The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

By now, Verna was feeling suspicious. “What’s going on here, Ophelia?” she demanded. “There’s something you’re not telling us. What is it?”


“Oh, no!” Ophelia exclaimed, widening her eyes innocently. “Oh, not at all! It’s just the way I said, honest, Verna. Lucy’s cousin is going to Nashville—No, Memphis, I mean. She’s been staying with Lucy and the boys for the past few days. They’ve been having such a marvelous time together, hunting mushrooms, picking flowers, going fishing. She’s really just the nicest person, even if—”

She broke off and looked from one to the other. “I’m babbling, huh?”

“You’re babbling,” Myra May said in a kindly tone. “Tell us what you’re hiding, Ophelia.”

Ophelia began to color. “Nothing,” she protested. “I’m not hiding anything. Honest!”

“Ophelia,” Verna said sternly, “we have played hearts together almost every Monday night for nearly ten years. I know when you’re lying. You’re hiding something. So what is it?”

“No, really! I—”

But Verna had left the group and was already on her way into the small frame railroad depot. It had an office and a ticket window at one end and a couple of benches so that waiting passengers could sit inside, out of the weather. The depot was empty, so she went through the opposite door to the wooden platform beside the railroad track.

The evening train was a short one, as usual—just the locomotive, the coal car, a baggage car, a soot-stained passenger car, and a red-painted caboose. Lucy was standing beside the nearly empty passenger car, helping her cousin up the steps. The conductor was standing at the head of the train, checking his watch and talking to the engineer, while the steam hissed and puffed from beneath.

“Have a good trip,” Lucy said to her cousin. “Be sure and write to me when you get there, so I’ll know you’re safe.”

“Thank you,” the cousin said, in a curiously high-pitched voice. “Really, I’m jes’ so grateful for all you’ve did. I’ll try to live up to it.” She bent down to take the cardboard suitcase out of Lucy’s hand.

But at that moment, a gust of wind caught her slat bonnet. The strings must not have been tied securely, for the bonnet went sailing off. Lucy, with great presence of mind, caught it one-handed in midair, while Verna gawked, openmouthed.

Lucy’s cousin was as bald as a billiard ball.



They all got their food and sat down together. While they ate, Lucy told the story, with a little help, now and then, from Ophelia. It didn’t take long.

“And that was why I felt I had to take him in, poor boy,” she said at the end. “I simply couldn’t let him go back to that awful place, where the overseers flogged him when he couldn’t work and where the other inmates—” She turned her face away, swallowing tears.

“You should have seen him,” Ophelia put in. “Skin and bones, with open welts on his back.”

Lucy took out a hankie and blew her nose. “I felt I had to get him away from here as soon as he was well enough to travel. I know it was wrong, legally speaking. If the sheriff or the prison people find out, I’ll be in hot water. They’ll put me in jail, too.” She gave them a defiant look. “But you can say whatever you want. I don’t care. It was the right thing to do.”

“It was the only thing to do,” Ophelia said firmly. “I for one am glad that he’s safely on that train and on his way north.”

There was a long silence. The five of them were sitting on wooden benches on both sides of a scrubbed wooden table, Ophelia and Lucy on one side, Verna, Myra May, and Lizzy on the other. Everybody but Verna had a sandwich of Buzz’s pulled pork with white sauce, along with side dishes of cabbage slaw and fried okra. Verna had ordered grilled chicken and poured white sauce over it, too. Before he moved to Monroeville, Buzz had worked for Big Bob Gibson, up in Decatur, Alabama, where he learned how to make the famous white sauce. Everybody raved about it.

“Well,” Verna said finally, “I have to admit that it was quite a sight. That bonnet flying off, and your cousin standing there on the train steps, bald as the day she was born.” She grinned. “Bet those shoes are going to kill her feet before she gets to Memphis.”

Lucy shook her head ruefully. “I had to warn her not to take them off. Her feet will swell so bad she’ll never get them on again. I wanted to give her a pair of Ralph’s but I was afraid a man’s shoes under that dress would be a dead giveaway.” She sobered, looking at them across the table. “You’re not going to tell on me, are you?”

“Tell what?” Myra May asked. “Seems to me that it was really nice of you to buy a train ticket for a cousin who was down on her luck.”

“I think so, too,” Lizzy put in. “I hope she gets where she’s going safely and never has to come back.”

Verna shook her head. “Too bad she had such a terrible experience during her visit here. Couldn’t have been much fun.”