The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

“Well, now,” she said brightly, “you just go sit in that chair, Miz Mann, and we’ll get you all beautiful for your niece’s wedding. And you can tell us what you are going to wear.”


“I thought my peach silk foulard with the georgette jabot, which I got from the latest Sears catalog,” Twyla said. “But I don’t know about a hat.”

“You go right on over to Fannie Champaign,” Beulah advised, drying her hands on a towel. “She’ll come up with a hat that’ll do you proud.”

“Oh, she’s back in town?” Twyla Sue asked. “I hadn’t heard. I’ll do that right after I take the wedding announcement over to the newspaper. I want to be sure it runs in Friday’s Dispatch.”

*

After Charlie Dickens had given the matter careful thought, he came to the conclusion that Alvin Duffy’s plan to issue scrip was about the only alternative the town had left, given the looming emergency. In his usual skeptical fashion, he doubted that anything they tried would have a great deal of effect. But he supposed it was only prudent to try something.

So while he still didn’t much like the idea, he took the printing order that Duffy handed him, set up the job press (which was almost old enough to have printed handbills calling for men to join the Confederate army and fight the Yankees), and spent all of Tuesday morning printing and trimming ten thousand dollars’ worth of scrip, in colorful denominations: yellow ones, red fives, purple tens, and green twenties.

Duffy wasn’t picking up the print job until the next day, so Charlie searched on the shelves in the back for something to put it in, something easy to carry. He found the brown decal-plastered satchel he’d used when he traveled in Europe after the Great War. When he looked at it, he remembered the nostalgic, half-sad words of a long-ago song, sung by the doughboys who marched off to war. “Good-bye Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square! It’s a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart’s right there.”

Whistling the tune between his teeth, he stacked the scrip on the counter, by denomination. He was bundling it into manageable packets to store in the satchel when the door opened and Archie Mann’s wife, Twyla Sue, came in. A heavyset woman with multiple chins and saggy upper arms, she worked behind the counter at Mann’s Mercantile and handled the store’s bookkeeping. When Archie hosted the weekly poker game, she always served a big batch of ham sandwiches with her own homemade whiskey mustard for the players. The mustard won Charlie’s heart, and when he told her how good it was, she gave him a jar of it.

Her eyes widened when she saw the bundles of scrip on the counter. “My goodness, Mr. Dickens,” she breathed. “What on God’s little green earth is all that?”

“Funny money, Mrs. Mann,” Charlie said, and put three more bundles of twenties into the satchel. “I’ve been printing it up for Mr. Duffy at the bank. He promises that people will be glad to spend it like the real thing.” He paused. “I suppose Archie is anxious for people to spend it over at the Mercantile.”

“Well, yes, I have to say he is. Ever since he heard about it, he’s felt a little better. The trouble is that people are holding on to whatever cash they have. Mr. Mann says he doesn’t know if this scrip money will do the trick, but we have to try everything once.” She opened her pocketbook, ducking her head in an embarrassed fashion. “I’m real sorry to have to ask this again, but I wonder if you could run this week’s Mercantile ad on credit, same as you did last week. We’ll pay you as soon as the money starts coming in again.”