Ophelia said goodbye to Bessie and Aunt Hetty and started home on Rosemont, walking fast, hands in the pockets of her red cotton print dress. She was sorry about being so out of sorts with Bessie and Aunt Hetty that morning. It certainly wasn’t their fault, and she knew they would have offered to help if she had asked. Aunt Hetty was sympathetic and Bessie (who as Darling’s historian was pretty good at discovering the skeletons in a person’s closet) might try to guess. But if they really knew what was bothering her, it would scandalize both of them.
No, this . . . this discontent (if that’s what it was) was her problem, and she had to deal with it herself.
The Snows’ house wasn’t more than a block from the Dahlias’ clubhouse. The small, citrus-yellow frame cottage had a green roof and bright purple shutters—an eye-popping color combination, but the paint had been on sale for half-price at Musgrove Hardware and those were the only colors Mr. Musgrove had left. Opie shuddered every time she looked at it, but a penny saved was a penny earned, as her father used to say, and every penny counted when it came to the Snows’ puny little budget. It was a minor miracle that the house had been painted at all, so she wasn’t going to fuss with Jed about the colors.
In fact, there was no point in fussing with Jed at all. Fussing never changed things, it just made everybody even more unhappy. If Opie had a philosophy of life, that was it. Don’t fuss. Paste on your brightest smile and pretend that everything was just fine, and sooner or later, it would be. Or near enough. That’s how she had managed to get through the first six years of this gawd-awful Depression. That’s how she would get through the next six, although she wasn’t going to allow herself to think that far ahead. What good did thinking ahead do, anyway? Something unexpected—like the Spanish flu or the boll weevil or the Wall Street Crash of ’29—was bound to pop up and change everything. It always did.
Opie was stepping up on the porch when she heard the wail of a siren and turned to see the new Darling fire engine barreling down Rosemont. Chief Mann was at the wheel and didn’t see her when she waved, but one of the young Hot Dogs hanging onto the back of the truck—wasn’t that Benny Biddle, Earlynne Biddle’s boy?—waved back as they flew past. Wherever that truck was going, it was going to get there fast. She shivered apprehensively, wondering where it was headed and hoping that Aunt Hetty was right and it was just another grass fire—not somebody’s house burning down.
Few people in Darling locked their houses, so Opie didn’t have to bother with a key. She opened the door and went inside—slowly, for the early-morning energy she had borrowed from Bessie and Aunt Hetty was already draining away. She felt as limp as the laundry in the ironing basket, and even though she had left the windows open all night, yesterday’s leftover heat hit her in the face like a smothery hot towel.
Rudy Vallée, the family’s tabby cat, came out from under a chair and purred loudly around her ankles. Jed was at the feed store and the kids were out and about this morning, so she could have the place to herself. Sarah was sleeping over at Mary Lou Kramer’s and Sam had ridden his bicycle out to the Marigold Motor Court, where he did a few handyman jobs for Pauline DuBerry when his father didn’t need him. He’d be starting his last year of high school after Labor Day and he was trying to save something for college.
But Jed wasn’t big on that idea. He thought Sam should come to work full time at the feed store and save his dad the salary he was paying Harold Matthews, who was looking to retire, anyway. This wasn’t what Opie wanted, of course. Sam was bright and good at his books—Sarah, too. As their mother, she felt that both of them deserved a chance to get out of Darling and live a life that wasn’t defined by the narrow limits of their little town—a life that gave them some real opportunities. She was vague about this, though. What did she know about opportunities outside of Darling? She’d never had any herself. But she was fairly certain that there must be some.
Opie opened the icebox (they couldn’t afford an electric refrigerator—even a used one) and took out a dozen brown eggs, laid by the mixed flock of Barred Rocks and Rhode Island Reds she kept in the backyard. It had been hot all week and there was only a small chunk of ice left. She closed the door hurriedly, remembering that Monday was Labor Day, which meant that Mr. Griffiths wouldn’t be around with another twenty pounds until Tuesday. She’d have to put a note on the icebox door, reminding the kids and Jed not to open it unless it was absolutely necessary.
She put the eggs in a large pan, covered them with water, set the pan on the stove, and turned on the burner. Then she dumped half a bag of potatoes into her dishpan. For tonight’s VFD supper, she had promised to make potato salad and deviled eggs, since both were cheap and cheap was what she could afford. Potatoes were just eighteen cents for a ten-pound bag at Hancock’s grocery, and the eggs were free. Well, not really free, since the wholesale price of the Purina laying pellets Jed brought home from the feed store had to come out of her skimpy grocery budget.
Feeling even more discontent, Opie carried the dishpan full of potatoes and a paring knife into the front parlor, where she turned on the radio, sat down in the rocking chair, and got started on the potatoes. It was a pretty room with ivory crisscross curtains, the upright Kimball piano that had belonged to Jed’s aunt, her rocking chair, and the floor-model Philco. There was also a coffee table in front of the sofa, where the family had left the Finance and Fortune game they’d been playing the night before. Looking at the board, Opie saw that she owned Broadway, Park Avenue, and Fifth Avenue, which was probably as close as she would ever come to actually owning a valuable piece of property.
But the real star of the room was a cozy pairing of davenport and chair in a rosy Jacquard velour. Opie had fallen in love with that davenport when she saw it on the back page of the Sears and Roebuck catalogue and—on impulse—had ordered it on the easy monthly payment plan. Then, aghast at her extravagance (it had cost twelve-fifty down and ten dollars a month for practically forever!), she had fibbed to Jed about the price, which was one of the things that had driven her to get her first job at the Darling Dispatch. Long before she finished paying for the furniture, she discovered that she loved “working out,” as Jed’s mother said with a disapproving sniff. And while Jed grumped and growled, he had to accept the fact that her paycheck covered the grocery bill. It still did.
She attacked her second potato. But while she had enjoyed reporting and selling advertising and operating the Linotype for Charlie Dickens at the Dispatch and doing secretarial work for Captain Campbell out at Camp Briarwood, the CCC camp, she absolutely adored working for the Federal Writers’ Project. She was sure that the Alabama guidebook was going to be a bestseller when it was finished. And the local history project—which included Bessie’s history of Darling as well as interviews Opie planned with the oldest settlers, with the veterans of the War Between the States, and with former slaves and the children of former slaves—was already well under way.
In fact, just last night, old Cal Boomer had brought over his short piece about life in the early days of Cypress County. In his sloppy script, on a page of his grandson’s yellow school tablet, he had written:
Pretty soon after the Creek War, around 1814, many settlers were terrorized by a ferocious outlaw named Savannah Jack, who claimed to be avenging the conquered Indians. Jack and a desperado band of renegade malcontents raided settlements, burning cabins, rustling horses, and robbing and tomahawking anybody who couldn’t get away fast enough. But the Creeks said Jack wasn’t one of theirs and helped the militiamen drive him down into the Florida swamps, where he bragged to the Seminoles that he had scalped and killed enough women and children to swim in a river of their blood.
Reading this, Opie had shuddered, thinking of Savannah Jack and his outlaws running wild in the streets of Darling. This was pretty exciting stuff and supposedly true, although she would have to check it against the big book on Alabama history that Miss Rogers kept on the reference shelf behind her desk in the Darling Library. But was this the kind of thing Mr. Nichols—her supervisor—would want her to include in the government’s guidebook? She would have to put it on her list of things to talk to him about.
She reached for another potato. Then, just at that moment, the radio began playing a recording by Ethel Waters singing an old New Orleans blues song, “Hotter and Hotter.” Appropriate to the outdoor temperature, yes, but also to the person—that person—who had been nibbling away at the edges of Opie’s conscience for weeks.
The subterranean source of her discontent. Mr. Nichols.
It was true. Whenever she thought of him—of Ryan, when she dared—she began feeling all warm and fiery inside, as if she were filled with something like . . . what? She didn’t suppose it was love, and anyway it couldn’t be love, because she knew she loved her husband and loving Jed was nothing like this.
No, not love. It was more like . . . well, like longing. A yearning, burning secret desire, the way Joan Crawford felt about Gary Cooper in Today We Live, when Joan was supposed to be marrying Robert Young, the quintessential nice guy, but was sorely tempted by Gary, who was extremely . . . well, let’s face it. Extremely sexy. Opie had cried when Robert’s airplane was tragically shot down in the war, but if that was the price of two lovers’ happiness, so be it. Anyway, Joan Crawford hadn’t actually been married to Robert Young, just engaged, which made it only a little wrong. And it was only a movie.
But Opie wasn’t in a movie. She was married to Jed. Really married. Which made it a lot wrong, she knew. Her father had been a Methodist preacher, and as a girl she had sat through innumerable sermons on the sin of lust, which was the same as desire, only cranked up louder and stronger. She also knew what First Corinthians said about the consequences of lusting after somebody in your heart. Even if you didn’t do anything, even if you only imagined what it would be like if somebody like Gary Cooper or Ryan Nichols swept you into his arms and smothered your face with kisses, it was still a sin. And you had to stop.
Fire in the heart sends smoke into the head, her mother had always said, and her mother was right. Right now, her head was so full of smoke that she couldn’t even begin to think where this might be going. But what did you do when just thinking about doing something was every bit as bad as doing it? And when you didn’t want to stop thinking about doing it, whatever it was? And especially when thinking and doing were so mixed up in your mind that you almost couldn’t tell them apart?
Still ensnared in the tentacles of this guilty conundrum, Opie finished peeling the third potato and then the fourth and the fifth. She was reaching for the sixth when the bell on the hand-crank wall telephone rang, startling her. It rang once, brashly, and then again, instead of the friendly two-shorts-and-a-long party-line ring they’d had until the new switchboard was installed at the telephone exchange. She set her dishpan on the floor and got up to answer it.
“Mrs. Snow?” A man’s deep voice, clipped, with a Yankee twang, but personal and . . . yes, thrilling. “Ryan Nichols here. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
Opie felt the man’s physical presence with such a sudden force that she couldn’t catch her breath. Over six feet, broad-shouldered, with athletic movements and a confident masculine energy. Blond hair, sun-bleached, with pale blue eyes in a darkly tanned face. Craggy features, not handsome but so compelling that you couldn’t stop looking at him—or remembering how he looked.
“Mr. Nichols, oh, hello.” She took a deep breath, trying to calm the flutters in her stomach. “What a surprise! I wasn’t expecting . . . How very nice to hear from you.” She was blabbering. She made herself slow down. “No, no interruption, really. I was just peeling potatoes. I’m taking deviled eggs and potato salad to the VFD dinner tonight and—”
She bit it off. Silly her. He was calling long distance. He didn’t want to hear the mundane details of her day, especially when they had nothing to do with the job she was supposed to be doing for the federal government. For him. Her stomach muscles clenched and she felt that . . . warmth. The hotter and hotter Ethel Waters had been singing about. Could he feel it, too, through the phone? Could he feel the way she was feeling? No, of course not. That was ridiculous.
“VFD dinner?” He chuckled, teasing a little. “The Very Free Dissidents? The Viewers of Fabled Domains?”
“The Volunteer Fire Department,” she explained. “They’re called Hot Dogs, so it’s a hot dog supper and it’s the Dahlias’ turn to serve and of course I want to do my part. It’s been awfully hot and dry and there’ve been an awful lot of fires around town lately and this is our way of saying thank you. Of course, it’s not enough, but—”
She bit her lip. Shut up, Ophelia!
Another chuckle. “Sounds like great fun. I’ve peeled a few potatoes in my time—I wish I could be there to help. I’m sure the Hot Dogs appreciate your support.” His voice became businesslike. “Unfortunately, I’m stuck in Birmingham for the Labor Day weekend. I’m calling to say that it will be Tuesday before I can get to Darling. I hope that won’t inconvenience you too much. And that you’re planning to do something pleasant over the holiday.”
Opie suddenly realized that she was holding her breath and she let it out. “No, no, of course not. I mean, of course, it won’t inconvenience me. And actually, it’s probably good. It’ll give me another day to get a few more things together so you can see what I’ve put together before we get together.”
Fire in the heart, smoke in the head. What an idiot she was. “Before you get here,” she amended lamely, feeling the heat rise in her face.
“Right, then. Thank you. Tuesday it is. It’ll likely be the middle of the afternoon before I get there, so I’ll be staying over Wednesday to give us plenty of time to work. There are some new ideas floating around the Project office—I’d like to share them with you. I think you’ll find them very interesting.”
Hearing the smile in his voice, she closed her eyes and swallowed.
And then he cleared his throat. In a slightly lower and more intimate tone, he said, “I’m looking forward to seeing you again, Mrs. Snow. On Tuesday.”
Before she could respond, before she could even think what to say, let alone get the words out, there was a click. He was gone.
And from the kitchen, the sound of a sharp pop and the smell of something scorching. The eggs had boiled dry.