Candles Burning

by Tabitha King

  “Calliope Carroll Dakin. I’m more Dakin than Carroll.” I didn’t answer the second question.

  She almost smiled. She held out her hand and I put my own hand, the one with the burnt finger, in her palm. She kissed my finger. All at once, the pain was gone. She released my hand and I stepped back from her slowly, staring at my finger, and then at her, and again at my finger. The burn was still there but there was no pain.

  When I looked up from it again, the candle on the table was burning once more.

  I heard Miz Verlow’s step on the backstairs. My gaze was drawn toward the door that she would come through and I tensed like a guy wire.

  A cold, bony hand grasped my wrist. I nearly jumped out of my skin. If I had been sitting in that chair by the window again, I would have fallen out of it.

  Tallulah Jordan stared at me intently as she gripped my wrist.

  Listen to the book, she said in her sandpapery voice.

  The door to the backstairs opened at the very instant that my hand fell loose from that grip.

  Miz Verlow stopped abruptly in the doorway. Her face drained of color, and she sniffed the air as if she smelled smoke.

  “I burned the toast,” I said.

  Miz Verlow frowned disbelievingly at me.

  I moved toward her, intending to get away and upstairs as fast as I could. She seized my wrist as I passed her, and let go as if she had burned her hand on me, and looked at her palm as if I had burnt her.

  “The doorbell,” she said.

  There was no question in her voice but I responded as if there were.

  “It was me,” I confessed. “I’m sorry.”

  She knew that I was lying. I didn’t want to find out what else she knew. Or did not know. She was seething with anger and, more interestingly, fear.

  “You let the candle go out,” she said.

  “No, ma’am.”

  The “ma’am” did not mollify her. “Who was here, Calley?”

  I yawned and fidgeted. “Nobody.”

  She looked disgusted with me, and I had no doubt that she knew that when I used the word nobody that I was only telling the technical, literal truth.

  “Get out of my sight, Calley Dakin,” Miz Verlow said, “and the next time I see you, I want the truth.”

  I lunged for the backstairs.

  Which book? Which one?

  I looked back to make sure that Miz Verlow was not watching me, and slipped into the linen closet, closing the door behind me as silently as I could, in case Miz Verlow was listening.

  In a moment my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I could make out the darker dangle of the chain pull with its white ceramic knob at the end that turned on the light inside the closet. I gave it a yank. Both knob and chain felt creepily colder than they should have. I usually enjoyed pulling a light chain, feeling the catch when it was at its full length, and then slowly releasing it, waiting for the instant that the bulb lit, or went dark. In that instant of electric light, I saw where I was and where I wanted to go, and yanked the chain a second time to return the closet to darkness. No line of light would be showing at the bottom edge of the door.

  Dropping to my knees, I crept to my shelf of books.

  How could I be certain that Tallulah Jordan meant one of these books when she told me to listen to the book? Some people called the Bible The Book. She had said listen, not read.

  I ran my fingers across the row of spines. As I touched the Audubon Bird Guide, the finger burnt in the candle flame instantly hurt again, hurt as bad as when it was actually in the flame. Reflexively I jerked it back. And it stopped hurting. Stopped burning. I braced myself, and gingerly touched it to the spine of the bird guide again. This time there was no pain.

  And a voice said. This one.

  It was not the voice of Tallulah Jordan, or my great-grandmama or Mamadee. It was the voice of Ida Mae Oakes, the mellifluous, comforting voice of Ida Mae Oakes. My eyes welled and I nearly blubbered. I tugged the book from the shelf and hugged it tight.

  I had been up all night. I climbed to my favorite shelf and settled into a comfortable nest of toweling and feather pillows and tucked the book under the pillow for my head. I didn’t think of pajamas or brushing teeth or any of the everyday going-to-bed routine. Dr. Keeling’s odd prayer came to mind. I heard my great-grandmama Cosima speaking again:

  Now I wake me to the day

  that breaks o’er me with burning ray

  If I should live until the noon,

  I’ll light a candle to the moon.

  If I should live the whole day long

  I’ll sing the sun a heartful song.

  I could hear the water clearly, rushing in and out, and it sighed like great wings

  all around me.

  shushabrush, shushabrush shushabrush

  Forty-five

  THE clock seemed to have stopped that Christmas, for when I came downstairs again in the early afternoon, after dinner, the stockings still hung from their hooks and none of the gifts under the fake tree had been opened. It was the first time that I realized that grown-ups did not have to struggle to postpone opening their presents. Such an indifference to the excitement of Christmas morning shocked me, and made me feel sorry for them to have it mean so little to them. It seemed to me in that instant of realization that this was the clear dividing line between being a child and being an adult. Adults were people who had lost the innocent greedy joy of Christmas morning.

  Still wearing the previous day’s clothing, and looking like an unmade bed, I’m sure, I was fortunately disinclined to mourn my future, thanks to the hunger of a healthy growing child unfed since Christmas Eve’s supper. I rummaged myself a bellyful in the kitchen and then wandered to the parlor, where the tree stood forlornly, its odd and gaudy fruit strewn meagerly about it.

  Father Valentine sat alone in his favorite chair, wearing his blind-man’s dark glasses, and doing nothing. He heard me enter, of course, and grinned.

  “Is it Rip Van Calley?” He cackled. “I thought you’d be sitting here with everything all opened when I came down this morning.”

  “Merry Christmas,” I said.

  “And to you,” he replied. “It had ought to be merrier, really, in Merry Verlow’s house. I believe I like the smell of the smoke from this wood fire as much as I do the warmth from it. Nostalgic.”

  “What’s that? Nostalgic.” I twiddled my sock dangling from its hook under the mantel.

  “The way you wish it once was, but of course it wasn’t. Bring me my stocking, Calley. I’m tired of waiting for it.”

  Father Valentine never hesitated to play at being childish, and when he did there was a quaver in his voice that was as good as a wink. It was a relief to have a grown-up at least willing to fake a little Christmas excitement.

  Using a hassock as a step stool to reach it, I unhooked his stocking. It was mysteriously lumpy but even though the fabric was stretched thin to near transparency, I could not make out what was in it.

  He took it eagerly and ostentatiously felt it all over.

  “Grand,” he said. “Just what I wanted. So thoughtful.”

  As if at a signal, the rest of the household began to filter into the parlor, greeting me with Merry Christmases and joshing about Father Valentine and me getting the jump on the presents.

  Dr. Keeling paused by her chair to ask, “What do you have there?”

  “Mine to know and yours to find out,” said Father Valentine. His hands clenched around his stocking. “It’s mine and you can’t have it.”

  “Don’t want it,” Dr. Keeling answered, “but I’d take it if I did.”

  “No squabbling, you two,” Mr. Quigley said. “Not today.” He took down my sock and gave it to me.

  Miz Verlow and Mama arrived lastly, after the Slaters.

  I squatted on the turkey rug with my sock at my feet. There was a rectangular box in it, the corners catching in the fabric, requiring me to work it out a snag at a time. I had it in the grasp of thumb and forefinge
r when Miz Verlow walked in. She paused to flip a switch and the lights on the aluminum tree bloomed like a dozen candle flames. The cranes on the tree wavered slightly as if on a passing air, but it might have been an illusion caused by the sudden multiple sources of light on the highly reflective tree.

  The sock clung to the rectangular box, which was about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Miz Verlow stooped over me to seize the toe of the sock, and the box slipped out into my hand.

  She was smiling at me. If she had been angry or suspicious earlier, there was no sign of it.

  “Merry Christmas,” she said, and uncurled the fingers of her free hand.

  Two AA batteries rested in her palm.

  Hastily I ripped the paper from the box and tore it open, to see the transistor radio that the batteries would power.

  The guests all laughed and applauded.

  “I’m not going to listen to that hurdy-gurdy day in and day out,” Mama said. “You hear me, Calley?”

  All too clearly, somewhere in my inner ears, as if she were sticking pins in them.

  Miz Verlow winked at me.

  I remember nothing else that was given me that Christmas, except for the sweater and watch cap that Mrs. Llewellyn had sent. It seems to me that there were no real toys—suitable for my age, I mean. No dolls, no children’s books, no records of children’s songs, certainly nothing as extravagant as a bicycle. My memories of later Christmases with the same guests, though, assure me that what I received were make-do tokens, like something a parent might pick up at an airport notions kiosk on the way home from a trip, after having forgotten to obtain a real souvenir: a fresh pack of cards from the Slaters, probably one of the several that they always brought with them, a secondhand science-fiction novel from Dr. Keeling, a little cheaply framed watercolor seascape from Mr. Quigley, a chocolate Santa Claus from Father Valentine.

  Mama always told me that we couldn’t afford Christmas presents. Every year I made something in school for her—a paper ornament, paper angel, a sachet made of a scrap of cloth and filled with the pine needles and rosemary that were commonplace on the island, or a newspaper mâché pot painted with primary colors that began to flake off as soon as the paint dried.

  It was always Miz Verlow who gave me something that I wanted, and other gifts that I needed. Sometimes I thought that I loved Miz Verlow more than I did Mama, or even wished that she was my mama, instead of Roberta Ann Carroll Dakin. Of course, I always felt guilty for loving her more than Mama, and wishing such a thing. I feared her more than Mama too, for as I grew, I began to perceive Mama more and more as a paper tiger.

  That Christmas, that first Christmas, I unhooked the paper cranes from the fake tree and smuggled them to the linen closet, where in a very high, hard to reach corner, one that I nearly brained myself climbing to, I stashed them in the box that had held the sweater and cap from Mrs. Llewelyn. If I kept those cranes that once had been playing cards, if I had the right candle, I might be able to ask more questions of my great-grandmama Cosima. If I ever felt brave enough. I wished that if she had to speak to me, she would do it without hocus-pocus, like all the other whispering or chittering voices that I heard. Of course I worked mightily to ignore them but now that I knew her voice by name, I would recognize it. Of course. How could I be so stupid? She had spoken to me first by way of introduction. The proof would be when I heard her voice again, and knew it for hers.

  And then, oddly, or perhaps not oddly, given what I have learned, the visitation of my great-grandmama, my vigil and my visitor and what she told me that Christmas, went out of my head. I remembered it only in dreams. When I dreamt it, I promised myself to remember when I woke but then, did not. It took a great many dreamings before I did. Before I remembered that I was supposed to listen to the book.

  Forty-six

  MERRYMEETING’S operation and upkeep took an enormous amount of work that Miz Verlow made every effort to keep unseen. Nothing upset guests like unreliable plumbing, while at the same time the finest pipes and fixtures in the world would be tried to their utmost by a succession of paying guests. After she lost a reliable plumber to a freak lightning strike at a church picnic, Miz Verlow cast about, trying several other local plumbers. She was dissatisfied with all until she found Grady Driver.

  First, though, she fired his daddy. On his very first call to Merrymeeting, Heck Driver managed to bust a pipe and ruin a wall, not from incompetence but because the Co’Colas he drank one after another, complaining of the heat, were about half cheap rum. The ruination of guest-room wallpaper by the leaking pipe in the bathroom next door was a predictable consequence. Miz Verlow took Heck Driver to task; he cussed her out, and she not only fired him and declined to pay him, she told him she was going to bill him for the repairs.

  An hour after Heck Driver stumbled out, leaving his tools where they lay, and drove uncertainly away, his rusted-out van returned with a mere boy at the wheel. I knew him from school: Grady Driver, Heck’s son, excruciatingly shy and chronically dirty. He had been sent home repeatedly with nits and been held back a couple times, so even though he was a couple years older than me, he was in the same grade.

  Grady knocked at the kitchen door and asked to speak to Miz Verlow.

  When she came to the door, he apologized for his father’s error, using a formula he had by heart.

  “My daddy sent me to beg pardon, Miz Verlow, and not hold it agin him on account of he come out sick to start, from havin’ ate bad fried fish last night, but not wantin’ to let you down, and maybe I could clean up the mess for you and pick up his tools.”

  Miz Verlow was in the doorway with her arms crossed under her bosom.

  “I will excuse your lie on grounds of your understandable desire to defend your daddy. However, Mr. Driver was drunk. You are too late to clean up, as my maid has already done so, and it requires a competent plumber to repair the broken pipe. But you may retrieve his tools.”

  “Hit were an accidence, Miz Verlow,” insisted Grady.

  Miz Verlow had rolled her eyes. “Enunciate, young man. Accident! It-was-an-accident.”

  Grady swallowed hard and repeated after her. “It-was-an-accident.”

  “It was not an accident,” Miz Verlow said.

  Grady looked confused. He was built like Roger, long-limbed and gangly, but poorly nourished for his frame, with a stolid expression on his face that people often took for vacuousness or backwardness of intellect.

  “True accidents are surprisingly rare. Most of the events that people call ‘accidents’ are entirely predictable. Time and again, close examination of the so-called ‘accident’ reveals incompetence, fraud or drunkenness, or any combination of those faults, as the real cause. The only ‘accidental’ aspect of the mess your daddy made was the fact he did it here, because I had the random bad luck to have hired him today.”

  Grady had passed from confused to stunned and back to confused again.

  Miz Verlow threw up her hands. “Get your daddy’s tools!”

  I’d been lurking about the kitchen to see what I could see and hear what I could hear. When Miz Verlow vacated the doorway, and Grady stood hesitant on the threshold, I hauled him inside.

  “I’ll show you,” I told him.

  He followed me up the backstairs and down the hall. Cleonie and I had mopped up and wiped up and even tidied the tools into Mr. Driver’s toolbox but we could not fix the pipe. Miz Verlow had turned off the water to the bathroom and so it was unusable.

  To my surprise, Grady made a thorough examination of the scene. Then he took some of his daddy’s tools and went to work. Needless to say, I was fascinated, not only by Grady’s bold advance upon the problem, but also by what he did. In a quarter of an hour, he had the miscreant pipe repaired and asked me to show him where the water was turned off and on. Once the water was back on, the bathroom was operational.

  Then I required Miz Verlow to cover her eyes and let me guide her to the scene, whereupon she opened her eyes on a clean, functional bathroom,
and a grinning, though still regrettably unwashed, Grady Driver.

  “I kin fixt that wall, Miz Verlow,” Grady said, “you got you sum plastern paste.”

  Miz Verlow shook her head in disbelief.

  “Young man, you amaze me. You’ll have to come back to fix the wall. I’ll have the materials on hand tomorrow.”

  Grady packed up his daddy’s tools again.

  Miz Verlow watched him for a moment, sighed, and went away.

  I tagged after her all the way to her office. She looked at me inquiringly and I held out my hand.

  “He done a good job,” I advised her.

  She pursed her lips. “You know better grammar than that, Calley Dakin.”

  I corrected myself, “Yes, ma’am, he did a good job.”

  She opened a desk drawer, the one where she kept petty cash. I watched her fingers hesitating and then lunging and plucking out a bill. She thrust it at me.

  I grabbed it and raced out, catching Grady stowing his daddy’s toolbox in the van. Just as Miz Verlow had thrust the bill at me, I thrust it at Grady.

  He looked at the five-dollar bill in amazement, scratched his head, and grasped it.

  “Much oblige,” he said, summoning all his dignity as a substitute adult.

  “Hey,” I said, “you got nits?”

  Immediately he was another kid again and disgusted with me.

  “Hey,” he said, “you fly with them ears?”

  “Hey, that’s original, how many times you s’pose I’ve heard it? My ears come attached to me. You get bugs in your hair from not washin’ it.”

  “I ain’t got bugs!” He climbed into the van and slammed the door. “I ain’t got bugs!”

  By way of underlining my superiority, I crossed my arms and watched him as he drove away. He probably did have bugs again, scratching his head like that.

  I went straight inside and washed my hair.

  Forty-seven

  DRAWN by the growl and beat of the engine, I raced up to the crest of the dune to see it: A black-and-cream Corvette was speeding toward Merrymeeting. Maybe Mrs. Mank had traded her Porsche. I had no burning desire to see Mrs. Mank but the Corvette commanded my attention. When I reached the parking area, its engine was ticking down. The driver was next to it, taking off his sunglasses. He squinted at me and smiled.