06/01/2026
The Bug
Donna Harris
The summer Troy left for Marine boot camp, the house on Park Street grew quieter than Bertha had ever known it could be.
No boots stomping down the hallway.
No slammed doors.
No late-night arguments drifting through the thin walls while she pretended not to hear them.
At first the silence unnerved her. She would catch herself listening for him in the evenings, expecting the sound of his voice or the crackle of his radio from upstairs. Instead there was only the ticking clock in the dining room and the low hum of Atlanta drifting through the open windows.
Marjorie, sensing the heaviness hanging over her mother, began spending most afternoons with Trudie. The little girl adored her aunt. Trudie taught her card tricks, let her help knead biscuit dough, and filled her head with Bible stories and mountain folklore until Marjorie spoke of saints and haints with equal certainty.
For the first time in years, Bertha found herself with something unfamiliar:
Room to breathe.
Some mornings she lingered over coffee. Other afternoons she rode through Atlanta with no destination at all, simply enjoying the strange luxury of not being needed every second.
But peace never lasted long in Bertha’s world.
One humid July afternoon she received word that Asa Candler had suffered a stroke.
The news hit Atlanta like a church bell tolling after midnight.
Asa had become more than merely a businessman to Bertha over the years. He was part mentor, part co-conspirator, part reminder that fortunes could still be built by people bold enough to seize the changing South before anyone else realized it was changing.
When she first visited him after the stroke, she expected to find weakness.
Instead she found stubbornness.
Asa sat wrapped in a blanket on the shaded veranda of his great home, thinner now, his speech slower, but his eyes still sharp as broken glass. Beside him sat his new wife, elegant and patient, with soft hands and the calm manner of a woman accustomed to managing powerful men.
Bertha liked her immediately.
“You look worried,” Asa rasped as a servant placed frosted bottles of Coca-Cola between them.
“I am worried,” Bertha admitted.
He chuckled weakly. “Then don’t be. Ain’t dead yet.”
The bottles hissed when opened, cold enough that condensation rolled down the green glass in beads. Bertha took a long drink and let the sweetness settle her nerves.
Conversations with Asa had changed now.
Less empire-building.
More legacy.
Yet even after the stroke his mind still moved faster than most men’s.
“Land,” he told her one afternoon, pointing a trembling finger toward the city beyond the trees. “Buy land before the roads come. Atlanta’s crawling outward like ivy.”
Bertha listened carefully.
She had already begun dabbling in real estate speculation—small houses near trolley lines, overlooked lots near developing neighborhoods, old boarding homes others considered worn out. She had a gift for seeing value where respectable society saw decay.
Asa sharpened that instinct.
“Poor folks always need somewhere to sleep,” he told her. “Rich folks always need somewhere to invest. Own both and you’ll never starve.”
Those words stayed with her.
Meanwhile Olin Wynn remained steadily in her life like a soft song she had nearly forgotten she loved.
With Troy gone and Marjorie often away with Trudie, Bertha found herself allowing happiness in small dangerous doses.
Olin took her dancing again.
Sunday drives became common.
Sometimes they parked near Lakewood while he smoked ci******es and talked about engineering projects and train lines while she leaned against him listening to the crickets sing in the dark.
His own heartbreak had unexpectedly brought them closer. The young girlfriend he had once flirted with endlessly had run away with a jeweler from New Jersey, leaving behind nothing but a note and unpaid dress bills.
“Guess she liked diamonds more than railroad men,” Olin laughed bitterly.
Bertha surprised herself by feeling relieved.
For the first time in years she felt desired instead of merely depended upon.
With Olin she was not just a widow, mother, gambler, or survivor.
She was still a woman.
Still beautiful.
Still alive.
But Atlanta itself was changing faster than any of them.
One evening in the back room of a cigar shop off Decatur Street, Bertha was introduced to the city’s newest obsession.
“The Bug,” they called it.
At first glance it seemed harmless enough. Housewives picked number combinations each morning from dreams, birthdays, Bible verses, license plates, funeral dates, lucky charms, or pure instinct. Runners moved quietly through neighborhoods collecting nickels and dimes wrapped in scraps of paper. Every night the winning numbers were drawn.
And when women won?
They talked.
That was the real genius of it.
Not rich men.
Not gangsters.
Housewives.
Laundry women.
Church ladies.
Widows.
Women who had never before stepped foot near a gambling table.
Bertha watched carefully as one woman excitedly explained how she’d won enough money to buy her daughter new shoes.
Another claimed she’d dreamed of three blackbirds and played the number 333.
The room buzzed with nervous excitement.
Bertha immediately understood what the men running it did not:
Women would make it enormous.
Women talked over fences, at beauty parlors, church socials, grocery counters, quilting circles, and front porches. They carried news faster than newspapers.
If the women embraced The Bug, Atlanta would belong to it.
And Bertha intended to make sure they did.
By autumn she had runners working quietly through neighborhoods all over the city.
Respectable women who would have fainted dead away at the sight of poker chips now tucked betting slips into recipe books and apron pockets.
The money came fast.
Very fast.
Too fast perhaps.
Because even during her happiest moments, Bertha never entirely forgot the shadow standing just beyond the porch light.
Chief Beavers.
So far he had asked nothing of her.
No repayment.
No favors returned.
But Bertha knew men like him did not forget debts.
Especially debts involving sons, scandals, and dead boys at military schools.
Some nights she would sit alone after Olin had gone home, listening to the cicadas outside while balancing betting ledgers beneath the kitchen lamp.
And in those quiet moments she would sometimes wonder which would arrive first—
Fortune…
—or the bill for everything she owed.
