The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree (5 page)

Ophelia had been glad when her husband, Jed, announced that he intended to run for mayor. The two of them had been born right here in Darling, had lived here all their lives, and felt a sense of responsibility for what happened here, good and bad. Ophelia’s father, dead now, had been a lawyer and part-time pastor of the Methodist Church. Jed’s family had been river-bottom farmers but his dad had sold out back in 1912 and opened Snow’s Farm Supply, a few blocks north on Rosemont. Jed began working there when he came back from France in ’18—all in one piece, thankfully. When his father retired a few years later, he took over.

Like Ophelia and Jed, most of the people who lived in Darling had been born there, or nearby. The town was located seventy crow-flying miles north of Mobile, in the modestly hilly region east of the Alabama River. It was named for Joseph P. Darling, who felt that a country rich in timber and fertile soils, with fast-flowing Pine Mill Creek close by and the Alabama River not far away, could benefit from a market town. He had planted his foot down right there, as Bessie Bloodworth (whose hobby was local history) liked to say. And where he had planted his foot the town had grown up, surrounded by farm fields and stands of loblolly and longleaf pines, with sweet gum and tulip trees in the creek and river bottoms, and magnolia and sassafras and sycamore and pecan.

Darling had grown apace without experiencing much in the way of noteworthy historical events, except for some brief but serious unpleasantness when Union soldiers occupied the town during the War Between the States and some considerable celebrating when the Louisville & Nashville Railroad came close enough to make building a rail-line spur and a rail yard a realistic scheme.

When the spur—the Manitee & Repton line—was completed, the town had blossomed. Now the seat of Cypress County, Darling was centered around a brick courthouse with a bell tower and a white-painted dome with a clock, the whole thing surrounded by a grassy lawn. The town’s businesses were arranged around the courthouse square, and the oak-canopied residential streets were organized in a similar four-square grid, as logical and orderly as old Joseph P. himself Around the town there were mostly corn and cotton fields and lots of timber. The past few years had been drier than normal—people were already talking about a drought—but Jed said the town’s water supply was in no danger, and Ophelia believed him. She always believed Jed. Always.

“I’m home,” Ophelia called, coming into the house through the kitchen door. She put her empty dish—the Dahlias had eaten every one of her stuffed tomatoes—on the kitchen table and went down the hall into the living room. Jed was just turning around from the telephone on the wall. He stepped to her quickly and gave her a hug. At six feet to her five-foot-four, he nearly dwarfed her.

“Have a good meeting?” He was one of those men who go on looking forty-five until they’re seventy, brown-haired and brown-eyed, with square, capable hands and—usually—an open, pleasant look on his face. Just now, his brows were pulled together. He looked troubled.

“We did,” Ophelia said, taking off her hat and fluffing her brown hair. “Except for Voleen Johnson, of course. She thinks Beulah’s sign looks tacky. Well, I s’pose it is a bit colorful, but since Beulah painted it, we love it. Then we cut the dues, which annoyed Voleen even more. She thinks it’ll encourage riffraff to join, although she couldn’t quite bring herself to say it in so many words.” She bent over and straightened the crocheted lace antimacassar on the arm of Jed’s chair. “Really, I don’t know why that woman bothers with the Dahlias. She—”

Ophelia straightened and caught the look on her husband’s face. “Something’s wrong?” She looked around uneasily. “The kids. Where are the kids?”

“Down the street at the folks’. Sis and her pair came over for the afternoon.”

Jed’s parents lived in a two-story white frame house four doors down on the other side of Rosemont, where one or another of their grown children, along with their broods, usually showed up for Sunday dinner or homemade ice cream on Sunday afternoon. Sis was Jed’s youngest sister. She lived out by Jericho. Her twins were only four, much younger than Ophelia and Jed’s two, Sam and Sarah, now thirteen and eleven. There’d been another baby before Sam, their first boy, but he had died at birth. And then Sam came along, robust and squalling, and they had put their loss behind them and got on with what had to be done.

“That’s good,” Ophelia said with satisfaction. “They’ll eat there, I reckon.” She glanced at the clock—the walnut tambour clock Jed’s parents had given them for a wedding present—on the shelf beside the radio. It was nearly six. “Are you hungry? We had refreshments—you know the Dahlias, plenty to eat. But I can fix you a sandwich. There’s some ham.”

Jed shook his head, and she saw that his frown was deeper. “Who was that on the phone?” she asked.

He hesitated imperceptibly. “Roy Burns.”

Ophelia tilted her head. Roy was the sheriff. He and his deputy, Buddy Norris, kept close tabs on all the criminal elements in Darling. The job didn’t amount to much, though, since the only people who came to Darling were friends and relatives of the folks who lived here or hoboes off the freight trains. Of course, there was the occasional crime of passion, some man getting liquored up and beating his wife, or a knife fight at the Watering Hole or the Dance Barn on Briarwood Road. There wasn’t supposed to be any liquor out there, or anywhere else for that matter, but the moonshiners took care of that. The jail, on the second floor of Jed’s Farm Supply building, had only two cells, which were mostly used to give drunks a place to sleep while they sobered up.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. Today was Sunday. Why was Sheriff Burns calling Jed on a Sunday afternoon, when families were settling in for supper and Sunday night church afterward and—

“Some sort of trouble at the prison farm. Dunno, exac‘ly.” Jed went to the row of pegs beside the door and took down his suit coat and his hat. “Reckon I better get on out there, Opie. See what’s goin’ on.”

She went to help him on with his coat. “Out where?”

“Ralph’s place.” He jammed his hat on his head. Ralph Murphy was Jed’s cousin on his mother’s side. The two of them went hunting and fishing together as often as they could.

“But why? Why did the sheriff—?”

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, honey-pie.” He bent down and gave her a quick kiss. “Nothin’ for you to be concerned about.” He always said this and she always took it to heart, for Ophelia would rather look on the bright side whenever she could. The way she saw it, wasn’t any sense to go digging up dirt when there was enough of it right under your nose. Same with trouble. And if Jed said there was nothing to worry about—well, there wasn’t.

“You be careful, now,” she said, and stood on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “What time will you be back?”

“Look for me when you see me.” He went out the door and clattered down the wooden steps. A few minutes later, she heard the Ford starting up, with its characteristic cough and chug, and Jed drove off.

Ophelia sat down in her husband’s maroon plush overstuffed chair and turned on the table model Philco that had been the whole family’s Christmas present. Jed liked to listen to Lowell Thomas read the news, and the kids loved to sprawl on the floor and listen to
Amos ‘n’ Andy
. Ophelia enjoyed music. The musical program that was on right now was the A&P Gypsies half hour on WODX, which broadcast from the Battle House Hotel in Mobile. Ophelia liked the Gypsies’ music. Liked Milton Cross, too, who did the announcing, in tones that were considered “mellifluous.” Frank Parker was singing “Just a Memory,” one of her favorites, although it always made her feel sad.

She leaned her head against the back of the chair and listened for a moment, trying to imagine the Gypsies and Frank Parker and Milton Cross in a New York studio, playing this beautiful music just for her, sitting right here in Darling, a thousand miles away, with the sound rippling in waves like water, but through the air.

The music changed to a faster beat, something Latin, and she got up and began straightening things, picking up a stray sock, emptying Jed’s ashtray, folding his
Mobile Register
. The article at the top of the page accompanied a photograph of Mr. Hoover, with a quotation from a recent speech: “We have now passed the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover.”

Well, good! Ophelia loved it when the president sounded so encouraging. Encouragement was what everybody needed right now. If people believed that things would turn out right in the end and kept their spirits up, that’s what would happen. And Mr. Hoover was doing all he could, reducing taxes and trying to get the states to spend whatever they could on public works. It wasn’t his fault that Wall Street was in such terrible shape and people couldn’t find jobs. She was sure that the president was doing the best he could.

She disposed of the sock and the cigarette butts, then collected her
Ladies’ Home Journal
and put it back with the others in the rack on the end table by the sofa. The children’s cat—an orange tabby named Rudy Vallée (because he was a vagabond lover)—came into the room and meowed plaintively. Ophelia followed him into the kitchen, where she opened the icebox and took out a pitcher of fresh milk and poured some into a saucer. Purring, Rudy lapped it hungrily.

She put the milk away, frowning. Ralph’s place. Last year, Jed’s cousin had married himself a new wife, Lucy—a little thing, pretty, with all that flaming red hair, but not very sensible. Ralph and Lucy and Ralph’s two boys didn’t live too far from the Jericho State Prison Farm. Occasionally there was trouble out that way, but why trouble at the prison farm should involve her husband, or why Roy Burns would call and ask Jed to drive out there, Ophelia couldn’t fathom. It made her feel vaguely uneasy, as if a dark cloud were hanging over the horizon out in that direction, which of course it wasn’t.

In fact, the sun was shining the same way it always did at this hour, the evening light slanting in through the window over the kitchen sink and turning Rudy Vallée’s fur into bright gold. Ophelia looked around at the pleasant room, with its yellow wallpaper, starched white curtains, white-painted cabinets with red-painted knobs, and yellow linoleum on the countertop and the floor, which was as clean as Florabelle could make it. There was a pot of ivy on the windowsill and a red geranium in a yellow ceramic pot on the table. Red and yellow, her favorite colors, in a sunny, cheerful kitchen. Red and yellow made her smile.

Well. Jed was gone to Ralph’s, the children were at Momma Ruth’s, and the house felt empty. Ophelia went for her knitting bag, which held the socks she was working on. She’d just walk down the street and see if Sis knew anything about trouble out at the prison farm. They could sit on the porch and visit and watch the children playing hide-and-seek in the yard. She could knit and Sis could brag about how many quarts of green beans she’d already put up in that new National pressure cooker she bought last year—Ophelia wanted one, but couldn’t justify buying it when her canning kettle worked just fine. After a little bit, Momma Ruth would put out the leftovers from Sunday dinner, fried chicken and new-potato salad and sliced tomatoes sprinkled with dill, and green beans and okra cooked up with onions and bacon. They would all help themselves, and then take their plates to the porch and eat, where it was cool.

Ophelia smiled happily to herself. She loved these late-spring Sunday evenings, before the brassy heat of summer settled in, the twilight falling softly across the familiar street, the shouts of happy kids, the contented squeaking of the porch swing, the sleepy melodies of evening birds and cicadas and frogs in the ditch behind the house. For her, this was the best time of the day and the week, the best time of the year, the best place to be.

Milton Cross and Frank Parker and the A&P Gypsies could keep New York.

She would rather be right here in Darling.

The Snows lived at Rosemont and Larkspur. Verna Tidwell’s house was at the other end of Larkspur, just a block from Ophelia’s, at the corner of Larkspur and Robert E. Lee. As she went up the steps to her front porch, she caught the scent of roses and took a deep, appreciative breath. The climber at the end of the porch, a Zepherine Drouhin, was covered with lovely pink blossoms, and the Louise Odier beside the steps filled the evening air with its rich, heady fragrance. Nothing like the scent of a rose, she thought to herself, to wash away your troubles, if you had any.

For the most part, Verna didn’t, although she was always just as glad to borrow somebody else’s. That was her nature, always had been, always would be, and it had driven her husband, Walter—now deceased—almost crazy. Walter had taught history and civics at the Darling Academy and always seemed to be living (or so Verna thought) in another time and place. He never paid enough attention to the real world or the minutiae of real life (except for his camellias, upon which he lavished hours every week). And he never was bothered by much of anything or anybody but Verna.