The Darling Dahlias and the Red Hot Poker Read online

  The Darling Dahlias and the Red Hot Poker

  Susan Wittig Albert

  The Darling Dahlias and the Red Hot Poker

  Copyright © 2022 by Susan Wittig Albert

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. For information, write to Persevero Press, PO Box 1616, Bertram TX 78605.

  www.PerseveroPress.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or, in the case of historical persons, are used fictitiously.

  Names: Albert, Susan Wittig, author.

  Title: The Darling Dahlias and the Red Hot Poker / Susan Wittig Albert.

  Series: Darling Dahlias

  Description: Bertram, TX: Persevero Press, 2022.

  Identifiers: ISBN 978-1-952558-17-7 (hardcover) | 978-1-952558-18-4 (paperback) | 978-1-952558-19-1 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH Women gardeners--Fiction. | Gardening--Societies, etc.--Fiction. | Long, Huey Pierce, 1893-1935--Fiction. | Depressions--1929--United States--Fiction. | Nineteen thirties--Fiction. | Murder--Investigation--Fiction. | Alabama--Fiction. | Historical fiction. | Mystery fiction. | BISAC FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Historical | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Cozy

  Classification: LCC PS3551.L2637 D37 2022 | DDC 813.54--dc23

  Table of Contents

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  The Darling Dahlias Club Roster

  Prologue. Firestarter

  Chapter One. That’s Politics for You

  Chapter Two. Fire in the Heart, Smoke in the Head

  Chapter Three. Reckon We Got Us a Firebug

  Chapter Four. All’s Fair in War and Politics

  Chapter Five. Out of the Frying Pan

  Chapter Six. I Don’t Spy

  Chapter Seven. How to Use Your Laundry Rinse Water

  Chapter Eight. Where There’s Smoke

  Chapter Nine. Fire!

  Chapter Ten. Firestarter

  Chapter Eleven. You Assumed Wrong, Buster

  Chapter Twelve. Ashes

  Chapter Thirteen. Fire at Will

  Chapter Fourteen. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

  Chapter Fifteen. Firestarter

  Chapter Sixteen. Milk Is Just as Wet as Water

  Chapter Seventeen. Flame Out

  Chapter Eighteen. Hotter’n Hades

  Chapter Nineteen. Extinguished

  Chapter Twenty. Hot Stuff

  Chapter Twenty-One. Fire’s Out

  Recipes and Resources

  About Susan Wittig Albert

  Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us.

  Laura Esquivel

  Like Water for Chocolate

  We have organized a society, and we call it “Share Our Wealth Society,” a society with the motto “every man a king.” Every man a king, so there would be no such thing as a man or woman who did not have the necessities of life. Every man to eat when there is something to eat; all to wear something when there is something to wear. That makes us all a sovereign.

  Huey P. Long

  Radio Address

  February 23, 1934

  October 1935

  The Darling Dahlias Clubhouse and Gardens

  302 Camellia Street

  Darling, Alabama

  Dear Reader,

  We realize that this book comes hot on the heels of our latest book about the Voodoo Lily. But things have been a little heated around Darling in the past few months and it seems like there’s a lot to tell. Mrs. Albert invited us to sit down, take deep breaths, and try to put it all together for you so we wouldn’t forget what happened, which was altogether quite remarkable and which got connected to an even more remarkable happening over in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

  It started with a little bonfire and went on to bigger and more spectacular blazes, while the citizens of our little town slept with one eye open and kept glancing over their shoulders and got more and more scared and suspicious as the weeks went by. Of course, it didn’t help that the Hot Dog fire chief election went off the rails the way it did, and that somebody got elected who didn’t have the least idea in his head of how to put out a fire and didn’t care to learn. There was an arsonist in our little town, bound, bent, and determined to burn us down to the ground. It was the only thing we talked about. It was the only thing we thought about.

  Well, except for the exciting news about Senator Huey P. Long making a campaign stop in Darling, which isn’t something that happens every day of the week.

  Or the heartwarming news that the Magnolia ladies’ corner garden of red hot pokers, sunny orange dahlias, hot pink cosmos, fire-red salvia, and artemisia won the August garden prize.

  Or—when we found out about it later—the shocking news about Mr. Ryan Nichols. But the least said about that, the better, for even though he was a Yankee, one or two of us were really quite smitten.

  And then, of course, there was . . . but Mrs. Albert thinks we should save that for our story, so we’ll just leave it there.

  As you may know, we like to name our books after a plant that seems to . . . well, carry the message, so to speak. Sometimes that’s a challenge, but with this book, we knew right away that we wanted to call it The Darling Dahlias and the Red Hot Poker. Of course, Miss Rogers (our Darling librarian) strongly suggested The Darling Dahlias and the Kniphofia Uvaria, but we were afraid it missed the point. We’re told that red hot pokers come from South Africa, but they’re right at home in Darling gardens. We’re sure they’ll be at home in yours, too—as long as their feet don’t get wet, which puts their fire out, so to speak.

  As you know if you’ve been reading our books, the Dahlias are a garden club and our members believe in the power of gardens to keep us steady and give us hope in difficult times. Times like now, for instance, when this Great Depression—like the War to End All Wars and the terrible flu pandemic of 1918, which killed so many people—is still causing so much trouble for so many. Our big vegetable garden feeds lots of Darling folk who are down on their luck, and the flower gardens we tend around town remind us that natural beauty is a balm for the spirit. We’re sure you’ll agree that without these, life would be pretty ugly and grim, especially when somebody you know decides to start burning down your town.

  Thank you for reading our book. Thank you, too, for the cards and letters and the packets of garden seed and the recipes you’ve been sending. We share them with our Darling friends, who appreciate them as much as we do.

  Sincerely,

  The Darling Dahlias

  The Darling Dahlias Club Roster

  Fall 1935

  The club takes its name from Mrs. Dahlia Blackstone, founder and chief benefactress. Mrs. Blackstone, who died in 1930, gave the club her house at 302 Camellia Street, one block west and one block south of Darling’s courthouse square. Now renovated and used as the Dahlias’ clubhouse, the Blackstone house has a flower garden in the back and a large vegetable garden in the adjoining lot. The flowers brighten the lives of Darling shut-ins, and the vegetables help feed Darling’s needy.

  Club Officers

  Elizabeth Lacy, president. Garden columnist for the Darling Dispatch, author of a just-published novel and assistant in the law office of attorney Benton Moseley.

  Ophelia Snow, vice president and secretary. Works for the Federal Writers’ Project. Wife of Darling’s mayor, Jed Snow, owner of Snow’s Farm Supply. Teenage children: Sam and Sarah.

  Verna Tidwell, treasurer. Cypress County clerk and treasurer. A widow, Verna lives with her beloved Scotty, Clyde. She goes out with Alvin Duffy, the president of the Darling Savings and Trust. Her passion: reading mysteries.

  Myra May Mosswell, communications secretary. Co-owner of the Darling Telephone Exchange and the Darling Diner with her partner, Violet Sims. Myra May and Violet live in the flat over the diner with their adopted daughter, Cupcake.

  Club Members

  Earlynne Biddle, co-owner (with Mildred Kilgore) of The Flour Shop, a bakery on the Courthouse Square, and current president of the local Share Our Wealth Club. Married to Henry Biddle, the manager at the Coca-Cola bottling plant. One son, Benny, comanager of radio station WDAR.

  Bessie Bloodworth, owner of Magnolia Manor, a boardinghouse for genteel elderly ladies. Bessie is Darling’s local historian and knows whose skeletons are hidden in whose closets.

  Fannie Champaign, noted milliner and proprietor of Champaign’s Darling Chapeaux. Married to Charlie Dickens, editor, publisher, and owner of the Darling Dispatch. Fannie’s son Jason, a polio survivor, is in rehabilitation at Warm Springs, Georgia.

  Zelda Clemens, new member. Head bread baker at The Flour Shop. Zelda is unmarried. She lives just down the street from Liz Lacy and grows berries in her backyard.

  Voleen Johnson, widow of the late George E. Pickett Johnson, the former president of the Darling Savings and Trust Bank. Mrs. Johnson is very proud of her greenhouse, the only one in town.

  Mildred Kilgore, co-owner (with Earlynne Biddle) of The Flour Shop, also an active member of the Share Our Wealth Club. Married to Roger Kilgore of Kilgore Motors. They live in a big house near the ninth green of the Cypress Country Club, where Mildred grows camellias.

>   Aunt Hetty Little, senior member of the Dahlias and Darling matriarch. Practitioner of traditional crafts and (occasionally) natural magic, Aunt Hetty is a good listener with friends in all corners of the community. She knows a great many Darling secrets.

  Lucy Murphy supervises the kitchen at the CCC Camp outside of town and grows vegetables and fruit on a small market farm on the Jericho Road. Her husband (Ralph Murphy) works on the railroad and is gone much of the time, so she’s developed a strong independent spirit.

  Raylene Riggs, Myra May Mosswell’s mother. Cooks at the Darling Diner, manages the garden behind it, and lives at the Marigold Motor Court. Her friends and family recognize and accept her as a clairvoyant.

  Dorothy Rogers, Darling’s librarian. Miss Rogers knows the Latin names of all the plants in the Dahlias’ garden and insists that everyone else does, too. Longtime resident of Magnolia Manor.

  Beulah Trivette, owner of Beulah’s Beauty Bower on Dauphin Street, where the Dahlias go to get beautiful. Artistically gifted, Beulah loves cabbage roses and other exuberant flowers.

  Alice Ann Walker, secretary to Mr. Duffy at the Darling Savings and Trust Bank. Alice Ann, her disabled husband Arnold, and their three grandchildren have just moved into a new house with a bigger garden, where Arnold grows enough zucchini to supply all of Cypress County.

  Prologue.

  Firestarter

  The flame has a dozen bright, throbbing tongues, licking hungrily at the tinder-dry grass, knee-high and brown after a summer’s growing. The firestarter stares at the flame, mesmerized, torn between the desire to do right and stamp it out and the even more urgent need to let it go and do what it does best.

  He lets it go. It isn’t his now, anyway. It’s its own self, with its own appetites, its own greediness, its own freedoms. As with so many things in his sad and sorry life, once he starts something, events always take over. Like this fire, everything has to run its course, however it ends up. All he can do is watch.

  He sighs a long sigh. It’s too bad that things have come to such a miserable pass. But as Huey always says, this is through no fault of his own. He is just another of the downtrodden victims of the banks and the big corporations, doing whatever he has to do to hang onto what had come down to him through his daddy’s and his granddaddy’s hard work. The powermongers in Wall Street and Washington control the markets and manage the prices so nobody else can turn an honest dollar unless he’s already a millionaire. And the millionaires are all as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, anyway. Until Huey P. Long gets to the White House and takes over the government, nobody is ever going to be anybody, let alone a king. Huey is right when he says that only he can make America work again.

  Fierce with resentment, the man squints through the shimmering heat that rises above the flames. The fire is snapping like a whip. In a few minutes, old Miz Murchison up the road—this is her pasture, this little patch along the creek—will see the smoke and run to the telephone. These days, Darling has a new fire truck and a new alarm that gets the Hot Dogs moving faster. They’ll be here before the fire can burn as far as the trees along the creek, so there won’t be any serious damage.

  Damage? The firestarter chuckles grimly. He’s actually doing old lady Murchison a favor. High time this little pasture got burned off. Come spring, the grass will be thicker and greener and the weed seed will be burned up, which is all good, isn’t it? The old lady oughtta thank him, that’s what she oughtta do. But will she? Of course not. Nobody’s grateful these days. He shakes his head disgustedly. Everybody’s out to get whatever they want and the devil take the hindmost.

  He turns back toward his car, parked along the road. He’s done what he came for, and the fire boys will be here pretty quick.

  Time to be on his way.

  Chapter One.

  That’s Politics for You

  Saturday, August 31, 1935

  The thick green vines of the pole beans in the garden next to the Darling Dahlias’ clubhouse were heavily loaded with bright green Kentucky Wonder string beans. Which was a very good thing, Bessie Bloodworth thought, since it was the Dahlias’ turn to feed the crowd at the annual supper for the men and boys of the Volunteer Fire Department, collectively known as the Hot Dogs. Bessie’s Cajun green bean casserole (a recipe borrowed from a Louisiana cousin) was on the menu. So she, Aunt Hetty Little, and Ophelia Snow were picking beans—early, to avoid the heat of what promised to be another simmering late-summer day. While they worked, they discussed the plans for tonight’s dinner, which featured (what else?) hot dogs.

  “Liz is managing the hot dogs and buns,” Bessie reported, stretching up to snag a bean hanging at the top of the tall cane-pole teepee. This year, she had been the one to organize the food, a job she always enjoyed. “Beulah is bringing all the stuff that goes with hot dogs,” she added. “Mustard, catsup, relish, onions—and cheese, of course. She’s also offered to fry a couple of chickens if we need them. She says she has an extra rooster.”

  “I don’t think we’ll need Beulah’s rooster.” Ophelia tossed a handful of beans into the bucket at her feet. “I’m making a pot of potato salad and three dozen deviled eggs. And Mildred and Earlynne are each bringing a big bag of roasting ears.”

  “And I’m bringing a bucket of coleslaw. Everybody likes that.” Aunt Hetty straightened up with a hand on her aching hip. She was eighty-something, sometimes walked with a cane, and always tried to snatch a little nap in the afternoon. But she never let age or temporary infirmities keep her out of the garden. “And Myra May and Violet are bringing a kettle of pulled pork and sandwich buns. That ought to be enough to feed the thirty who have signed up for the supper.”

  “Plus my green bean casserole and Alice Ann’s stewed okra,” Bessie reminded them. “Oh, and Lucy says she’s got more ripe tomatoes than she’s got time to fool with. She said she’d slice them up with some red onions and dill.”

  Ophelia swatted a mosquito. “Don’t forget pie. Raylene said that she and Euphoria will bring as many as we want from the diner.”

  “Plus the five or six gallons of iced tea that Mildred is brewing, and that should just about do it,” Aunt Hetty said. “Sounds like a feast, girls. Let’s hope the Hot Dogs bring big appetites.”

  “Oh, they’ll be hungry, all right,” Ophelia said. She held up the lard pail she was using to collect her beans. “I’ve got three quarts here. How are you doing, Bessie?”

  Bessie looked down at her basket, which was gratifyingly full. “Almost a gallon. You, Hetty?”

  “Three quarts,” Aunt Hetty said. “That gives us close to three gallons, which ought to be enough for your casserole, with some left over for your Magnolia ladies’ supper.” She dusted her hands on her rickrack-trimmed red print apron and regarded a leafy green teepee still studded with beans. “Don’t you just love these Kentucky Wonders? Best pole bean ever. We’ve picked enough for the supper and there are still plenty left.”

  “Which is good,” Ophelia replied, “because the First Baptists are coming this afternoon to pick for their Labor Day canning party. Liz told them they could take beans and okra, plus all the cucumbers they want. Mrs. Rothbottom said they were getting together to put up dill pickles.”

  The long, hot Alabama summer still wasn’t over, but the Darling churches were already starting to stock the town’s free food shelf—the big pantry closet in the courthouse basement—against the coming winter. Now in its fifth year, the Depression had hit everybody hard. There were too many people with empty cupboards and hungry children to feed. The Dahlias helped by putting in a garden big enough to share, free of charge, with those who wanted to come and pick for themselves and others.

  Well, not exactly free, Bessie knew. There was a sheet on the back door where people could sign up to trade a few hours of weed-pulling and row-hoeing for a bucket of vegetables. Most did, and as a consequence, the garden was well tended. It looked very pretty, especially considering that there hadn’t been any rain at all in the month of August and it was hot enough to fry an egg on the courthouse step—as Earlynne Biddle’s boy, Benny, had demonstrated last week. He had even broadcast this sizzling event on WDAR, Darling’s recently launched radio station, which he helped to manage. A remote broadcast, he said it was. Which Bessie wondered about because the courthouse was not a bit remote. It was smack-dab in the middle of town.