Free Galatea by James M. Cain

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