The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

Of course, if the bank was closed for much longer, or if (inconceivably) it failed, he wouldn’t have any money to play pool or buy meals or Mickey’s white lightning. But he could probably find a few things that Archie would take in trade, especially since nobody else in town was going to have any money, at least not in the foreseeable future.

Except maybe they would have something they could fill their empty pockets with in the meantime, if Mr. Alvin Duffy was able to pull off his scheme. Thinking of this, Charlie snorted. What Duffy was talking about sounded as illegal as a three-dollar bill. Maybe they’d all end up in the hoosegow, right along with Mr. George E. Pickett Johnson. But Duffy was certainly right when he said that what this town needed was money. Not tomorrow, not next week or next month, but right now. And somebody ought to do something about it.

The lack of money is the root of all evil. Somebody said that once, Charlie thought, trying to remember. Mark Twain, was it? Or Mark Twain quoting George Bernard Shaw? Well, whoever it was, he got it right, and the Bible got it wrong. It wasn’t money that was the root of all evil, it was the lack thereof. And now that the bank had closed, there was a definite lack of money. Which meant, if Charlie understood the situation (and he did) there was going to be a definite excess of evil, starting directly.

Charlie scowled. And if ol’ George E. Pickett Johnson knew what was good for him, he would stay the hell out of everybody’s way or he’d find himself with a brass-plated invitation to a necktie party. What with the boll weevil chewing up the cotton and the agricultural prices bottoming out and the stock market crash and the Depression, things had been pretty rocky in Darling for a pretty long time.

And the harder the economic crunch bit down, the worse things got. A small town with a strong sense of community, Darling had never seen much crime. But just in the last week, the Five and Dime had been broken into, some impious thief had stolen the Sunday offering from the Methodist church (during Reverend Trivette’s benediction, too!), and a masked bandit driving a Ford Model T had held up Jake Pritchard’s Standard Oil filling station and sped away with sixteen dollars. All this made good copy for the local pages of the Friday Dispatch, but it wasn’t welcome news. Now, with the bank closing, things could get worse. A whole helluva lot worse, and Mr. Johnson, guilty or not, was the easiest target for everybody’s wrath. If he escaped tar and feathering, the man would be lucky.

Charlie lifted the bottle, gave it a long, appreciative look, and took another swallow. Whiskey was like a woman. You got the best out of it if you handled it right, not diving in but enjoying it with respect and gratitude and desire, coaxing and courting, the way you coaxed and courted a woman. He turned the bottle in his hands, thinking of women, of a woman, of Fannie Champaign.

His mouth tightened. Of course, if he and Fannie Champaign had managed to work things out between them, he might be in a different situation and maybe he wouldn’t be drinking so much. But they hadn’t, and he wasn’t, and damned if he was going to spend the rest of his life mooning over a silly love affair that had gotten derailed because Fannie Champaign was too pigheaded to overlook a simple misunderstanding.

Or something like that. In his current hungover state, he found it hard to remember just what had happened or why or what had been said to whom, and he didn’t want to. All he knew was that it had been over since last July, when Fannie packed up and left town because she was miffed at his friendship with Lily Dare, the famous Texas Star, the fastest woman in the skies. And all Charlie had to remember her by (Fannie, that is) was the taste of her shy, sweet kisses in those long-ago summer months, before their misunderstanding, before—

Charlie swung his feet to the floor, corked the bottle, and dropped it back in the drawer. He had thirty-five cents in his pocket, just enough to get a pork chop plate and a piece of pie at the diner. Food was what he needed. Food would put him in a better frame of mind.

Anyway, Twain and Shaw both had it wrong. It wasn’t the lack of money that was the root of all evil. More likely it was women, or a woman. Or Fannie Champaign.

Or the lack thereof.





THREE