The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

Lizzy frowned. This was unusual, wasn’t it? Why was Coretta Cole having breakfast with Amos Tombull, who pulled all the strings in county government, and Earle Scroggins, who was Verna’s boss? Lizzy herself wasn’t comfortable around Mr. Scroggins. He was well enough respected around town because he owned property and had the power to hire and fire, and he always managed to get himself reelected when the next election rolled around. But he wasn’t much liked, except by the few who profited from his patronage. Lizzy could guess why. She had seen another side of him once in a legal dispute. Mr. Moseley called him Snake Eyes.

She turned back around. “What’s going on, Myra May? Why is Coretta Cole having breakfast with Mr. Scroggins and Mr. Tombull?” She narrowed her eyes. “I’ll bet you heard something on the switchboard, didn’t you?”

But Myra May only pressed her lips together and shook her head. She poured coffee in Mr. Gibbons’ mug and took Lizzy’s nickel for the two doughnuts.

“Thanks,” she said briefly, and gave Lizzy a troubled smile.

Lizzy understood that something unusual was going on, something to do with Verna. But she also knew she wasn’t going to get another word out of Myra May. She would have to find out the truth from Verna herself when they had lunch together, although of course she wouldn’t say that Myra May had inspired her concern. She would, however, casually mention that she’d seen Coretta Cole having breakfast with Mr. Scroggins and Mr. Tombull. Lizzy had no idea what this meant, but it certainly seemed like something Verna ought to know.

Back out on the street, thinking about what she had just seen, Lizzy headed for the office. It was still early, but there was traffic on the square, with cars and a few old trucks parked, nose to the curb, in front of the diner and Musgrove’s and across the street at the courthouse. Farther down the street, tethered to the streetlight post in front of Hancock’s Groceries, she saw a big brown horse. The draft animal was hitched to a wagon, and a farmer in a pair of muddy denim overalls was unloading a bushel basket of collards and a bucket of turnips. A heavyset woman in a faded cotton dress and slat bonnet clambered down from the wooden seat with a wire bucket of eggs. Yard eggs were advertised for twenty cents a dozen these days, but she would likely sell hers for eight or nine cents, which she would take in trade. Many of Hancock’s customers, especially the farmers, bartered fresh-caught fish, butter and eggs, and garden truck for staples like flour, salt, coffee, and tea. Some also traded for white sugar, although at fifty-eight cents for ten pounds, sugar was almost three times as expensive as flour. Most farmers and even some townspeople used honey or molasses as sweeteners. If you knew where to look and weren’t afraid of getting stung, you could raid a bee tree, and many folks made molasses from their own sorghum.

As Lizzy walked past the plate glass window of the Dispatch building, she could see Charlie Dickens standing at the counter, talking to Angelina Biggs, who was probably handing in the copy for the Old Alabama Hotel’s menus for the upcoming week, which Charlie ran off on the old Prouty job press that filled one back corner of the print shop. Angelina managed the hotel kitchen, while her husband Artis was the hotel’s general manager. Charlie didn’t look up when Lizzy walked by, which was just as well, Lizzy thought. The copy for her “Garden Gate” column was due and she realized with a guilty start that she hadn’t given this week’s items even a moment’s thought. Then she turned and climbed the stairs at the west side of the building, up to the second-floor offices of Moseley and Moseley.

Benton Moseley (the youngest and now the only surviving Moseley) had hired Lizzy a few months after her high school graduation. She had been planning to work just until she and Reggie Morris, her high school sweetheart, could get married and move into a little house of their own. But Reggie had joined the Alabama 167th and marched off to France and—like so many other American boys—hadn’t marched home again.

Heartbroken, Lizzy had moved the little diamond Reggie had given her from her left hand to her right. She kept on living in her mother’s house and working in Mr. Moseley’s law office, which quickly became the center of her life. After all, the law office was where important things happened, where people came to get their problems solved and their mistakes fixed—or not, as the case may be. Benton Moseley was smart and progressive and (most of the time) treated Lizzy almost as an equal. For her part, Lizzy was bright and eager, a quick study, presentable behind the reception desk and pleasant on the telephone, and more talented than she knew. They got along well.