The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

So after she had settled Dad Snow for a game of checkers with Sarah and persuaded Mother Snow to lie down for a nap on the double bed in the bedroom she and Jed shared, Ophelia sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the two lists. She studied them carefully, then (since she couldn’t mark the originals) made a list of the names—eighteen of them—that were on the sergeant’s list but not on hers. She included the voucher amounts and totaled them, a little over $22,000. Then she picked up the thin telephone directory for Cypress County and began to look up the names. Fifteen minutes later, as the sky outside the kitchen window grew darker and thunder growled and grumbled in the distance, she gave it up as a bad job. None of the eighteen—not a single one!—was in the telephone directory.

She was still sitting there, thinking about this, when Jed came in from his last-minute outdoor preparations. “It’s beginning to blow pretty hard out there,” he said, taking off his yellow storm slicker and hanging it, dripping, on the hook beside the back door. “Looks like we lost a limb off the peach tree. And who knows what else we’ll lose in the next few hours. We may be lucky to hang on to the roof—and the chimney.”

Ophelia sighed as she got up to get the coffeepot. They’d had to rebuild their chimney a couple of times already. “Is everything taken care of in town?” she asked.

“I think so.” Jed pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, and Ophelia poured him a fresh cup of coffee. “After you called, I went over to the sheriff’s office to let them know about the forecast. Buddy had gone out to the camp, but Springer was there. That new deputy has a lot on the ball. He’d heard the forecast and was already making plans. The sheriff’s office will be storm headquarters, and the Exchange will relay emergency messages there.”

“Out to the camp?” Ophelia asked.

“Yeah. Springer wouldn’t tell me why, but I’m guessing that it has something to do with the Hancock murder.” He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his face. “After that, I went over to the courthouse and told Hezzy to ring the storm bell and take all the flags in, then stopped in at the Exchange to make sure that Myra May’s diesel generator is ready to fire up if the power fails. She had already heard the WALA weather forecast and had brought in a couple of her extra girls to call the older people in town—the ones with no families or near neighbors—to see if they need any help getting over to the Methodist basement. And all the party lines are going full tilt, of course. Everybody should get the word.”

As mayor of Darling, it was Jed’s responsibility to monitor emergency situations. Hezzy was Hezekiah, the colored man who managed the flags and wound the clock and rang the courthouse bell, which could be heard from one end of Darling to the other. The storm bell was a peal of five rings and a pause, then three and a pause, then five. By the time Hezzy finished pulling the bell rope thirteen times, everybody in town would know that a bad storm was on the way. If they missed that warning, Hezzy would ring it again thirty minutes later. Those who weren’t sure that their houses could stand a big blow were welcome to go to the Methodist church, where the deacons and their wives were organizing the basement as a storm shelter. If people needed a ride to the church, they could call the switchboard (which could be powered by a diesel generator if the electricity went out), and somebody would go and get them. In a difficult situation, Darling always took care of its own.

“I’m sure you’ve done everything you could do,” Ophelia said. She sat down and pushed her list of eighteen names across the table. “If you’ve got a minute, I wonder—would you mind taking a look at this, Jed?”

He glanced down at it, then picked up his coffee and drank. “What am I looking at?”