Free Galatea by James M. Cain Page A

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