The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star

“If you ask me, Raylene’s fried catfish was even better than Euphoria’s,” Myra May went on energetically. “And I just can’t get over her vegetables. Collard greens cooked with mustard sauce. Rosemary—rosemary—with roasted tomatoes, potatoes, and bacon! And garlic and red pepper in the okra! Did you ever?” She rolled her eyes.

“Amazing,” Violet agreed. “There’s no getting around it, Euphoria was definitely a top-notch down-home cook. But with Raylene, those plain old everyday vegetables taste like they came from a fancy gourmet restaurant. She makes it seem so easy, too. It looks like all she has to do is wave her magic wand and abracadabra, there it is. And what in the world do you suppose is in that special seasoning she brought to use for the fried chicken? I’ve never tasted anything quite like it.”

“Neither have I,” Myra May replied. “No doubt about it. She is an extremely talented cook.” She frowned a little. “I can’t quite believe that she wants to come to work for us. I keep asking myself why.”

By the end of the afternoon, word of Raylene Riggs’ audition as a replacement for Euphoria had rippled around town the way gossip does in Darling, starting at one end of town and ending up at the other, getting somewhat magnified along the way. The evening crowd was bigger than it had been for some time, and definitely curious. J.D. returned for supper, in order to judge Miz Riggs’ fried chicken and see for himself if she was the cook she claimed to be. If there was any doubt in his mind, though, it was completely dispelled when he got a mouthful of her sweet potato and toasted coconut meringue pie. It was even better, he swore, than his sainted aunt Mamie’s, and he vowed to tell everybody he knew that the diner had a swell new cook who was (incredibly) even better than Euphoria.

And it wasn’t just the speed and quality of Raylene’s cooking that recommended her. In the kitchen, Raylene was easy to get along with and willing to listen—a far cry from Euphoria, who was queen of the cook stove and ruler of the roost, and made darn sure that everybody knew it. Toward the end of the supper hour, Raylene even took off her apron and left the kitchen to visit with the diners at their tables, asking people what they thought of this dish or that, just as if they were all old friends at a church social or a school reunion. The customers might have found this a little strange, but they seemed to like it.

In fact, Edna Fay Roberts (Doc Roberts’ wife and Charlie Dickens’ sister) had come up to Myra May after supper and said, “You know, Miz Riggs seems so familiar to me, Myra May. I could swear that I have run into that woman somewhere before. Is she from around here?”

“She hasn’t said,” Myra May replied.

Indeed, Raylene Riggs was something of a mystery woman, which to Myra May seemed very strange. She was friendly and outgoing, but she didn’t seem eager to answer any personal questions, such as where she came from and whether she had a family and how long she might be thinking of staying in the area. She did say that if she got the job in the diner, she would start looking right away for a cheap place to live in Darling, since she couldn’t depend on Mr. Clinton to get her to work on time. She was afraid that transportation could be a problem.

By the time they closed up that night, it was too late for Mr. Clinton’s taxi. So Myra May left Violet to close the diner and drove Raylene back to Monroeville in Big Bertha, her old green canvas-topped 1920 Chevy touring car. Once Bertha got cranked up and running, she was pretty reliable. But she never went anywhere very fast, so the thirty-minute drive had given Raylene time to ask quite a few questions about Darling, and about Myra May, as well. She wanted to know who Myra May’s mama was, and when she heard that she was dead and that Myra May had been raised as a proper Southern girl by her aunt Belle, she let out a long, sympathetic sigh and murmured, “You poor thing.” Then she asked about Myra May’s daddy (who had been dead some three years now), and how it had happened that she and Violet had purchased the diner together, and whether Myra May wanted to stay in Darling or live somewhere else. Myra May answered as fully as she could, if only to oblige Raylene to do the same.

But that strategy failed abysmally. When Myra May tossed out a few questions of her own—Where was she from? Did she have any children? How long did she think she might stay in the area?—Raylene sidestepped them as deftly as if she were playing dodgeball. It was obvious that the woman intended to remain a mystery.