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your mother who rang me, asking me to hold off until tonight, but if any straightening is to be done, your brother will have to do it.”
    Now that news about Mother threw me off, and for a moment I was annoyed that Sonya hadn’t mentioned it, but then it occurred to me, perhaps she hadn’t known it. Also, his manner, and this news about Burl, that he had to do the straightening if straightening was going to be done, reinforced what I’d smelled, from the way she had acted about it, that something was lurking under cover that I’d had no idea of. So I heard myself tell him, “Well, I’m strictly here on my own. I haven’t talked to my brother in a couple of months, or seen my mother since Sunday. If I represent anyone, it’s Sonya.”
    “I represent her, Mr. Kirby.”
    His voice had a bit of a rasp.
    “Then, Mr. Lang, suppose we get at it. Do you mind my asking, so I have things perfectly clear, what it was you intended to do, that you held off from at my mother’s request?”
    “Mr. Kirby, it was you who came to see me.”
    “Or in other words, get at it?”
    “If you don’t mind.”
    My temper was beating a tattoo in my throat, but I swallowed it under control, and told him: “Well, we have two questions, here, as I see it. One is moral, and I don’t condone it, or try to minimize it. What my brother did was unspeakable, I don’t try to pretend it was not. But I know nothing I can do about it.
    “The other question is financial, and about that, there is something I can do, and will, if permitted. As Sonya explained it to me, it comes down to this: If no charges are filed, if the whole matter is dropped, a Maryland abortion is out, and Sonya must have the child. That, she tells me, she’s willing to do, and in fact prefers it to what she calls the stink that would surely come if my brother is persecuted. But of course, it will entail a certain expense, especially at the Florence Crittenton Home. So in return for your dropping the charges, I’m willing to bear that expense. I can give you a check right now.”
    Money talks, and I always carry a blank check in my wallet. I slipped it out now, like a magician palming a card, and waved it in front of his eyes. He hardly looked at it. Instead, he asked: “Do you know what the charges will be?”
    “Sonya told me, yes.”
    “And you think the amount you suggest, the Florence Crittenton expense, adequately compensates her?”
    “It’s compensation for the actual costs.”
    “It’s no compensation at all.”
    “It’s not hay, it’s four-figure money.”
    “But what does it leave her? What does she get out of it?”
    “Well if you put it on that basis—?”
    “I do, and you ought to be damned glad! You should be thanking God that I do. Because there’s another basis that I could put it on—”
    “Louis!” said Mrs. Lang. “Please!”
    “Our family,” he went on, paying no attention to her, “used to farm a place near Waldorf in Charles County, and my grandmother used to sell eggs. She sold eggs that she collected, from women all around, to a storekeeper on the Bryantown Road, who she claimed paid her better than any other. So one Saturday afternoon my grandfather lent her the truck, the little Ford truck that he had, so she could take her eggs in and sell them, and then he walked to Ryon’s store, that was across from the railroad station, to see a show that they had.
    “And the show was two runt oxen, that an old buzzard drove in every week, to make his week’s groceries with. The store kind of helped him out, by keeping silver dollars for him, silver dollars in the till, and how the thing worked was: The old buzzard would find him a sucker, and then bet him a silver dollar that he could throw it down—down in the dirt in front of the store, then roll the cartwheel on it, by word command to the oxen, and then talk them around. He would talk ’em, till they turned the cart clear around, sidewise a step at a time, without coming off the