The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

Ophelia had been glad when her husband, Jed, announced that he intended to run for mayor. The two of them had been born right here in Darling, had lived here all their lives, and felt a sense of responsibility for what happened here, good and bad. Ophelia’s father, dead now, had been a lawyer and part-time pastor of the Methodist Church. Jed’s family had been river-bottom farmers but his dad had sold out back in 1912 and opened Snow’s Farm Supply, a few blocks north on Rosemont. Jed began working there when he came back from France in ’18—all in one piece, thankfully. When his father retired a few years later, he took over.

Like Ophelia and Jed, most of the people who lived in Darling had been born there, or nearby. The town was located seventy crow-flying miles north of Mobile, in the modestly hilly region east of the Alabama River. It was named for Joseph P. Darling, who felt that a country rich in timber and fertile soils, with fast-flowing Pine Mill Creek close by and the Alabama River not far away, could benefit from a market town. He had planted his foot down right there, as Bessie Bloodworth (whose hobby was local history) liked to say. And where he had planted his foot the town had grown up, surrounded by farm fields and stands of loblolly and longleaf pines, with sweet gum and tulip trees in the creek and river bottoms, and magnolia and sassafras and sycamore and pecan.

Darling had grown apace without experiencing much in the way of noteworthy historical events, except for some brief but serious unpleasantness when Union soldiers occupied the town during the War Between the States and some considerable celebrating when the Louisville & Nashville Railroad came close enough to make building a rail-line spur and a rail yard a realistic scheme.

When the spur—the Manitee & Repton line—was completed, the town had blossomed. Now the seat of Cypress County, Darling was centered around a brick courthouse with a bell tower and a white-painted dome with a clock, the whole thing surrounded by a grassy lawn. The town’s businesses were arranged around the courthouse square, and the oak-canopied residential streets were organized in a similar four-square grid, as logical and orderly as old Joseph P. himself Around the town there were mostly corn and cotton fields and lots of timber. The past few years had been drier than normal—people were already talking about a drought—but Jed said the town’s water supply was in no danger, and Ophelia believed him. She always believed Jed. Always.

“I’m home,” Ophelia called, coming into the house through the kitchen door. She put her empty dish—the Dahlias had eaten every one of her stuffed tomatoes—on the kitchen table and went down the hall into the living room. Jed was just turning around from the telephone on the wall. He stepped to her quickly and gave her a hug. At six feet to her five-foot-four, he nearly dwarfed her.

“Have a good meeting?” He was one of those men who go on looking forty-five until they’re seventy, brown-haired and brown-eyed, with square, capable hands and—usually—an open, pleasant look on his face. Just now, his brows were pulled together. He looked troubled.

“We did,” Ophelia said, taking off her hat and fluffing her brown hair. “Except for Voleen Johnson, of course. She thinks Beulah’s sign looks tacky. Well, I s’pose it is a bit colorful, but since Beulah painted it, we love it. Then we cut the dues, which annoyed Voleen even more. She thinks it’ll encourage riffraff to join, although she couldn’t quite bring herself to say it in so many words.” She bent over and straightened the crocheted lace antimacassar on the arm of Jed’s chair. “Really, I don’t know why that woman bothers with the Dahlias. She—”

Ophelia straightened and caught the look on her husband’s face. “Something’s wrong?” She looked around uneasily. “The kids. Where are the kids?”

“Down the street at the folks’. Sis and her pair came over for the afternoon.”

Jed’s parents lived in a two-story white frame house four doors down on the other side of Rosemont, where one or another of their grown children, along with their broods, usually showed up for Sunday dinner or homemade ice cream on Sunday afternoon. Sis was Jed’s youngest sister. She lived out by Jericho. Her twins were only four, much younger than Ophelia and Jed’s two, Sam and Sarah, now thirteen and eleven. There’d been another baby before Sam, their first boy, but he had died at birth. And then Sam came along, robust and squalling, and they had put their loss behind them and got on with what had to be done.

“That’s good,” Ophelia said with satisfaction. “They’ll eat there, I reckon.” She glanced at the clock—the walnut tambour clock Jed’s parents had given them for a wedding present—on the shelf beside the radio. It was nearly six. “Are you hungry? We had refreshments—you know the Dahlias, plenty to eat. But I can fix you a sandwich. There’s some ham.”

Jed shook his head, and she saw that his frown was deeper. “Who was that on the phone?” she asked.