The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “I won’t,” Sarah said, opening her book. “I want to see if Nancy actually gets captured. It’s kind of scary, actually. These counterfeiters are dangerous people. If Nancy can get the goods on them, it’ll shoot down their whole operation, so they’ve got a lot at stake. She’ll have to be careful.”

  And for the first time, Ophelia (an optimistic person who liked to look on the bright side of things) thought of the dangers she might face—and the consequences—if somebody caught her doing what Charlie had asked her to do. She felt a cold knot of apprehension, almost of fear, tightening somewhere deep inside, and she shivered. She hadn’t thought of it before, but she could lose her job! And if she was accused of taking records she wasn’t supposed to have access to, she might even go to jail. But worse, if she was caught by whoever—

  Ophelia was startled out of her frightened thoughts by footsteps on gravel and looked up to see a familiar figure coming toward her. It was Lucy Murphy, one of the Dahlias. Lucy had started working at the camp six months ago as a part-time kitchen helper, but she soon showed what she was made of and had been promoted several times. Now, she managed the entire food service for the camp, planning meals, making up the grocery and supplies orders, and supervising the enrollee kitchen helpers who did the prep work, cooked, baked, and cleaned up. Ophelia put Lucy’s menus in the Dispatch every week, so the mothers of local boys could see how well their sons were eating—fried chicken, meat loaf, pot roast, pulled pork, and macaroni and cheese, which they probably didn’t get at home on a regular basis.

  “Hey, Lucy,” Ophelia said, raising her hand in a greeting. Trim and athletic, Lucy was wearing a green short-sleeved blouse and khaki-colored slacks, her flaming red hair tied back with a matching green ribbon, a purse swinging from one shoulder. Her cheeks were flushed—as a redhead, she had porcelain skin—and she looked unusually attractive.

  For a moment, Ophelia thought Lucy might turn and go the other way, almost as if she wanted to avoid a conversation. But then she changed her mind and came forward. Studying her, Ophelia sighed, wishing she dared to wear slacks. A couple of weeks before, she had seen a pair she liked in the women’s department at Katz’s. She had bought them on impulse, but she hadn’t had the courage to wear them yet. Jed would put up a big fuss. He didn’t mind her wearing coveralls when she was working on the Linotype and helping Charlie around the newspaper press, but he was dead set against women wearing men’s clothes in public.

  “Hey, Ophelia.” Lucy wore an unusually sober expression—that is, unusual for Lucy, who never let anything bother her. “You’ve heard what happened to Rona Jean?”

  Ophelia nodded. “I know about the murder, but that’s about the size of it. A sad thing.”

  “Yes. Do you think . . . do they know . . .” Lucy swallowed. “Have they caught the guy yet?”

  “Not so far as I know,” Ophelia said, thinking that Lucy seemed awfully apprehensive. But then, Ralph was on the railroad and she spent a lot of evenings alone. Rona Jean’s murder probably made her feel vulnerable. “I’m sure the sheriff’s doing an investigation,” she added.

  “I hope so,” Lucy said, in an odd voice. “We can’t have somebody running around killing people. I mean, it’s downright scary, is what it is.”

  Uncomfortably, Ophelia changed the subject. “I didn’t think you worked on Saturday.” Five days a week, the camp had hot meals, but on the weekends, the enrollees set out cereals for breakfast and sandwich and salad fixings for lunch and supper, and everybody helped themselves. “I figured you’d be home with Ralph today, working in your garden.”

  “I’m not here, usually,” Lucy said in an offhand way. “But Ralph had to make a run to Nashville, and I had a stack of orders to finish.”

  She cleared her throat, her eyes sliding away, and Ophelia, with a startling conviction, thought, She’s not telling the truth! Or maybe she was remembering the gossip that had cropped up lately. Lucy was an attractive woman, and Ralph’s railroad job took him out of town at least five days a week, and sometimes weekends, too. In fact, Ouida Bennett’s sister, Erma Rae, who lived just up the road from the Murphys, had told Mother Snow that she had seen Lucy on the back of an Army motorcycle, late in the evening, and that she’d heard that motorcycle several other nights. It didn’t look good, Erma Rae had said, especially with Ralph out of town. Mother Snow had told Ophelia, who had immediately pooh-poohed the idea that Lucy was running around.

  But now she wasn’t so sure. Was it possible that Lucy and her motorcycle man had been having a tryst this afternoon? Were they romantically involved? Yes, of course it was possible. In fact, looking at Lucy’s flushed cheeks, she’d say it was entirely likely. But if they were, Ophelia reminded herself, it was none of her business. Whatever Lucy was up to was between her and Ralph and nobody else.

  “Anyway,” Lucy was going on, “I thought I’d just go ahead and get it done today, while nobody’s around. Weekdays are always such a madhouse in that kitchen. And there’s always too much paperwork—the CCC may be doing good things, but it’s a huge bureaucracy.”

  “That’s certainly true,” Ophelia said emphatically. The Civilian Conservation Corps was jointly run by the secretaries of war, agriculture, labor, and interior, and there were so many reports to compile and send that it made Olivia dizzy. “I often wonder if anybody actually reads that stuff or whether it’s just stuck in a file drawer in an office somewhere in Washington.” Which, as Charlie had explained when he offered her the undercover assignment, might make it all too easy for somebody to cheat the system.

  Lucy gave Ophelia a sideways glance. “But you’re not usually here on weekends, either. Right?”

  Ophelia nodded warily. “I left some papers on my desk that I meant to take home, so I stopped to pick them up.” It was the second time she had said this out loud, and she thought it sounded more or less authentic.

  But she knew it wasn’t true. Did she suspect Lucy of lying because she was lying?

  Lucy was studying her, frowning. “You work in the quartermaster’s office with Corporal Andrews, don’t you? Managing the supply orders from local people?”

  Ophelia was guiltily aware of her undercover assignment. “That’s right. I’m the liaison person, between the camp and the local suppliers. Corporal Andrews arranges the contracts, and he and Sergeant Webb supervise the deliveries, manage the payments, and make sure that the camp gets what it pays for.” She hesitated. What was behind Lucy’s question? “Why are you asking?”

  “Oh, I was just wondering,” Lucy said casually—too casually, Ophelia thought. “I’ve met Corporal Andrews a time or two. He’s nice.”

  “He is,” Ophelia said. She suddenly remembered that Corporal Andrews rode an Army motorcycle on his various rounds of the local suppliers. Was he the guy Lucy was involved with? Assuming she was involved with anybody, that is, which might not be the case at all. And of course, the corporal wasn’t the only one who rode a motorcycle. The camp had a motor pool, and there were a couple of motorcycles in it, and she frequently heard them buzzing past her office. Hurriedly, she changed the subject. “Are you headed home? I’ll be going back to Darling in a few minutes. I’d be glad to drop you.”

  Lucy smiled. “Thanks, but I’ve got Ralph’s car. He let me take it while he’s gone, for once, although I’m sure he doesn’t expect to get it back in one piece. He keeps saying that women don’t know how to drive.” Lucy’s eyes were bright, and to Ophelia, she seemed unusually vivacious. “Anyway, Bessie is over at the garden, keeping an eye on the boys who are picking the first batch of early sweet corn. I told her I’d give her a lift back to town.”

  Bessie Bloodworth, another Dahlia and an experienced vegetable gardener, came out to the camp three days a week to supervise the planning and maintenance of the large garden. Captain Campbell had assigned a half-dozen strong young men to do the heavy work—plowing and harrowing with the camp mules and doing the planting, h
oeing, irrigating, and picking. Bessie decided what they were going to plant and how much and when, and when it was ready for harvest. Bessie had told Ophelia that she thought the garden was going to be the best she’d ever seen. “We’ve already got ripe watermelons,” she’d said, “and it looks like we’ll soon have all the sweet corn the boys can eat.”

  But Ophelia, Lucy, and Bessie weren’t the only Darling people working at the camp—and not the only Dahlias, either. The enrollees were expected to do most of the labor, but experienced local people, both men and women, were hired to help manage some of the operations. Since jobs were so scarce in Cypress County, there was plenty of competition for every position, even for jobs in the camp laundry and kitchen. The camp was about five miles outside of town, and most of the workers didn’t have their own transportation, so Captain Campbell had arranged for the camp jitney to pick up the employees each morning in front of the Darling courthouse and bring them back to town at the end of the day, at no charge.

  The Dahlias who happened to be around at lunchtime often ate together at one of the tables in the mess hall. They agreed that Darling was much better off now that the camp had brought more money into the community, and that the building projects and roads and tree plantings and erosion controls were going to make a big difference in Cypress County.

  But they agreed that there were also plenty of personal benefits. Working at the camp gave each woman her very own salary, several of them for the first time in their lives. Bessie Bloodworth, for instance, owned a boardinghouse called the Magnolia Manor, but she had never earned a regular paycheck working for somebody else. And while Lucy sold the fruit and vegetables she and Ralph raised in their market garden, the money went into Ralph’s pocket, and he handed over whatever he thought she needed for household expenses. Working at the camp gave all of them their very own paycheck and a new feeling of personal independence.

  And, as Miss Dorothy Rogers frequently said, working with people who came from somewhere else—like the Yankee officers at the camp and the young men who came from out of state—was “broadening.” Miss Rogers, Darling’s long-time librarian, was now managing the Camp Briarwood library. In the column Ophelia had written about the library, she had quoted Miss Rogers as saying that “the boys always seem thrilled to find the latest magazines and paperback books.” Off the record, Miss Rogers had told her that Captain Campbell had given her a surprisingly large budget for library materials and had hinted that once the camp had finished its work and made plans to pack up and leave, the books and magazines would be donated to Darling.

  Earlynne Biddle, Verna Tidwell, and Liz Lacy were the other Dahlias who worked at the camp, part-time, as teachers. Since one of the goals of the CCC program was to give the boys as many learning opportunities as possible, Briarwood offered a full-scale educational program, with classes taught by local people. It included basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, as well as wood shop (taught by Ozzie Sherman, who ran the sawmill), welding shop (taught by Jesse Maxwell, who had recently converted his Darling blacksmith’s forge into a welding operation), and auto shop (taught by Jake Pritchard’s son, who helped his dad run the Standard Oil station).

  Verna taught arithmetic and a small advanced course in basic accounting. Earlynne and Liz shared the reading and writing classes. When Ophelia interviewed Earlynne for her column, she said she’d been astonished to learn how many of the CCC boys hadn’t stayed in school long enough to learn to read and write properly. Now was their chance, and many of them were taking advantage of it. All of the classes were held in the education building, which contained the camp library and reading room as well as the classrooms. The vocational classes were taught in the adjacent shop building.

  Lucy shifted her bag to the other shoulder. “It looks like almost all the Dahlias are out here today. Bessie is waiting for me, and I saw Earlynne and Miss Rogers a little while ago, on their way to the education building. And here you are. Haven’t seen Verna, though, or Liz.” She glanced in the direction of Ophelia’s car. “Sarah’s with you?”

  Ophelia nodded. “Tomorrow is her fifteenth birthday. She and I drove over to Monroeville to get her birthday present—a new red swimsuit that’ll likely make Jed blow his stack.” She laughed.

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “Fifteen. It doesn’t seem possible, Opie. Seems like that little girl should still be climbing trees and jumping rope.”

  “I know.” Ophelia made a mournful face. “Next thing you know, she’ll be all grown up.” Sam, too—he was two years older. When the kids were gone, she and Jed would just rattle around the empty house.

  “Sarah is so smart,” Lucy said with a serious look. “I hope she’ll go to college.” Lucy had told Ophelia that she had wanted to go to college, but she’d wanted to marry Ralph even more and didn’t think he’d wait for her. She wished now that she’d gone for at least two years, Ralph or no Ralph. But of course it was too late. Women her age didn’t go to college, even if they had the money.

  “I don’t think we can afford it,” Ophelia said. “Sam graduates next year, and Jed is hoping he’ll be able to go. He says there’s not much future in the farm supply business. But Sarah’s a girl and—” She gave a little shrug. “Jed thinks college for girls is a waste of money. He says she’ll just get married.”

  Lucy leaned forward, her face intent. “Don’t you believe everything that man tells you, Ophelia Snow. Girls have every bit as much right to a college education as boys do. Every woman ought to have a shot at independence. At freedom.” Her voice was low and fierce, and there was a kind of longing in it that Ophelia had never heard before.

  “Freedom?” Ophelia asked uneasily. “What kind of freedom?”

  Lucy came from Atlanta, so she had a somewhat different view of the world than women who had lived in Darling all their lives. She was different in other ways, too. She said what she thought and felt without holding back, and she was . . . well, romantic. Ralph had complained once that she wore her heart on her sleeve where it could get knocked around and hurt, and Ophelia thought that was probably true. It might also account for some of the gossip about her.

  Lucy bit her lip, as if she wished she could bite back what she had said. And when she spoke, she didn’t quite answer Ophelia’s question.

  “I just mean . . . well, things are getting better now. There’s finally some hope, when we’ve all been feeling hopeless for so long.” She took a breath. “You don’t want Sarah stuck in Darling for her whole entire life, do you? She ought to get a college degree so she can get a decent job if she wants one, or a career. So she can go places and do things. And doesn’t have to depend on a husband to support her.”

  That last sentence startled Ophelia, and she suddenly saw what Lucy was driving at. She shifted uncomfortably. She was holding down two jobs and helping to support the family, and she thought of herself as a modern mother—modern enough, anyway, to buy that red swimsuit for Sarah, even if she didn’t dare put on a pair of slacks.

  But she hadn’t given a lot of thought to Sarah’s future. She had assumed, more or less unconsciously, that her daughter would get married, settle down right here in Darling, and start having babies. Ophelia had always wanted lots of grandbabies to hold in her lap. To croon to and cuddle. And that’s what girls wanted, too, wasn’t it?

  But maybe she ought to think beyond that, for Sarah. For the sake of Sarah’s future. Maybe college—

  Lucy drew back. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I’m probably way out of line. Sometimes I wish I could have done it differently myself, that’s all.” She sighed and waggled a hand, resigned. “Well, you know, Opie. Water under the bridge. We can’t have everything we want out of life. And maybe I’m just depressed, thinking about what happened to Rona Jean. It seems so awful, dying like that, so young. She never had a chance to see the world or go to college or anything. Just think of all she’s missed.”

  Ophelia studied Lucy’s face sympathetical
ly. Lucy didn’t have many friends, even among the Dahlias, because she lived outside of town. But since Ralph was Jed’s cousin, she and Lucy had occasionally talked, and she knew it wasn’t the first time Lucy had felt stuck in her marriage. But people in Darling always said that when you’ve made your bed, you have to lie in it. That was what most folks did, as best they could, even though they might not like it. Not all of it, anyway, and not always. The thing about Lucy, though—the thing that made her different from everybody else—was that she didn’t pretend to like it.

  “I appreciate what you were saying about Sarah and college,” Ophelia said quietly. “I’ll start thinking about it and see if I can’t put a little more in the cookie jar, without telling Jed. Then when the time comes, maybe Sarah will have an option.”

  That made her feel . . . well, disloyal, like buying their daughter a bathing suit she knew Jed wouldn’t like, only more so. College was a bigger, more consequential thing than the bathing suit, but either way, she was going against his wishes. Still, she ought to be thinking of what was best for Sarah, which probably wasn’t what Sarah’s father—or her mother, for that matter—might like.

  She glanced down at her wristwatch. “Gosh, look at the time! I’d better get what I came for and head home. We’re having a backyard picnic for Sam’s baseball team tonight. If the rain holds off, that is.” She glanced toward the southwest. Did the sky look more menacing? “It might be a back porch picnic, if it doesn’t.”

  Lucy nodded. “Thanks for listening, Opie.” She raised her hand. “I suppose I’ll see you at the clubhouse early on the Fourth.” The Dahlias were decorating the Miss Darling float that morning, for the parade.

  “Count on it,” Ophelia said. She waved good-bye, reached into her handbag, and took out the key to her office, which also unlocked the front door. Like the other buildings, this one was so new that it still smelled of fresh pine, roofing tar, and paint. No effort had been made to pretty it up or make it anything other than functional. Inside, the pent-up heat was stifling. The hallway went through the middle of the building, with offices on either side. Lit only by a dim bulb hanging from the ceiling midway to the far end, it was hot and dark and . . . well, creepy.