The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

“I hope so,” Lucy said, with a glance at Ophelia. “But first you have to rest.”


They went back into the kitchen. Without a word, Lucy set about cleaning up the mess. She scooped the food into the slop bucket by the door, where it would go to feed the pigs, and put the plate and fork and spoon into the enamel dishpan, to be washed later.

Ophelia stood by, feeling helpless and more than a little guilty, not knowing what to say. When Lucy was finished, she helped her right the table, and managed, in a small voice, “I’m sorry, Lucy. I didn’t know—I mean, I thought he was ...”

“I know what you thought,” Lucy said in a chilly tone. “And you were wrong. That poor boy nearly died in that prison farm. He didn’t belong there in the first place. Do you know what he was sentenced for?” She answered her own question. “He got six months for stealing a chicken, that’s what. One lousy chicken. He was hungry. The poor kid hadn’t had anything to eat for several days.”

Ophelia stared at her. At her house, things were pretty much the way they always had been, so it was easy to turn a blind eye to the problems that were cropping up everywhere else. Men without jobs, mothers without food for their children, children without proper clothes and shoes.

“They sentenced him to the juvenile home,” Lucy continued, “but it was full, so they sent him to the prison farm with all those tough, seasoned criminals. He wasn’t strong to start with, and they made him work terribly long hours, in all kinds of weather, until he could barely stand up. There was worse abuse, too, because he’s young and slender and some of the other prisoners, big bullies, men who—” Her voice broke and she turned away.

A moment later, she turned back, wiping her eyes with her hand. “I don’t want to tell you what they did, but you can imagine.” Ophelia could, and shuddered. “It was more than he could take,” Lucy went on. “When the other fellow made a break for it, he ran, too. He told me he was running for his life.” She turned to look squarely at Ophelia. “And if you’d been me, Opie, you would’ve taken him in, too. You’re a kind person—you couldn’t have helped yourself.”

“What happened?” Ophelia asked quietly.

Lucy finished wiping the table. “Sit down and I’ll pour us some coffee and tell you,” she said, and Ophelia obeyed.

What happened, it turned out, was that when the two convicts escaped, the sheriff and Buddy caught the older man right away, at the low-water crossing on the road between Ralph’s place and the Spencers’. The other convict, Joey, managed to get away and hide out in the woods before the dogs arrived.

Normally, of course, the dogs would have tracked him down and the sheriff would’ve hauled him back to the prison farm before supper time. But Scooter and Junior found him first, hiding under a sweet gum tree in the swamp about a mile away. They saw how young and scared and pitiful he was and immediately felt sorry for him.

“I was proud of them,” Lucy said quietly. “They knew they couldn’t let that boy go back to the prison farm, and they were right.”

It was Scooter’s idea to trade shoes with him, to keep the dogs from following. Each of the boys put on one of Joey’s shoes—such as they were, almost no heels and soles flapping loose—and gave him one of theirs to wear. Then Junior took the boy on his back and carried him to another tree, where they boosted him up high. Scooter ran off in one direction and Junior ran off in the other, circling around through the marsh and crisscrossing their trails until they got back home.

This tactic naturally confused the dogs, of course, when they were brought in. They tracked Joey off the road and into the swamp, but when they got to the sweet gum tree, they lost the scent completely, circling around and sniffing. They never did pick up the trail. When the dogs were pulled off for the night, the boys went out and brought Joey back and hid him under Lucy’s bed.

“So he wasn’t already here when Jed came,” Ophelia said, trying to get the sequence of events straight in her mind.

“No, he was still out there in the swamp.” Lucy met her eyes. “To tell the truth, Opie, I wanted Jed here so that the sheriff wouldn’t suspect Scooter and Junior of having anything to do with Joey getting away. Jed doesn’t know anything about Joey.” Her forehead puckered. “Say you won’t tell him. Please!”

Ophelia hesitated. She knew her husband, all too well. He took his duties as Darling’s mayor very seriously. She didn’t like keeping secrets from him—it made her feel disloyal. It made her feel ... Oh, it was hard to describe, almost as if she were disobeying one of the Ten Commandments. But if Jed knew, he’d insist that the boy be sent back to the prison farm immediately.