Galatea (8 page)

When I was down, I asked if there was something she wanted, and at first she didn’t answer, but stood staring at the ladder. Then she said she was going to church and wanted me to drive her. I said: “That would be nice, wouldn’t it? First you play hooky, and then, lo and behold, you’re back, but not on a Sunday, on a weekday, and not with your husband, but with a tall, thin guy who somewhat favors a fighter.”

“I didn’t mean the church up in the city that Val and I go to. I mean my own. The one in St. Mary’s City.”

“You mean down in the party-line belt, where nobody ever tells anyone, as it might be heard and repeated?”

She thought that over, very dark, looking at the yellow Maryland sunlight. Then: “Duke, I have to go. Couldn’t you park somewhere so you wouldn’t be noticed? And wait for me? While I go in? To be—alone with myself?”

“Can’t
you
drive yourself down?”

“I want you with me.”

“I’m paid to work.”

“It’s not yet nine, and we’ll be back by lunchtime, easy. We’ll not be missed, no matter who calls or comes.”

But she knew, I think, I couldn’t say no to her, and around nine thirty we started, me at the wheel of her car, which by that time had the attachments removed, she curled up in one corner, a rug over her legs. She kept staring at southern Maryland, which was mainly cutover tobacco, with yellow suckers growing out of the stalks, some corn, quite a few flocks of turkeys, and scrub woods that gave off a wild-grape smell. We swung right at T.B., where 5 runs on 301, and rolled on down to Waldorf, eight or ten miles. Passing the Association warehouse, she cut her eyes hard left, in case Bill would show, but once we were by, she said take it easy. Then: “My, what a change, Duke! Waldorf used to be nothing. A station, a store, and a hotel. Now look. Houses everywhere—and hope.”

“And cocktail bars.”

“It always had liquor.”

“And bandits.”

“It always had gambling.”

She said there was a poker game that went on fifty years, “and one time a fellow won twelve hundred dollars in a jackpot. He hired a car, went to Washington, got four girls from C Street, and rode them right back to Waldorf. He commenced whooping and hollering and carrying on until his money was gone, and it was a scandal. He had no regard for his family.”

“Well?”

“It’s all part of it.”

“Part of what, Mrs. Val?”

“Everything. Me, maybe. He was no doubt some relation. Almost all of them are. I told you, till the university got busy, taught us, and all, it was a tragic land. It was—so poor. Poor, poor land, poor, poor people. Only difference is, these people are proud.”

We turned left at the Waldorf light, where 5 leaves 301 and runs by itself again, and started through the village. But she suddenly told me to stop by an open place in front of a store. When I had pulled in she said: “My mother has told me often that on this very spot an old man made his living. He had a cart and two runty oxen, a yoke of yellow scrubs. He’d come to town every Saturday, with a silver dollar he had, dented up from what he’d do with it, and smooth from the rub of his pocket. He’d look around, find him a stranger, and offer to bet. He’d throw down his silver dollar, and the bet was he could roll his cartwheel on top of it and swing his cart clear around. If he came off the dollar, the stranger could pick it up. If he stayed on, the stranger owed him one dollar. So the whole town would gather, and he’d sing his oxen around: ‘Come
yay
, come
gee
, come
petty whoa
, come
yo!
’ Some drivers sang
Haw
for the swing to the left, but mostly they sang
petty whoa
. It was a sight, my mother says, with those steers moving like ballet dancers, first the right foot over, then the left foot under, their heads swinging low in the yoke, always to the left, as seems to be natural to them, as the old man knew, of course. They never let him down and always won him his dollar. But the awful part was he lived on that dollar all week. It was all the money he had—and that was part of it, too.”

Something seemed to be gnawing her, and I didn’t quite get what it was, but it was wonderful to be with her, and to know she wanted to be with me. I went on, but we’d gone just a few hundred yards past the village when she told me to stop again. She stared at a side road and said: “Wilkes Booth came that way. Beyond is the Mudd house, still standing. Dr. Mudd set his leg, and was sent down to the islands, though he wasn’t guilty at all. Mudd’s a Charles County name, and the family still lives here. Mudds and Beans and Carricos. I hear Beans live in Texas. Dr. Semmes is a Charles County name. He’s the same family as the one who commanded some Confederate ship, I forget which one it was.”

“Booth stopped at your place?”

“Val shouldn’t have said so.”

I was getting curious about Booth, but she flinched away from him and I drove on. Pretty soon she said stop again, and when I did, pointed at a wagon track through a woods. She said: “That’s what our roads were like before this highway was built. If an oxcart met a fix, neither one could pass and the fix would have to unhook. They’d back it into the bushes, lead the horse around, and leave room for the cart to go through. That was part of it too.”

Around half past ten she gave a little gasp, and, sure enough, just ahead was the St. Mary’s County sign, quite a nice one, saying how welcome we were and how the county would grow. She exclaimed how beautiful it was, and I didn’t see much difference, but did my best to give out. She said: “It’s like Ireland, they say, which is out in the Gulf Stream, so it’s warm, wet, and green. It’s a long, narrow strip, no more than ten miles wide, between the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay. They close it in, so it’s warm and wet and green too. Except now, in the fall weather we have, it’ll be all kinds of different colors. You’ll see the difference. You watch.”

That began to interest me, and as we drove along, I did notice changes that weren’t her imagination. The houses were small, with green lawns, much like the ones we had passed, and the corn, tobacco, and poultry were the same. But the woods, which she kept looking at, were terrific. They were thick, with big trees, all blazing with yellow, red, and gold. She said: “Do you see the laurel, dogwood, and holly, Duke, all scattered under the trees? I was named for the holly. I came around Christmas time, when it was all over the house, and my mother never sees it without thinking of me.”

We passed a place called Leonardtown, the county seat apparently, with a sign on it telling how old it was, which was more than three hundred years, quite a way back, I thought, but when I asked her about it she said it was right, so no mistake had been made. We hit open country again and she started to talk. She said: “They had all this heaven, but at that time they didn’t know what we know, about fertilizer and such, and they let the land run down. By the Revolution it had run way down, and by one hundred years ago it had run down to nothing at all. And then they got a terrible idea. They took slaves and bred them, and drove them up for sale, in gangs that carried their chains. They drove them to Port Tobacco, which was just a slave town. The breeders and dealers and lawyers had offices one side of the square, the storekeepers had their places another side, the barracks were on the third side, where the stock was locked until sold, and the fourth side was open, facing Port Tobacco Creek, with the slave block right in the middle. A slave auction was the awfulest thing this country ever produced, with the buyers stripping the colored girls bare, looking at them and feeling them all over, little children being torn from mothers, whips coming down, and the screaming going on—just horrible. My mother has seen Port Tobacco; it was a ghost town before the bricks were carted away to La Plata, or Plata Station as they call it, and there can be no question about it. The one fine thing it had it still has: a little artesian well that even a slave could drink from, right at the side of the square.”

“In St. Mary’s, this place is?”

“No, it’s in Charles.”

“But it’s part of it too?”

“Part of it? Duke, do you know why they bred those slaves? They didn’t have enough to eat. They were hungry, like that old man, like his runty oxen, like everybody. Like me, maybe. That
could
be the answer. Why I couldn’t say no. To food, when I had the chance.”

“Stop breaking my heart.”

“I’m not weak no more.”

“
Any
more.”

“I talk like my people talk.”

“Talk as you please, Holly.”

I hadn’t known I would say it, her first name, at last, and she caught the start I gave when it slipped out of my mouth. She took my hand and pressed it.

We came to an arrow sign,
BAYSIDE LUMBER COMPANY
, which she said was her father’s sawmill, with her home just beyond. But she didn’t say stop, and I kept on past a little inlet, with boats tied up at landings. Past that was another sign,
ST. MARY’S CITY
, with news about the settlers of 1634. A road led up to the right, which she told me to follow. Beyond a hill we came to a hedge that ran on our right, with various buildings ahead, and she whispered I should stop. I parked beside the hedge, so we got a better view, and I could see, at the side, to our right, what looked like a school. Past that, the other side of a wall and through some trees, we could just see a church, an old brick one. In front of us, beyond the wall too, where it turned to follow the road, was what looked like a statehouse, about the size of the one in Carson, meaning quite small.

But at first she paid no attention to what she saw, but stayed with the smell, inhaling it with her eyes shut. She said: “Do you catch it, Duke? Isn’t it wonderful?”

“What is it, a flower?”

“Box. The hedges are old English box. There’s no smell in the world like it. And those trees there are old, old chestnuts. It’s not possible, but there they are. All American chestnuts were killed by the blight years ago. These weren’t. The water protected them, so the blight never came in. Do you wonder I love it? My beautiful St. Mary’s?”

“I almost love it myself.”

She pointed to the water, which we could see beyond the church, below a bluff, and told of the boats that had come. Bill had told me their names, the
Ark
and
Dove
, the night he got so drunk, but I let her tell me all over, as they seemed to mean so much to her. She told how it was spring when the settlers came ashore, “with the flowers blooming, the Indians friendly, and even the birds singing a welcome.” She said they picked one bird to be their special friend, “on account of the nest it built, so strong, so safe, as they hoped this place would be. The bird was the oriole.”

“That’s the Baltimore oriole?”

“Lord Baltimore had the patent.”

She went on: “Soon they built their statehouse, the one you see right there, except this one is a duplicate, put up in 1934, when we had the three hundredth anniversary. The original was carted off, as Port Tobacco was, in the dark, poor days. And they built Trinity Church, the one you see right there, which at least is partly original. At first Church of England, then Protestant Episcopal, as I am.”

“That you came to pray in. Remember?”

“ ... Don’t hurry me, Duke.”

“Why haven’t you gone to church?”

“All kinds of reasons, Duke.”

She thought, and then: “I’ve talked about doing good, and maybe I have done a little. But that’s not the reason I made a life in the church, and the real reason was wrong. I went there to hide. To be safe. To be where no one could laugh at me for being fat. Now you know. Now I’ve told the truth. I’m not that person at all, the one I pretended to be. She was just part of the lying. Duke, I’ve been trying to fool God.”

“Is He so easy fooled?”

“I tell you I’ve been living a lie.”

“And so far as reasons go, on this, there aren’t any bad ones. Some are better than others, that’s all that can be said. Listen, it’s getting late. Shove off, and make with the mumbling.”

“ ... If I do.”

“
If?
You better, do you hear me?”

She tied a scarf over her head, dropped the robe from her knees, and got out. She had put on a light tan coat, and stopped to button it. Then, her head bowed, she walked quite slow to a break in the hedge, went through, and headed for the church. She was gone some little time. A guy came out, and two or three women went in. Then here she came back, but the way her head was still bent didn’t mean peace of mind. She got in, pulled the robe over her knees, leaned her head on the door, but so the scarf hid her face. I waited for her to speak, and when she didn’t, asked her: “You pray?”

“ ... I didn’t go in.”

“Why not?”

“I couldn’t.”

She looked at the trees, and went on: “I went up to the door, then wanted to wait or something. Lloyd Dennis, my uncle, came out, passed, and didn’t know me. I realized, then, how different I must look, and a funny feeling came over me. Then those ladies came up, half peeped, and went in, and didn’t know me either, though I know them, from way-back. It was like that dream you have, where you’re floating downstairs, and everyone is there, staring into the coffin, and it’s you, so beautiful and all, at your own funeral. I wanted to go in, and couldn’t. I walked to the edge of the bluff, so nobody else would see me, and tried to make myself go in and kneel—and that’s all. I thought: if I could just come down here, where it’s part of me and all—I would get straightened out. I’m not. I’m in—worse shape—than ever.”

She started to cry, and I pulled ahead. I swung left past the statehouse, hit No. 5 again, and started back where we came from. After we passed the inlet, and were in open country again, I said: “Listen, you can’t kid a pal. There’s more to this, a whole lot more, than fine points connected with reasons. If that was all, you could start over, and I imagine God would be satisfied. Now, out with it: what’s this really about?”

“I couldn’t
make
myself tell you. Duke, some things are so black you dare not take them to church. You can’t have them in your heart when you kneel in there. To make with the mumbling, that’s sweet, to hear you say it, to know how you feel about it. But it’s not enough, to mumble. It won’t cleanse your heart. That has to come first—then all the rest follows. Duke, for the first time since I’ve owned that place up there, since by a crazy accident it was left to me—I’ve known Booth to be there. In me has been evil.”