The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

“A week!” Mrs. Freeman exclaimed. She sounded frightened. “Mr. Lima has never closed that drugstore before! He always says he’s here to take care of this town, regardless. What are we supposed to do for medicine while he’s gone?”


“Tell you what, Mrs. Freeman,” Myra May replied. “I’m here at the telephone switchboard, and Tommy Ryan is sittin’ out front in the diner, polishin’ off a piece of Euphoria’s chocolate meringue pie. Tommy works out at the Coca-Cola bottling plant, but he lives over t’wards Monroeville and drives back and forth every day. If you’ll put Doc Roberts on the phone, he can tell Tommy what he needs and Tommy can pick it up at the drugstore in Monroeville tomorrow morning and bring it to you.”

“Oh, what a wonderful idea, Myra May,” Mrs. Freeman said, with a sigh of relief. “I’ll go fetch the doctor.”

“I’ll go get Tommy,” Myra May said. “Lizzy, see you tomorrow at five.”

“I’ll get off the line now,” Lizzy said. “Mrs. Freeman, I hope Mr. Freeman gets to feeling better.”

“I do, too, dear,” the old lady said fervently. “Howard suffers so with that stomach of his. And I sure hope Lester Lima gets back from that vacation real soon. There’ll be lots of folks in town needing medicine.” She sighed heavily. “Oh, and Lizzy, there’s a few more eggs for you here, if you want them. The hens are laying good right now.”

“Thanks,” Lizzy said. “I’ll get some extra for Mother, if you can spare them.” Going back to the table, she said, “Myra May says that Mr. Lima called his sister and said they’d gone to Pensacola so Mrs. Lima could sit on the beach.”

“I really would like to know why they left town so suddenly,” Verna said.

“We may never know,” Lizzy replied. They finished their meal in silence, the deposit book and the telltale photograph on the table between them.





NINETEEN





Bessie Bloodworth Bags a Ghost


Evenings were always quiet at Magnolia Manor—so quiet, in fact, that the younger folks (the ones who liked to go out to the Watering Hole or the Dance Barn to dance and drink bootleg booze in the parking lot) might have called them dull. Bessie didn’t see it that way, of course, for her days were full of chores, sunup to sundown. When supper was over and the evening work was done, she was glad to go out to the front porch and join the Magnolia Ladies (that’s what they called themselves) for a relaxing hour or two before bedtime.

Besides Bessie herself, there were five other ladies living at the Manor at the present time: Dorothy Rogers, Mrs. Sedalius (the one who had heard the Cartwright ghost digging in the Darling Dahlias’ garden), a retired schoolteacher named Leticia Wiggens, Maxine Bechdel, widow of the previous editor of the Dispatch, and Roseanne, the Negro lady who had cooked and cleaned for Bessie’s family for over forty years.

None of the Magnolia Ladies was “well fixed,” as Leticia put it delicately, and all of them had their own chores at the Manor, to help out with the cost of running the old place. Roseanne did the cooking and the laundry, as she had done for many years. Leticia and Maxine washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen and dining room. Mrs. Sedalius cleaned the upstairs, Miss Rogers dusted the downstairs, and Bessie did the downstairs floors, the shopping, and the outside work.

In addition, everyone (even Miss Rogers) worked in the garden that supplied the Manor’s table, and they all helped to tend the dozen hens that gave them their breakfast eggs. One year, they had a milk goat named Belle, but while everyone loved Belle for her sweet manners and soft ears, none of them was crazy about her milk (“tastes like old socks,” Miss Rogers said). So Belle lived a lazy life in her backyard pen and Roseanne walked the two blocks to Mr. Wellgood’s barn every morning and brought back a quart of straight-from-the-cow milk for breakfast.