The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

Ophelia wasn’t inclined to pay a lot of attention to Mrs. Adcock’s story. But there were a few other things, now that she thought about it. Little things, like Jed’s increasingly frequent visits to the Murphy place. And people who stopped talking when she came into the room, as if they didn’t want her to hear what they were saying. Were they talking about Jed and Lucy?

But Ophelia didn’t believe in stirring a big pot of troubles until her mind and heart got stewed into mush. So she stopped thinking and went out to the washhouse to give Florabelle a hand with the wringer. Jed’s pants were heavy when they were wet and the wringing went faster when there was one to feed and one to turn the wringer crank.

By the time Jed’s pants were on the line, Ophelia had decided what to do. She put on a fresh cotton dress, combed her hair, put on her second-best hat (the straw with the blue silk flowers) and reminded Florabelle that Jed wouldn’t be home to noon dinner because it was the third Monday, the day the Elks held their monthly meeting at the Darling Diner. Florabelle could go ahead and give the children their dinner—she would eat when she got home, which might be later in the day. Then she went to the garage and carefully backed out the Ford sedan. She was going out to see Lucy. She didn’t have a plan—Ophelia wasn’t the kind of person who thought ahead about what she wanted to say. She just wanted to see Lucy and try to figure out what was what, that was all.

Really, she told herself. That was all.





The Murphy place was at the end of the Briarwood Road, about four miles west of town, just at the edge of Briar’s Swamp and not far from the river. It was Ralph’s daddy’s home place, but Ralph had built an addition on the house when he and Emma—Ophelia’s best friend—got married years ago. Emma had been a solid, sensible girl, and she’d started having babies right away. But she’d died of a cancer too young, leaving Ralph to cope with Junior and Scooter, who were as free-spirited and independent as might be expected of youngsters who didn’t have a mother. Ophelia didn’t like to criticize, but Lucy wasn’t old or heavy-handed enough to take Emma’s place. The boys needed a switching every now and then, which wasn’t likely to happen, with Lucy being as soft as she was and Ralph working on the railroad and gone all week, even some weekends.

Ophelia pulled up at the gate. When Emma was alive, she had kept up the yard, but now there wasn’t much to it but dirt and weeds and a few straggly flowers along the porch, where a pair of dominecker hens were scratching under the watchful eye of their red-watded rooster. A white goat was tethered beside the fence, thoughtfully nibbling what was left of Emma’s favorite Ducher rosebush—a white China rose, the only white one Ophelia had ever seen.

Ophelia tootled the horn, and in a few moments Lucy hurried out onto the porch, waving when she saw the car and starting eagerly down the rock-bordered dirt path. But when Ophelia got out and Lucy saw who it was, she dropped her arm and stood still.

With some wistfulness, Ophelia had to admit that Ralph’s wife was a beauty. She wasn’t more than twenty-two or twenty-three, and her thin cotton dress was buttoned tight across a full bosom and snugged in to a small waist. She was barefoot and her red hair was twisted up carelessly to keep it off her neck, but the untidiness only added to her loveliness, making her look like a child. There was something of the child in her face, too, a welcoming eagerness, even when her visitor turned out to be somebody other than the person she might have been expecting. She was wary, yes, in the way a child is wary of a stranger. But who wouldn’t be on her guard, living out here, with the nearest neighbor—the Spencers—threequarters of a mile away, back toward town?

Seeing the eagerness, Ophelia took heart. This girl is just plain lonely, she thought. Ralph’s boys might be company, but she’s happy to see anyone who might pay her some attention, break up the monotony of an isolated life. Maybe she would have preferred it to be Jed, but his wife would do almost as well. Of course, she was an optimist, Ophelia reminded herself, but it wouldn’t hurt to start off thinking like this, until she was proved wrong.

“Why, hello, Opie,” Lucy said warmly. “I wasn’t expecting anybody this morning. So nice of you to come by.”

“I was just out this way,” Ophelia said, “and I thought I’d stop and see how you were doing.” Of course, if Lucy gave it a moment’s thought, she’d know this wasn’t true. Ralph’s place was at the end of the road, which dead-ended in the swamp just behind that clump of trees to the west. You wouldn’t come this far unless you were coming here. But maybe she wouldn’t think about it. “You okay?” she added.