The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree (10 page)

The Beauty Bower opened promptly at nine in the morning, after Beulah saw Hank Jr. and daughter Spoonie off to school. Then she took out her hair curlers (she had traded her bob for curls), applied her makeup, and donned a freshly ironed pink-ruffled apron, with
Beulah’s Beauty Bower
embroidered across the bib. Bettina, similarly aproned, was already at work, sweeping the floor, folding towels, and making sure that the customers’ cover-up capes were clean and ready to be deployed.

Each day brought its regulars—the Mondays, Tuesdays, and so forth. These ladies had gotten so used to meeting at Beulah’s that it was more like a tea party than anything else, especially since somebody usually brought cookies while somebody else brought cupcakes, to go with the coffee percolating in Beulah’s kitchen and the iced tea in the icebox. There were also the “irregulars,” as Bettina called them, women who never could remember what day their appointment was or whether they had made one at all and just stopped by to see if Beulah or Bettina could fit them in. They usually could, after a short wait, which nobody minded because the Beauty Bower was such a good place to catch up on the news.

The Mondays included Myra May Mosswell and Miss Dorothy Rogers (nine o’clock), Mrs. Voleen Johnson and Leona Ruth Adcock (nine thirty). Beulah especially liked having Myra May first on Monday morning. That way, they got to hear a full report of all the weekend goings-on, straight from the telephone exchange and the Darling Diner. It got the week started off right.

“Well, dear?” Beulah asked, when Myra May was stretched out flat in the chair with her feet on a stool and her toes turned up in her peep-toed shoes (Myra May liked to paint her toenails red so they showed through her rayon stockings). Her eyes were closed, and her head lay in the shampoo tray. “Got any good news to tell us? Have they captured that escaped convict yet?” Beulah poured a pitcher of water over Myra May’s dark hair.

Myra May opened her eyes and squinted up. “Water’s too cold, Beulah. I like it hot, remember?” Beulah poured some more hot water out of the teakettle into the pitcher and tried again.

Myra May smiled blissfully and closed her eyes. “No, they haven’t captured him. Sheriff Burns says they’re still looking. But there’s some other news. Somebody stole a car on Saturday night”

“Stole a car!” Beulah and Bettina exclaimed in astonished unison.

“Well, my goodness gracious,” Miss Rogers said. She was in the same prone position as Myra May, toes up (sensibly shod) and head in the shampoo tray. “A car theft? In Darling?”

“Whose car?” asked Bettina, scrubbing Miss Rogers’ gray hair energetically.

“Watch your fingernails, Bettina,” Miss Rogers reprimanded. “And the water could be a little cooler. I don’t like hot water.”

“The car was a roadster,” Myra May said. “Pontiac, near new. Stolen from in front of Fred Harper’s house. Belonged to his brother. He phoned the sheriff around midnight Saturday night to say it’d been stolen.”

“Who stole it?” Beulah asked, vigorously applying shampoo.

“Mr. Harper said he didn’t know. A man and a young woman. They—”

“A woman?”
Miss Rogers interrupted sharply. “Really. I don’t know what girls these days are coming to. Dancing, smoking, drinking, taking the Lord’s name in vain.” She sniffed. “And now stealing cars. Society is going to utter wrack and ruin.”

“Was Mr. Harper’s brother visiting?” Beulah asked.

“No,” Myra May replied. “He’d borrowed the car. Mr. Harper, that is. His brother is a dentist, lives over in Monroeville.” She opened her eyes. “That feels lovely, Beulah, but you can rub a little harder.”

“Lord sakes. A girl?” Bettina was shocked. “What’ll Sheriff Burns do if he catches her? Will he put her in jail along with Clipper Rexnoth?” Clipper could be counted on to get roaring drunk a couple of weekends a month and be confined to jail to sober up safely.

“That will never do,” Miss Rogers said definitively. She fished for a hankie in her brown-checked bosom (Miss Rogers always wore brown—checks, stripes, plaids, or plain) and wiped a drop of water off her cheek. “The sheriff will have to find somewhere else to put her.”

“There’s an old lockup in the cellar of the courthouse,” Bettina offered, pouring a pitcher of rinse water through Miss Rogers’ hair. “I saw it once, years back. Used to be full of old records, but they got wet and mildewed, so they had to put ’em somewhere else.”

“That won’t do, either,” Miss Rogers said. “It’s like a dungeon down there. She’d catch her death of pneumonia.”

“What did she look like?” Beulah asked Myra May. “The girl who stole the car, I mean.”

“All I know is what Mr. Harper told the sheriff,” Myra May replied. “She was—”

The telephone on the wall rang. Beulah was the one person on the street who had a private line, because the phone rang so often with calls from women wanting their hair done that the constant jangling would be a nuisance to anybody else on the line.

“If that’s Olive LeRoy,” Myra May said emphatically, “don’t tell her I’m here. She wants me to work for her on the switchboard tonight, and I’m playing hearts at Ophelia’s. Any of the rest of you coming?”

“Wish I could but I can’t,” Beulah said, as Bettina went to the phone, leaving Miss Rogers with her head in the shampoo sink. “I’m workin’ on Spoonie’s new Sunday dress. Promised it to her last week, but didn’t get it done. It is the sweetest thing, blue and white checks with white ruffles and blue rickrack trim.”

“I don’t play cards,” Miss Rogers said disapprovingly.

“Miss Rogers,” Myra May said, “just what
do
you do for fun?”

“Fun?” Miss Rogers asked. “Well, I read. I’m reading
Wuthering Heights
right now.”

“I thought that was ‘withering,’” Beulah said, finishing with Myra May’s rinse.

“Wuthering, my dear,” Miss Rogers said, in a superior tone. “The word refers to the atmospheric tumult to which Thrushcross Grange is exposed.”

It wasn’t Olive LeRoy on the phone; it was Mrs. Johnson, canceling her nine thirty. “Says she’s got a bad cold,” Bettina reported to Beulah, returning to Miss Rogers.

“Must be really bad,” Beulah said sympathetically. “Miz Johnson never misses an appointment. Likes to get her nails done on Monday so they look nice all week.” Voleen Johnson didn’t do any real work, except for cutting the flowers that went to the bank every day, so keeping her nails nice wasn’t difficult.

“A cold?” Myra May was derisive. “Is that what she said? Well, I for one doubt it.”

“Sit up, Myra May, and I’ll wrap you,” Beulah said, taking a towel. “Why do you doubt it?”

“Because she was perfectly fine yesterday morning in church. And because there’s trouble at the bank, and she’s probably afraid one of us will ask her about it” The minute Myra May said it, she pursed her lips, as if she knew she’d said something she shouldn’t.

“Trouble?” Miss Rogers asked, pushing herself up from her prone position. She sounded alarmed. “What kind of trouble?”

“Wait,” Bettina said hurriedly. “You’re dripping. Let me get your towel.” She wrapped Miss Rogers’ head in pink terrycloth. “There. You look just like Cleopatra.”

“You say there’s trouble?” Miss Rogers frowned. “At the bank?”

Myra May tsk-tsked. “Now, Miss Rogers. You know I’m not supposed to talk about what goes through the exchange.”

“But you told us about the pair that stole the automobile,” Miss Rogers protested. “The man and the young woman.”

“That’s different,” Myra May said defensively. “I could tell you that because you’ll read all about it in the paper, and because once the report goes to the sheriff’s office, it’s public. Like the escaped convict business, stuff like that. I don’t talk about the private things I hear. The things nobody’s supposed to know about” She gave them a significant glance. “And there’s a bushel of those, believe you me. I could tell you things that would curl your toes. But I don’t. Because they are strictly private, and I am a professional telephone operator.”

But her claim to complete confidentiality wasn’t entirely true, and Myra May knew it. She sometimes passed on tasty little tidbits of this and that, even when she felt it was wrong—but only when it didn’t matter too much and when it was just too good to keep to herself. Like the time old Mr. Beekins flushed his dentures down the toilet and Mrs. Beekins had to call Toomy LeGrand, the town’s plumber, to come and fish them out. Everybody giggled when she told them that one. Or the time little Wilbur McWilliams swallowed a goldfish, and his mother called Doc Roberts to ask what to do about it, and the doctor said he should drink lots of water. That was always good for a laugh.

But Myra May also knew that she had slipped up in her remark about Voleen Johnson. She felt she was right—Voleen didn’t want to have to face people just now, in case they asked too many questions about the situation at her husband’s bank. Voleen didn’t want to have to pretend that everything was hunky-dory when it wasn’t.

Myra May had to admit that what she heard about the goings-on at the bank scared her silly, too. One of the Mobile banks had failed the previous November and Myra May’s second cousin—her mother’s sister’s daughter’s son—had lost every cent he had to his name. He’d left town on a freight train with his mother’s last three dollars in his pocket and was somewhere out in Washington State, sleeping in a hobo jungle. Myra herself had money in the Savings and Trust, but she wasn’t going to leave it there for much longer. The minute Beulah finished trimming her hair she was on her way to the bank to take that money out. She’d have to put it under her mattress, but if half of what she had overheard was true, it would be as safe there as in Mr. Johnson’s Savings and Trust. Safer, probably.

“Of course you’re a professional, Myra May,” Beulah said in a comforting tone. “You’re a professional through and through. Now, you just come on right over here to the chair, and I’ll trim off those itty-splitty ends.”

“But we are talking about the
bank!”
Miss Rogers exclaimed, dismayed. She sat down in the other chair and Bettina adjusted the cape around her neck. “That’s where I have all my money! And not just me, either. The Savings and Trust is the only bank in town. We
all
have our money there—every single one of us! If something’s wrong, we’ve got a right to know about it, haven’t we?” Her voice rose to an unusual pitch—unusual for Miss Rogers, who was ordinarily very self-contained (except when it came to the possibility of losing her money—again).

“Sorry, Miss Rogers.” And Myra May lifted her chin, took an imaginary key, and turned it in her lips.

Beulah picked up the scissors and began to trim Myra May’s ends. “You said they haven’t caught the escaped convict yet,” she said, changing the subject. “But has anybody seen any sign of him?”

“Haven’t heard,” Miss Rogers said shortly.

“At church yesterday,” Bettina said, “Mrs. Sidell—she lives on the road that goes out t‘ward Springtown—said she lost two chickens and some eggs out of the coop and a sweet potato pie that was coolin’ on the windowsill. Nobody saw who took it, but her husband said he figured it had to be the convict. Must be pretty hungry by now.”

“Springtown,” Beulah said thoughtfully. “Well, that’s a ways south. Guess he’s not headed in this direction. But somebody’ll spot him, sure. They all have shaved heads, you know. The prison farm does that to keep ‘em from gettin’ lice, poor things.” It was Beulah’s opinion that having your head shaved was worse than going to jail.

“Wait, Beulah!” Bettina looked up, excited. “You know, I’ll bet it was the convict who took that automobile! He prob‘bly picked up a girlfriend and he was stealin’ a car so the two of ’em could get out of town.”

“You could be right, Bettina.” Beulah put down the scissors and reached for the hand dryer. “I sure wish they’d catch him. Don’t you, Miss Rogers?”

“I wish Myra May would tell us what is going on at the bank,” Miss Rogers said crossly. “We’ve got a right—”

There might’ve been more words exchanged on this subject, but at that moment, the screen door opened and Sylvia Search lumbered in. Sylvia was just over five feet high and nearly that in girth. Next to Leona Adcock, she was the worst gossip in town.

“I cain’t remember whether I’m down for nine thirty or ten,” she said cheerfully, “so I thought I’d just come on over an’ set ’til you’re ready for me.” She took a notebook out of her purse. “While I wait, I’ll just take a minute to jot down some of those ‘handy tips’ Lizzy Lacy was askin’ for in her garden column on Friday. We’ve been makin’ do at our house for years and years.”

“Actually, you’re a Tuesday,” Beulah replied, turning on the dryer. “But it don’t matter at all, Sylvia. You want done on Monday, we can do you. Can’t we, Bettina?”

“We sure can,” Bettina chirped. “Just so happens that Miz Johnson canceled not five minutes ago. You just sit there, Miz Search. We’ll get to you in two shakes. And maybe the rest of us can help with those tips. We’ve been makin’ do, too.”

And that, Myra May thought with relief, was the end of that conversation. Nobody would say a single thing of any consequence as long as Sylvia Search was in the room—not unless they wanted it broadcast to the rest of Darling.

But it wasn’t the end of the troublesome subject of the bank.

An hour later, freshly combed and dried and turning away from Alice Ann Walker’s window at the Savings and Trust with fifty-three dollars tucked carefully into the lining of her pocketbook, Myra May bumped into Miss Rogers. She hung around long enough to see the librarian push her savings book across the counter and hear her say, with her accustomed firmness, “I wish to withdraw the money in my savings account, please, Alice Ann. All of it.”

And at noon, Beulah and Bettina hung the Closed sign on the Beauty Bower’s door and went together to the bank, where they stood in line with three or four other citizens of Darling, all looking warily uncomfortable.