Candles Burning by Tabitha King Page A

that meant Captain Senior grieved himself to death, a common fate of the bereaved in Alabama. I had to wonder now that Daddy was dead—if he really was—if I could grieve myself to death.
    Almost outside the window, one of the old oaks whispered and creaked, and in it, the birds and the squirrels and chipmunks carried on their daily lives.
    Mamadee’s yardman, Leonard, had placed my suitcase on the bed, my record player on the floor and my Betsy Cane McCall doll and box of paper dolls on the bed. He had opened the window a few inches to air out the room; now it was chilly. I flung my coat on the bed, opened my suitcase and one of the dresser drawers, threw the contents of the first into the second, and slammed them both shut. I slid the suitcase under the bed next to the pot. That left the doll and my paper dolls. I lifted the box top and looked down into it. Betsy McCall Was Still In Pieces. At Ramparts.
    My stomach grumbled. I ran downstairs and banged through the doors into the kitchen. Tansy paused with her chopping knife over the carrots she was dicing.
    â€œGone tear tha hinges right out the wall,” Tansy said. “You git, gal. I don’t need no chile unfoot in my kitchen. Somebody could be done a harm.”
    â€œI’m hungry!” I cried. “Desperate hungry!”
    â€œSo’s a million Chinamen. Git.”
    Tansy did the cooking and the light housekeeping and found professional fault with the succession of hard-up women who came in to do the heavy work. Mamadee had fired every servant she had ever had, or had them quit. Tansy had been fired or quit everywhere else and the only job she could get was at Ramparts. They were stuck with each other. Tansy gave Mamadee somebody to rag everyday, and Mamadee gave Tansy somebody to resent everyday.
    I banged back through the doors out of the kitchen and headed down the hall for the library.
    Ford lunged out of nowhere and grabbed my wrist. He spun me off course and pushed my face against a wall, holding my arm behind me. I opened my mouth to scream and he kneed me in the small of the back, so I couldn’t get any air down my lungs.
    â€œSsshhh,” he whispered in my ear, strong-arming me into the powder room. His breath smelled of bourbon, which meant that he had penetrated the defenses of Mamadee’s liquor cabinet once again. He shoved me inside and shut and locked the door behind us. I finally got a look at him. His hair was raked up and down and he had been crying. His nose was leaking. He wiped it with the back of his hand.
    â€œI am gone crazy,” he said in a croak. “I caint take this no more. Mama got Daddy murdered and chopped up by those women. I do not know how but she did. You know it. You don’t miss the sound of a mouse fart.” He threatened me with a curled fist. “You tell me how she did it and you tell me why she did it right now, or I swear I will kill you, Dumbo, I will cut your stupid ears off your stupid head and shove them down your throat!”
    â€œShe did not!” Then I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Mama did not do what you just said. You are a liar, Ford Carroll Dakin, a liar and a bully.”
    We stared each other down for a long moment.
    Then Ford said, “She’s gone kill me next. You would like that. You would help her.”
    I shook my head no. “Course I would help her, but Mama ain’t gone kill you. Why would she? Why would she kill Daddy?”
    â€œMoney,” he whispered. “Get rid of me, she gets all the money.”
    I knew money was important. Mamadee and Mama talked about it enough. I just could not see how any amount of money explained what had happened to Daddy, especially since I was not entirely sure exactly what had happened to Daddy beyond two crazy women having killed him and cut him up and stuffed most of him into a footlocker. Mama had not killed Daddy; those women had. And those crazy women had never collected the