The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star

Verna looked at her watch. “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ve got my car this morning. I’ll run across the street to the office and get Melba Jean and Ruthie started for the day.” She gulped the last of her coffee and slid off the stool. “Then I’ll drive out to the Marigold and find out what’s what. If she’s just overslept, I can drive her back. Her name is Raylene, you said? Which cottage is she in?”


“Oh, would you, Verna?” Myra May asked happily. “You’ll earn our undying gratitude. Right—Raylene Riggs. She’s in Number Four.” She grabbed a paper napkin and two biscuits off a plate, wrapped them up, and thrust them at Verna. “Here. Take these with you so you won’t starve. And when we get ourselves organized again, you’ve got a couple of free breakfasts coming.”

“I’ll let you know as soon as I find out anything,” Verna said.

From the kitchen came the ominous sound of grease crackling. “Myra May!” Violet yelled, louder this time. “Help!”

Verna had been working late recently to reorganize the county bank accounts, so she felt justified in taking a little time off this morning. She got Ruthie and Melba Jean—her two employees—settled on the day’s work, signed a couple of documents, and returned a telephone phone call. Twenty minutes later, she was back in her LaSalle, heading out to the Marigold Motor Court.

Pauline and Floyd DuBerry had built the motor court back when people were upbeat and hopeful and could spend a little extra money to put gas in their tanks and new tires on their cars and drive somewhere for a vacation. They had lost their only child, Herman, in the Great War, and they had nothing except the motor court cottages, their house, a few chickens, and a garden. And then Pauline had lost Floyd to heat stroke, one hot July afternoon two years before, when he shouldn’t have been out mowing but was anyway, because it needed doing. That was Floyd, she said sadly, out there in the noon sun without a hat. Stubborn as an old mule. You couldn’t tell that man a blessed thing.

With Floyd gone, Pauline had to hire Jake Pritchard’s boy to come over from the Standard Oil station across the road and cut the weeds and fix the plumbing and do whatever had to be done to keep the motor court looking attractive. The Marigold income was all she had to keep her going in her old age, which she had already reached, since Pauline was sixty-two and wishing she could slow down.

Unfortunately, things weren’t working out that way. When she stopped by the courthouse to pay the property tax, Pauline (a chatty little old lady) told Verna that she was lucky to have more than two guests on any one night and there were lots of nights when all the cottages were vacant and she was out there by herself. What little she made was barely enough to keep the electric lights on and the toilets flushing, let alone pay down the mortgage Floyd got from Mr. Johnson at the Darling Savings and Trust to build the cottages.

“A measly seventy-five cents a night is all I charge for one, plus a quarter for two,” Pauline said, but folks still couldn’t afford it. They’d sleep in their cars, sometimes right there in the parking lot beside the CLEAN SHEETS AND TOWELS sign.

“I’d give just about anything if Senator Huey P. Long would run for president instead of that rich man Roosevelt,” Pauline had added wistfully. Many Southerners favored Long over Roosevelt, who was not only wealthy but had an aristocratic look and talked like a college man and a Northerner, to boot. Long, on the other hand, was a down-home good ol’ boy. He talked just like everybody else and looked out for the people’s good.

As she counted out ten ones and twenty-six cents for her property tax payment, Pauline had said, “Did you know that Senator Long is in favor of old age pensions for everybody over sixty? If I had one of them, I could sit back and put my feet up.” She had sighed heavily. “Of course, I’d still have my swolled-up ankles, but my money troubles would be over.”

Verna pulled into the motor court, parked her car, and looked around. The seven one-room frame cottages were arranged in a half-circle around the sides and back of the DuBerry house—each cottage painted a different color because Floyd had bought the paint in a closeout sale at Musgrove’s Hardware. A red neon VACANCY sign blinked hopefully in Pauline’s parlor window, which was also the motor court office. There was only one car in sight, a dilapidated black Model A Ford, missing both its front and back bumpers, parked in front of Cottage Two.

Verna got out of the car and hesitated a moment, wondering if she should go and look for Pauline, then decided to try the cottage first. Number Four was painted a bright lemon yellow, with orange window frames and a blue door. Pauline had carried out the color motif at the front window with yellow print curtains edged with several rows of bright orange rickrack. A battered tin water bucket planted with red and gold marigolds stood beside the door.