The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

Myra May put one mug and one silverware wrap in front of Jed, whom she knew well, for they’d grown up together. Right out of high school, he had married Ophelia, Myra May’s friend and fellow Dahlia, and they had two young children. He had inherited his daddy’s business, Snow’s Farm Supply, a block west on Franklin, across from the Savings and Trust and downstairs from the jail. He’d been Darling’s mayor for three years now.

But times were hard for the Snows, Myra May knew, because while being mayor took a lot of time, it didn’t pay a nickel. Worse, the Farm Supply depended on the local farmers—and the farmers had been in serious trouble for a decade or more, between the boll weevil and the rock-bottom farm commodity prices and the stock market crash, which made it a lot harder to get a farm loan. In fact, Myra May knew for a fact that if Ophelia hadn’t gotten that job as a Linotype operator and reporter at the Darling Dispatch, the Snows would be in hot water up to their chins. Jed had gotten all high-and-mighty about Ophelia working for money, but the minute he figured out that she would be bringing in eleven-fifty every week, he changed his tune.

“Well, you can stop worrying, Mayor Snow,” Mr. Duffy replied confidently. “I have come up with an idea.” He didn’t look up as Myra May put the mug and silver wrap in front of him. He leaned forward and dropped his voice. “You and I are going to fix it so that everybody’s got the money they need to buy what they have to have.”

Myra May poured Mr. Duffy’s coffee, her ears perking up. Mr. Duffy was the new vice president at the Savings and Trust, and while he’d been in Darling for a couple of months now, he wasn’t in the habit of frequenting the diner. She’d heard that he was living at the Old Alabama Hotel, where he undoubtedly took his meals. He was an attractive, dark-haired man, slender and well dressed with a thin, dark mustache that made him look like Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and when Myra May came around the table, she got a whiff of an expensive aftershave. She put him somewhere in his late thirties, forty tops. A bachelor, he was quite naturally interested in seeking out female company, and the local wives had made it a point to invite him to their dinner parties so that he could meet the local widows—at least, that’s what Myra May had heard over at Beulah’s Beauty Bower, where everybody caught up on the local news while they were being shampooed and set. Reportedly, Mr. Duffy had accepted every invitation and attended to his companion of the evening with such a chivalrous gallantry that her heart flamed with a passionate hopefulness. But while Mr. Duffy had invited two or three of the Darling widows to take in a movie or have dinner at the Old Alabama, no spark had ever ignited the corresponding flame in his heart.

To the deeply disappointed Darling ladies (who like nothing better than a sweet romance—unless it is a scandal) this was an enormous mystery. What kind of woman was Mr. Duffy looking for? A beautiful girl, a brainy girl, an “It” girl—or (mostly likely) someone who was all three? He was clearly a magnificent catch, but were his standards so high that no Darling female could measure up? What did one have to do to capture and hold the man’s attention? The Darling ladies were beginning to suffer terrible feelings of inadequacy.