The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

Charlie ignored J.D. “Did she say where she’s been?” he asked plaintively. “What she’s been doing?”


Myra May folded her arms and leaned on the counter, giving him a teasing smile. “Why, where else? She’s been staying with friends over in Atlanta ever since she left here, which was—what? Last July, was it? About the time Lily Dare came to town?” Lily Dare, the beautiful Texas Star, the famous, high-flying aviatrix whom Charlie Dickens had squired around, flaunting her in Fannie’s face.

Charlie swung his dark gaze to her face. “July.” He barely croaked it out. “Fannie left in July.”

Something like pity eroded a corner of her contempt, and Myra May understood that the date of his desolation was etched in his memory like the date of a death carved in a gray granite headstone. But there was no getting around the fact that he had humiliated Fannie in front of the whole town. It was time he got his comeuppance.

She said, “Yeah, July. Well, from the looks of her, I’d say that the city was just real good to her. New dress, new hat, and prettier than ever.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Charlie muttered. “It was just a misunderstanding.”

“Oh, really?” She chuckled again, and that perversity pushed her to shove the knife in and twist it, hard. “She said she’d had a real swell time with her friends there. Even got herself engaged.”

It was true, although Fannie had also said that she’d immediately thought better of the engagement and broken it off the day after she’d agreed to it, with no hard feelings on either side. But Charlie Dickens didn’t need to know that. Not right now, anyway. What he needed was to chew on her being engaged. And after he’d digested that, a good big piece of humble pie.

“Engaged.” He fumbled for his fork. “Engaged,” he said again, dismally. He sat there like a heavy lump inside his clothes, as wooden as the carved wooden Indian that used to sit on the bench in front of Mann’s Mercantile until one day some boys took him out to the fairgrounds and set him on fire. His eyes were the only things that moved, and his lips. “Who’s she engaged to?”

“Engaged?” J.D. crowed at Charlie’s discomfiture. “Serves you right, Charlie boy. Serves you damn right.”

“Who’s she engaged to?” Charlie repeated in a sepulchral voice, his eyes fixed on Myra May.

“She didn’t say.” Myra May straightened up, beginning to halfway repent. She made it a point never to meddle in other people’s business. What had provoked her to do it this time? “Look here,” she added, “it doesn’t really matter, does it? You’re making out just fine.” The taste of the words in her mouth restored her contempt. Yeah, Mr. Charles Dickens was making out, all right. He was making money. Making counterfeit money with Mr. Alvin Duffy to save the town from drying up and blowing away. “What do you care what Fannie Champaign does or doesn’t do?”

His mouth twisted and he pushed his full plate away. “I don’t care,” he gritted. “I don’t give a good goddamn, and don’t you dare tell her I do.”

He fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a quarter and two nickels, and slapped them down on the counter. He got off the stool and went to the door, fumbling to get it open, then remembered his hat and fumbled it onto his head before he managed to get the door open again and went out, slamming it behind him. Myra May looked after him. She still felt contempt, but at the same time she was feeling sad and sorry for what she’d done.

J.D. leaned over, hooked Charlie’s plate with a gnarled right hand, and slid it toward him. “No point in lettin’ good chicken livers and mashed potatoes go to waste,” he said. “Seein’ as how they’re areddy paid for.” He picked up his fork and dug in.