The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

Bessie always took care with her list, including the prices and totaling them up at the bottom so she’d be sure to stay within the week’s grocery allowance. Today, she was getting two pounds of spare ribs (twenty-five cents), two pounds of Eight O’Clock coffee (forty-five cents), self-rising Split Silk flour (twenty-four-pound bag for sixty-five cents), ten pounds of red potatoes (fifty cents), four pounds of prunes (twenty-five cents), a one-pound box of Blue Grass macaroni (five cents), a three-pound bag of grits (ten cents), and two boxes of Octagon soap powder (twenty-five cents).

She was standing at the counter when she smelled something tangy and turned to see a box of oranges, sitting on top of a barrel of cabbages. The hand-lettered sign said that they were nineteen cents a dozen, a bit pricey, but they did smell good. The Magnolia Ladies loved nothing better than fresh-squeezed orange juice for breakfast, and she could dry the peels for flavoring.

“I’ll take a dozen of those oranges, too,” she said impulsively, and Mrs. Hancock nodded approvingly.

“Good you got ’em now,” she said, putting them into a paper bag. “That’s such a nice price, they’ll all be gone in another hour or two.”

Bessie didn’t think it was a nice price. She’d bought oranges last month at fifteen cents a dozen. But it didn’t pay to argue with Mrs. Hancock, who owned the only grocery store in town. Before the Crash, there’d been talk about A&P building a self-service market on the other side of the square, where Sevier’s Stationery had burned down a few years ago.

But Bessie thought it was just talk, with the economy so shaky. At least she hoped so. If A&P opened a store here, that would likely be the end of Hancock’s. But A&P wouldn’t give credit—you’d have to pay every time you went shopping. They wouldn’t deliver, either. Mrs. Hancock would jot down each amount and the total ($2.69) in her black book, and then put Bessie’s purchases in a cardboard box for Old Zeke to deliver to Magnolia Manor. Bessie or Roseanne would come in and pay the bill, in cash, at the end of the month. Some folks couldn’t pay everything they owed every month, and Mrs. Hancock would give them a hard look and sometimes a little lecture. But she’d carry them until they got back on their feet—or as long as she could, anyway. And in the meantime, she’d take on trade anything they could give her, from chickens and eggs to woodstove lengths.

Bessie left the groceries to be delivered, went back out onto Franklin Street, and walked one door to the east, to the Dispatch office, to leave Miss Rogers’ paper with Charlie Dickens. She was just about to enter when, to her surprise, the door was flung violently open and Angelina Dupree Biggs rushed out. Her face was flushed, her eyes were wide, and her yellow straw hat was crooked. She ran straight into Bessie, bumping her so hard that she almost knocked her over.

Back in high school, Angelina had been a slightly plump but very pretty girl, blond and blue-eyed, with bee-stung lips and a figure that was nicely rounded in all the right places. She had a perky personality that (along with her physical attributes) made her the most popular girl in school. All the boys were crazy about her, so when Bessie read Charlie’s torrid love letters, they hadn’t come as a big surprise. Edna Fay had made fun of her brother’s extravagant language and Bessie had joined in. But she had been unaccountably affected by the depth and sincerity of Charlie’s passion and wished with all her heart that Harold Hamer, her sweetheart, would write letters like that to her. Harold couldn’t, because he was basically your boy next door. Charlie could, because he had always had a way with words, even when he was still a skinny, all-elbows boy with brown hair that stuck up no matter how much Brilliantine he put on it.

But Angelina had never been what you’d call skinny, even in high school. For the past several years, she had run the kitchen at the Old Alabama Hotel, where her husband Artis was the manager. It was her duty to sample the pies and cakes and fried chicken and potato salad the cook produced, and as a result, she had gained quite a few extra pounds, many of them settling comfortably around her hips and bottom.

So when she flung open the door and ran into Bessie, the impact nearly knocked Bessie off her feet. Bessie gave an involuntary “oomph!” and grabbed at the door to keep from being bowled over.

“So sorry,” Angelina gasped. She seized her hat with both hands and jammed it on her head. “I didn’t see you, Bessie. Door didn’t hurt you, did it?”

“I’m all right,” Bessie said, and sucked in a deep breath. With it, she got an overwhelming whiff of Emeraude perfume. Angelina must have soaked herself with the stuff. “Are you okay?”

Angelina nodded, but Bessie thought she was fighting back tears, which was odd, because over the years, Angelina had settled into an almost stolid placidity. Bessie, who had worked with her on several Ladies Club committees, had never once seen her upset.

“You’re sure?” Bessie persisted. “You’re not hurt, are you?”