The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose Read Online Free

freight into town. The boy was accused of stealing five green peaches from Earl Ayers’ peach orchard, out on Pascagoula Road. Mr. Ayers was extremely proud of his prize-winning peaches (most of which—as everybody in Darling very well knew—went to making bootleg peach brandy, a local favorite). He pressed charges against the boy for theft. The case looked like a winner for the prosecution, and it was expected that the thief would get at least thirty days in jail.
    But Mr. Moseley had pointed out that there were usually about sixty-five peaches in a bushel of Mr. Ayers’ finest early variety, and that the current market rate was one dollar and forty-two cents per bushel.
    “Which means, Your Honor,” he said to the judge (old Judge McHenry, who was known to have a very hard heart), “that each one of Mr. Ayers’ splendid peaches—even when they are ripe and juicy—is worth just a little over two cents. Which further means that the three green peaches that poor, hard-luck kid ate and the two he stuffed into his overall pockets are worth a dime.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out a coin, holding it up. “One dime, Your Honor. One thin silver dime, for five green peaches. Why, you couldn’t
pay
me to eat five green peaches for a dime. For a dollar, either.” He paused, scratching his head. “Way things are, though,” he allowed, “I might do it if you gave me five.”
    A ripple of laughter had run around the courtroom. Old Judge McHenry had no doubt intended to throw the book at the boy. But he probably felt he’d look pretty silly if he did, so he directed Mr. Ayers to let the criminal work off his crime rather than going to jail.
    At which point Mr. Moseley reminded the court that Mr. Ayers paid his peach-pickers a dollar a day for ten hours’ work. At this rate, the boy ought to be sentenced to work for an hour. Which the youngster did, then hopped the next outbound freight.
    Afterward, Mr. Ayers, highly incensed, had come over to the law office and threatened to get even with Mr. Moseley for making him look bad. That’s what things were coming to these days. Lizzy thought that Verna was right: it would be a long time before this storm would blow over and people got back to normal. Which in Darling meant being nice to one another again.
    “Well,” Bessie said with her usual stout common sense, “storms come and storms go.” She looked up at the ceiling and raised her voice triumphantly over the sound of the rain pounding on the roof. “But you can rain as hard as you want to. Y’hear? We’ve fixed the roof! We don’t have to worry about leaks.”
    When the Dahlias had inherited Mrs. Blackstone’s old house, the garden wasn’t the only thing that had been in need of some tender loving care—and a sizeable investment of money, as well. The old shingle roof on the house had been in such terrible shape that the Dahlias kept busy emptying buckets every time it rained. And the plumbing was even worse. They couldn’t flush without fear of overflowing, so they couldn’t flush at all. Until they could afford to get the toilet fixed, Bessie had invited them to use the Magnolia Manor bathroom next door. Afford to get it fixed? They were delighted to have Mrs. Blackstone’s house, but there wasn’t a penny for huge expenditures like roofing and plumbing.
    But then—hallelujah and praise the Lord!—they had unearthed a buried cache of family silver, hidden by Mrs. Blackstone’s mother to keep it from falling into the greedy hands of the damn Yankees as they stormed through Alabama near the end of the War Between the States. With the silver, they had found an emerald bracelet, a pair of pearl earrings, a diamond ring, and a velvet bag containing ten gold double eagles that were worth a great deal more than their twenty-dollar face value. The lucky find brought enough to fix the leaky roof and repair the plumbing, with some left over in what Lizzy called the club’s “Treasure Fund.”
    Ophelia