The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

She loved the special character of this old room, with its creaky wooden floor, glass-fronted bookcases, and wood-paneled walls hung with certificates and diplomas and the somber, gilt-framed portraits of the three deceased senior Moseleys—Mr. Moseley’s great-grandfather, his grandfather, and his father. The junior Mr. Moseley, however, stubbornly refused to have his portrait—or even a photograph—taken.

“All traditions have to come to an end sometime,” he said firmly. “And I am putting a stake through the heart of this one right now. Anybody wants to know what I look like, they can by God take a gander at my face, not at my portrait.”

But he left the portraits hanging, he said, as a reminder that “the sins of the fathers are forever with us, especially in the goldurned South.” Then he’d shaken his head dejectedly and muttered something that Lizzy didn’t quite understand: “Forever and forever. We’ll never be free of them.” But then, Mr. Moseley often said things that Lizzy didn’t understand. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.

By the time she closed the door and went down the outer stairs to the street, the rain had stopped, and Lizzy was glad. She and Grady were driving over to Monroeville to see Grand Hotel, with Greta Garbo and John Barrymore, and she didn’t want to get her hair all wet and straggly. Just in case, she put up her pink umbrella against any stray drops and turned left and hurried east on Franklin past the Dispatch. She noticed that the newspaper office was closed and dark, and she wondered how the meeting had gone and whether Jed Snow had gotten over his objections to the Darling Dollars. Passing Musgrove’s Hardware, she saw that Mr. Musgrove still hadn’t changed his window display, maybe because he didn’t have any new merchandise, as Aunt Hetty had said, since he couldn’t pay for it. And then the diner, with Myra May behind the counter, where only two people were seated—not a very good crowd for this time of evening. In the old days, before all this trouble, every seat at the counter was filled and most of the tables. Lizzy would have gone in to say hi and maybe buy a piece of Raylene’s pie for supper, but she was already late. So when Myra May looked up, she just waved and went on across Robert E. Lee and east toward home.

This section of Darling had always been pretty, and even though the houses were small, their owners had kept them neatly painted, with flowers along the walks and the lawns mowed and trimmed. In the dusky evenings, folks sat in their porch swings or their rocking chairs, reading the newspaper or crocheting an afghan and watching the neighborhood girls playing jacks and jumping rope and the boys swatting baseballs in the dusty street. In the spring, the windows would always be open and you could hear radios playing through the evening air. People liked The Fred Allen Show and Jack Benny for comedy and The Carnation Contented Hour for music, and when you walked down the street, you could sometimes hear a little of both.

Lately, though, Lizzy had noticed a change. The houses needed painting, the yards weren’t as tidy, and people didn’t sit on their porches so much. You could still hear the radios and the scene looked serene—until you noticed that the porch roof on Mrs. Friedman’s house had blown off in a January windstorm and hadn’t been replaced. That was because the bank had foreclosed on the house and Mrs. Friedman was living in Selma with her sister. And on the other side of the street, Mr. Harrison’s house had been vacant so long that the honeysuckle completely covered the front window and the FOR SALE sign had fallen facedown. Old Mr. Harrison had died and the little house looked lonely and deserted and desperately in need of rescue. Lizzy, who loved little houses, wished somebody would buy it and give it the tender, loving care it deserved.