The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

“Little lady” was a joke between them, because Verna was five-foot-eleven (taller, when she wore dress pumps with heels) and Mr. Norris, now in his seventies, was stooped, standing no higher than her chest. What’s more, since she usually wore Walter’s baggy old pants, she couldn’t rightly be called a lady. And “fatback” was meant to be funny, too, because Verna didn’t eat pork and Mr. Norris knew it. She had raised a pet pig when she was a girl and pork never seemed to taste right to her after that. Which was why she knew she shouldn’t tell Clyde what was in his can of Ken-L Ration.

Verna walked to the well with Mr. Norris and watched him hang the bucket on the pump spout and raise and lower the handle. The water gushed out, clear and cool and every bit as good as the water that came out of the city mains. The full bucket was heavy and she took it from him.

“Buddy’s not around to fetch water for you?” she asked. “He’s out lookin’ for a lady-friend?”

Mr. Norris’ son’s philandering was another joke, although sometimes not very funny. Buddy had got himself in serious trouble a couple of months before, when his wandering eye lit on another man’s wife and the man took exception. Buddy had ended up with a broken arm and a black eye, which you might’ve thought would be embarrassing for a deputy sheriff.

But not for Buddy, who was never embarrassed by anything. He had gotten the deputy’s job because he’d ordered a how-to book on scientific crime detection from the Institute of Applied Sciences in Chicago, Illinois, and had taught himself how to take fingerprints, identify firearms, and make “crime scene” photographs. When Deputy Duane Hadley retired earlier in the year and moved over to Monroeville, about fifteen miles to the east, to live with his married daughter, Buddy applied for the job. Sheriff Burns had been so impressed with his knowledge of fingerprinting and photography that he hired him on the spot.

Of course, the fact that Buddy rode a 1927 red Indian Ace motorcycle was probably the deciding factor, since Sheriff Burns had heard that the New York Police Department bought nothing but Indian Aces for their crack motorcycle police squad. Buddy’s motorcycle gave Verna a headache every time he came roaring up to the house. But it gave Roy Burns the right to brag that Darling had the only mounted sheriff’s deputy in all of southern Alabama.

“Buddy?” Mr. Norris shook his head. “Naw, he’s out on a case.” He liked this, so he said it again, louder. “He’s went out on a case. Sheriff come by in his automobile and told him to ride out to the Ralph Murphy place. At the end of Briarwood Road, out by Jericho.”

“What’s going on out there?”

“Jailbreak.” Mr. Norris was enjoying himself “From the prison farm, I reckon.” Prison farm guards with rifles sat on their horses and watched the work parties, but occasionally somebody, or a pair or a trio of somebodies, would walk off and head for the trees. If they didn’t get shot, they could be hard to find out there in the woods.

“cup.”

“Have they found them yet?” she asked. “The escapees, I mean.” Verna wasn’t all that anxious, but she knew that many people in town would be concerned. Once, years before, an escaped prisoner had made his way to Darling. Desperate, he’d broken into the diner for food and into Mann’s Mercantile for clothing to replace his prison stripes. He’d jumped a train and gotten as far as Montgomery before the police caught up with him, and until then, everybody in town was on pins and needles, wondering where he was.

“Found ’em?” Mr. Norris said. “Haven’t heard.”

No, of course he hadn’t. Mr. Norris refused to have a telephone, which made Buddy so mad he could spit. As a deputy, he said, he needed to be on the line, and kept threatening to get himself his own place, just so he could have a phone. As it was, if the sheriff needed Buddy, he had to call Verna or Mrs. Aylmer, on the other side of the Norris house, and one or the other would run over to get him.

They reached the back door, and Verna opened the screen and set the bucket on the wash bench just inside.

“Why don’t you jes’ come on into the kitchen and help me snap them beans?” Mr. Norris asked.

Verna tried not to laugh. If she went in with him, pretty soon she’d have all the beans snapped and he’d be asking her to cook them—and bake a batch of cornbread, to boot. “Sorry. I’ve got to get back and finish my hoeing.”

He sighed. “Well, when Buddy gets home, you come on back over here an’ he’ll tell you all about the jailbreak.” He slanted her a cagey look. “Or I c’n send him over there.” Mr. Norris was always trying to persuade Buddy that he ought to court Verna, in spite of the fact that she was a dozen years older and a head taller.

“I’ll come over if I’m not busy,” Verna said briskly. She didn’t want to encourage Mr. Norris’ romantic efforts. She and Buddy definitely were not a match.