The Darling Dahlias and the Unlucky Clover Read online

  In the past few months, however, a rather unsettling difficulty had emerged in the office. The new CCC camp outside of town had been a welcome boost to Darling’s economy, but it hadn’t been much of a help for Mr. Moseley’s law practice. Lizzy was beginning to fear that her job—which she needed, of course, to pay her bills—might not be as secure as she liked to believe. Last week, Mr. Moseley had even mentioned that he might have to cut her back to part-time.

  “Maybe thirty hours, instead of forty,” he had said casually. Too casually, Lizzy thought with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. He was trying to act like ten fewer hours a week didn’t matter, but of course it did—to her pocketbook.

  “Nothing more, huh?” Ophelia repeated, sounding unconvinced. “Well, if you say so. But I still think that you and Mr. Moseley would make a really swell—”

  She broke off. “Oh, goodie! Here they come!” She sat up straight as four men emerged from a side door and stepped smartly onto the platform. “And don’t they look fine?”

  Oh, they did! Dressed in dark suits, starched white shirts, and their usual bright green bow ties, the Lucky Four Clovers looked confident, self-assured, and eager to please their audience. For the last couple of years, the quartet had enjoyed a stable membership. Portly Martin Ewing (owner of Cypress County’s biggest cotton gin) sang lead and acted as the group’s amusing master of ceremonies. Frank Harwood (a salesman at the Kilgore Dodge dealership, a bachelor, and very good-looking) crooned a rich baritone. Reginald Dunlap (owner of Dunlap’s Five and Dime and the new husband of Liz Lacy’s mother) sang a high, warbling tenor. And gray-haired Whitney Whitworth (the wealthy part-owner of the Darling Telephone Exchange) sang a full-throated bass but managed never to smile.

  Everybody settled back happily into their seats as the quartet swung into “I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover.” Then Mr. Ewing introduced himself and each of the other three men (although of course, everybody in the room already knew who they were). He followed that with a few cheerful words about how lucky they all were to live in the beautiful town of Darling, the luckiest little town on earth. And then the songs began.

  The Lucky Four Clovers sang effortlessly, beautifully, with passion and precision, their voices blending harmoniously—and with no mistakes, not even one. They sang “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue, Has Anybody Seen My Girl?” and “Bye, Bye, Blackbird” and “I Found a Million-Dollar Baby (in a Five and Ten Cent Store),” and an old Stephen Foster ballad, “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair.” They sang several familiar hymns and a few Broadway tunes and the Confederate songs that everyone in Darling loved: “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and “The Battle Cry of Freedom” (the Southern version, of course) and “Dixie,” with the audience joining in.

  And at the end of the performance, after the Clovers had reprised their signature song and taken their bows, everybody in the room jumped to their feet, clapping and shouting and whistling. Two encores later, as Darlingians were putting up their umbrellas and sloshing back to their homes through the darkness and still-pouring rain, they were saying that the Lucky Four Clovers were the very best barbershop quartet in the entire South. Without a doubt—without a doubt—they would win the Dixie championship and put lucky little Darling on the musical map.

  But while Darling folk are good and kind and industrious and have many outstanding talents, they are not very good at predicting the future. It isn’t their fault, of course. It is fair to say that, as a species, humans are not very well equipped to look ahead. Nobody in the audience that night, for instance, could know that two of the Lucky Four Clovers were destined to have some very bad luck, very soon.

  One would lose his voice.

  And another would end up dead.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE DAHLIAS PLAN PIES

  Sunday, October 21, 1934

  “I swear, Bessie,” Aunt Hetty Little said. “In all my born days, I have never seen a prettier pie pumpkin. Why, it makes my mouth water just to look at what’s in that basket. I can picture the pies.”

  The bushel basket Aunt Hetty was looking at was filled with bright orange Winter Luxury pie pumpkins, grown by the Darling Dahlias in the large vegetable garden next to their clubhouse. The basket in the middle of their clubhouse’s kitchen floor was heaped with the small pumpkins, known across the South as the best pie pumpkin anybody could ever hope to grow. And the Dahlias canning-kettle ladies, under the direction of master canner Bessie Bloodworth, were making sure that there would be plenty of pies this winter, all over Darling.

  “They do look good, don’t they?” Bessie said proudly. “You know, Aunt Hetty, those seeds came from my mother’s garden. She got them from her mother’s garden in the mountains north of Tuscaloosa. Gramma bought a packet of Winter Luxury from the Johnson and Stokes seed catalogue back when she set up housekeeping in 1895. Every year, she saved the best seed, and my mother kept up the habit. So have I. That’s been—” She stopped, calculating. “Why, almost forty years now. Forty years!”

  Ophelia Snow, whose husband Jed owned Snow’s Farm Supply, shook her head admiringly. “Forty years’ worth of pumpkin pies from one packet of seeds? Why, that is just plain amazing, Bessie!”

  Mildred Kilgore turned from the kitchen counter, where she was slipping the skins off steamed pumpkin halves and cutting the flesh into one-inch cubes. “How do you save the seeds, Bessie? I don’t think I know how to do that.”

  Bessie, plumpish and short, in her mid-fifties, might have been tempted to roll her eyes, but she didn’t, because Mildred was a friend, even if she wasn’t much of a gardener. “Why, there’s nothing easier, Mildred.” She nodded toward a colander that was filled with pulp that Liz Lacy had scooped out of the pumpkins before she sliced them in half.

  “You just stick that colander under the faucet and pick the biggest seeds out of that mess of fibers and stuff. Rinse them off clean and spread them out on a dish towel, separated as well as you can, so they don’t get all stuck together. Should take them about a week to dry. Then drop them into an envelope and write on it what they are, with the date.” She smiled reminiscently. “It’s a really nice feeling, you know—planting the same seeds your momma and your gramma planted. Makes the pumpkins feel like members of the family, in a way.”

  “Not to mention that you don’t have to lay out good money for seeds every year,” Aunt Hetty said thoughtfully. “Although maybe if Huey P. Long gets to the White House, we’ll have a little more money in our pockets.”

  Everybody knew that Aunt Hetty had to cut corners where money was concerned and was hoping that Senator Long would win the 1936 presidential election. He was making a lot of noise about his Share the Wealth program, traveling around the country promising that every family in America would get $2,000 a year. Not only that, but everyone over sixty would get a special $30-a-month old-age benefit! Some people were skeptical (“Where’s that money going to come from is what I want to know”), but others were in such dire straits that they were jumping at Huey Long’s campaign promises like a rainbow trout jumping for a June bug. He was collecting quite a following.

  “Franklin Roosevelt says he wants to give old folks a pension,” Ophelia said, digging a pumpkin out of the basket.

  “Well, then, why hasn’t he done something about it?” Aunt Hetty asked testily. The oldest Dahlia but still spry and alert, she read the newspapers and prided herself on keeping up with the political news. She answered her own question. “He’s afraid that if he does, people will say he’s a socialist, so he’s dragging his feet.”

  Bessie plunged her knife into a pumpkin and began sawing it in half. “Old Huey P. says people can call him anything they want,” she said, “as long as they listen to what he’s got to say.”

  For years, Bessie had been a big fan of Senator Long, the former governor of Louisiana, who was telling everybody within earshot that he wanted rich folks to share their wealth—which meant that the government would take money from rich people and give it to the poor. It w
as a popular message, and whenever he went on the radio, Bessie and the ladies who lived in her Magnolia Manor boarding house gathered around the RCA and listened. Most of them clapped.

  Liz Lacy finished scooping the seeds out of a pumpkin Bessie had cut in half. Over her shoulder, she remarked mildly, “Mr. Moseley says that kind of talk makes Senator Long a bigger socialist than FDR. He thinks the president is waiting for the right moment to push his social security plan through Congress. We just have to be patient a little while longer.”

  “He’d better hurry,” Ophelia said, “or he’s going to disappoint a lot of people.”

  Agreeing, Lizzy turned back to her job, layering cleaned pumpkin halves into the big blue enamel pot. The pumpkins would steam on the back burner of the gas stove for fifteen minutes or so. When they were cool enough to handle, Mildred could slip the skins right off.

  “If FDR does decide to push old-age pensions,” Bessie retorted, “it’ll be because Senator Long is nipping at his heels.”

  “That’s what Henry says, too,” Earlynne Biddle replied, hanging the dishtowel on the rack. Her husband Henry managed the Coca-Cola bottling plant outside of town. “He says Roosevelt is good as far as he goes but he doesn’t go far enough.”

  “If you ask me, he’s gone way too far,” Mildred said acidly. “That man has been in office for only eighteen months, and just look at all the programs he’s come up with. The AAA and the CCC and the CWA and the FDIC and the FERA—crazy alphabet soup. Why, it’s enough to make a person gag.”

  Mildred Kilgore and Roger, her husband, owned and managed Kilgore Motors, the local Dodge dealership, which hadn’t exactly been doing a booming business during the Depression. It was hard to sell cars when people were worried about putting food on the table and shoes on the kids’ feet. But the Kilgores had been staunch Hoover supporters and Mildred had never gotten over his trouncing. She criticized FDR every chance she got.

  Bessie put down her knife. “Should I cut more pumpkins, or are we done for now?”

  Mildred surveyed what was in her bowl. “Looks like I’ve got enough for two more quarts,” she said. “That should fill up the pressure cooker.”

  “How many quarts will that make, total?” Ophelia asked.

  “Sixteen,” Mildred said. She grinned. “That’s sixteen of Aunt Hetty’s pumpkin pies. Best in Darling.”

  Earlynne began spooning the hot pumpkin cubes into sterilized quart Mason jars. “Best pies in the world,” she said.

  The filled jars, capped with flat metal lids and shiny screw-on rings, would go into the club’s new National pressure cooker, which the Dahlias had bought with the money they raised in their recent quilt raffle. After ninety minutes at ten pounds’ pressure, the jars would be cooled. Some of them would go straight to the Darling Blessing Box, others would join the canned fruits and vegetables on the shelves in the clubhouse pantry.

  “Oh, yes, pies!” exclaimed Liz, the current president of the Dahlias. “That reminds me, girls. We need to make a plan for the community pie supper. It’s a week from Friday, after the Dixie barbershop finals. The Dahlias have been asked to contribute a dozen pies.” She picked up a notepad and pencil from the table. “While I have you right here, maybe you can tell me what kind of pies you want to make.”

  The Dahlias were the most active club in town and were always being asked to contribute to this and that. The club was founded back in 1925 by that dedicated gardener, Mrs. Dahlia Blackstone, who bequeathed them her house at 302 Camellia Street. Along with the dilapidated old house—now their clubhouse—had come an acre of sadly run-down gardens in the back, a half-acre of overgrown vegetable garden in the adjoining lot, and two beautiful cucumber trees. (They were really Magnolia acuminata, Miss Rogers reminded them. A librarian, she insisted that people use the proper names for things).

  Some might have been daunted by the condition of the gift, but that was when the Dahlias showed what they were made of. They repaired the roof and replaced the plumbing and then turned to the unkempt gardens. The front yard had once been filled with azaleas, roses, and hydrangeas, and the backyard—over an acre—swept down toward a little wooded area and a clear spring surrounded by bog iris, ferns, and pitcher plants. Inspired by the zeal that all true gardeners feel when they confront a weedy, overgrown garden, the eager Dahlias rolled up their sleeves, got out their gardening tools, and marched out into the jungle.

  They trimmed the clematis, mandevilla, and wisteria; cut back the exuberant Confederate jasmine and trumpet vine; and pruned the gardenias. They divided and replanted Mrs. Blackstone’s favorite orange ditch lilies, as well as her crinum lilies, spider lilies, oxblood lilies, daffodils, and narcissus—far too many to count! They pulled weeds and dug out invaders and cleared the curving perennial borders to give the larkspur, phlox, Shasta daisies, iris, alliums, and asters more elbow room. They also pruned Mrs. Blackstone’s many roses—the climbers, teas, ramblers, shrubs, and the rowdy, unruly Lady Banks, whose arching green branches had taken over an entire corner but whose gorgeous yellow blooms in early spring made it all worthwhile.

  Then they hired Mr. Norris to bring Racer and plow the vegetable garden. Racer (his name was a Darling joke) was as slow as blackstrap molasses in January, but the old bay gelding knew exactly what to do when he was hitched to the business end of a plow, and he and Mr. Norris whipped the garden plot into planting shape in almost no time. The Dahlias got out their seeds and planted sweet corn, collards, chard, green beans, tomatoes, okra, mild bell peppers and fiery chili peppers, eggplant, squash, melons, cucumbers, sweet potatoes—and of course pumpkins, both the large and jolly jack-o’-lantern pumpkins and Bessie’s Winter Luxury pie pumpkins.

  In the natural way of things (and because they were very good gardeners), the garden had produced abundantly, yielding plenty of vegetables to sell at the Saturday farmers’ market and give away to the Retirement Haven, the old folks’ home over on Rayburn Road. And to put up in Mason jars, like the delicious little pie pumpkins they were canning today.

  “Pies for the pie supper,” Aunt Hetty said thoughtfully. “Well, let’s see. My big old pecan tree struggled this year, what with all the rain and hot weather we had in August and September. But there’ll likely be enough for a real nice pecan pie or two.” She grinned mischievously. “With my secret ingredient, of course.”

  Everybody laughed, for they knew her secret ingredient. Aunt Hetty’s cousin, Rondell Little, lived back in the hills and made the very best brandy—peach, apple, pear, cherry, whatever fruit he could get his hands on. Aunt Hetty used his brandy to flavor her pies. While Prohibition was in effect, Rondell’s brandy was illegal, so everybody just whispered about Aunt Hetty’s “secret ingredient.” Now, almost a year after Repeal, it was still illegal, since Cousin Rondell didn’t have Alabama’s tax stamp. So everybody still whispered.

  “I’ll take a couple of these pumpkins and make a pumpkin pie,” Bessie offered. She smiled. “I’ll make it with pineapple—it’ll be a special treat.”

  “There are quite a few green tomatoes still left on the vines,” Liz said. “Green tomato pie is always a hit, and it’s easy. I’ll make that.”

  “Oh, and buttermilk pie,” Ophelia added. “I’ll make my mother’s old-fashioned buttermilk pie.”

  “Put me down for a lemon icebox pie,” Mildred said. “Mrs. Hancock saved me some lemons when her grocery order came in the other day. I’ll make a cookie crumb crust.”

  Liz grinned. “Sounds like we have a plan, girls. Now, who’d like to call the other Dahlias and ask them what they’ll be bringing?”

  Aunt Hetty peered at Liz over her silver-rimmed glasses. “I would if I could, dear, but my party line is down.”

  “Again?” Mildred asked, raising her eyebrows. “Wasn’t it down last week?”

  “And the week before that,” Aunt Hetty said with a scowl. “I’m afraid it’s gettin’ to be a regular thing. There are six of us on that line, and we miss our morning coffee-and-conversation.” She l
ooked pointedly at Ophelia. “Claretta Manners is really stewing about it. She’s writing a letter to the mayor. She says he ought to do something.”

  “I’m afraid Jed won’t be any help,” Ophelia said apologetically—as she should, since her husband was Darling’s mayor. “Our line was out three days last week. He had some mayor’s telephoning to do, and he was fit to be tied. He went over to the Exchange and talked to Myra May about it. She says that we’re having all these problems because Darling has outgrown the old switchboard. To fix the problem, we need a new one.”

  Myra May Mosswell and her friend Violet Sims—both active members of the Dahlias—owned and managed the Darling Telephone Exchange, which was located in the back room of the Darling Diner, which they also owned.

  “Well, if that’s what it is, I hope they do it soon,” Aunt Hetty said emphatically. “I was one of the last to get on the telephone. But now that I’ve got used to having one, it’s a tad bit hard to get along without it. I miss bein’ in on the news as it happens.”

  Ophelia gave a regretful shake of her head. “Myra May says the new switchboards work better and faster, but they’re pretty expensive. She and Violet have just about half of what they need and are trying to get the other half from their partner. In the meantime, we just have to get along the best we can.”

  “Partner?” Bessie asked curiously. “I didn’t know they had a partner. Who is it?”

  Mildred lifted her chin. “Myra May just needs to get creative,” she said in a teacherly tone. “If she put her mind to it, I’m sure she could come up with a solution.”

  There was a silence. Everybody knew that Mildred was thinking of events at Kilgore Motors, which had almost gone out of business over some mistakes her husband Roger had made—mistakes she would never let the poor man live down. But while Mildred carried a grudge longer than most, she was a creative manager who would try anything to boost sales. With that in mind, she had hired Frank Harwood as a salesman and posted a big sign in the window.