Pay the Piper by Joan Williams

party, Laurel considered that most of her life she had felt herself heading upstream, alone. Often, she wondered that people she dealt with in publishing did not see down to her true, ignorant, inner depth. So long had she lived, when she was young, in an environment without culture that there was no way she could catch up. She remembered, though, when she and William married and he started his job at Events-Empire, he’d stood with his briefcase, saying, “I’m going somewhere in this world, and you can come along or not.” She had looked at him in silence, thinking she’d arrived somewhere already and did not see why he might think she’d lag behind. However, it did not seem a wifely comment.
    She and Rick stopped on the way for Miss Mamie’s famous mousetrap cheese, but also because a van was parked near the store saying county dogs could be vaccinated there. An elderly gray-haired black man came out, holding a big dog on a rope with a collar saying King . “We gone to the dawgs today,” he called out. Inside, Miss Mamie was disappointed about cutting her cheese; it kept crumbling. “It hasn’t been out of the box long enough. And honey, I wanted it to look so nice for you.” Laurel and Rick enjoyed her handmade signs: for sale she had Hair Gromer and Congeled Salad. “A long way from Soundport,” he said, coming outside. They drove on eating crumbly cheese Miss Mamie wouldn’t take money for, enjoying it, as Buff did. Rabbits made crazy running patterns all down the roads, between ditches laden with kudzu. When they went up to Allie’s, widows of Laurel’s uncles were sitting under oak trees; they had never seemed anything but blood kin. Sitting on the ground, Laurel suddenly asked what her mother had been like as a girl here.
    Her Aunt Letty said, “Kate was the prettiest girl I ever laid my eyes on.”
    â€œAnd couldn’t she play the organ. Lord have mercy,” said Old Man Agnew, from down the road.
    â€œI thought she only played the piano,” Laurel said.
    â€œHoney, she played the organ at both our churches for funerals. When Kate pumped that organ and struck into ‘The World is Waiting for the Sunrise,’ there was not a dry eye.”
    â€œGirl.” Her Uncle Tate broke in eventually. “You keep listening to this talk, and that cream’s been ready. Come on, you dawgs, and get yours.” He set down two bowls full. His dog and Buff came up out of the shade of a crepe myrtle.
    â€œDon’t let none of the dogs roaming around get into them peach pits you got out back,” A. T. Murray said. “Ain’t no sight worse in this world than seeing a dog trying to pass a peach pit.”
    â€œHush your mouth,” Allie said, laughing.
    â€œAll this mud.” Tate continued to talk about farming. “My cotton picker and my combine both are laid up from mud. Their transmissions are strained. Man called and wanted to know if I was coming to grange meeting tomorrow. Said they were going to talk about cotton. I said, Shoot, I don’t want to talk about cotton.”
    â€œThe cost of insurance and the cost of fixing equipment, they’re going to eat you up,” Sam Upchurch said. He was a black friend who happened along in time for ice cream. “Fields about dried out. I hoped and prayed and watched. And nothing to do but talk about the weather. A man might try not to think about it, but that crop is out there.”
    â€œSometimes,” said Tate, “I get in my truck and I start riding. Riding like I could do something about it all, or change things.” He laughed. “Only thing that changes is, I end up in a turnrow and having a bill for my truck’s transmission too. Always there is next year.” He looked off to the road, and Laurel watched all the others look the same direction. “But last year my beans lay in that field so long,” he said.
    â€œYou and