The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

The Dahlias’ get-together in Liz Lacy’s backyard wasn’t the only event that transpired on Tuesday night, but on all counts, it was the friendliest and most pleasant.

Unfortunately, the little town of Darling was in for a violent night, although most of its citizens slept right through the excitement and didn’t learn about the frightening events until sometime on Wednesday. People heard about them in the usual way, when they eavesdropped on their neighbors talking on the party line, or attended the regular Wednesday afternoon meeting of the Darling Embroidery Club, or joined their cronies for the noontime domino match in the back room at Snow’s feed store. By evening, the reports were all over town, although not all of them were 100 percent accurate, of course. That’s what happens when people start piecing together bits of this and that from what they’ve heard, like a crazy quilt. What they come up with sometimes makes a pattern, but mostly not. Accurate or not, though, it’s always colorful.

Verna heard about it from Melba Jean Manners, one of the ladies who worked in her office. Melba Jean had heard it from Artis Hart when she stopped on her way to work to drop off five of Mr. Manners’ dress shirts to be washed and ironed at Hart’s Peerless Laundry, across from the diner at the corner of Robert E. Lee and Franklin. Melba’s husband worked at Katz Department Store on the south side of the square in Monroeville, and Mr. Katz expected him to wear a fresh white shirt every day. This made a dent in the Manners’ budget (the laundry charged twelve cents a shirt) but it couldn’t be helped. Melba Jean said she worked all week at a paying job and she wasn’t aiming to spend her Saturdays washing and starching and ironing Mr. Manners’ shirts. And Sunday was the Sabbath.

Melba Jean was a stoutish, double-chinned woman in her fifties, and by the time she climbed the stairs to the second floor of the courthouse on Wednesday morning, she was red-faced and so out of breath with excitement and exertion that she flopped right down in her chair and panted like a puppy. Verna sent Sherrie rushing off for a glass of water and stood by, patting Melba Jean on the shoulder and urging her to take deep breaths.

Finally Melba Jean had recovered enough to speak. “It was just plain awful, Mr. Hart said!” She fanned herself rapidly with an envelope. “There was at least a dozen, all got up in Klan regalia. They had a big bucket of hot tar and brushes and three or four pillowcases full of chicken feathers. And if Buddy Norris hadn’t’ve got there as quick as he did, there would have been big trouble for sure. They scattered like pigeons when they heard that big old Indian Ace.”

Deputy Buddy Norris rode a motorcycle, which was both good and bad: good because it got him to the scene of the crime fast, bad because the criminals knew he was coming.

She paused for breath and hurried on. “Leastwise, that’s what Mrs. Barbee told Mr. Hart when she brought her big white tablecloth and sixteen napkins in to be washed after the family reunion. The Barbees live right across the street from the George E. Pickett Johnsons and when Mrs. Barbee heard the neighborhood dogs carrying on, she made Mr. Barbee get up out of bed and put on the porch light to see what they was up to.”

“Klan regalia?” Verna asked, puzzled. “But why in the world would the Klan want to tar and feather Mr. Johnson, of all people?”

Melba Jean shook her head so hard that her chins wobbled like a big turkey gobbler’s. “Mr. Hart said Mrs. Barbee said they wasn’t really Klan.” She accepted the glass of water Sherrie handed her and gulped it down. “Thanks, dearie. They didn’t want to show their faces, was all.”