The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

What’s more, on Friday she had been told confidentially by Amos Tombull, the chairman of the county commissioners, that there was a big change coming at the bank. It was likely that it would be closed for at least two more weeks while they sorted things out. She had no idea what he meant, although she suspected that it had something to do with Mr. Johnson’s sudden removal. Two more weeks! That could mean that she would not only miss the April 14 payroll, but she would miss the one that was due on April 28. The county employees were living paycheck-to-paycheck now. Two missed checks would simply doom most of them, and they’d end up on the street. Something had to be done. But what?

Now, it has to be said that Verna Tidwell was not a sentimental person. During their brief marriage, her husband, Walter, was forever complaining about her lack of sentiment—not that he had a lot of it himself, of course. Walter taught history and civics at Darling Academy and lived in a world that was built on a foundation of indisputable facts and known quantities that he could teach and his students could learn. Verna couldn’t bring herself to trust Walter’s faith in a world of facts, and their marriage had not given her what she wanted (although she had never been sure exactly what that was). If he hadn’t absentmindedly walked out in front of a Greyhound bus, northbound on Route 12 on that rainy afternoon some eleven years ago, they would probably have gotten a divorce.

As it was, she had missed him briefly, mourned his passing for a respectable period, and then gotten on with the rest of her life. In lieu of the child Walter had never wanted, she adopted a little dog, a black Scottie named Clyde who knew nothing at all about indisputable facts and was certain only that Verna was the center of the known universe. She settled down to life as a career woman with a steady job and the firm intention of never again inviting a male (other than Clyde, of course) to share her life. Most Darling widows made every effort to trade their widowhood for wifehood as quickly and advantageously as possible, but Verna cherished hers. She found it protective, like a suit of armor. It shielded her from distracting, costly relationships—costly, that is, in terms of time and emotional energy.

Verna’s lack of sentiment had stood her in good stead in her job as the county probate clerk and acting treasurer. In fact, she took great pride in her reputation as a no-nonsense, tough-minded businesswoman who did whatever had to be done—such as cutting everybody’s salaries across the board, rather than letting one or two people go. This meant serious hardship for some, of course, and there were the inevitable bad feelings, especially among those who didn’t fully understand the mathematics of the situation and who blamed Mrs. Tidwell for the loss of a few dollars in their paychecks.

All in all, Verna was not the best-loved person in Darling—and she knew it. This didn’t bother her, though, and she certainly didn’t feel that her lack of sentiment was a fatal character flaw. It was just part of her nature, along with her habit of wanting to know what motivated people to do the things they did, especially the unsavory and unlawful things, such as cheating on their property taxes. “Why?” was one of her most frequently asked questions, along with “Who told you?” and “What makes him think he can get away with that?”

So it was in Verna’s nature to ask herself what was likely to happen after the county missed two payrolls in a row, and she didn’t like the answers she came up with. She had been sitting at her desk midway through the afternoon, thinking about this bleak scenario, when Chester P. Kinnard—the federal revenue agent for this part of Alabama—came into the office.