by Rhett DeVane
Chapter Four
DRAGONFLY FLORIST
The elaborate brick office of Daniel H. “Hank” Henderson, attorney-at-law, was located on Jefferson Street adjacent to the Chattahoochee Police Station. Bobby’s drab green Game and Freshwater Fish Commission truck was parked next to Hank’s shiny charcoal gray Mercedes sedan.
Hank’s longtime secretary, Janice, looked up from her computer screen. “Hi, Miss Hattie. I’m so sorry about your mama. She taught me business education in high school. Of course, back then the rage was the electric typewriter. I’m not so sure this thing is an improvement, some days. Well…your brother is already back in Hank’s office.”
Hank looked the same as he had for the last thirty years—overweight, over-stuffed, and over-saccharine. “Well, here she is,” he said. “Bobby and I were just catching up on a few things.”
I could only imagine what things that would be.
“Let’s get started, shall we?” Hank hauled his tailored pants up underneath his distended stomach. “Your mother and father were quite interested in making sure you both were taken care of, as well as being equally treated. There is a sizeable estate for you two to split.”
Bobby and I exchanged puzzled glances.
“The 150 acres of property is to be shared. The only stipulation is that Hattie will own the parcel of property containing the house. Bobby, you will be compensated in kind for the estimated value of the home from the investment accounts.”
The leather upholstered chair squeaked in protest when Hank shifted his considerable weight.
“I have a breakdown of the cash value of the investments. These funds will be available as soon as I have cleared all outstanding debts, of which there are few. I will contact you as soon as possible with information regarding the transfer of all funds.”
I didn’t have to look at my brother to know he was as shocked as I was at the final figure at the end of the column.
“Where’d all this come from?” Bobby asked.
Hank smiled, showing a straight line of perfectly capped Chiclet teeth.
“Your father and mother did two things in favor of their children; they lived simply and invested wisely. Now, if you don’t have any questions for me at this time, I have a Board of Directors meeting at the bank that pulls me away.”
Bobby stood and walked toward the lobby.
“Oh, I almost forgot, Hattie.” Hank handed me a weathered gray wire-bound notebook. “This notebook was with your parents’ papers.”
On the front, in handwritten oversized block lettering, it read: “TO MY FRIEND MR. DAN DAVIS AND HIS SWEET CHILD HATTIE.”
Hank held up one well-manicured hand. “I have no idea, Hattie. Please excuse me now, I must leave.” He grabbed an oxblood-red leather briefcase and trundled from the office.
I waved goodbye to Janice on the way out. Bobby’s pick-up was gone. As I unlocked the truck door, a City of Chattahoochee police cruiser pulled up alongside.
A sultry deep male voice said from behind me. “You got a license to look like that, lady?”
I studied the mustached face of the officer. “Why, you going to arrest me?”
“Only if you give me trouble.” Officer Rich Burns grinned. “How ya’ doin’, Hattie? Carol and I been meaning to call you up for dinner. Your mama was a fine lady, even if she didn’t turn out to be my mother-in-law like I had all planned out in tenth grade. Lot of folks will miss her.”
“Thanks, Rich. You haven’t changed a bit. Still have a smile that could stop a five-day clock.”
The dispatcher’s voice on Rich’s radio rattled unintelligibly in his ear. He spoke back in code, then turned to me. “I gotta run, Hattie. There’s some drunk causing a scene down at the river landing bait shop.”
He rustled in his uniform pocket. “Here’s my card. You call me if you need anything out there on the Hill. Heck, I’ll even write down my cell phone number on the back.”
“Thanks, Rich. It’s good to know I have one of the Hooch’s finest at my beck and call.” I noticed the fine dusting of silver hair between the dark waves.
“As always.” He gunned the cruiser to Washington Street and turned west toward the river.
Except for different businesses, Chattahoochee’s Washington Street looked pretty much the same as I remembered from childhood. The two lane thoroughfare ran east toward Quincy and west toward the junction of Lake Seminole and the Apalachicola River. The recently renovated Victory Bridge spanning the river near Jim Woodruff Dam was used by locals and a few tourists who desired an easier pace over the high volume of Interstate 10. Only two traffic lights still graced the main drag, not counting the flashing caution/stop light at the top of Thrill Hill.
Thrill Hill wasn’t nearly as much fun as it had been in my teenage years. I would turn at the light at Washington and Boliver Avenue, slam the accelerator to the floor, feel the rush as all four wheels left the ground at the crest of the hill, and bottom out the shocks when I landed. I remembered the woozy roller-coaster stomach I used to get as my parents’ Ford LTD dropped toward the pavement. Now, a three-way stop bordered the top of the hill.
The larger of the two main intersections had recently been widened to accommodate the rush hour traffic at the entrance to the Florida State Hospital. At one time, the hospital’s mental-patient inhabitants made up the vast majority of the local population, as well as providing employment to a large number of townspeople. Over the years, changes in legislation and funding had reduced the number of patients and staff. Recently, several unoccupied buildings had been renovated, and two Department of Corrections institutions were located there now.
I spied the plate-glass window of the Dragonfly Florist halfway down the first block on the north side of Washington Street and pulled into a parallel parking place. Inside, Jake Witherspoon danced behind a large flower-strewn table to an old Temptations tune as he stuck daisies into a basket of ferns and snapdragons.
“Oh, my Gawd! Sister-girl!” Jake whooped when he looked up. He dropped the clump of daisies and rushed to sweep me into his arms.
“I was hoping you’d come by! Sorry I haven’t had a break since your mama’s funeral to come out to see you on the Hill.” Jake held me at arms’ length. “You look as sweet and sassy as the last time I saw you.” He reached up and plucked playfully at a stray sprig of my hair. “Well, maybe your ’do could stand a little trim, but otherwise, you’re flawless!”
Jake had chided me about my limp do-nothing-famously hair since we were old enough to sprout self-awareness.
“Yeah, I’ll have to stop by and see if Mandy can fit me in while I’m home. But you…you look…handsome and movie-starish.”
Jake had aged little since high school; still the same boyish facial features, sprinkled with a light dusting of freckles. His sandy brown hair was clipped stylishly short, the tips highlighted light blonde. The calm blue eyes I had loved as a teenager reflected humor and gentleness.
Jake glowed with the praise. “You’re too kind, please. I have more than an inch-pinch around my middle and just oodles of smile lines. But thanks for fostering the delusion that I’ve aged well. I’ve thought of you often since I moved back. It’s been a wild ride getting the business built up again. The shop had gone down a little before I took over.”
He frowned slightly. “I’m sorry it took your mama’s funeral to bring us together. I’d always hoped to catch sight of you on one of your fly-by trips to the Hill, but I seemed to find out about you being here after the fact. I’m surprised your mom didn’t tell you I was back in town.”
“I haven’t spent much time over here in the past year, I’m afraid. I guess you just never came up in conversation, or I would’ve come in to see you before this. Aunt Piddie told me you were back in town, just this morning…and, you were at the graveside? I didn’t see you.”
He tilted his head and smirked. “Of course I was there! I did practically all the flowers. You took out two of my finest carnation and lily standing sprays with
your amazing nosedive. And, I had to deal with that enchanting brother of yours to plan the casket drape.” He wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Besides, I know how crazy it gets after a funeral. I was giving you a few days before I made an appearance, armed with an appropriate casserole, naturally.”
“Jake, you’re so…”
“Flashy? Marvelous? Queer?” Jake supplied, flinging his delicate hands out like a Broadway dancer taking a bow.
“Actually, I was going to say slim. You look incredible. But then, you always were a sharp dresser.”
He hugged me again. “Oh, I have missed you, sister-girl!” Jake propped his hands on his slender hips. “Well, let me fill in the awkward spots. Since you’ve located me, I can assume you’ve talked to that delightful auntie of yours. You know I am back home to stay, and gay… and you’re not, I understand.”
“How’d you know that?”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, let’s see. Hmmm… handsome, chiseled man at the graveside service…” he said in singsong. “Obvious! Besides, Elvina Houston told me. She stops by periodically to see if there are any funerals she can attend. That woman operates on the rule of six degrees of separation. If she can even remotely trace her way to any of the folks I’m doing funeral sprays for, she breaks out the mourning clothes and calls it a social function.”
“I’m glad Elvina cleared things up. Although I didn’t even know I was gay until I came home for Mom’s funeral. Imagine my shock!”
“Isn’t this town wonderful?” Jake laughed. “Come on back here and sit while I finish this arrangement for the Morningside AME Sunday service. Lucille Jackson will be by shortly to fetch it.”
I watched Jake’s masterful hands as he turned the arrangement around, plugging flowers into vacant spots. He handed me a cold drink from a small refrigerator.
“How’d you end up back here?” I asked.
“Kismet. Fate. The Gods smiled on me. Actually, my mother, the Countess of the Twin Cities, left everything to me when she died. Got your card, by the way. I tried to live in the Witherspoon castle, but it was just too much. I sold it to a couple from south Florida who’ve never so much as set foot in town, and bought the store and a rat-trap delivery van that runs most of the time. And… here I am!”
“You like it here? I couldn’t wait to get out!”
He crinkled his nose when he smiled, a gesture I remembered fondly. “I love this little burg. I didn’t want to leave in the first place. When Cruella de Witherspoon-Ville found out her beloved son walked with a swish, she flipped out. Told me she ‘loved me, but it would just ruin her standing in the community’ if anyone knew. So, I left with mother’s blessings. Went as far away as I could fathom at the time—New York. Mother wrote me, sent money sometimes. I went to school, worked at a little flower shop close to my mangy little apartment to earn extra cash, and got a business degree that I hang in the bathroom. I helped Mrs. Lucy Gray with this shop off and on when I first moved back. She wanted to retire, and it just all worked out. For once.”
“If you sold the mansion, where are you living now?”
“I threw a cot in the back.” Jake motioned toward a small room in the rear of the shop. “Eventually, I’ll find some little hovel to call home. I wish Piddie would sell me her little frame house on the corner of Morgan Avenue and Cedar Road. What I could do with that place! And those azaleas!” Jake paused and considered the flower arrangement from all sides before plugging a wired white carnation into a blank spot. “So…you never married or had kids?”
“No, to both questions. Relationships haven’t exactly been my strong suite. The men I’ve picked so far have either been too scared to commit for the long term, or they’ve balked at the thought of children. Someday, I may just say to hell with them all and raise a child all by myself. For now, I like my independence. Like to be able to pick up and travel. Besides, I’d have to carry a baby in a suitcase if I had one now…I’ve had, as Piddie calls it, a ‘hysterectum’ a couple of years back.”
“Oh, sister-girl. I’m sorry!” Jake hugged me.
“Don’t be. I’m certainly not. I still get bitchy once a month, but I don’t have to go through all that other female stuff. It’s kind of nice.”
He added extra fern to the arrangement. “Your aunt is a card. I provide some of the adornments for her hair, by the way. Piddie helped me a lot when I first moved back home. Some folks were a little…put out…with my somewhat flamboyant, though charming, personality. Piddie and her bosom friend Elvina Houston pretty much turned things around in my favor. Thanks to them, the business has flourished, and it seems most folks kinda choose to overlook the gay issue.”
Jake smiled. “She and Evelyn were in here ordering flowers for Mama Jean Thurgood’s funeral several months ago, and she told me she thought the reason she was having her fallin’ out spells was because her karate arteries were clogged. Evelyn says ‘no, Mama, that’s carotid arteries!’ Piddie fires back, ‘That’s what I said, karate!’ Turns out, Evelyn’s all steamed at her for ruining one of her ace bandages. Mrs. Ginny Pridgett told Piddie she’d read somewhere that you could put a poultice of mustard on your neck and it would unclog your arteries! Well, Piddie didn’t want to go to the trouble of going out for dry mustard powder, so she squirted regular old hotdog yellow mustard on an ace bandage and wrapped it around her neck!”
When I caught my breath from laughing, I said, “I would’ve loved to have seen the look on Ev’s face. I’m positive her kitchen was a royal mess! That is classic Piddie!”
“Just in time!” Jake said, glancing toward the front of the shop. A tiny bell tied to the glass door rang, announcing the arrival of a small black woman.
Mrs. Lucille Jackson called, “Mornin’, Mr. Jake! Whew! It’s heatin’ up, out there!”
“Perfect timing, Miz Lucille! I was just finishing your arrangement!”
“Heww! I suwanee, Mr. Jake, you are an artist! It makes me feel cooler just to look at that basket of flowers! I can’t tell you how much Reverend Jackson and I appreciate you doin’ this at the last minute. Dessa White was supposed to be in charge of the flowers for the altar this week, but she’s over in Tallahassee in the hospital. Her sugar went way up and she’s havin’ problems with her blood pressure. If it wasn’t for you, the sanctuary would be awfully plain tomorrow.”
“I’m always glad to help you out, Miz Lucille. Y’all send a load of business my way. Oh, ’scuse my bad manners, do you remember Hattie Davis?”
Lucille brushed a strand of gray hair from her glistening forehead and dabbed the beads of perspiration with an embroidered handkerchief. “Why sure! I thought you looked familiar. You’re Mama Tillie’s little girl! Lord, I don’t reckon I’ve laid eyes on you in a good while. My prayers are with you and your family. Miz Tillie did a lot for this town. She taught my son, Thurston II, to type, and just a couple of years ago, she helped my grandson, Thurston III, in that special readin’ program at the elementary school.”
I nodded. “I remember her talking about that! Before she started having so much trouble with her arthritis, she joined the mentor program in the county. She said it helped her have a reason to go on after my dad died.”
“Yeah. I reckon we all need somethin’ to make us feel like we still count for somethin’ in this world. I see your Aunt Piddie regular. She’s been a friend of mine and the Reverend’s for goin’ on forty years or so. She comes to services with us ’bout twice a month. Be sure to tell her for me, if you will…some of the church ladies will be bringin’ supper by to you all tomorrow. I made a couple of sweet tater pies. Miz Piddie just loves my tater pies, now. One of us’ll call before we head over with the food.”
She gathered the arrangement and tucked it in the crook of one arm. “Well, I best be gettin’ on. Brother Parker is waitin’ for me in the car. I’ll be by to pay up on the church’s bill first of next week.”
I asked after she left, “What happened to the other flower shop in town?”
“Silver Moon Flowers?
” He shrugged. “Oh, Minnie Blue is gettin’ on in years, so I get more and more of her business. We often work together for big events, weddings and funerals.”
“How does that stand with the rest of the town?”
“Seems to be okay, for the most part. There’re a few folks around that would just as soon keep black and white folks separate forever. I tell them The War is over, every chance I get! Change comes slow, you know. Anyway, I stay pretty busy, although I would like to add on to the shop. I own the other side of this building, as well. I’m just waiting for the inspiration to hit. I want to do something different. Maybe gift baskets. I don’t know….that’s so overdone anymore.”
“Don’t you worry about being so…gay… in this town?”
Jake’s boyish face clouded over for a moment. “No, not really.” A fleeting expression of anxiety betrayed the brave façade.
“You’ve had trouble. I can only imagine.”
“No one’s gonna bother me. I know a lot about the happenin’s in this quiet little burg. I see who gets the red roses, and it’s not always the person who ought to be getting them, if you catch my meaning. I watch and keep my mouth shut. Besides, it’s been nothing serious. Just a few silly pranks, usually after I’ve helped with a large event for the black community. That seems to get whoever it is going. I suppose they feel the people of color of this town are just supposed to pick field flowers and put ’em in a bucket!”
I shook my head sadly. “That’s one of the few things that can’t change fast enough about the South.”
The door opened and two teenaged boys stepped inside. They poked around for a few minutes before Jake acknowledged their presence.
“Help you…gentlemen…with anything today?” Jake fake-smiled in their direction.
The older and more sinister of the two boys smirked. “Nope. Ain’t nothin’ in this store I need.”
The two of them laughed, and then shuffled through the door. They loitered on the sidewalk briefly before continuing down Washington Street.
