The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

Lizzy looked around. Zeke was right, she thought. The grass was ankle-high, and if it wasn’t clipped soon, the job would be a lot harder—maybe too hard for Zeke, who must be in his seventies. But he was strong still, strong enough to make a living delivering groceries for Mr. Hancock and doing odd jobs around the neighborhood—when he wasn’t drunk or recovering from an extended bout with the bottle.

“Thanks for pointing that out, Zeke,” Lizzy replied. “Our club members will handle the cleanup on the flower beds, but maybe you could cut the grass for us.” She looked again at the long stretch down toward the woods. “How much did Mrs. Blackstone pay you for the work?”

Zeke brightened. “A quarter’s whut she paid, Miz Lizzy.”

“Good.” Lizzy opened her purse and took out a quarter. “Oh, and there’s something else you might could do for us, Zeke. It doesn’t have to be this week, but please dig a hole for the sign and plant it, out there in front of the house, under the cucumber tree. We want people to see it as they go past.” Considering his habits, it would probably be better if she didn’t give him all the money at once. “If you’ll come by my house when you’re finished, I’ll pay you for it”

Zeke nodded, grinning a snaggletoothed grin. “Yes’m, I’ll do that” He pocketed the money, giving her a questioning look. “What folks’re sayin’ is true, then? Mr. Beatty Black stone ain’t never gonna live here? This place don’t belong to him or his’n?”

There was something in the tone that arrested her, but she only said, “No, Zeke. Mrs. Blackstone left the house and the lot next door to the garden club. The Dahlias will be keeping the garden up—as best we can, anyway—and using the house for our meetings. It’s what Mrs. Blackstone wanted.”

“Yes’m,” Zeke said, and looked away. “Reckon you know about the Cartwright ghost”

Many Alabama houses have their resident ghosts, of course, especially if the house has had a history of tragedy. The Cartwright house was burned during the War (always spoken of in Darling with a capital W) and the Cartwright ghost, dispossessed, was said to wander through the old gardens looking for something she had lost, variously reported to be a baby, a family treasure, or even her shoes.

“I’ve heard about it, of course,” Lizzy said. “I haven’t seen her myself, though,” she added.

“Lots of folks has seen it.” Zeke was serious. “Never bothered Miz Blackstone much, ’cuz it’s her fam’ly ghost. She wuz familiar. But other folks might be afeerd, if they ain’t never seen her.”

“Have you seen her?”

Zeke looked wise. “Oh, reckon I have. More’n once, too, since I was a chile. Wears a long black cape, she does. Carries a spade and digs in dem bushes at the back end of the garden. You’ll see her, too, if’n you come round here one night when the moon’s full.”

Lizzy nodded, although she had the feeling that Zeke’s adult encounters with the ghost might be the product of his notorious adventures with the local moonshine whiskey—and his childhood sightings the product of an active imagination.

“Well, thanks,” she said. “Let me know when you’ve put up the sign, and I’ll pay you.”

She walked away, wondering if there was a way the Dahlias could exploit the legend of the Cartwright ghost to help them raise money to fix the leaky roof Maybe a moonlight garden tour, with one of their members dressed in a long black cape, playing the part of the ghost? She did a quick calculation. If the roof cost twenty dollars to fix and they charged a nickel apiece for the moonlight garden tour (half the price of a movie ticket), they would need four hundred people.

She laughed at herself. Obviously a silly idea.

They’d have to think of some other way to raise that money. But it wasn’t going to be easy. Nobody in town had much of anything to spare.





TWO





Ophelia


Ophelia Snow didn’t have far to walk home, for her house was around the corner on Rosemont Street, down Rosemont across Mimosa to Larkspur Lane, in a block that Ophelia had always thought was the prettiest in the entire town of Darling. (And since she believed that Darling must be the prettiest town in Alabama, that was saying something.) The well-kept houses, most painted white with blue or red or even yellow shutters, had wide front porches and green lawns under arching water oaks and magnolias and there were pretty flowers along the street all summer long. It was a place where kids could ride bikes and play wherever they wanted to, and where people cared about their houses and wanted them to look nice. It was the pride of Darling.