The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

But since it never occurred to anybody that they ought to plant more trees to replace the trees that had been cut down, it wasn’t long before pretty much all of the original forest had totally disappeared. The hillsides were starkly denuded, the soil was eroding, and even people who didn’t know a loblolly from a longleaf had begun to understand that something had to be done to save the land.

Which was, Buddy thought as he slowed to let a little girl holding on to a big red balloon skip across the street in front of him, maybe the biggest reason to be grateful to the CCC. Speaking at a recent town meeting, the commandant had announced that over the next two years, the camp was scheduled to receive half a million pine seedlings, fifty thousand black locusts, two thousand five hundred catalpa, and (to help control soil erosion) a quarter of a million kudzu crowns. The pines would mostly be fast-growing loblollies that could put on a couple of feet of height a year. This meant that within a decade, the trees would be twenty feet tall and ready for harvest—a more selective harvest this time, which would leave enough trees standing to prevent erosion and ensure the continuity of the forest. The CCC boys would begin planting in January (tree-planting time), on several thousand cut-over acres out by Briar’s Swamp. When they were finished with that section, they would go on to others. This had been welcome news, and the commandant (Buddy had forgotten his name) had been given a big round of applause.

Buddy shifted into second gear and made a left turn onto Franklin. He drove west for half a block and turned right into the alley behind Snow’s Farm Supply. The sheriff’s office was located in what had been a small frame house on the back of the lot, and the jail was upstairs over the Farm Supply. This handy arrangement made it easy to keep an eye on the jail, which was usually occupied only on Saturday night and Sunday by one or two of the local fellows who had indulged a little too freely in the local moonshine. Following the practice of his predecessor, Buddy booked them on drunk and disorderly, let them sleep it off overnight, then released them on Sunday in time to get cleaned up and shaved and make it to morning worship at the church of their choice—in lieu of a fine. Sheriff Burns (himself a fervent Methodist) had liked to brag that some of his D and Ds had gotten saved and sworn off the bottle, at least for a while.

Wayne Springer’s old 1927 Chevy was parked on the gravel strip in front of the office, and the COME IN sign hung face out on the front door, which meant that the office was open. Buddy went in and slung his hat onto the wall peg.

“Yo, Springer,” he called. The place smelled like fresh coffee.

“Back here,” Wayne replied.

Buddy found his deputy hunched with a magnifying glass over fingerprint cards, at the scarred pine-topped table in what once had been the back bedroom, now a workroom and conference room. A Royal typewriter sat on the table (the deputy was a pretty good typist), and on a shelf beside the table, a radio was playing “Oh, You Beautiful Doll.” Wayne reached over and turned down the volume. The coffee percolator was burping on the hot plate beside it, and Buddy poured himself a mug. He liked it black and strong, which was a good thing, because when Wayne brewed it, that’s how it was. Strong enough to lift a locomotive.