The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

by Susan Wittig Albert

  But her claim to complete confidentiality wasn’t entirely true, and Myra May knew it. She sometimes passed on tasty little tidbits of this and that, even when she felt it was wrong—but only when it didn’t matter too much and when it was just too good to keep to herself. Like the time old Mr. Beekins flushed his dentures down the toilet and Mrs. Beekins had to call Toomy LeGrand, the town’s plumber, to come and fish them out. Everybody giggled when she told them that one. Or the time little Wilbur McWilliams swallowed a goldfish, and his mother called Doc Roberts to ask what to do about it, and the doctor said he should drink lots of water. That was always good for a laugh.

  But Myra May also knew that she had slipped up in her remark about Voleen Johnson. She felt she was right—Voleen didn’t want to have to face people just now, in case they asked too many questions about the situation at her husband’s bank. Voleen didn’t want to have to pretend that everything was hunky-dory when it wasn’t.

  Myra May had to admit that what she heard about the goings-on at the bank scared her silly, too. One of the Mobile banks had failed the previous November and Myra May’s second cousin—her mother’s sister’s daughter’s son—had lost every cent he had to his name. He’d left town on a freight train with his mother’s last three dollars in his pocket and was somewhere out in Washington State, sleeping in a hobo jungle. Myra herself had money in the Savings and Trust, but she wasn’t going to leave it there for much longer. The minute Beulah finished trimming her hair she was on her way to the bank to take that money out. She’d have to put it under her mattress, but if half of what she had overheard was true, it would be as safe there as in Mr. Johnson’s Savings and Trust. Safer, probably.

  “Of course you’re a professional, Myra May,” Beulah said in a comforting tone. “You’re a professional through and through. Now, you just come on right over here to the chair, and I’ll trim off those itty-splitty ends.”

  “But we are talking about the bank!” Miss Rogers exclaimed, dismayed. She sat down in the other chair and Bettina adjusted the cape around her neck. “That’s where I have all my money! And not just me, either. The Savings and Trust is the only bank in town. We all have our money there—every single one of us! If something’s wrong, we’ve got a right to know about it, haven’t we?” Her voice rose to an unusual pitch—unusual for Miss Rogers, who was ordinarily very self-contained (except when it came to the possibility of losing her money—again).

  “Sorry, Miss Rogers.” And Myra May lifted her chin, took an imaginary key, and turned it in her lips.

  Beulah picked up the scissors and began to trim Myra May’s ends. “You said they haven’t caught the escaped convict yet,” she said, changing the subject. “But has anybody seen any sign of him?”

  “Haven’t heard,” Miss Rogers said shortly.

  “At church yesterday,” Bettina said, “Mrs. Sidell—she lives on the road that goes out t‘ward Springtown—said she lost two chickens and some eggs out of the coop and a sweet potato pie that was coolin’ on the windowsill. Nobody saw who took it, but her husband said he figured it had to be the convict. Must be pretty hungry by now.”

  “Springtown,” Beulah said thoughtfully. “Well, that’s a ways south. Guess he’s not headed in this direction. But somebody’ll spot him, sure. They all have shaved heads, you know. The prison farm does that to keep ‘em from gettin’ lice, poor things.” It was Beulah’s opinion that having your head shaved was worse than going to jail.

  “Wait, Beulah!” Bettina looked up, excited. “You know, I’ll bet it was the convict who took that automobile! He prob‘bly picked up a girlfriend and he was stealin’ a car so the two of ’em could get out of town.”

  “You could be right, Bettina.” Beulah put down the scissors and reached for the hand dryer. “I sure wish they’d catch him. Don’t you, Miss Rogers?”

  “I wish Myra May would tell us what is going on at the bank,” Miss Rogers said crossly. “We’ve got a right—”

  There might’ve been more words exchanged on this subject, but at that moment, the screen door opened and Sylvia Search lumbered in. Sylvia was just over five feet high and nearly that in girth. Next to Leona Adcock, she was the worst gossip in town.

  “I cain’t remember whether I’m down for nine thirty or ten,” she said cheerfully, “so I thought I’d just come on over an’ set ’til you’re ready for me.” She took a notebook out of her purse. “While I wait, I’ll just take a minute to jot down some of those ‘handy tips’ Lizzy Lacy was askin’ for in her garden column on Friday. We’ve been makin’ do at our house for years and years.”

  “Actually, you’re a Tuesday,” Beulah replied, turning on the dryer. “But it don’t matter at all, Sylvia. You want done on Monday, we can do you. Can’t we, Bettina?”

  “We sure can,” Bettina chirped. “Just so happens that Miz Johnson canceled not five minutes ago. You just sit there, Miz Search. We’ll get to you in two shakes. And maybe the rest of us can help with those tips. We’ve been makin’ do, too.”

  And that, Myra May thought with relief, was the end of that conversation. Nobody would say a single thing of any consequence as long as Sylvia Search was in the room—not unless they wanted it broadcast to the rest of Darling.

  But it wasn’t the end of the troublesome subject of the bank.

  An hour later, freshly combed and dried and turning away from Alice Ann Walker’s window at the Savings and Trust with fifty-three dollars tucked carefully into the lining of her pocketbook, Myra May bumped into Miss Rogers. She hung around long enough to see the librarian push her savings book across the counter and hear her say, with her accustomed firmness, “I wish to withdraw the money in my savings account, please, Alice Ann. All of it.”

  And at noon, Beulah and Bettina hung the Closed sign on the Beauty Bower’s door and went together to the bank, where they stood in line with three or four other citizens of Darling, all looking warily uncomfortable.

  And in his bank president’s office, watching through the glass window as one after another of the bank’s customers made a withdrawal, Mr. George E. Pickett Johnson was becoming nervous.

  SEVEN

  Ophelia Lends a Helping Hand

  It wasn’t Verna or Lizzy who told Ophelia about her husband carrying on with Lucy Murphy, after all. That responsibility was assumed by Mrs. Leona Ruth Adcock, who lived kitty-corner across Rosemont from the Snows. Mrs. Adcock always took it on herself to make sure that everyone in the neighborhood stayed firmly on the straight and narrow. Or if they strayed, that the appropriate people knew about it. She and Sylvia Search had a reputation for gossip that was excelled by none.

  It was early Monday morning, just about the time that Beulah and Bettina were opening up for business. Ophelia, who liked to get into the garden while it was still cool, was spading a hole beside the corner of her front porch for her new angel’s trumpet, properly called Datura arborea, according to Miss Rogers. Ophelia had swapped Bessie Bloodworth an early-blooming double white peony for it at Saturday’s plant sale. (She didn’t know the peony’s real name because it had come from her mother, who always called it Aunt Polly’s peony because that’s where she had gotten it.) Bessie, who “specialized” in angel’s trumpets, had taken half a dozen cuttings in the fall and carried them over the winter on her south-facing back porch, just for the sale. This one was supposed to be creamy yellow and would probably get about six feet tall. Ophelia wanted it by the porch where she could enjoy its sweet scent when the trumpets unfurled in the evening, but she’d have to remember to tell the kids to leave the seeds alone. They were poisonous, although Bessie said that her grandmother had smoked the leaves to relieve her asthma. Ophelia didn’t think she’d try smoking it, even though Bessie said her grandmother (who had died on her hundredth birthday) thought the smoke helped to take the edge off her troubles.

  Mrs. Adcock—an older lady with a sharp, ferrety nose and a pointed chin with two or three stiff hairs growing out of it—was returning the cup of brown sugar she
had borrowed the week before. But that was only the ostensible reason for her visit. Her real reason became clear when Ophelia (who tried to be neighborly even when she didn’t particularly like the neighbor) invited her into the kitchen for coffee. Mrs. Adcock wanted to let Ophelia know that certain folks in town—she didn’t like to name names—were saying that Jed was fooling around with his cousin Ralph’s young wife while Ralph was away, working on the railroad.

  Of course, Mrs. Adcock went on piously, she never liked to interfere in people’s private business. But she did think it was her bounden duty to let Ophelia know what was being said. Not that there was necessarily anything in it, she hastened to add, since even Christians were always going to gossip. No matter what the truth of something was, they’d have it told six ways from Sunday, and there never was any real knowing just what the facts were.

  Still, she was sure that Ophelia would like to hear about this, ’cause goodness only knew, it was terrible when people you thought were your friends were talking about your husband and his cousin’s wife behind your back and you didn’t know a thing about it.

  Having delivered this nasty bit of news, Mrs. Adcock smiled in a neighborly fashion, changed tacks, and opened a new subject. “Have you heard about the ghost?”

  “What ghost?” Ophelia asked blankly, trying to get her mind around what Mrs. Adcock had just said about Jed and Ralph’s wife. Of course it was all a pack of lies. Jed would never—

  “Over on Camellia Street. The Cartwright ghost. She was wanderin’ around in Mrs. Blackstone’s garden Satiddy night, pretty as you please.”

  “Oh, really?” Ophelia murmured distractedly. She didn’t believe for a minute that Jed might be hiding any sort of—

  “Really.” Mrs. Adcock picked up her coffee cup. “Mrs. Sedalius saw her and told me all about it after church yestiddy mornin’.” Mrs. Adcock was one of the faithful at the Four Corners Methodist Church. “Mrs. Sedalius lives at the Magnolia Manor, you know, right next door to the old Blackstone house. She has a very nice second-floor room, facin’ south, where she can see out of her window into the garden. That’s where she saw her. The Cartwright ghost, I mean. The one that haunts the old mansion that was burned during the War.”

  “Hmm,” Ophelia said. Jed wouldn’t. Not with Lucy, not with anybody. But there was that telephone call—

  “Exactly, my dear. That one.” Mrs. Adcock sipped her coffee. “It was ’bout ten o’clock, an’ Mrs. Sedalius was gettin’ herself ready for bed. She looked out the window toward Mrs. Blackstone’s garden, and what did she see but the ghost, wearin’ a long, dark cape an’ carryin’ a spade, way she always does.” Mrs. Adcock leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Mrs. Sedalius said it was a full moon out there an’ she saw that ghost just as plain as if it was bright daylight”

  “What did she do?” Ophelia asked, wrenching her attention away from Jed and that phone call. Jed had said it was from Sheriff Burns, although that had struck her as odd at the time. Why would the sheriff—

  “Do? Why, she ran out in the hall an’ banged on Bessie Bloodworth’s door an’ called her to come have a look. But by the time they got to the window, the moon had went behind a cloud and they couldn’t see a blessed thing. Mrs. Sedalius said it was black as the inside of a wolf.”

  Ophelia didn’t ask how Mrs. Sedalius knew what the inside of a wolf looked like. “Well,” she said doubtfully, “I suppose she might have been—”

  Mrs. Adcock sat back in her chair. “That’s exactly what Bessie said, too. She was sure that Mrs. Sedalius was imaginin’ it. That ghost ain’t been seen for quite a while, you know, and folks’re figurin’ she found what she was lookin’ for and wouldn’t be around anymore. But later that night, after everybody had went to sleep, Bessie herself heard it”

  Ophelia frowned. “Heard what, exactly? How do you hear a ghost?”

  “Why, the sound of the spade, that’s what! The ghost was diggin’ out yonder, at the back of the garden where it’s all marshy an’ wet, by that cucumber tree. Bessie said at first she thought she was dreamin‘—you know, after hearin’ all about the ghost from Mrs. Sedalius. But she got up out of her bed an’ raised her window an’ heard it loud an’ clear. Clink-clink-clink.” Mrs. Adcock picked up a spoon and rapped it against her cup. “Jes’ like that. Clink-clink-clink.”

  “And then what?”

  “Well, I don’t rightly know, dear.” Mrs. Adcock put the spoon down. “Somebody come up to us jes’ then to ask Mrs. Sedalius ‘bout the Sunday School party, an’ she didn’t finish her story. But if it was me, I‘d’ve run right straight back to bed an’ pulled the sheet right up over my head. Wouldn’t you, if you heard a ghost diggin’ in the backyard?”

  “Probably,” Ophelia said. She was going to see Bessie in the next day or so, to help clean up the garden. She made a mental note to ask whether Bessie had looked around to see if there had really been any digging.

  Mrs. Adcock said she reckoned that the ghost was looking for the buried coffin of that dead baby, or a lost pair of shoes, or maybe a box of family silvef—she’d heard the story three different ways. She added that she was keeping all her doors and windows locked, so that if that escaped convict came around looking for food or money, he couldn’t get in. Then she thanked Ophelia for the coffee and borrowed an egg (so she’d have an excuse to come again, when she had another piece of gossip) and went back across the street, saying that she had to get ready to get her hair done over at Beulah’s Beauty Bower.

  After she had gone, Ophelia sat at the table for a moment, thinking that it was a good thing that Mrs. Adcock had come over while Florabelle was out in the backyard hanging out the wash. Florabelle absolutely believed in ghosts. If she thought the Cartwright ghost was walking again, she’d throw her apron over her head and go sit with her face to the wall.

  Ophelia was also glad that Florabelle hadn’t heard the other thing, too—although if people around town were talking about Jed and Lucy, the colored folks already knew it. Florabelle lived in Maysville, on the east side of the railroad tracks. When she went home at night, she caught up on the news from all her cousins and friends who worked for the white families in Darling. Ophelia considered asking Florabelle what people were saying about Jed and Ralph’s young wife. But Florabelle was like most of the colored women Ophelia had known in her life, kind and thoughtful, with a sturdy, innate dignity. She might’ve heard something, but she wouldn’t tell Ophelia what it was. It would be too embarrassing to both of them.

  Ophelia got up and wiped the red-and-yellow-checked oilcloth with a dishrag, then got the broom and began to sweep. She was remembering the phone call a week ago yesterday, the one Jed had said was from Sheriff Burns. She was also remembering what she had heard on the party line that same evening, when Verna and Myra May were talking about Buddy breaking his arm when he drove his motorcycle into Ralph’s corncrib. Myra May had said it was Lucy who called Jed, not the sheriff, the way Jed claimed.

  Ophelia hadn’t thought much about it at the time. There must have been a lot of excitement at the switchboard that afternoon, with telephone calls flying back and forth about the prison farm escape. It would’ve been easy for whoever was on the board at any given time to misremember who called who and what they said. Ophelia had meant to ask Jed when he got home, but Sam had fallen and scraped his knee when he was roller-skating, and by the time she’d patched that up, she’d forgotten all about it.

  Ophelia wasn’t inclined to pay a lot of attention to Mrs. Adcock’s story. But there were a few other things, now that she thought about it. Little things, like Jed’s increasingly frequent visits to the Murphy place. And people who stopped talking when she came into the room, as if they didn’t want her to hear what they were saying. Were they talking about Jed and Lucy?

  But Ophelia didn’t believe in stirring a big pot of troubles until her mind and heart got stewed into mush. So she stopped thinking and went out to the washhouse to give Florabelle a hand with the wringer. Jed’s pants were
heavy when they were wet and the wringing went faster when there was one to feed and one to turn the wringer crank.

  By the time Jed’s pants were on the line, Ophelia had decided what to do. She put on a fresh cotton dress, combed her hair, put on her second-best hat (the straw with the blue silk flowers) and reminded Florabelle that Jed wouldn’t be home to noon dinner because it was the third Monday, the day the Elks held their monthly meeting at the Darling Diner. Florabelle could go ahead and give the children their dinner—she would eat when she got home, which might be later in the day. Then she went to the garage and carefully backed out the Ford sedan. She was going out to see Lucy. She didn’t have a plan—Ophelia wasn’t the kind of person who thought ahead about what she wanted to say. She just wanted to see Lucy and try to figure out what was what, that was all.

  Really, she told herself. That was all.

  The Murphy place was at the end of the Briarwood Road, about four miles west of town, just at the edge of Briar’s Swamp and not far from the river. It was Ralph’s daddy’s home place, but Ralph had built an addition on the house when he and Emma—Ophelia’s best friend—got married years ago. Emma had been a solid, sensible girl, and she’d started having babies right away. But she’d died of a cancer too young, leaving Ralph to cope with Junior and Scooter, who were as free-spirited and independent as might be expected of youngsters who didn’t have a mother. Ophelia didn’t like to criticize, but Lucy wasn’t old or heavy-handed enough to take Emma’s place. The boys needed a switching every now and then, which wasn’t likely to happen, with Lucy being as soft as she was and Ralph working on the railroad and gone all week, even some weekends.