“What is it, then?”
“And it’s not a what. It’s a who.”
I could feel her heart stop as mine did, as she said, very muffled: “... Oh.”
“Oh. Oh. Oh.”
His voice was mean, and he roared on: “It’s me, the forgotten man on this place. That tries to please you. By giving you the one thing you ever loved in your life, which is food. Food fit for a king. Food I’ll serve to a king, if a king’s coming to town. But no, though you love it, you look down on those who make it, and so you try to be half married and half not married. You want to eat a little bit, enough to live on, but not a real meal, enough to thank me for. You—”
“Val!”
She got up and did some marching, of a kind I’d never seen. Her hands, though pretty, had always seemed quite clumsy, as to keep them from bumping her side, she did what a fat woman does, swung them wide from the elbows, as though doing the crawl stroke. But now, with the hips straighter, she could let her hands act natural. One went to her belt, the other hung down straight, as she went to him and said: “What’s the matter, Val, you afraid to go alone?”
“Go where?”
“To church, of course.”
“What’s to be afraid of, there?”
“Mr. Commissioner Dayton, and his prowtocowl. And Dr. Carroll, and his hawndshake. And Mrs. Carroll, and her lorgnette. And—”
If it was how she mimicked, or what, I don’t know, but he broke, without letting her finish. He cringed, rubbed his hands, and was the same old bus boy again. He said: “What’s come over you, Holly? We had our differences, like when we gave the party. But we’d each concede a point, and—”
“I conceded the points!”
“And I did!”
“No.”
By then she was looking right up at him, smiling, almost laughing. She said: “You love to crack the whip, don’t you, Val? But like all whipcrackers, you jump at a whip too, don’t you? And those people, in church up there today, frighten you, don’t they? Well, they won’t bite you. You go now, leave soon if you want, and when I’m normal—we’ll see.”
She snapped her fingers under his nose and went swaying into the house. I waited, whistled some tune, scuffed my feet, and came bustling out. By then he was in the car, and said he’d ride me to town. For some minutes he had nothing to say, and then: “Holly, if you ask me, spends entirely too much time on the telephone, talking to her relations.”
“ ... You mean, in St. Mary’s?”
“I mean in Waldorf.”
Then one of those fights jarred me in a way I didn’t expect. It was late September, and his special dish that night was some kind of a lamb roast, done like a broil, on top of the stove. But while he was working on it and I was in the pantry, putting stuff in the freeze that he’d brought in the car, she called from the living-room door: “If that’s lamb you’re cooking, just leave me out altogether. I thought it would simplify everything if I had dinner alone. Little stew I made—not much but quite enough. I’ll keep you company and have some coffee with you, but on dinner, no.”
His face went white as usual, and he licked his lips in a way I hadn’t seen. But he said nothing until she’d drifted into the alcove and sat down at the table, to wait until we would come in. Then he said: “Duke, we’ll eat right here. In the kitchen, just us two.” And then, in a rotten way, raising his voice to make sure it carried: “That health food, stews and stuff like that, leaves kind of an odor.”
From where I was I could see and I strictly didn’t hear. He got out the white metal table and set it for two, with doilies all very snappy. He ladled my soup in a two-handled cup, put crackers on my butter plate. He served the lamb and carved it, ladled his own soup, took his place at the table, and waved me to my seat. She came in, looked at the lamb very interested, and listened while he talked, to the oven it seemed like, on how some roasts are better broiled, and some steaks better roasted. But he didn’t get up, and he didn’t get a third chair.
She turned to me and waited, and when I made no move to sit down she raised one foot and kicked. The table hit the deck with a crash you could hear a mile. She said: “Val, you and Duke will eat your dinner, if you eat your dinner, in the alcove, when it pleases me to drink my coffee.”
“You do this to me? Before Duke?”
“You spoke to Duke about an odor.”
She was walking around by then, her right hand at her belt once more, and once more he took what she said. Because once more here was the eye of a Hollis, and once more he couldn’t meet it. So we ate in the breakfast nook, or alcove as she called it, or went through the motions thereof. But all that, except for the table, was kind of a retake on other brawls, and wasn’t what shook me up. The unexpected part, to me, was she’d lost still more weight, so it swept over me, as she swayed around in front of him, that inside that blubber, once I’d melted it off, was a shape to set you nuts. I had never once suspected it.
From then on, my life was simply a hell. Because while I’d known that I loved her, that was love of a different kind. It was friendship, which in a way is deeper than love, as it’s there in spite of fat, and in spite of anything. This was all that and more besides, so it was more like insanity.
CHAPTER X
YOU CAN LIVE INSANE IF you have to, but not forever, and one day I woke up I was near the end of the plank, and had better watch what was next. It was an October morning, with the mug gone and the weather fine, and began by the water tank. I had run the pump, but we’d had a drought, and the well couldn’t take it, to use my usual system, which was pump till the tank was full, as shown by the overflow pipe squirting out. I had to pump half full, and do it somewhat by guesswork, so after I cut I would have to climb up, throw open the vent on its hinges, and gauge with a bamboo pole I had hung up there on a nail. As I started down, here she came from the house, and I may have stalled on the ladder, to watch her a second or two. She wasn’t quite normal yet, but was something to see just the same, round, strong, beautifully put together, with a high-born tilt to her head. In place of the waddle was a graceful, swaying walk, and in place of the crawl stroke was this way she had with her hands, of putting the right one to her belt, just over the hip, and letting the other one swing. In her tan skirt, maroon sweater, and maroon shoes, she looked more Spanish than ever.
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 s
aid 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 ther
e 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.”