The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Except maybe they would have something they could fill their empty pockets with in the meantime, if Mr. Alvin Duffy was able to pull off his scheme. Thinking of this, Charlie snorted. What Duffy was talking about sounded as illegal as a three-dollar bill. Maybe they’d all end up in the hoosegow, right along with Mr. George E. Pickett Johnson. But Duffy was certainly right when he said that what this town needed was money. Not tomorrow, not next week or next month, but right now. And somebody ought to do something about it.

  The lack of money is the root of all evil. Somebody said that once, Charlie thought, trying to remember. Mark Twain, was it? Or Mark Twain quoting George Bernard Shaw? Well, whoever it was, he got it right, and the Bible got it wrong. It wasn’t money that was the root of all evil, it was the lack thereof. And now that the bank had closed, there was a definite lack of money. Which meant, if Charlie understood the situation (and he did) there was going to be a definite excess of evil, starting directly.

  Charlie scowled. And if ol’ George E. Pickett Johnson knew what was good for him, he would stay the hell out of everybody’s way or he’d find himself with a brass-plated invitation to a necktie party. What with the boll weevil chewing up the cotton and the agricultural prices bottoming out and the stock market crash and the Depression, things had been pretty rocky in Darling for a pretty long time.

  And the harder the economic crunch bit down, the worse things got. A small town with a strong sense of community, Darling had never seen much crime. But just in the last week, the Five and Dime had been broken into, some impious thief had stolen the Sunday offering from the Methodist church (during Reverend Trivette’s benediction, too!), and a masked bandit driving a Ford Model T had held up Jake Pritchard’s Standard Oil filling station and sped away with sixteen dollars. All this made good copy for the local pages of the Friday Dispatch, but it wasn’t welcome news. Now, with the bank closing, things could get worse. A whole helluva lot worse, and Mr. Johnson, guilty or not, was the easiest target for everybody’s wrath. If he escaped tar and feathering, the man would be lucky.

  Charlie lifted the bottle, gave it a long, appreciative look, and took another swallow. Whiskey was like a woman. You got the best out of it if you handled it right, not diving in but enjoying it with respect and gratitude and desire, coaxing and courting, the way you coaxed and courted a woman. He turned the bottle in his hands, thinking of women, of a woman, of Fannie Champaign.

  His mouth tightened. Of course, if he and Fannie Champaign had managed to work things out between them, he might be in a different situation and maybe he wouldn’t be drinking so much. But they hadn’t, and he wasn’t, and damned if he was going to spend the rest of his life mooning over a silly love affair that had gotten derailed because Fannie Champaign was too pigheaded to overlook a simple misunderstanding.

  Or something like that. In his current hungover state, he found it hard to remember just what had happened or why or what had been said to whom, and he didn’t want to. All he knew was that it had been over since last July, when Fannie packed up and left town because she was miffed at his friendship with Lily Dare, the famous Texas Star, the fastest woman in the skies. And all Charlie had to remember her by (Fannie, that is) was the taste of her shy, sweet kisses in those long-ago summer months, before their misunderstanding, before—

  Charlie swung his feet to the floor, corked the bottle, and dropped it back in the drawer. He had thirty-five cents in his pocket, just enough to get a pork chop plate and a piece of pie at the diner. Food was what he needed. Food would put him in a better frame of mind.

  Anyway, Twain and Shaw both had it wrong. It wasn’t the lack of money that was the root of all evil. More likely it was women, or a woman. Or Fannie Champaign.

  Or the lack thereof.

  THREE

  Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

  Myra May turned up the Philco radio on the shelf behind the counter. The Saturday afternoon local news roundup had ended, and WODX in Mobile was playing Rudy Vallée singing “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” The week before, he had sung the same song on The Fleishmann Hour. It was a sad song in a minor key, dirgelike, even, but it fitted Myra May’s mood. She thought about it as she listened and swabbed the counter.

  They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead. Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?

  But it wasn’t just bread that people were waiting for, Myra May thought gloomily. Sure, there had been a flurry of exhilaration over Roosevelt’s inauguration the month before. People were sick of the status quo and any change was as welcome as a cool breeze on a hot July day. But the excitement had dried up in a hurry when FDR put the national banks on holiday. And then he had signed an order that said that everybody had to turn in their gold, which resulted in a chorus of grousing. From now on, it was illegal for citizens to have any gold, except for jewelry and dental gold (you could keep your fillings) and coins you might have collected. Myra May’s jewelry was cheap stuff and she didn’t have any gold fillings or coins, but it was the principle of the thing, far as she was concerned. The government shouldn’t be allowed to confiscate your gold, for pity’s sake.

  Brother, can you spare a dime?

  “Turn that goldurned thing off, Myra May,” J.D. Henderson growled from his regular seat at the counter, where he was hunched over a plate of meat loaf, corn, and mashed potatoes. “Bad ’nuff to be broke without havin’ to listen to some damn fool idjut singin’ about it.”

  Myra May turned off the radio. When the diner was full, the way it usually was at lunchtime, she didn’t listen to WODX. Most of her customers preferred to have the Philco tuned to WSM, a clear-channel station out of Nashville. Its call sign was abbreviated from “We Shield Millions,” which was the slogan of the station’s owner, National Life and Accident Insurance Company. (Mr. Musgrove at the hardware store had had unsatisfactory dealings with National Life and said the call letters really referred to “We Swindle Millions.”) When WSM wasn’t broadcasting the farm and market reports, their studio musicians were playing the country music the diner’s customers heard—and liked—on Saturday night on the Grand Ole Opry radio show.

  But Myra May preferred WODX, and now, she found herself humming Rudy’s refrain as she wiped the counter and the tables, stacked dishes, and made a fresh pot of coffee for the lunch crowd. Except that it was past twelve thirty and the lunch crowd had failed to show up. There were only two customers in the whole place right now. One of them was bad-tempered old J.D., Mr. Musgrove’s helper at the hardware store. The other was a man Myra May had seen once or twice before, a tall, lanky fellow with dark hair, a pockmarked face, and a steely gaze—Chester Kinnard, the district revenue agent, sitting in the corner with his back to the wall. Only two, when both the counter stools and the chairs at the tables were usually filled. Myra May had the feeling that there weren’t going to be many more until the bank reopened—if it reopened.

  She shuddered. It had been bad enough when the bank closed during the Roosevelt bank holiday last month. But then, they’d had some warning, and everybody had thought it was only a formality, just something they had to get through, because their bank was strong. That’s what Mr. Johnson had told them, standing like the Rock of Gibraltar on the steps in front of the bank while the townspeople gathered beneath him on the sidewalk, nodding as they listened to his reassurances and cheering when he said, “We’ll get through this together, boys. And we’ll be even stronger when we come out on the other end.” When he had finished, there were cheers and whistles and applause.

  But now Mr. Johnson was under arrest. Well, under suspicion, but arrest was sure to follow. The Darling Savings and Trust was closed and everybody’s money—if they had any—was locked up. A “holiday” was one thing. But what would she and her partner, Violet, do if the bank stayed closed and their money disappeared? What would anybody do?

  Myra May heard the clatter of footsteps on the n
arrow wooden stairs that led down from the second-floor apartment where she and Violet lived, and Violet appeared, holding Cupcake by the hand. The daughter of Violet’s deceased sister, Cupcake was just three and as bright as a new-minted copper penny. People in Darling said that she was every bit as cute as that little Shirley Temple, whom Myra May had seen a few weeks ago in “Glad Rags to Riches.” The one-reeler “baby burlesk” featured a half-dozen three- and four-year-olds dressed up in Gay Nineties costumes. Little Shirley, who was obviously destined for stardom, tap-danced and sang, “I’m only a bird in a gilded cage.”

  “Hewwo, Myra May,” Cupcake warbled, clutching her favorite picture book, The Little Engine That Could. She wore bib overalls made out of brown corduroy by her Grammy Ray and a yellow shirt Violet had embroidered with bunnies. Cupcake did not willingly submit herself to hair brushing, but Violet had managed to subdue her strawberry curls long enough to pin them back with two yellow poodle barrettes. Privately, Myra May approved of Cupcake’s little rebellions, seeing them as hopeful signs that she might grow up to be something other than a decorative addition to some man’s household—a bird in a gilded cage.

  Violet glanced around the empty diner, up at the clock, and then at the customer at the counter. “Hello, J.D.,” she called cheerfully. “Nice day, isn’t it?”

  J.D. raised his head from his meat loaf and mashed potatoes and fixed her with a hollow-eyed look. “Think so, missy?” he asked sardonically. “Then how come they ain’t six or seven people sittin’ here, elbows on the counter, way they usually is?” He went back to his plate.

  Violet squared her shoulders against J.D.’s surly intransigence. “Well, it’s just past twelve thirty,” she said brightly. “The Saturday crowd is always just a little bit later.”

  Myra May inserted a fold of paper napkins into the chrome napkin dispenser on the counter. “Don’t kid yourself, sweetie. With the bank closed, people are going to hold on to every last dime they’ve got in their pockets.” Glumly, she added, “Especially since they don’t know where the next dime is coming from.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Violet said, tossing her head. “People still have to eat.”

  “They’ll eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” Myra May retorted, thinking that Violet really ought to face the facts. “At home.”

  Half annoyed, she took the flyswatter off its hook and swatted a fly crawling across the glass top of Raylene’s pie cabinet. She loved her friend and partner dearly, but sometimes that determined optimism was a little hard to take. Violet had an outgoing personality, curly brown hair, deep-set brown eyes, and a Cupid’s bow smile framed by a deep dimple in each cheek. She liked to wear swirly, flower-print georgette dresses with a touch of feminine lace and she spoke in a honeyed Southern voice. But this didn’t mean she was girlish or a pushover—definitely not a pushover, in fact, because Violet had her own ideas about the way things ought to be done, and she was happy to tell you exactly how that was. And since Myra May always spoke her mind, too, she and Violet sometimes disagreed. But they had a great deal of affection for each other, so they always mended their fences as fast as they could.

  But it was, as Aunt Hetty Little said, a case of opposites attracting. Where Violet was friendly and vivacious and took everybody on their own terms, Myra May was just the opposite: moody, frequently melancholy, usually critical, and (according to some) a regular sourpuss. Nobody had ever called her pretty, and she would’ve felt like a total idiot in a georgette dress.

  In fact, Myra May was the only Darling woman who dared to wear trousers every single day of the week. She was tall and strong, with short brown hair, a decided mouth, a prominent nose, and a probing glance that sometimes made people sneak a look down to make sure they were buttoned and zipped. Her no-nonsense practicality and business sense had made the diner a going concern since the day she and Violet had thrown in their lot together and bought it from old Mrs. Hooper, who would never have sold out if her ankles hadn’t started swelling so bad she couldn’t stay on her feet all day, the way she used to.

  At the same time, they also bought Mrs. Hooper’s half of the Darling Telephone Exchange. It only made sense, Myra May told Violet, since the switchboard was located in the diner’s back room, so they might as well have the whole kit and caboodle. Or the whole kit and half the caboodle, Violet corrected, because Mr. Whitney Whitworth owned the other half of the Exchange. Mr. Whitworth was a real pain in the patootie to work with, but they couldn’t get out of the agreement unless they bought him out, which they couldn’t, so there wasn’t any point in barking up that tree.

  Myra May turned as the kitchen door opened and Raylene Riggs stepped through, clad in her print cotton cook’s smock.

  “Grammy Ray!” Cupcake chortled.

  Raylene scooped up the little girl and gave her a big smoochy kiss. Turning to Myra May, she said, “Things are a little slow in the kitchen so I thought I’d go ahead and get started on supper. How many chickens do you reckon I ought to cut up? Two, maybe? Three?”

  Myra May sighed. “Maybe you just better do one, Mama. If we don’t have any customers, we can fry it up and eat it ourselves.”

  Raylene was Myra May’s height, with heavy dark eyebrows, a firm mouth and chin, and short auburn hair streaked with gray. A quick glance would tell you that the two were related, but it wouldn’t tell you the rest of the story: the tragic truth that mother and daughter had been separated for almost all of Myra May’s thirty-some years. They had discovered each other the previous summer, when Raylene showed up to try out for the cook’s job after Euphoria Hoyt (the diner’s previous cook) had signed on to cook at the Red Dog juke joint, on the other side of the L&N tracks. Raylene had known that Myra May was her daughter before she came to Darling—in fact, that was her reason for coming. It took a while, though, for Myra May to figure out their relationship, and the truth came as a colossal surprise. And a nearly incomprehensible happiness, as well, since her father and the aunt who raised her had told her that her mother was dead. Now, Myra May had more family than she had ever imagined: her friend Violet and little Cupcake and her mother. You’d think she’d be happy, wouldn’t you?

  “If you ask me, we should plan for our usual crowd,” Violet said stoutly. “It’s Saturday night, and Mr. Greer is showing The Mummy, with Boris Karloff. You know how people love horror films, and this one is supposed to be a jim-dandy. It’ll bring out a crowd and some of them will want to stop and eat first.”

  The bell over the diner’s front door dinged and Charlie Dickens stumbled in.

  “See?” Violet crowed. “There’s Mr. Dickens. The lunch crowd is on its way.”

  “Three customers hardly constitute a crowd,” Myra May muttered, frowning. She could tell from the rakish tilt of Charlie’s fedora that he was three sheets to the wind. Well, two and a half, anyway. It seemed that she’d seen him that way more and more often lately, after Fannie Champaign got fed up with his tomcatting around and took off for Atlanta. She wondered if he knew that Fannie was back.

  “I think things will pick up,” Raylene said serenely, and Violet nudged Myra May with her elbow.

  “You listen to your mama,” she said. “She knows what she’s talking about.”

  “Oh, I do,” Myra May replied, and swatted at the fly on top of the napkin dispenser. This time she got it. “I definitely listen.”

  Myra May did, too, for her mother had a special and rather surprising gift. She was psychic. Raylene knew what people wanted to eat and surprised them by having it ready when they walked in and sat down at the counter. She knew when certain things were going to happen, and when certain people had certain feelings that were going to cause them to behave in certain ways. She explained all this by saying that it was sort of like tuning a radio to a station that came through loud and clear. The signal was powered by people wanting, or planning, or hoping. It didn’t work 100 percent of the time, because sometimes there
was static, when people were conflicted or guilty or apprehensive. And sometimes there were competing signals, and she had to figure out which was which and what it meant.

  Raylene didn’t advertise her gift, but she didn’t make any secret of it, either, and the people who knew about it didn’t think anything of it one way or another, especially the elders. Back in the old days, almost everybody knew somebody who had the gift, especially among the rural folk who lived along the edges of the swamps. Aunt Hetty’s opinion was that the gift was squelched by city life, so the more people who moved to the cities, the less of it there was. Pretty soon it would all be gone.

  Charlie tossed his fedora at the hat rack on the wall under the Dr Pepper clock, missed, and didn’t bother to pick it up. He took a seat at the counter, two stools down from J.D. He was barely settled when the bell over the door dinged again, and Mayor Jed Snow came in, dressed in his usual blue plaid shirt and wash pants. He raised his hand in greeting to Myra May, then picked up Charlie’s hat and hung it, with his own gray Ferguson Tractor cap, on the hat rack. A moment later, Jed Snow was followed by Alvin Duffy, who worked at the bank. Mr. Duffy was dressed in a brown business suit and white shirt and dark red tie and wore a natty brown porkpie hat, which he hung up beside Jed’s cap. Without saying a word, the mayor and Mr. Duffy went to the table in the far back corner of the room.

  “Three chickens,” Raylene decided, watching them. “Meanwhile, I’ll fry up some chicken livers for Mr. Dickens. He’ll be wanting some green beans, too. And Mr. Snow will have that last pork chop.” She snuggled Cupcake’s neck and the little girl giggled. “Baby play pots and pans while Grammy Ray does her cooking?”