The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

But there it was, alcohol poisoning, right on the death certificate, and nobody could quarrel with that. It was widely speculated throughout Darling that Mr. DeYancy had fallen accidental victim to tainted corn squeezin’s, although the more mistrustful wondered whether one of his opponents on various issues (there might have been one or two) had supplied a jug of a fatally potent brew. It was certainly true that accidents happened, since once white lightning was bottled and hauled to the nearest town, there was no way of telling who had distilled it or what exactly was in the jug. Moonshining was an exacting process (some wanted to call it a science) that required experience and good judgment, but not all moonshiners possessed either, both, or both at the same time. This sometimes resulted in mistakes and miscalculations, and since moonshine was odorless and colorless, it was all too easy to pass off the heads or tails (the highly toxic first and last few quarts out of the still) as the pure and perfect middlin’s. Accidents happened, and one of them might have happened to Mr. DeYancy.

But while Mr. DeYancy had a long-standing reputation as a good and faithful servant who discharged his official duties with devoted attention, there was at least one person who wondered. Charlie Dickens was a veteran newsman who had grown up in Darling, moved away, and came back to take over the Darling Dispatch from his ailing father. Over the twelve months prior to Mr. DeYancy’s death, Charlie had written several editorials questioning some of the policies and procedures in the Cypress County treasurer’s office. The editorials were not your usual hit-and-miss, running skirmishes, either, but thoughtful, targeted, and detailed. In fact, Charlie Dickens exhibited such a firm grasp of the details that a few suspicious folks speculated that there must be an informant in the courthouse, an insider who was handing the Dispatch some confidential dope.

The editorials did not accuse Mr. DeYancy of wrongdoing. Charlie was a seasoned newsman (he’d worked on newspapers around the country) and knew better than to make unsubstantiated accusations. But he did point out that the county’s roads and bridges were badly neglected. And since the county commissioners (of whom Mr. DeYancy was one) kept saying that there just wasn’t enough money to do everything, he demanded that the county’s financial records be opened to public examination and scrutiny. Those who read the editorials carefully came away with the idea that somebody in county government was up to something and that Charlie Dickens intended to find out who and what it was.

Then Mr. DeYancy died and any questions about his conduct as county treasurer became moot. Whatever the unknown and unknowable facts of his untimely death, Cypress County now found itself in need of a treasurer. Since the dead man had recently been elected to his fourth term and the county commissioners didn’t want to spend the money to hold a new election, they decided to appoint an interim successor, someone they already knew and felt comfortable working with.

As the whole county might have guessed, the commissioners already knew and felt comfortable with Earle Scroggins, the elected probate clerk and Verna’s boss, currently in his eighteenth year in office. (Men who got elected to office in Cypress County tended to stay in office as long as they remembered who had put them there. Mr. Scroggins, who had a very good memory for favors rendered, was no exception.) So nobody was surprised when Mr. Scroggins got the nod as acting treasurer to fill out Mr. DeYancy’s term. People just shrugged and said, “Well, whaddya expect?”

Charlie Dickens wasn’t surprised, either. But he didn’t like it. He wrote an editorial charging that the commissioners were just a tad bit too comfortable—he actually dared to use the word cozy—with Mr. Scroggins. This was to be expected, however, since Charlie Dickens had been in the habit of criticizing the former county treasurer and everybody figured he’d probably roll up his sleeves and lay into the new one, too. That was the way newspapermen operated in the big city, and while Charlie was Darling born and Darling bred, he had worked on newspapers in Cleveland and Baltimore and New York, and that’s where he’d learned those habits. That’s what people said, anyway.

But most Darlingians had a few other urgent things to worry about, such as keeping their business afloat or paying the weekly bill at Hancock’s Groceries. If they had been asked, they would no doubt have approved the treasurer’s appointment, regardless of what Charlie Dickens wrote. Mr. Scroggins had a reputation for running a tight ship in the probate office, although the folks who worked there knew that it was really Verna’s ship, not his. The county commissioners probably knew this, too, but that didn’t count for much because they were eager to have Mr. Scroggins take on the treasurer’s job.