Michael McDowell - Candles Burning

“Glued together, I swear,” Mrs. Mank said. There was an edge of anger in her voice. “I can’t imagine that you could separate one page from another without destroying both.”

I produced my oyster knife and she looked down her nose at it and made a dismissive noise. She thrust the book at me, and I made it disappear into my pocket again.

“Merry Verlow has informed you where you will go to college and that you will live with me,” she said, picking up the thread of her previous remarks. “I know that you would like to finish high school here but that’s impossible. In order to succeed in the caliber of school to which you are going, you need to spend a year in a first-class prep school.”

The thought of leaving Merrymeeting and Santa Rosa Island evoked a shiver of panic. I was not as ready as I thought.

Mrs. Mank squeezed my forearm insistently.

“It’s the right time, Calley. Your mama is engaged to marry Colonel Beddoes. She is going to start a new life. Surely you don’t want her to live the rest of her life alone.”

“Surely, I don’t. It’s not Mama that gives me pause, Mrs. Mank. I was preparing myself to go, just not so soon.”

She said nothing for a time while we walked on. My own thoughts were rushed, my emotions surging from panic to excitement. My whole body shivered with gooseflesh.

“When?” I asked.

“Not very long,” was her placid answer. “Not long at all.”

We were within sight of Merrymeeting.

“There is nothing like the sea air for spurring appetite,” Mrs. Mank remarked. “I am ravenous for Perdita’s breakfast sausage. Say nothing to Roberta Dakin when she returns, Calliope. Let her have the pleasure of her wedding planning.”

We parted in the foyer, Mrs. Mank for the dining room, me for the kitchen.

I won’t tell Mama, I thought. I won’t tell anyone, not even Grady. And not just about leaving.

THE day we set out, Grady and I made Tallassee by dinner-time, but of course we didn’t go Mama’s crazy route through Elba. I told no one that I was going. Grady was always good at keeping his trap shut, so we had fixed our own day, borrowed the Edsel from Roger, and snuck off as soon as it was light enough to see.

Tallassee had gotten smaller, to my eye. That’s the way it felt, though of course I knew that it was Calley Dakin who had gotten bigger.

The first thing we did was hit a diner that served breakfast all day and night. After we had filled our stomachs, we went looking for a service station to refill the Edsel’s tank. The sight of a rusty red Pegasus sign sent my pulse racing. I took it for luck and it was: The gas station had a telephone booth with a phone book chained inside.

I checked Mr. Weems’s phone number against the list in my lunar notebook and copied out his home address. The names in the phone book jumped from Ethroe to Everlake with no stop for Evarts. A careful study of the page that listed physicians informed me that Tallassee had more doctors than when I was a child, but that Dr. Evarts did not appear to be among them.

The listings for lawyers offered no Adele Starret, not even A. Starret.

“I’ll write the Alabama bar,” I told Grady. “Adele Starret would have to be listed with them.”

“If she was for real.”

When he said that, for an instant I felt as if he had decided that I had made the whole thing up. A certain mulishness welled up in me.

I checked that phone book for Verlows and Dakins too, in case of new listings or a mistake by the directory assistance. Not a one. I didn’t expect to find Fennie Verlow’s name but it seemed strange that a clan as big as the Dakins should have no listings. Surely some of them would share a party line with someone somewhere.

Grady occupied himself gawking at Tallassee. He hadn’t ever been outside of a thirty-five-mile radius of Pensacola, and marveled at how strange it was to be so far north. He wasn’t sure that he liked it, being so far from the Gulf or any other body of saltwater, never mind he didn’t understand half of what anybody said to him.

Without a map, and depending on a small child’s memory, I had more trouble than I expected finding Ramparts. We kept coming to the same block of recently built houses.

Grady drove us downtown, where I went into the old pharmacy. To my relief, Mrs. Boyer was behind the cash register and Mr. Boyer was visible in the back of the store, doing his pharmacist duties. They were both older than I remembered but not as old as I expected they might be.

“Mrs. Boyer,” I said.

For a second there was a question in her eyes because she wasn’t sure who I was.

“I’m Calley Dakin,” I told her.

“Calley Dakin,” said Mrs. Boyer. “Well, I never.”

Mr. Boyer raised his head and peered at me.

I waggled fingers at him.

“All grown up,” marveled Mrs. Boyer.

“Yes’m,” I agreed, and laughed as if being grown up was just what I put down on my Christmas list. “It’s been so long since I was here, Miz Boyer, I caint seem to find Ramparts!”

“Oh dear.” Mrs. Boyer’s smile faded straight away and she looked very unhappy.

Mr. Boyer came to the front of the store.

“Calley Dakin,” he said, shaking his head. “Honey, Ramparts burned down, oh—well, years ago—it went for new houses. All those old live oaks, chainsawed right down.”

To know Ramparts was gone was an unexpected relief, though I felt some regret for the trees.

“Oh.” I put my hat back on and tied the ends loosely. “Oh, well.”

“She didn’t know,” Mrs. Boyer said to Mr. Boyer in a pitying voice.

He shook his head. “Didn’t know.”

“Thanks,” I said, and stumbled gracelessly out the door to the Edsel.

The Boyers looked out at me as I flung myself into the passenger seat.

“Ramparts is gone,” I told Grady. “Burned.”

Grady glanced at the Boyers looking out at us behind the plate glass of the pharmacy. He turned the key in the ignition.

“Shit,” he said with notable cheerfulness. “Ain’t it allus the way. I was looking ford to them umbrellas.”

The Weems’s house was at least still there, though it took three go-rounds of the neighborhood before we found it.

This time Grady went to the door with me.

A colored woman answered the doorbell.

I opened my mouth, intending to inquire politely if Mr. Weems was at home, but what fell out was, “Tansy?”

She stared at me through thick-lensed glasses and crossed her arms over her stomach. Her hair had gone all white.

I took my hat off.

She blinked rapidly.

“Hit Calley Dakin,” she said, in an amazed mocking tone.

“Yes.” I drew Grady forward to stand next to me. “This is my friend Grady Driver.”

She gave him a cursory once-over that made it clear she didn’t think much of my choice of friends.

I managed to ask then if Mr. Weems were at home.

“Mistah Weems allus at home,” Tansy said. “Had hisself a stroke three years ago come Chrismus.” With considerable satisfaction, she added, “He caint talk, caint walk, caint get out the bed. He’s jes pitiful.”

“Well, maybe I could see Mrs. Weems.”

Tansy smiled grimly. “Miz Weems pass over. She loss her mine and Doc Evarts give her some pills to make her better and she took ever one of ’em all to onced.”

“What about Dr. Evarts?”

“He don’t live here no mo,” she told me, again with seeming pleasure. “He divoice Miz Evarts and lef. She done got married up again to a fella in Montg’mry.”

“Well, where’s my brother, Ford?”

“Doc Evarts took him with ’m.”

Though Tansy was telling me what I wanted to know, it was like begging for cookies and getting one at a time.