senior managed to hold on to the bank and Ramparts, and to provide Mamadee with Cadillacs and an estate sufficient to keep her from the poorhouse. Mamadee made miserly economies over the pettiest items, while justifying other, larger expenses on the grounds of value. I doubt that she was ever truly hard up, as I have observed this behavior in many wealthy people. Perhaps it is only a tingle of shame that causes rich people to chintz and chisel over pennies while indulging themselves in great luxury without hesitation, but that may be giving credit where none is due.

In its salon, Ramparts sported a Chickering baby grand. It had been locked up for all the years of my short life, except for the day every year when the tuner came to tune it. Mamadee did not play but she was not about to let anyone else play either. Nor did Mama play, and I had not been able to discover if anyone else in the family ever had. I already knew that it was hardly the only piano in the world that was less an instrument than a very large elaborate pedestal for candelabra, a vase of flowers, or a wedding portrait in a silver frame.

My personal favorite room in Ramparts was Captain Senior’s old library. Mamadee almost never came into it, for one. It was called a library because it had a bookcase in it, though hardly anybody ever cracked any of the books on its shelves. The old books were falling apart, the edges of their pages crumbling and the leather bindings cracking and flaking. Every time I picked one up, I sneezed. The books were mostly about explorers, and illustrated with many old maps in pastel colors: sky blue, mint green, rose, butter yellow. All my life since I have enjoyed looking at maps, those glorious illusions that we can know where we are.