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.”