The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star

That was the way Charlie had lived most of his adult life, floating from here to there as possibilities and opportunities presented themselves, doing first one thing, then another. Some people were driven by desire, but Charlie wasn’t one of them. He was driven by nothing at all. He drifted along with whatever current pulled him, and Darling was just another backwater he’d gotten stuck in—temporarily. As soon as the spirit moved, finances improved, and he could unload the Dispatch, he’d be on his way again. In the meantime, the ordinary tasks of putting out the weekly paper were a kind of crutch to get through the days and weeks and months, limping along, managing to keep himself and the business going, with the help of liberal doses of Mickey LeDoux’s bootleg medicine.

Printing 427 newspapers plus a couple of dozen extra for the boxes in front of the hotel and the diner didn’t take long. The press run finished, Charlie stopped the Babcock, shut off the motor, and raised the ink rollers. He pulled off the forms and carried them to the makeup table, where he washed the ink off the type with a gasoline soaked rag, then went back to the press and cleaned it off, as well. He carried the folded papers to another table, where he took out the long galleys that held the names of the dwindling numbers of his subscribers. He inked each galley, placed it into the mailing machine, then fed the folded newspapers into the mailer. Each one came out with the name and address of a subscriber printed at the top and went into a large cardboard box.

The last paper labeled, Charlie cleaned the mailing machine and then took off his canvas apron and his printer’s cap and washed his hands at the sink in the back corner of the room. He glanced at the old octagon Regulator clock on the wall—nearly noon, he saw. It was time for lunch, and he thought hungrily of the possibility of a pulled pork sandwich on the noon menu at the diner. But he had two things to do, and decided that he’d better take care of the first—getting the papers to the post office—before Mr. Stevens closed for lunch.

He picked up the box of newspapers, hefted it onto his shoulder, and took his straw boater off the peg. Jamming it on his head and kicking the door shut behind him, he headed for the small frame building that housed the post office. It was just down the block on Franklin Street, past Hancock’s Grocery and the Palace Theater, then a right turn onto Rosemont.

But in front of the Palace, he ran into Don Greer, the owner and operator of the theater, who was sweeping the dust off the sidewalk with a straw broom. He paused in his work, leaned on his broom, and gave Charlie a knowing wink.

“Hello, you sly old dog, you,” he said, and chuckled. “Saw you last night with that Texas Star. Quite some gal, ain’t she? Looked like you two was havin’ yourselves a high ol’ time, back there in the next to the last row, in the dark.”

Charlie paused, frowning. “Don’t know what you mean, Greer,” he said stiffly.

“Oh, yeah?” Greer’s chuckle became a broad leer. “Just remember that folks are lookin’ over your shoulder, and one or two of ’em might carry tales.”

“Carry tales?” Charlie asked, and immediately regretted his question.

Greer lifted both eyebrows. “To that other lady you’re sweet on. The one that makes hats. The missus told me she heard that you and her are figurin’ on gettin’ hitched sometime soon.”

Charlie, who was normally pretty swift with a comeback, found that he had no ready answer to this. The best he could do was a muttered “Don’t believe everything you hear, Greer.”

“I’m just repeatin’ what folks’re sayin’,” Greer replied cheerfully. As Charlie walked away, he began pushing his broom with a greater energy, whistling the tune to “Falling in Love Again.”

Gritting his teeth, Charlie rounded the corner and went into the post office. “Here’s this week’s batch of newspapers,” he said to old Mr. Stevens, the post master, and slid the box over the counter.

“A little late, ain’cha, Charlie?” Mr. Stevens had bushy white chin whiskers and wore sleeve garters and suspenders and a green eyeshade. “Y’ missed the morning mail run. Guess you stayed up too late last night with your out-of-town ladyfriend, huh?” He snickered. “I seen you and her, comin’ out of the picture show.”

Charlie bit his tongue. It didn’t pay to talk back to Mr. Stevens. “I’m a little late,” he acknowledged stiffly. “But no matter, so long as the papers go out tomorrow.”

“Oh, they’ll go out all right,” Mr. Stevens said. “But it may not be tomorrow. Tom Wheeler’s old car broke down halfway through his deliveries this mornin’ and had to be towed. May be next week before he gets it fixed. In the meantime, he’s puttin’ Old Fred to work.” Old Fred was Tom Wheeler’s horse, which he hitched to his buggy when his car wasn’t running. “The post office ain’t made of money, you know,” he added sternly. “The best we can do is the best we can do. And the best we got right now is Old Fred.”