The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Bessie took Roseanne’s shopping list out of her purse and handed it to Mrs. Hancock. Every Tuesday night, Roseanne, the Manor’s cook-housekeeper, got out the grocery ad in the Dispatch and made up the list, including prices. Bessie always went over it with her, adding everything up to make sure they could afford it. Today’s list:

  3 lbs. pork loin roast, 15¢/lb.

  1 lb. Wisconsin cheese, 23¢/lb.

  3 cans Campbell’s tomato soup, 3 for a quarter

  1 box Pillsbury pancake flour, 13¢

  2 lbs. wieners, 8¢/lb.

  2 rolls Kewpie toilet paper, 2/15¢

  1 box Octagon soap powder, 13¢

  1 3-lb. bag grits, 10¢

  Mrs. Hancock pulled each item from the shelf, put it in a cardboard box, and added the total amount (in this case, $1.60) to the Magnolia Manor account she kept in her black ledger. Later that same day, Old Zeke would deliver the box in his little red wagon. And at the end of the month, Bessie or Roseanne would come in and pay the bill. Of course, since things had gotten bad, some folks couldn’t settle up completely every month, but Mrs. Hancock always carried them as long as she could, taking in trade whatever they could give her, from garden truck to butter and eggs. People were grateful for her help and everybody did what they could to keep her in business. Bessie seriously doubted if they would feel that way about the A&P.

  But this morning, Mrs. Hancock said she couldn’t enter Bessie’s purchase into her ledger. “I’m sorry, but I have to have cash,” she said apologetically, and gestured to a new hand-lettered sign on the wall behind the counter, next to a blue and white poster advertising King Arthur flour. In big black letters, it said CASH AND CARRY ONLY, EFFECTIVE NOW.

  “Up until last week,” Mrs. Hancock went on, “I always got credit from the bank to pay my suppliers. Mr. Johnson would carry me until the goods were sold. If I don’t pay the suppliers in cash, I won’t have a thing left to sell.” She was a neat little woman who wore her gray hair twisted up into a round, hard bun on the top of her head. She had a large nose and the tip always glowed red when she was troubled or embarrassed. It was glowing right now, like a red Christmas tree bulb, and Bessie immediately felt sorry for her.

  “Well, let’s see how much I’ve got with me,” she said, and opened her pocketbook. But she could find only $1.50. “Looks like I’m a dime short.” She took the bag of grits out of the box. “I think Roseanne’s got enough grits to see us until next week, so let’s put this back.”

  “No, go ahead and take it, and I’ll add a dime to this month’s bill,” Mrs. Hancock said, opening her ledger to the Magnolia Manor page and penciling in the grits. With a sigh, she closed the ledger, adding, “I really don’t know what we’re going to do in this town if the bank don’t reopen soon. I heard there’s going to be some funny money this week, as soon as the county and the bottling plant and the sawmill meet their payrolls. That’ll help some folks, but not me. My suppliers won’t give me credit and I won’t have any cash.” She put the ledger under the counter, looking as if she were going to cry.

  “Well, I guess it can’t be helped,” Bessie said. “We’ll all just have to eat out of our gardens.” She chuckled wryly. “And maybe use some of that funny money for toilet paper.” But it wasn’t a laughing matter, she reminded herself. What would she do if the girls started paying their board bills with that worthless stuff?

  “I blame Mr. Johnson,” Mrs. Hancock said bitterly. She shook her head. “It just do seem like trouble comes in patches, don’t it?”

  “You’re talking about that purple paint, I guess,” Bessie said, thinking that it wasn’t exactly fair for people to be grateful to Mr. Johnson for extending credit on the one hand and blame him for the bank closing on the other. “Or maybe it was blue. I heard it both ways. Too bad about the flowers, too. They didn’t need to do that.”

  “I don’t know anything about any paint,” Mrs. Hancock said. “Flowers, neither. I’m talking about what happened out on Dead Cow Creek.”

  Bessie put the grocery list back in her pocketbook. “Dead Cow Creek?”

  “Oh, you know, Miz Bloodworth.” Mrs. Hancock leaned forward, an avid look on her face. “That creek out west of town, where Mickey LeDoux makes his moonshine. One of the boys out there got shot last night and the still got busted up.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake!” Bessie exclaimed, horror-struck. “Shot, really? Who was it?”

  “Nobody’s said yet,” Mrs. Hancock replied. “If they have, I haven’t heard.”

  Bessie frowned. “Well, was he shot dead or just shot?”

  “Mr. Stevens at the post office was the one who told me,” Mrs. Hancock said. “He got the news from Miz Roberts, who hadn’t heard back yet from Doc Roberts at the hospital over in Monroeville.” Edna Fay Roberts was Dr. Roberts’ wife and a usually reliable source of information about people’s illnesses and accidents.

  “Well, I hope not shot dead,” Bessie said.

  Mrs. Hancock set her mouth in a defiant look. “I’m not sayin’ it was right to shoot anybody, whoever done it and whoever it was got shot. But I am proud that Mickey’s still got busted up. If you ask me, it was about time.” A staunch member of Reverend Trivette’s congregation, Mrs. Hancock had long been active in the local temperance movement and had made no secret of her opposition to President Roosevelt’s election on a wet ticket. She was one of the few people in town who had voted for Hoover and the drys in last November’s election. She also refused to stock patent medicines like Lydia Pinkham’s tonic for women, which was mostly alcohol.

  “Sounds like it must have been the revenuers who did the shooting,” Bessie remarked. She didn’t know much about Mickey LeDoux’s operation, but she did know that, as a practical matter, Sheriff Burns wouldn’t make a move to close down that still, let alone fire on any of the shiners working out there. They were all local boys, and the sheriff owed his election to their extended families.

  “I reckon it was,” Mrs. Hancock said approvingly. “I saw Agent Kinnard going into the courthouse just yesterday.” She put Bessie’s cardboard box on the floor behind the counter. “Tell Roseanne that Zeke’ll bring this over to the Manor this afternoon.”

  “Agent Kinnard.” Bessie gave an indignant sniff. “You’d think they’d send those federal agents to Chicago and Detroit, where there’s real crooks to catch, now, wouldn’t you?” She picked up her pocketbook and left.

  * * *

  Just about the time that Bessie was talking to Mrs. Hancock, Myra May, Violet, and the breakfast bunch at the diner were hearing from Deputy Buddy Norris himself, who had come in for his usual breakfast of two eggs sunny-side up, bacon, grits, and two biscuits, washed down with hot coffee, black with four spoons of sugar.

  Buddy rode a 1927 red Indian Ace and wore close-fitting brown leather motorcycle leggings (even in the summer) and a brown leather helmet like the one Lucky Lindy wore. In fact, everybody in Darling said that Buddy looked a lot like the Lone Eagle, although he was usually much more willing to talk about his exploits. Colonel Lindbergh never bragged once about flying all the way to Paris by himself, but when Buddy got started talking, it was hard to shut him up.

  All in all, though, Buddy had turned out to be a good deputy, now that he had a little experience under his belt, and the town was rightfully proud of him. Not only was he the only mounted deputy in all of South Alabama (by virtue of his Indian Ace), but he knew how to take fingerprints, identify firearms, and make crime scene photographs, all of which he had learned from a home-study book on scientific crime detection from the Institute of Applied Sciences that he had mail-ordered from a True Crime magazine. He could shoot, too, and was a crack shot with his sidearm and his shotgun, which he carried in a big leather case strapped to his motorcycle. And because Buddy was only twenty-six, he still believed he was immortal, which made him inclined to rush in where nobody else would go, especially Sheriff Burns. The s
heriff was old enough (twice Buddy’s age plus ten) to have seen everything twice or three times and knew better than to put himself in a situation where he might have to shoot back. When there was serious trouble, Deputy Buddy Norris was handy to have around.

  “It wasn’t the Klan,” Buddy said right off, as Myra May was pouring his coffee. “There’s no reason in the world for the Klan to bother with Mr. Johnson. There was six of ’em and they all came in an old black Ford truck they parked around the corner. They was wearin’ sheets so nobody could get a look at ’em. That’s all it was, plain and simple.”

  “Didja recognize the truck?” Mr. Musgrove (from the hardware store) asked, pushing his empty plate away.

  “Naw.” Buddy spooned several sugars into his coffee. “Never even got a good look at it. They heard me comin’ and drove off quick.” He looked up and saw Violet standing in the kitchen doorway and winked at her. “Hiya, hon. Anyway, it was dark. Real dark.”

  Myra May reached up and turned off the Philco. The market reports were depressing. Anyway, nobody was listening.

  “And there ain’t more than two dozen black Ford trucks in this county,” Mr. Dunlap (from the Five and Dime) put in. “Maybe three.” He pushed his mug toward Myra May. “How ’bout some more coffee, Myra May?”

  Myra May picked up the coffeepot, catching Violet’s eye and smiling. She didn’t mind Buddy winking at Violet. He was just a big kid who liked to play around, and as far as Violet was concerned, he was like a brother.

  “Maybe you should’ve hung around for a while, Buddy,” Violet remarked critically, folding her arms as she leaned against the doorjamb. “They came back after you left. Brought a bucket of red paint.”

  “Purple,” Mr. Dunlap said. “They messed up Miz Johnson’s flower beds right good, too.”

  “I heard it was blue,” Mr. Musgrove said. He reached in his pocket for his coin purse, scowling at Violet. “No need for Buddy to hang around after he chased ’em off. He couldn’t’ve known they was comin’ back. Anybody with a lick of sense would’ve gone straight home and stayed there.” He dropped three dimes on the counter and stood up.

  “It was red,” Myra May said definitively, scooping up Mr. Musgrove’s dimes and putting them in her apron pocket. She wouldn’t tell them how she knew, but in fact she had got it straight from the lips of Mr. Johnson himself, when he telephoned Mrs. Johnson up at her sister’s in Montgomery to report what had happened. The way he told it, Sally-Lou, the Johnsons’ colored maid, heard voices and looked out her window and saw the white-sheeted men on the lawn. She ran downstairs and phoned the sheriff’s office and got Buddy there in a hurry. (Unfortunately, Eva Pearl had been on the switchboard last night and had failed to say a thing about it when she checked out that morning. As far as Myra May was concerned, this was a black mark against Eva Pearl. She liked to be informed about important events that occurred in town overnight.)

  Myra May filled Mr. Dunlap’s mug with coffee. “Splashed red paint all over the front porch,” she elaborated. “Steps, too, and the front walk. Dark red. Like blood.” It was sad, was what it was, grown men hiding under sheets and acting up that way.

  “Barn paint, you think, maybe?” Violet hazarded.

  “Artis Hart at the laundry says he’ll be on the lookout for sheets with paint on ’em,” Mr. Dunlap said. “But it would be good if somebody could tell him for sure what color.”

  “Barn paint,” Mr. Musgrove said, frowning. “Seems to me I remember . . .” His frown deepened. “I could’ve told you once whoever bought paint, back five years or more. Now I can hardly remember last week. But I guess I could check my receipt book.”

  Buddy poked the yolk of his egg with his fork and sopped up the runny yellow with half a biscuit. “I couldn’t’ve stayed all night if I’d wanted to. I had to ride out to see about that other trouble.”

  “What other trouble?” Mr. Dunlap wanted to know, hooking the filled mug and sliding it toward him.

  “Out at Dead Cow Creek,” Buddy said, diligently applying himself to his plate.

  “Something happened at Dead Cow Creek?” Myra May asked.

  “You ain’t heard?” Buddy put down his fork and looked at her. “You mean, nobody’s said nothin’ on the phone?”

  “Not about Dead Cow Creek,” Myra May replied. Aside from Mr. Johnson’s call to Montgomery and Mrs. Jamison’s call to the principal’s office at the Academy to say that Nonie would not be at school because she’d been throwing up all night, the switchboard had been unusually quiet that morning. But the minute she thought that, she heard it buzz, and Violet (who was on the board that hour) hurried to the Exchange office.

  Mr. Musgrove had been about to leave, but now he sat back down on the stool, leaning on one elbow, looking past Mr. Dunlap at Buddy. “Told us whut?” he demanded. “What about Dead Cow Creek?” He frowned. “You don’t mean out there where Mickey—”

  “Yeah, that’s where I mean.” Buddy picked up a piece of fried bacon, doubled it like a stick of chewing gum, and stuck it in his mouth. “Sheriff didn’t have nothin’ to do with it,” he added, chewing emphatically. “Not one damn thing. He was only out there ’cause Kinnard told him he had to be. It was all Kinnard, start to finish. Him and his men have been hunting Mickey’s still out there for a couple of years.”

  “And before then, there was that other agent,” Mr. Musgrove said. “Browning or Burton, something like that. He never could find the place, neither.”

  “Well, Kinnard found it,” Buddy said. There was disgust in his voice, and anger. “And it was one of his men that done the shootin’, although it ain’t for sure which one.”

  “Uh-oh,” Myra May said softly.

  The year before, Agent Kinnard had managed to locate and break up Bodeen Pyle’s first operation, at the southern end of Briar’s Swamp. But there hadn’t been any shooting. When the Feds had moved on, Bodeen had simply relocated his operation to the northern end of the swamp, which was a better location anyway, closer to his market at the Jericho State Prison Farm.

  “Damn them rev’nuers.” Mr. Dunlap set his mug down with a hard thump. “Cain’t leave well enough alone. Nobody out there at Mickey’s was hurtin’ a single one of us. They’re just good ol’ boys needin’ to make a living, is all. And Mickey’s whiskey is the finest there is.” He squinted at Buddy. “Anybody kilt?”

  “Dunno,” Buddy said in a matter-of-fact tone. “The boy was bleedin’ pretty bad when I saw him.” He picked up his fork again. “Tom-Boy and Jerry put him in the sheriff’s car and drove off with him to the hospital in Monroeville. Kinnard brought Mickey and Tom-Boy back here and locked ’em up. Took names and let the rest of the shiners go with a warning. Busted up the still, of course.” He shook his head regretfully. “Poured out the whiskey.”

  “Poured out the whiskey,” Mr. Dunlap repeated sadly.

  “What boy was bleedin’?” Mr. Musgrove demanded. “Who you talkin’ ’bout, Buddy? Not Baby Mann, I hope. He’s a right good boy. I’d sure hate to see him hurt.”

  Myra May opened her mouth to say that Baby had got religion at the latest revival meeting and was now looking for work that the Lord wouldn’t frown at. But before she could say anything, she saw Violet shake her head slightly. She got the message and closed her mouth. There was something not quite right about this.

  “Naw, Baby must have had the night off, lucky for him.” Buddy forked up the last of his egg-soaked biscuit. “It was Rider.”

  “Rider?” Mr. Dunlap asked. “Rider who? Is he a Mann?”

  “He’s a LeDoux,” Buddy replied, getting after his grits. “Mickey’s kid brother. It was his first night on the job. Mickey heard that Kinnard was in town yesterday so he put Buster on lookout duty down at the county road, where the trail crawls up the ridge. Told him to whistle like a jaybird if he saw anybody coming, at which point the boys who were tending the fire and watching the mash were suppos
ed to take to their heels and slip into the underbrush. The last thing anybody wants is shooting, you know. And it was plenty dark. Should’ve been easy to disappear.”

  “Dark as pitch last night,” Mr. Dunlap agreed wisely. “New moon. Didn’t come up until near dawn.”

  “I want somebody to tell me how Kinnard found that place,” Mr. Musgrove demanded. “I damn sure couldn’t find it, especially on a dark night. And I used to hunt out that way when I was a kid. Knew Dead Cow Creek like the back of my hand.”

  “That’s a good question, Mr. Musgrove,” Buddy allowed, and went on with his story. “Since the road up to Mickey’s still is so well hidden, nobody figured that Kinnard or anybody else could find it, ’less they had somebody who could tell them exactly where to cross the ditch and turn off the main road. So it seems that Buster wasn’t too worried about anybody coming up that way. He curled up and went to sleep. The revenuers parked some distance away and walked right on past him and up the road until they got to where the shiners were working at the head of the creek. Nobody had time to get away. There was yelling, shouting, and Tom-Boy said something happened. Somebody stepped on a stick or broke a jug or made a cracking noise, something like that. Seems that one of the revenuers took it for somebody cocking a pistol in the dark. He pulled out his revolver and got off three, four shots. Rider took a bullet. Tom-Boy said later it was his birthday, Rider’s, I mean. He was fifteen.”

  “Aw, hell,” Mr. Musgrove said, very low, and rubbed his face.

  “Jeez.” Mr. Dunlap was mournful. “Fifteen. Just a kid.”

  Buddy shrugged. “Old enough to make shine. Not that anybody wanted it to happen, of course. All I mean is, if you’re going to do something like that, you have to reckon up your chances.”

  “Let’s hope the boy’s okay,” Myra May said. She looked up to see Raylene standing, white-faced, on the kitchen side of the pass-through, with a plate of waffles in her hand. She was shaking her head. Myra May understood what her mother was telling her, and her heart sank. The boy was dead.