Teetoncey Read online

  She was looking down at the floor.

  Ben said angrily, "Tee, why don't you get some sleep," and took her back into the bedroom. He thought he might have been better off going to Mrs. Farrow's and listening to Ecclesiastes.

  He couldn't understand it. His mother seemed to have no trouble at all. She jabbered on as if she was getting answers to everything. And he'd never seen her so happy, not even when Reuben came home safe. He made a guess that after taking care of four men she was inspired to do all sorts of things, from making more dresses for Tee to getting Mr. Burrus to order some hair curling irons from Elizabeth City.

  The clock ticked on and Ben slowly went out of his mind waiting for his mother to return.

  10

  THE NEXT DAY Frank Scarborough and Kilbie Oden, who were twelve and thirteen, respectively, came by just to take a look. They stuck their heads in the door and got their look, but didn't say anything.

  Ben watched Tee. She was on the couch. She didn't seem to know what to make of it.

  Rachel said, "Come on in, boys."

  Frank answered, "No, ma'am, Mis' O'Neal."

  Ben was sure they did not want to be around a freak.

  They pulled their heads back out. Frank was nice looking but Kilbie had bad skin. His mother daubed salve that contained sweet spirit of niter, and something else, on it. He was speckled white a lot of the time. But Kilbie was plagued with an unfortunate face, anyway. It looked like piecrust with a round nose jammed in the middle. His hair was reddish. But Ben had always said, "They're as good-a-boys as any."

  Of the three of them, Kilbie, despite his looks, was the smartest, in Ben's opinion; including himself. He knew a lot about many things but he had his weaknesses, too. They had only "gotten" to Kilbie on one occasion, in Ben's memory, and it was over snakes.

  It was around the time that Jabez Tillett took the three of them up the feeder ditch to Lake Mattamuskeet. Vines hung over that wine-colored ditch and snakes lay up in the vines. It was not a recommended trip for those who were skitterish.

  That morning a few dropped into the boat and Jabez, Frank, and Ben were frantic with the oars trying to get them out. They hit each other as much as they did the snakes.

  But Kilbie stayed calm and wisely just reached down to pick them up one by one and toss them over the side. They weren't "pizen," he said. He even laughed when Frank hit Ben in the mouth with an oar blade, drawing blood.

  Two days later they got back at Kilbie. They made a cut in the rear wall of the Odens' outhouse and found a long, crooked stick. When Kilbie came out just past sunrise and sat down Ben guided the stick through the hole and up. He aimed perfectly. Just as he jabbed it, Frank hollered, "Snake!"

  Kilbie came out of the door as if his tail was torched. He ran across the flats with his pants down around his ankles. They heard his yelling in Chicky, and Mrs. Oden inspected his bottom for an hour trying to find fang marks.

  But it did prove to Ben and Frank that Kilbie wasn't always smart, and that under certain circumstances he was afraid of snakes.

  Kilbie seemed to be involved in everything around the village. He and his older brother, Everett, were the ones who dressed up on the eve of January 6, old Christmas, in a cow's hide and head, to charge up and down the streets of Chicky, pretending to be Old Buck, which the British professor had said was a direct descendant of St George's dragon. Actually, Old Buck was a direct descendant of the wild bull of Trent Woods, which was really an ox, according to Kilbie.

  Ben went on down to the dock with Frank and Kilbie. High water had messed it up several times. It swayed some. John O'Neal had built it two years before he capsized. Filene and Jabez had worked on it twice, and Reuben had put in six new pilings on a trip home. Only time it was used for a boat was when someone brought a sharpie or bugeye along it Sundays to visit Rachel. The boys crabbed off it summers to pass time. They didn't eat the crabs. They were the same as "trash fish." Sharks, skates, and the like.

  However, Ben, Frank, and Kilbie had also used the dock as a place to get away from prying ears. They'd been learning how to cuss the last summer and had spent some afternoons on the dock just cussing at each other between netting crabs. They had gone beyond "damn" and "hell."

  Soon as they sat down, Frank asked, "You see her naked?" He was dying to know.

  "Every pore of her," Ben answered proudly.

  "How's she built?"

  "All bones."

  "Nothin' else? You know what I mean," Frank said.

  "She's the same as Lucy, Frank," Ben replied, not really knowing, of course.

  But he had seen Lucy in the pure ivory hull. They'd all three stood on a box looking into Lucy's room after she'd had a bath until Mrs. Scarborough came storming around the side of the house and threw a rake at them.

  Kilbie said, "I can't figure out why she's speechless. It's the talk of Chicky."

  "It's a medical word," Ben said. "She had her brains addled."

  "Then she's crazy."

  "I wouldn't put it past her."

  Kilbie said, "Remember that mate, Armitage McNamara, off the Sally Hubbard} He come in on a surf. Prochorus Midgett had to rope him to get him off the island. I saw him. He was trussed up like a wild pig."

  "We're not worried about that, Kilbie. She hasn't the strength to lift a bobbin."

  "But I can't figure out why she can't talk. Even crazy people talk. Look at Mis' Peele. That's all she does. Not a word makes sense but they come out to never stop."

  Frank said slyly, "Mebbe she don't want to talk? You thought about that?"

  Ben hadn't at all.

  Frank went on. "Mebbe she's an orphan an' lookin' for a good home."

  Ben had to laugh. "Well, she could find a damn sight better than this one."

  "Not if you're starved. You said she was all bones."

  That was a thought. Although there weren't any on the Banks, there were orphans all over Carolina looking for homes.

  Kilbie said, "Mebbe she's deef an' dumb?"

  That was also a thought. Doc Meekins hadn't mentioned that. They talked on for about an hour until Frank had to go home. His papa docked about four usually and Frank had to help unload fish. Kilbie's papa was on duty at little Kinnakeet station and did not fish in the winter.

  In the house, Ben said, "Kilbie thinks she may be deef an' dumb."

  Rachel answered, "Kilbie's taken up medicine now?"

  11

  IN ANOTHER few days, Tee was almost recovered except that she was still speechless and acted like a spirit around the house. She sat a lot and stared with blue owl eyes. Ben could have sworn she found something remarkable in the comers of the living room. She'd seem to look vacantly into them for hours.

  She was also having bad dreams. Ben was now sleeping in his mother's room which wasn't too pleasant at best. Rachel sometimes snored with a sound that resembled a file being drawn through an empty gourd. Then every night or so Tee would awaken them by screaming. They'd rush in and she'd be sitting up in bed, shivering. It would take a spell to get her quieted down.

  By this time, Ben had decided she was definitely hopeless and began to wish that the British consul would take her off their hands. He did not mention that to his mother, though.

  But aside from the bad dreams, she was well enough to do some things. Rachel had her helping in the kitchen although she wasn't of much use. She could dry dishes but she dried them as if she was in a dream. Her hands moved. That was about all. But Ben thought she was fattening up a bit though she ate no more than a thrush.

  It snowed lightly on Tuesday, while they were parching coffee beans. Snow was a seldom thing on the Banks and it never lasted too long. The Gulf Stream winds and the sun melted it. But Tee watched it for several hours. The flakes were big and feathery.

  Ben asked, "You think it snows in England?"

  Rachel replied, "I would think so."

  "It's a wonder it doesn't remind her."

  "Mebbe it does."

  Maybe eels could walk, too, Ben
thought.

  On Thursday, Rachel said, "Ben, I want you to take her out. Go somewhere with her. Get her out into the fresh air. I'll bundle her up."

  "Go where?"

  "Anywhere. Jus' don't take her near Heron Shoal or talk about the Malta Empress."

  That was a jest, Ben thought. He could have talked about the devil and she wouldn't have known. He argued but ended up hitching Fid to the sand cart and helped her in. She seemed to go docilely wherever he led her. No different than Boo Dog, he thought.

  There was a board seat on the cart and then a canvas bag beneath it, behind Fid's tail, to drop feet in. It was mostly there for his mother, Ben assumed. Women were so finicky about their shoes.

  With Boo Dog trotting on ahead, Ben got the pony going and headed for the beach. He thought he'd show her some wrecks and whatever else was around Dead whale or bottle-nosed dolphin washed up. Maybe go on to Hatteras and show her the lighthouse. She'd never get a better view of shoals, with water crossing like herringbones, than up those steps.

  Had it been a stormy day she could see waves fighting each other on the shoals. They'd crash together and throw spray fifty feet up. It was the tallest lighthouse in America. Two hundred seven feet high. Ben climbed it when there wasn't anything better to do.

  He began to get a good feeling even though he was sitting by a mummy. It was the first time he'd ever done this. First time to squire a girl out this way. "Goin' gallin'." Except usually the gal had something to say, he would think.

  The sand cart rode smoothly, almost silently. The rims were wide on the two big wheels and unless the sand was deep and dry the tadrie had no problem. And Fid was hardly overworked. Rachel used him to go to Chicky for groceries or on Sundays. Ben forgot about him most of the time.

  They cut across toward the sea over the low dunes and clumps of juniper roots that had tumbled in on storm tides and were now half covered. The gold dog was running out in front; Fid's mane was bouncing and quivering in the breeze, shaggy coat ruffling. It didn't take much to stir the sand and start it blowing about an inch off the surface. It streamed out behind them.

  Ben glanced over at Teetoncey. She seemed to be coming alive a little. Her pale cheeks were turning red; her hair was whipping. The sharp nose was pointed into the wind. The large blue eyes were beginning to look around.

  They broke to the beach at about the Hettie Carmichael wreck. She'd been a three-masted schooner out of Baltimore, grounded in the winter of '96. Keel long broken, and up on the sand, she was rotting out. The mast and rigging had been cut off. She was good for firewood now.

  Ben said, "Shipwreck, Tee."

  The eyes narrowed.

  There were parts and pieces of wrecks, anything from bow or stem sections to ribbing, every few miles up and down the beach; some half buried in sand. Some surfacing again after a storm. Once they were stripped down, no one paid much attention to them.

  Ben stopped and got Tee down off the cart, walked her over to the Carmichael's stem, and then persuaded her on up. The sun was out and the sea was behaving itself. It was a pretty day.

  Ben thought maybe that just seeing a wreck would jog her memory and dear her mind. It didn't. Mainlanders usually frog-jumped all over the wrecks. Tee just stood there like a statue; looking more at the beach.

  Ben felt compelled to say something. "Spring an' summer, we sea-feesh all up an' down here. Haul nets. For croaker, spot, butterfish, sea bass, blues..."

  For all she cared, Ben thought, they could be fishing for mule dung.

  He got her down and back up on the cart. Now, he knew what it was like to be a nurse. He cut inland to circle around Heron Shoal and then dropped back down to the beach.

  As they jogged along, Ben thought that if she'd been a boy and could talk and listen, he could tell her about Reuben's trip down Cape Lookout way to watch the whaling. Lookout was at the bottom of Core Banks, last of the real barrier islands, on south of Ocracoke and Portsmouth Island.

  Reuben had sailed down as a boy, by himself, taking three days to go down and back. There were five or six crews camped from Shackleford Banks north to Hatteras in the spring, putting lookout "crow's nests" on the highest dunes and then waiting for the whales. They went out in boats and harpooned them; towed them ashore and cut the blubber out, boiling it in big kettles on the beach to get the oil. That went at thirty-five or forty cents a gallon. They'd also sell the whalebone "baleen." They got more than a dollar a pound for it, Reuben had once said. Diamond City, on Shackleford Banks, was the whaling capital of North Carolina.

  Although there wasn't as much whaling now, Ben planned to take the same trip in Me and the John O'Neal when he could. But there wasn't any use in trying to tell her about it. She wouldn't be interested, anyway, he thought. British girls would be concerned with fairy tales, likely.

  Going on south, he couldn't resist saying, "Ghosts out here at night, you know. They walk the beach in full moon." She was looking over the side, paying no attention.

  One night he'd come out with Frank Scarborough and they'd seen something near the Calderon, which was a Spanish wreck. Even the shapes of the hulks were spooky at night. With silver light on them, they looked like wooden skeletons.

  If the weather was good, it was a custom to take anybody from the mainland down on a full moon. Summers, especially. Once, they took Kilbie Oden's cousin, who was visiting from Charlotte, down to see them. He almost rendered his heart from fright.

  Ben had put on a sheet and hid in the Hettie Carmichael After Frank and Kilbie brought the cousin, Ben began making "wooing" sounds all over the place and then jumped up. What a story that boy had to take back to Charlotte, Ben often thought. But he admitted later that even he didn't like waiting all alone on the wreck until the others got there.

  "What moon were you born under?"

  No answer.

  "Mine was dark That means I'll never be thrifty an' strange things will happen to me."

  No answer.

  Why even talk?

  But it was true. The moon controlled the tide, which everyone knew, and the tide controlled the Banks. Wood cut on a dark moon never burned well. No one ever planted a garden on a dark moon, and death always came on an ebb tide.

  Ben got restless and decided to walk for a while. He got Tee down and turned her loose. She did seem to be interested in what was on the beach. She squatted to examine a Scotch Bonnet shell, turned a horseshoe crab over with her foot; then picked up a clamshell. She seemed to be looking at the lines in the shell.

  Well, Ben thought, if that's what she wanted he could show her a pile of oyster housings ten feet high.

  The reins had dropped off the seat and Fid was stepping all over them. Ben stopped long enough to take care of that, and when he looked up Tee was staring at him as if she'd never seen him before.

  "Whew," he said. Maybe she was a ghost that hadn't died properly.

  He sighed, "C'mon, Tee."

  12

  HE TOOK HER next to the store at Kinnakeet to show her off as much as anything. There were four old men sitting around the stove, as usual, spitting into the sandbox. All they ever did was talk wrecks, fishing, and politics. Zion Fulcher was one of them. He had the stump of his leg up on a nail keg. They all looked over.

  Ben said, "This is the British survivor."

  Tee was almost hiding behind him. He stepped away.

  "Name's Teetoncey. Temporarily."

  Zion cackled and spit a brown bullet of dark plug into the sandbox without losing a drop. "Heerd so. Looks it, all right. I'm proud to know ye. You swum in, eh? Had a rough toime?"

  Ben explained, "She can't talk."

  Zion said, "Well, oi can." He said direct to Tee, "Women an' younguns don't fare well in wrecks. Lost a lot of 'em off the Home down by Ocracoke."

  Ben thought to himself: Zion, why are you bringing that up? That was Racer's Storm, in 1837, before you were even born.

  Another old man, toothless as a scallop, said, "I feeshed plenty some that year."


  He hadn't even heard what Zion said. Ben sighed. "Tee, let's go." He took her hand.

  Zion spoke again. "Ben, Mis' Creedy come up to say that heifer got out o' powsture. Got her earmark on it. Split to right. You see it, you tell Mis' Creedy."

  "I will, Mr. Fulcher."

  Zion spit again, a good eight feet, and perfect.

  "You tried shootin' a gun off up near her nose? Ears moight be clogged."

  Ben shook his head. They hadn't tried that. It was an idea, though.

  They went on toward Hatteras Light, which had a stripe like a candy cane around it. Ben wanted her to see Diamond Shoals and the whale-oil beacon lamps. They were about the best sights on the island.

  To the west was Buxton Woods. A strange place, in Ben's opinion. It was only twelve or thirteen miles from the Gulf Stream. Lemons grew there. Chicky could be freezing while people sat around in Buxton in shirtsleeves. There were cottonmouth snakes there, and one man had sworn he'd seen an alligator at one pond between the ridges. Everyone thought he'd lied, though no one said so.

  Ben got Tee going up the steps of the lighthouse. The ladder well was dim and Ben liked to shout in it because it echoed. "Two hundred sixty-eight steps to the top, Tee," he yelled.

  "Tee ... Tee ... Tee."

  The echo funneled up and out.

  She was ahead of him. Climbing silently.

  "Mebbe we'll see a school o' feesh..."

  It echoed nicely up the tube. "Feesh ... feesh ... feesh."

  At about ninety steps, Ben stopped to holler again. There, the sound seemed to go down and hit the bottom, then slither back up the clammy bricks to glide out into the Hatteras graveyard sky. Step 110 was better, but 90 was all right. Ben cupped his hands around his mouth:

  Kill a cat

  Gut a bat

  Last one up's a

  Bloody rat

  Ben waited. Down it went. Then up it came.