"My name? What the hell do you mean, my name?"
"I mean Trooper Truth."
"Someone carved Trooper Truth on her body?" Andy was shocked and amazed. "What…? What…?"
"I don't know what the hell what or anything else. But I think it might be a damn good idea to scrap this Trooper Truth shit and return to normal police duties before any more damage is done."
"You can't blame me for what some deranged killer did! As awful as I feel about the victim, I had nothing to do with her death and I promise to help in any way. Listen, we had an agreement and you promised," Andy reminded her. "And don't forget what I said a year ago when we discussed all this. If you tell the truth, the forces of evil don't like it, and shit happens. But in the end, truth will prevail."
"Oh, for God's sake!" Hammer replied unkindly and with impatience. "Please, don't subject me to any more of your naive philosophizing!"
"That hurts," Andy said, stung and disappointed, but more determined than ever. "Read Trooper Truth in the morning and maybe we'll talk."
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TANGIER ISLAND
by Trooper Truth
Although it may wish it wasn't at the moment, Tangier Island is part of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and was happened upon in 1608 when John Smith and seven soldiers, six gentlemen, and a doctor of Physicke were exploring the Chesapeake Bay in a three-ton open barge.
While searching for fit harbors and habitations, they found themselves in the midst of many isles, which they named the Russell Isles. When they crossed the bay to the eastern shore, they found themselves confronted by two grim, stout Naturals, or Salvages, as Smith called them, who bore long poles with bone heads.
"Who are you and what do you have in mind?" the Salvages boldly demanded in the language of Powhatan, called such because this was what the great chief Powhatan, father of Pocahontas, spoke.
Smith answered them in their own language, which impressed the Salvages considerably, and I pause here to digress a moment about the importance of communication, which certainly is a timely issue in light of what happened yesterday on the very island (Tangier) that John Smith discovered. No government, including
Virginia's, should make laws and take initiatives that affect a people who speak backward. If an Islander says, for example, "Well, this is a nice one," or "It ain't rainin' none," he may mean quite the opposite, depending on his speech tune, as native Tangierman David L. Shores explains in his definitive work Tangier Island: Place, People, and Talk.
Now, in the old days, if an Islander meant the opposite of what he said, then he would signal as such by adding, "over the left," which obviously meant he was talking backwards. He would say, "It ain't rainin' much, over the left," which was only fair if he really meant it was raining like hell. Not so anymore. Only those intimately acquainted with the Islanders' use of inflection and facial expression might detect what was really meant when, as another example, a waterman says, "I have neither interest in going" or "That's a poor arster."
"What you're getting at, I guess," said my closest friend, who from now on I will refer to as my wise confidante, "is if the Islanders' reaction to the VASCAR speed traps was, 'Well, this is nice!' then what they probably meant was that the speed traps aren't nice at all and they're really pissed off about them. Based on what you've told me, clearly, the island woman Ginny Crockett was annoyed, even if she talked backward to the police, correct?"
"Exactly my point," I agreed. "The governor shouldn't do anything to or on that island without a full comprehension of backward talking. And it's pretty clear to me that the governor's administration is quite skilled at backward thinking, but not backward talking. And they've just done a brilliant thing."
'And you just had a forceful inflection in your voice and an exaggerated high pitch and prolonged your syllables while jerking your chin and raising your eyebrows when you said they've just done a brilliant thing. Does that mean you really meant the opposite?"
"Ah! I was testing you to see if you're catching on," I replied. "It's not what you say, but how you say it."
"I'm wondering if John Smith might have had a similar difficulty when dealing with the Salvages," my wise confidante mused. "Perhaps the Salvages talked backward as well."
"Well, you can be sure that how they said things was often much more important than what they said," I replied.
After a friendly visit with the Salvages, Smith set sail again, following inlets and the coast, when suddenly an extreame gust of wind, rayne, thunder, and lightening happened, that with great danger we escaped the unmerciful raging of that Ocean-like water, in Smith's words. Barely escaping with their lives, they sought shelter on one of many islands that Smith named the Russell Isles.
Setting sail again, they were struck by a second storm that blew their mast and sail overboard and almost sank them as they frantically bailed out the barge. For two days, they waited out the tempestuous weather and searched for water to drink on an uninhabitable spot that Smith named Limbo Island. Finally, they repaired their sails with the shirts off their own backs and headed home to Jamestown.
Most scholars seem to believe that Tangier is one of the Russell Isles. But I asked myself after studying several old maps and a modern flight chart: Is it possible that
Tangier might really be Limbo, and might this explain the Islanders' tendency not to mean what they say or say what they mean? I don't think historians can completely rule out the possibility any more than I can offer much of a case for it. But if you look on a Washington sectional flight chart, you will see that Tangier and Limbo Islands are only a few minutes' helicopter flight apart.
To investigate this further, I decided to fly a helicopter to Jamestown and from there record the exact coordinates were Smith to sail from Jamestown to Tangier and then return to Jamestown and sail to Limbo. Note the geographic coordinates, which I shall supply here for Jamestown, Tangier, and Limbo as they were displayed on my GPS when I hovered over each island. After you study the chart, I will explain the significance:
JAMESTOWN
ISLAND
TANGIER
ISLAND
LIMBO
ISLAND
LATITUDE
37° 12.47
37° 49.51
37° 55.75
LONGITUDE
76° 46.66
75° 59.87
76° 01.58
Clearly, Tangier and Limbo are not at all far from each other. So the hypothetical case I make is if you, the reader, imagine Smith and his men in the open barge with terrible rains, thunder, lightning, and zero visibility, how could Smith be so certain that when he thought he sought refuge on what he named Tangier Island that he really wasn't on Limbo Island instead? I know with reasonable certainty that had I been flying in such conditions after a nip or two of Wild Turkey, perhaps I could have ended up on Limbo as easily as anywhere else.
Whether Tangier is really Limbo will never be known. I doubt if John Smith were here today that even he could tell us. But I have no doubt that if Smith visited Tangier in modern times, he would feel as if he were in Limbo, even if he weren't.
If Tangier is really Limbo, then I personally wish the name had stuck. I believe Limbo Island could have developed a strong and specialized market in attracting tourists who are neither here nor there and would like to go somewhere in the middle of nowhere and do nothing about anything for a while. I also don't think the governor of Virginia would have bothered ordering speed traps painted on the streets of a place named Limbo, nor would the people of Limbo have cared one way or other.
Be careful out there!
Seven
Andy could measure Hammer's impatience by the rhythm of her fingers drumming her desk. This moment, she was tapping out a loud staccato on her ink blotter as Andy briefed her on Tangier Island and how the uprising was connected to the Tangiermen's past, because he had no reason to know at this moment that his comments about dental malpractice had riled up the Islanders just as much as the speed trap had.
>
"Most of those people probably don't even know their past and have never heard of John Smith," Hammer countered from behind her desk, which afforded a fine view of the circular drive in front of headquarters and flags fluttering from tall poles.
"I wouldn't underestimate them, and I'm just trying to give you a little background," Andy replied, sweating beneath his uniform and dreading what Hammer was going to say about his latest Trooper Truth essay. "My point is, the Islanders are programmed to think people are picaroons out to steal their island from them and everything on it-very much the way the Native
Americans felt when the English sailed to Jamestown and started building their fort."
"Picaroons?" Hammer frowned.
"What the Islanders call pirates."
"Oh, God," she groaned.
Windy Brees suddenly wafted into Hammer's office with an excited look on her made-up face and a UPS package clutched in her bright red-painted fingernails.
"Holy heavens to Betsy!" Windy exclaimed. "You'll never guess what happened!"
Hammer never liked it when her secretary made her guess. "Just tell me," Hammer said with an edge of impatience.
"We've got more trouble than you can poke a snake at!" Windy breathlessly said. "Some dentist who works on those Tangierians is missing! He went to the island yesterday as usual, and his wife told the Reedville police that he never came back on the ferry, and when the clinic was called, some strange-talking boy said the dentist was being held hostage until the governor makes the island an independent state. Or something like that."
"Yes, I am already aware of what's happened. Apparently, the Islanders are holding him hostage in the medical clinic," Hammer said.
"The clinic?" Andy said as a very bad feeling crept over him.
"So the dentist told me when they let him make a phone call," Hammer explained. "But I don't know his name. He said he couldn't give it to me."
"Sherman Fox," Windy filled her in. "It's a weird spelling." She glanced at her notepad. "F-A-U-X."
"It's Faux," Andy corrected her.
"It's fo'? Fo' what?" Windy puzzled.
"Never mind," Hammer abruptly said. "Andy, did you happen to see this dentist when you were painting the speed trap yesterday?"
"No," he replied, neglecting to mention that when he had returned to the island later, wearing a disguise, he hadn't seen the dentist, either, but had probably been within twenty feet of him because one of the places Andy had visited was the medical clinic.
He needed to tell Hammer about his secret mission, but he thought it wise to wait until she was in a better mood.
"A large group of watermen were marching down Janders Road," he added, "and I'm not surprised because the Islanders have a long history of resentment and isolation. And as much as I admire Thomas Jefferson, he didn't help matters by ordering all the Tangier boats snatched and supplies cut off during the American Revolution. Here he is saying this to his own people and treating Tangier like an enemy country, as if the island wasn't part of the very Commonwealth he governed…"
"Well, I'm afraid Mister Jefferson isn't available to help us out!" Hammer curtly cut him off as she rose from her chair.
"Maybe that's best, based on how he handled the island last time," observed Andy, who had barely escaped on the awaiting Bell 407 helicopter when the watermen chased him down Janders Road, across several footbridges and through countless wetlands, and finally onto the tiny airstrip, where Trooper Macovich was waiting in the helicopter and, thank God, had already started the engine.
"We've got to go back," Andy told a frantic Macovich as he took off, skipped the hover, and sped away.
"You out of your damn crazy-ass mind?" Macovich's voice sounded loudly in Andy's headset as a rock pinged off a skid. "We ain't going back! Those nutcakes are throwing things at us! Let's just hope they don't hit a rotor blade!"
They didn't, because the 407 was very powerful and soon enough was well out of range.
"Well, the thing is, I didn't finish," Andy tried to explain as he watched the angry mob shrink to the size of ants.
"Man, you didn't finish painting the speed trap? Shit. That's just too bad," Macovich said." 'Cause I ain't going back there unless it's to buy crabs for the guv. If you ain't buying something, you'd better not go back, either, unless you want to end up crab bait."
"That's fine," Andy assured him. "I think there's a serious case of dental fraud going on down there, but I'll take care of it myself."
Andy had not ended up crab bait, nor had he been foolish enough to return to the island in the same helicopter that clearly was marked STATE POLICE. He had been shrewd enough to get a buddy of his at the local charter service to let him use an unmarked Long Ranger…
"Andy!" Hammer stopped pacing and stared accusingly at him. "Are you with us, or did you already leave without letting me know?"
"I'm sorry," he apologized. "I was just thinking about the Islanders and how their true feelings about us come out when we aren't buying seafood or souvenirs. They were actually throwing rocks at the helicopter as we flew off."
"How awful!" Windy said with overblown emotion. "You could have been killed. I mean, throwing rocks at a helicopter is a little more serious than sticks and bones will shake like stones but words will never hear me, now isn't it?" She certainly wished Andy were older and would ask her out one of these days. "I don't ever want to visit an island where they throw rocks and talk inside out."
"I see you read Trooper Truth this morning," Hammer wryly commented as Andy feigned ignorance.
"Wouldn't miss him for all the eggs in China," Windy gushed. "I sure do wish he'd put a picture of himself on his website. I'm just dying to know what he looks like."
"He probably looks like a nerd." Andy pretended to be critical and jealous of Trooper Truth. "You know how most of these computer jockeys are. And I'm getting sick of hearing Trooper Truth this and Trooper Truth that. You'd think he's Elvis."
"Well, I don't think he's Elvis. And I no longer believe he's the governor using a ghost name, either," Windy announced. "Not after what I read this morning. If the governor was Trooper Truth, then he wouldn't criticize the governor, because that would be the same thing as criticizing himself and…"
"What else do we know about the kidnapped dentist?" Hammer interrupted as she started pacing the carpet again and wished she could tie Windy's tongue in a knot.
"He was born in Reedville and has been volunteering out there on Tangier Island for more than ten years, although he doesn't like to admit it to anyone, so the police said his wife said," Windy answered. "Because it wouldn't help his practice back home if patients knew he got most of his experience from working on Tangieri-ans. But at least he understands how they talk and he thinks like one."
"How do you know what he understands or thinks?" Hammer was quite opposed to assumptions and found herself surrounded by them constantly.
"You know what they say about birds in a pod," Windy reminded her. ''Everybody on that island thinks alike, and he'd have to think like them to work on their teeth. The Reedville police also mentioned that this Dr. Fox doesn't have an address, only a P.O. box, and his wife claims there are no photos of him because he hates to have his picture taken. Also," she gusted through the information, "he doesn't have his social security number on his driver's license or anything else, and all of his phones are answered by machines, and when he takes family vacations to exotic places, he never tells anybody where he's going."
"I think we need to run a few checks on him," Andy suggested, as if the idea had never occurred to him before this minute. "Sounds to me like he's hiding something. What about his lifestyle? Money?"
"Gobs of it," Windy said. "The police told me he has this big, huge house and all these cars and private schools."
"How do the police know what his house looks like if they can't find an address for him?" Andy inquired.
"Oh, Reedville's a small place and everybody knows where everybody else lives. Besides, a huge house
like his right on the water sticks out like a sore nose on your face."
"I did think it more than a little suspicious when he said the Islanders were demanding fifty thousand dollars cash, which was to be sent to a Reedville P.O. box." Hammer continued to pace. "He also said that they were demanding all restrictions lifted."
"I see," Andy said. "So they're trying to extort our lifting the freeze on crab licenses."
Hammer absently snatched memos off her desk and glanced through them, hopeful that the governor might finally have returned one of her phone calls. But no. There was not a single message indicating he had tried to reach her or even knew she had been trying to talk to him for months.
"And I'm sure they expect us to remove the speed traps and prevent NASCAR from coming. They think we're going to turn the island into a racetrack," Andy informed Hammer.
"So I understand. How the hell can they think such a thing?" Hammer's voice rose. "The island couldn't possibly hold a hundred and fifty thousand fans. There would be no place to put the cars and no way to get them or the drivers or pit crews on and off the island. Not to mention, no beer or cigarette sponsors want their stock cars and people like Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and Rusty Wallace on a track where alcohol and tobacco are considered sins. And Tangier's barely above sea level, meaning the track would flood. Why the hell did you tell them NASCAR is coming, Andy?"
"I didn't. I was explaining VASCAR, not NASCAR, and this island woman got the names mixed up, just like a lot of people are doing."
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