The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

“Purple,” Mr. Dunlap said. “They messed up Miz Johnson’s flower beds right good, too.”


“I heard it was blue,” Mr. Musgrove said. He reached in his pocket for his coin purse, scowling at Violet. “No need for Buddy to hang around after he chased ’em off. He couldn’t’ve known they was comin’ back. Anybody with a lick of sense would’ve gone straight home and stayed there.” He dropped three dimes on the counter and stood up.

“It was red,” Myra May said definitively, scooping up Mr. Musgrove’s dimes and putting them in her apron pocket. She wouldn’t tell them how she knew, but in fact she had got it straight from the lips of Mr. Johnson himself, when he telephoned Mrs. Johnson up at her sister’s in Montgomery to report what had happened. The way he told it, Sally-Lou, the Johnsons’ colored maid, heard voices and looked out her window and saw the white-sheeted men on the lawn. She ran downstairs and phoned the sheriff’s office and got Buddy there in a hurry. (Unfortunately, Eva Pearl had been on the switchboard last night and had failed to say a thing about it when she checked out that morning. As far as Myra May was concerned, this was a black mark against Eva Pearl. She liked to be informed about important events that occurred in town overnight.)

Myra May filled Mr. Dunlap’s mug with coffee. “Splashed red paint all over the front porch,” she elaborated. “Steps, too, and the front walk. Dark red. Like blood.” It was sad, was what it was, grown men hiding under sheets and acting up that way.

“Barn paint, you think, maybe?” Violet hazarded.

“Artis Hart at the laundry says he’ll be on the lookout for sheets with paint on ’em,” Mr. Dunlap said. “But it would be good if somebody could tell him for sure what color.”

“Barn paint,” Mr. Musgrove said, frowning. “Seems to me I remember . . .” His frown deepened. “I could’ve told you once whoever bought paint, back five years or more. Now I can hardly remember last week. But I guess I could check my receipt book.”

Buddy poked the yolk of his egg with his fork and sopped up the runny yellow with half a biscuit. “I couldn’t’ve stayed all night if I’d wanted to. I had to ride out to see about that other trouble.”

“What other trouble?” Mr. Dunlap wanted to know, hooking the filled mug and sliding it toward him.

“Out at Dead Cow Creek,” Buddy said, diligently applying himself to his plate.

“Something happened at Dead Cow Creek?” Myra May asked.

“You ain’t heard?” Buddy put down his fork and looked at her. “You mean, nobody’s said nothin’ on the phone?”

“Not about Dead Cow Creek,” Myra May replied. Aside from Mr. Johnson’s call to Montgomery and Mrs. Jamison’s call to the principal’s office at the Academy to say that Nonie would not be at school because she’d been throwing up all night, the switchboard had been unusually quiet that morning. But the minute she thought that, she heard it buzz, and Violet (who was on the board that hour) hurried to the Exchange office.

Mr. Musgrove had been about to leave, but now he sat back down on the stool, leaning on one elbow, looking past Mr. Dunlap at Buddy. “Told us whut?” he demanded. “What about Dead Cow Creek?” He frowned. “You don’t mean out there where Mickey—”

“Yeah, that’s where I mean.” Buddy picked up a piece of fried bacon, doubled it like a stick of chewing gum, and stuck it in his mouth. “Sheriff didn’t have nothin’ to do with it,” he added, chewing emphatically. “Not one damn thing. He was only out there ’cause Kinnard told him he had to be. It was all Kinnard, start to finish. Him and his men have been hunting Mickey’s still out there for a couple of years.”

“And before then, there was that other agent,” Mr. Musgrove said. “Browning or Burton, something like that. He never could find the place, neither.”