Michael McDowell - Candles Burning

He strolled along behind me, though.

Doris stood next to the sedan, her eyes bigger than ever at what she had heard and witnessed. She opened the passenger door at my approach.

Ford stepped between me and the open door.

“You,” he said to Mrs. Mank, in a mocking tone.

She flinched.

“That’s right,” he said. “Why don’t you just get yourself out of this here Cadillac and dig yourself a hole in an unconsecrated ditch somewhere and pull the dirt in on yourself and die, Auntie? I won’t help you either. I won’t even throw the dirt on your face, old woman.”

She snarled, but seemed unable to speak a word.

“She wants to make a confession, first,” I said.

Mrs. Mank looked from me to Ford and back again. Her jaw twitched violently, nearly dislocating itself. At last she got it in gear.

“I am owed Calley. I knew it the minute that I saw her in that shop in New Orleans face-to-face. Deirdre promised me. Her stupidity cost me those two girls, Faith and Hope. The two of them weren’t half of Calley, of course, not that Deirdre would admit it. She thought she was going to get Joe Cane Dakin’s money too. Fennie sorted her out for me. You should thank me for that, boy. You two have no complaint against me. Old Cosima was charcoal before you were born. What could she do for you but interfere?”

Ford slammed the door hard enough to make the automobile shake.

Inside, Mrs. Mank hit the door lock. Clunk . Cadillac door locks always clunked.

“Let’s go get drunk,” he said. “I had all this I can take.”

“What about her?”

“What about her?” he said irritably.

He strode toward the Corvette and with a glance back at Mrs. Mank’s purpling face, I followed him. I guessed that I didn’t have to tell her anything. I didn’t have to account to her.

Ford did not open the car door for me. He went over the one on the driver’s side, of course, rather than open it for himself. I did the same thing on the passenger side, no doubt showing my underpants to Doris, Mrs. Mank, the undertaker and his man. Those two fellows had yet to begin lowering the casket. They were standing there gawking, and who could blame them?

Sinking into the bucket seat, I unpinned the beret and took it off. I tucked it under my fanny.

Ford watched me quizzically.

“It’s a Schiaparelli,” I said.

He chortled. “Oh, Mama, you hear that?”

He drove just the way I expected he would, like an idiot. It was highly enjoyable, and I whooped and hollered and laughed along with him.

We came to a roistering stop outside a cement block road-house. It was properly low in every way, as a Southern bar should be, on account of drinking and everything associated with it is so sinful. The least a body could do was sin in as squalid a place as could be found.

We didn’t actually stay. Ford bought a bottle of Wild Turkey from the old blind man behind the bar and we carried it away to his Corvette. A black limousine waited in the parking lot not far from it. Doris waved at me from behind the wheel. The windows were up, no doubt with the air-conditioning keeping Mrs. Mank cool, and so she was not visible to us.

“Is this against the law?” I asked Ford.

“Hope so,” he said, throwing the cap away.

Handing me the bottle first was an unexpected, gentlemanly gesture that might have brought tears to my eyes, if Ford were anyone else but Ford.

“Krast,” he said, letting his accent thicken ridiculously. “You growd tits. No much of ’em but that’s about as much as I expected. You gone drink that whole bottle yourself?”

“You ain’t changed a bit,” I said, with airy contempt.

He sucked a good mouthful out of the bottle, swished it around like mouthwash and swallowed it.

“That’s a lie,” he said. “Now we’re orphans, you best be kinder to me.”

“You gone be kinder to me?”

“Maybe.” He fingered the breast pocket of his jacket, withdrew from it a card, and passed it to me.

“Fred Hatfield. Damn,” I said, “I’m getting all warm and gooey.” I tucked the card into the pocket in my dress.

“Daddy set up a dealership to sell Fords to colored people,” Ford said. “That was the last straw for Mamadee. Not that it matters. When somebody wants to kill somebody else, motivation is justification, that’s all. So when Auntie offered to help get rid of Daddy and steal his money, Mamadee jumped right on. She should have known Auntie would double-cross her. Evarts and Weems and Mamadee cooked the books on Daddy. They were gone steal him and Mama blind. And did. But those loonies that murdered Daddy, they were tools. Tools for Isobel Mank, who felt about Daddy much as Deirdre Carroll did but was most anxious to control you. What you gone do about her, that old witch Isobel?”

I shrugged. Truly I did not know.

“What happened to all the Dakins?” I asked him out of left field.

He grinned and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “They accepted the kind assistance of Mamadee’s agent, Lawyer Weems, to remove to California. I’ll send you all the addresses of the ones that are still alive.”

“How do you know her?” I asked.

“Same way you do,” said Ford. “She bought me from Lew Evarts. He took the money and run. She told me right off that she was Mamadee’s sister and my closest blood, next to Mama, who run off like the slut she was. She already had custody of you, she said, and you were in someplace for the feebleminded. She put me into the Wire Grass Military ’Cademy. It’s outside of Banks, Alabama, about as far from anywhere as you can get and not be dead. It’s run by some friends of hers, the Slaters, and it’s a lot more like a prison than a school. First-class teachers, though. They’d all been run out other schools for some peccadillo or another, like picking their noses in church or being ex-Nazis or something socially iffy.”

“There were other kids there?”

“Seventy-five, give or take. Juvenile delinquents, basically.” Ford grinned. “I learned as much from my fellow inmates as I did from the faculty.”

“Did you send Mama that letter, the one from Paris?”

“Yeah. I went from Wire Grass to Phillips Exeter, and then I got control of my money and split for France.”

“How did you do that? Get control of the money?”

“Blackmailed Mank. I can connect her with Fennie Verlow, the morning that y’all skedaddled. I hear the Edsel plowing up the driveway and reckoned Mama was in a snit at Mamadee. So I came downstairs and there was ol’ Fennie havin’ a cozy chat with Tansy. Tansy tucked some cash money away real quick, so I wouldn’t see it, but I did. Then Mamadee started squealing for her coffee and toast. A couple hours later, Mamadee had this thing on her neck I couldn’t even see to start, and she was going batty. Tansy pretended to find fault with something and ran off, which made me a little suspicious. I poked around the kitchen and found the new butter thrown into the trash with just a little bit gone, enough for Mamadee’s toast. It didn’t smell like butter. It had a funny medicine smell. After she ran around town buying umbrellas, Mamadee went into her bedroom and didn’t come out. I peeked in and by then that thing on her neck was visible, my God it was disgusting. I jammed an umbrella ferrule into the keyhole. Lew Evarts turned up and got the door open. I saw him touch that thing and then it exploded. She flopped around like a fish on a hook and then she was dead. I didn’t see Lew Evarts do a thing to stop it. The blood. He just looked disgusted.”

He paused for the cause and then resumed. “Anyway, that isn’t the only thing that I’ve got on Madame Mank. Among other things, she twiddles currency, you know, and a lot of it she forgets to do legally. I’m a hell of a researcher, worse luck for her, and a very good thief”—he rubbed the tips of the fingers of one hand together—“and while I can’t hear the way you can, Calley, I mastered the latest techniques in phone tapping at Phillips Exeter. Some of those rich kids come by dishonesty honestly. You ever smoke pot?”