Galatea

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This story is laid in southern Maryland, a tongue of land comprising five small counties between the Patapsco, Chesapeake, and Potomac estuaries, geographically the South’s northernmost outpost, spiritually of its deepest heart. The Marylander will find much in it that is familiar to him, of names, places, and legend, but the characters are imaginary, not representing, nor being intended to represent, actual persons.

I chopped, grubbed, and shoveled, and the deeper I dug the keener I felt it: I was being watched. At first I tried not to mind, as a holdup case, his first day out, on a cockeyed probation deal, could expect watching, especially if left alone on the farm he’d been put to work on. But it rattled me, and didn’t help any that I was going about it all wrong, the job I’d been given to do. The order was get out trees, and the right way was hire a dozer. But, maybe on account of the cost, maybe on account of me, to test the stuff I had in me, nothing had been said about that, and I was left with the tools that were there. With chain, rope, blocks, and stuff from the implement shed, and a ladder to help with the climbing, I thought I might get by, shackling trees to each other and hauling them out by the roots. But it meant trenching around each one, and was slow, pesky, and tough.

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