The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

“Just give out,” the Dahlias chorused, in singsongy unison, and broke into giggles. Ophelia, round and bouncy, with flyaway brown hair and a sweet smile that never stopped, was an incurable optimist, and this was her favorite saying.

Miss Rogers bit her lip, and Lizzy was immediately sorry for joining in the laughter. Out loud, she said, “Miss Rogers is certainly right, ladies. None of us wants that kind of excitement, ever again. But gardening is a different kind of excitement. We’ve got a full calendar ahead of us, and I hope every Dahlia will roll up her sleeves and pitch in.”

She began ticking things off on her fingers. “This coming Saturday is the annual plant sale. June is the Flower Show, July is the Tomato Fest, August is the Watermelon Roll, September we are having our Garden Tour, and October is the Harvest Festival. Oh, and don’t forget: every Monday night, we get together for a game of hearts. Never let it be said that the Dahlias are lazy!”

Three or four people pretended to groan, but everyone else chuckled. There wasn’t a lot of entertainment in Darling, but the Dahlias always managed to find something to do. Lizzy was about to ask for a motion to adjourn, but Verna Tidwell raised her hand.

“One more thing, Lizzy.” The physical opposite of plump, pretty Ophelia, Verna was tall and thin, with an olive-toned complexion, a firm mouth, and intelligent, searching eyes. But while Verna was not everybody’s idea of a Southern belle, she had a razor-sharp mind. She worked in the office of the probate court clerk, where she was in charge of keeping the records. This was a big job that involved shelves and boxes and cabinets of dusty plat books and details of property ownership, tax liens, wills, elections—papers and documents that went back generations. Verna always said that her job gave her a perspective on Cypress County that she couldn’t get anywhere else.

“As club treasurer,” she said, “I need to remind y’all to pay your dues. You can pay by the month—twenty-five cents. Or if you want to pay ahead, it’s just two dollars and fifty cents for the full year. That’s a savings of fifty cents.”

Myra May cleared her throat. “I thought we discussed making it fifteen cents a month,” she said. “I’m not speaking for myself, of course,” she added hurriedly, although everybody knew that business at the Darling Diner had begun falling off even before the Crash. Myra May and her friend Violet Sims (they shared the apartment over the diner) were working two full-time jobs, supplementing the income from the diner with money they earned as telephone operators. Myra May always said the hours didn’t matter—she and Violet were just glad to have the steady work. Everybody knew exactly what she meant.

“You know, Verna,” Lizzy said, “Myra May is right about the dues. I think maybe you weren’t at the meeting where we discussed this. But we did talk about dropping it down to fifteen cents.” She looked around. People were nodding. “As far as the club goes, we’ll be okay for money. Mrs. Blackstone paid the taxes on this house, so we won’t have to worry about that for several years.” She added, wanting to be fair, “Although there’s the electrical bill, of course. And the roof.”

They were lucky to have Dahlia House—there was no doubt about that. But the place was forty years old and hadn’t been built all that well to start with. After the last hard rain, there had been puddles in the kitchen and the back room, and the leaks were only going to get worse. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, they would have to find the money to fix the roof Voleen Johnson frowned. “Personally, I think we should leave the dues right where they are. A quarter surely isn’t too much to ask. If anything, we ought to raise them. We don’t want to encourage—”

She stopped, because everybody knew what she had been going to say. She had been arguing for years that Darling’s garden club should accept as members only people who were “serious” gardeners. Which meant people who had enough spare time to spend hours every day in the garden, or had the money to pay somebody else to spend the time, the way she did. The Johnson garden was a showplace, but Voleen Johnson never had dirt under her fingernails, like the rest of the Dahlias. And twenty-five cents a month, Lizzy was thinking, pretty much excluded the folks who lived over in Maysville, on the east side of the railroad tracks.

She saw that people were shifting on their chairs. “If somebody’ll make a motion about the dues, we can discuss it,” she said.

Aunt Hetty spoke up first. “I move that the 1930 dues be set at fifteen cents a month,” she said firmly. “If somebody wants to pay it all at once, let’s make it a dollar fifty.”