The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady (18 page)

“Well, here we are,” Ophelia said, slowing the car at the top of the small hill that overlooked the camp, beside a large wooden sign.

Welcome to Camp Briarwood
Civilian Conservation Corps
Company 432, Camp SCS-8

“Golly,” Sarah said, her eyes widening. She sat up and looked through the windshield at the camp below them. “It's huge, Mom! It's a lot bigger than I thought.”

“One of the biggest camps in the state,” Ophelia replied proudly. “It's really something, isn't it?”

Camp Briarwood sprawled like a small city across about twenty acres of open meadow, a mile or so from the eastern edge of Briar's Swamp. On the flat plain below them lay an orderly arrangement of two dozen wooden buildings of similar construction, all single story, each painted a dark forest green with a brown shingled roof. They were laid out around a large rectangular parade ground, its grass neatly clipped, with a graveled road that traced another rectangle around the perimeter of the buildings. The place looked like a military compound, which it was, partly. That is, it was run by Army officers, and there was enough military discipline to keep the young men organized and working in an orderly way, although not as much as they would have encountered in a real Army camp.

As they would in the Army, though, the “enrollees” (that's what the boys were called) were given free dental and medical care, free inoculations, and free meals and lodging and clothing. They received a wage of $30 a month, $25 of which was automatically sent home to their families, all of whom were on relief. For that, each boy traded eight hours of labor, five days a week. Everybody was there, as Captain Campbell said firmly, to do a job. An important job.

“Those are the administration buildings,” Ophelia said, pointing to two identical structures on the right. “And those are the barracks where the enrollees sleep.” She pointed to the left, to a row of four long green-painted frame buildings with doors at either end, each capable of housing fifty young men. “Beyond them are the officers' quarters and the camp guesthouse. When I began working here, there were already 192 enrollees with more on the way, along with a half-dozen officers. Before the barracks were built, the boys lived in tents.”
She chuckled. “I'm told that they were glad to move out of those tents. The barracks don't leak. And they're heated.” Which mattered in January, when the temperature could go as low as ten or fifteen degrees above zero.

“What do the guys do all day?” Sarah asked wonderingly. “Do they go to school, maybe?”

“They
work
,” Ophelia said, remembering what the captain had told her. “That's what they're here for.”

Ophelia knew that when the boys arrived, most of them had never held a steady job—and their dads weren't holding steady jobs, either, thanks (or no thanks) to the Depression. Many of them had roamed around the country, catching rides on freight trains, which meant avoiding the railroad cops, sleeping in cardboard boxes in hobo jungles beside the tracks, picking up whatever work they could find in return for something to eat. Ophelia found it frightening that a whole generation of young American men had grown up with no experience of making or building or creating something lasting, or trading their labor for a regular paycheck.

So for the enrollees, the camp's regular daily and weekly work schedule was a crucial part of their learning. Monday through Friday, they were awakened before dawn by the camp bugler blowing reveille. Dressed, beds made, they went for calisthenics, then breakfast in the mess hall. Then they picked up their equipment and climbed into trucks that drove them wherever they were scheduled to work that day. At noon, the mess wagon took lunch to the job site. The trucks brought them back in time to wash up and get ready for supper, announced with another bugle call.

The camp had been built just a short distance from Briar's Swamp for an important reason, Ophelia had learned. According to the “Mission Statement” posted on the wall in the quartermaster's office, the first big work project was to drain the
swamp to control the mosquitos and “to put the land into condition for continuous production of timber.” One or two people in Darling—including Bessie Bloodworth—were strongly opposed, since the swamp was a natural feature of the land and draining it would mean denying a home to many different species of wildlife. But that was definitely a minority opinion, and the mission was going forward. To get that job done, the boys spent their workdays digging drainage ditches, building roads, and clearing firebreaks. Once finished with that, there were other projects on the camp's agenda.

“But they don't work all the time,” Ophelia added. “The boys eat supper in the mess hall, over there.” She pointed. “After supper, they can go to the rec hall—that's the building next to the mess hall. Or they can take classes in the education building. That's the shop building, behind it. Or they can catch a ride into town for a movie, as long as they're back by lights-out.”

On weekdays, the bugle call for lights-out came at ten p.m. Saturday mornings were reserved for camp cleanup and personal chores. On Saturday afternoons, there were organized sports, or trucks took the boys into town for a matinee movie and a stroll around the square, or dropped them off at the Roller Palace. On Saturday nights there was a dance, to which the townspeople were invited. Some of the enrollees had brought their clarinets and saxophones and trumpets and trombones, and formed a dance band, calling themselves the Briarwood Boogie Boys. Ophelia hadn't been to any of the dances yet—Jed wasn't much for dancing—so she hadn't heard them. But everybody said that while the Boogie Boys weren't quite Benny Goodman, they were really quite good. Ophelia wished she could get Jed to at least come and listen. It sounded like fun.

“Looks like they're playing baseball,” Sarah said, pointing
to a game that was underway on a diamond just behind the rec hall.

“It's a tournament,” Ophelia replied. “It's been going on all month, among six or seven of the camps in this part of the state.” One of the camp officers was in charge of organized sports—baseball, basketball, boxing, horseshoes, footraces, and even table tennis and pool, played in the rec hall. There was a drill team, too, and a flag team and regular calisthenics. When Ophelia interviewed Captain Campbell, he had mentioned that the sports and games weren't just designed to keep the enrollees occupied and out of trouble. They were an important part of the plan to put more meat and muscle on the young men, many of whom had been underweight and malnourished when they arrived at the camp. For many, food hadn't been easy to come by when they were living at home or hopping freight trains to get from here to there, in hopes of more opportunities.

Ophelia reached over and ruffled her daughter's hair. “I wrote about the baseball tournament in my newspaper column last week. Bet you didn't read it, did you?”

“I'm afraid not,” Sarah said, laughing ruefully. “But now that I know what it's like out here, I'll try to do better.” A deeply tanned young man in a khaki uniform with the sleeves rolled up walked past the car and turned to wave at Sarah with a wink and a broad grin. Sarah, blushing, waved back. “Golly,” she breathed. “He's cute!”

Ophelia couldn't help smiling. Last year, boys had been the object of Sarah's scorn. Now, it was different. Sarah was definitely growing up. Ophelia put the car in gear, and they started down the hill, bearing right, toward the administration buildings. Through the open car windows, they heard the whack of a ball being solidly hit and a chorus of
wild yells—the rebel yell—as the hitter rounded the bases. It sounded as if somebody had just scored a home run.

“Hey.” Sarah sat up straight. “Can I go watch the baseball game while you get your stuff?”

Ophelia shook her head firmly. “Not a good idea, dear. Some of these boys haven't seen a girl in a while. You'd be mobbed.”

Sarah gave her a long-suffering look. “That's the idea, Mom. Being mobbed by a few boys wouldn't hurt a bit. I'll bet it would be fun. Pretty please?”

“Not on your life,” Ophelia said. “You know what your father would say to
that
idea.” She turned right at the main camp signpost, followed the gravel road a quarter of the way around the parade ground, and parked behind the farthest administration building. “If you don't want to come in with me, you can stay out here and read.” She turned off the ignition. “You did bring a book, didn't you?” She really didn't have to ask. Sarah was a bookworm. She always had a book with her.

“Yeah,” Sarah said and pulled a book out of the satchel on the floor. “Nancy Drew. Miss Rogers got it for me at the library.” She held it up. “
The Secret of Red Gate Farm.
”

“Oh, good,” Ophelia said. Grown-up that she was, she enjoyed reading the Nancy Drew books, and she always reached for them when Sarah was finished. “What's it about?”

“Nancy, Bess, and George are conducting an undercover investigation to get the scoop on a counterfeit money ring and turn the information over to federal agents. I can't wait to see what's going to happen next—looks like Nancy is about to be captured by the counterfeiters.” Sarah grinned mischievously. “Maybe they'll torture her to get her to give up the secret code she stole.”

An undercover investigation?
Ophelia was startled, since those were the same words—the very same!—that Charlie had used to describe the assignment he had given her. It was unsettling to hear that Nancy Drew, who was usually so astute and careful, had gone undercover and was about to be captured. And
tortured
? Surely not. She frowned. Anyway, that was a story, just fiction. It had nothing at all to do with real life. Still, maybe there was more to this undercover stuff than she had thought. Maybe—

Ophelia pushed the thought away, opened the door, and got out of the car, taking her large handbag with her. “I won't be too long, Sarah. Please wait for me here. And don't leave the car,” she added through the open window. She trusted her daughter, but she knew that the baseball game might be tempting.

“I won't,” Sarah said, opening her book. “I want to see if Nancy actually gets captured. It's kind of scary, actually. These counterfeiters are dangerous people. If Nancy can get the goods on them, it'll shoot down their whole operation, so they've got a lot at stake. She'll have to be careful.”

And for the first time, Ophelia (an optimistic person who liked to look on the bright side of things) thought of the dangers she might face—and the consequences—if somebody caught her doing what Charlie had asked her to do. She felt a cold knot of apprehension, almost of fear, tightening somewhere deep inside, and she shivered. She hadn't thought of it before, but she could lose her job! And if she was accused of taking records she wasn't supposed to have access to, she might even go to jail. But worse, if she was caught by whoever—

Ophelia was startled out of her frightened thoughts by footsteps on gravel and looked up to see a familiar figure coming toward her. It was Lucy Murphy, one of the Dahlias.
Lucy had started working at the camp six months ago as a part-time kitchen helper, but she soon showed what she was made of and had been promoted several times. Now, she managed the entire food service for the camp, planning meals, making up the grocery and supplies orders, and supervising the enrollee kitchen helpers who did the prep work, cooked, baked, and cleaned up. Ophelia put Lucy's menus in the
Dispatch
every week, so the mothers of local boys could see how well their sons were eating—fried chicken, meat loaf, pot roast, pulled pork, and macaroni and cheese, which they probably didn't get at home on a regular basis.

“Hey, Lucy,” Ophelia said, raising her hand in a greeting. Trim and athletic, Lucy was wearing a green short-sleeved blouse and khaki-colored slacks, her flaming red hair tied back with a matching green ribbon, a purse swinging from one shoulder. Her cheeks were flushed—as a redhead, she had porcelain skin—and she looked unusually attractive.

For a moment, Ophelia thought Lucy might turn and go the other way, almost as if she wanted to avoid a conversation. But then she changed her mind and came forward. Studying her, Ophelia sighed, wishing she dared to wear slacks. A couple of weeks before, she had seen a pair she liked in the women's department at Katz's. She had bought them on impulse, but she hadn't had the courage to wear them yet. Jed would put up a big fuss. He didn't mind her wearing coveralls when she was working on the Linotype and helping Charlie around the newspaper press, but he was dead set against women wearing men's clothes in public.

“Hey, Ophelia.” Lucy wore an unusually sober expression—that is, unusual for Lucy, who never let anything bother her. “You've heard what happened to Rona Jean?”

Ophelia nodded. “I know about the murder, but that's about the size of it. A sad thing.”

“Yes. Do you think . . . do they know . . .” Lucy swallowed. “Have they caught the guy yet?”

“Not so far as I know,” Ophelia said, thinking that Lucy seemed awfully apprehensive. But then, Ralph was on the railroad and she spent a lot of evenings alone. Rona Jean's murder probably made her feel vulnerable. “I'm sure the sheriff's doing an investigation,” she added.

“I
hope
so,” Lucy said, in an odd voice. “We can't have somebody running around killing people. I mean, it's downright scary, is what it is.”

Uncomfortably, Ophelia changed the subject. “I didn't think you worked on Saturday.” Five days a week, the camp had hot meals, but on the weekends, the enrollees set out cereals for breakfast and sandwich and salad fixings for lunch and supper, and everybody helped themselves. “I figured you'd be home with Ralph today, working in your garden.”

“I'm not here, usually,” Lucy said in an offhand way. “But Ralph had to make a run to Nashville, and I had a stack of orders to finish.”