"Well, I tell you, son, I've visited your island for many years," Dr. Faux confessed. "And it's no coincidence that I don't choose to live here. My point is, if you want a chance in life, Fonny Boy, you've got to do the smart thing, which in this case is listening to me."
"Listening to you is not much count," Fonny Boy replied with a few toots on the harmonica, not letting on that his interest was snagged by what might just prove to be a transaction of some sort.
"Listening to me has plenty of value. Because doing the smart thing might just give you an opportunity. Maybe there's something special out there for you, Fonny Boy. But if you go along with these people that have me locked up in here, there's a good possibility you'll end up in trouble and spend the rest of your life on this tiny, eroding island, selling crabs and souvenirs and playing the harmonica. You got to help me get out of here, and if you do, maybe I'll take you with me back to Reedville and you can work in my office and learn to drive a real car."
"If I carry you to shore, what you gonna do? Throw silver dollars at me?" Fonny Boy asked sarcastically as he blew out an unrecognizable rendition of "Yankee Doodle."
"You know what a recruiter is?" Dr. Faux said smoothly. "Well, I'll tell you. I could put you to work going around and finding needy children whose teeth require a lot of work their families can't afford. You bring them in to my Reedville clinic and I'll give you ten dollars for every kid. When you learn to drive, I'll find you a car. We don't have to come back here to this impoverished little island ever again."
Fonny Boy had a lot to think about and it was time to head home for supper. He walked out of the storage room, shutting the door hard to make sure the dentist heard him leave, and failing to inform him that water and a tray of food would be delivered momentarily. Fonny Boy felt a pinch of guilt as he got on his bicycle and pedaled away from the clinic, still working on "Yankee Doodle." Maybe he should have been a little kinder to Dr. Faux and told him food and drink were on the way. Maybe he should work harder to do what he had been taught in church, but getting involved in military and mutinous activities sharpened Fonny Boy's edge.
He felt a bit feisty and in a mood to commit mischief and mayhem. He played his harmonica loudly and rode his bicycle faster than usual, speeding up full tilt when he crossed the two painted lines on Janders Road. Fonny Boy pumped furiously through chilly air and moonlight, scarcely acknowledging his aunt Ginny, who was headed to the clinic in a golf cart.
"Heee!" she called out to him as they passed each other in the road. "Doncha play the juice harp in the evening! You gonna drive the neighbors star-crazy!"
Fonny Boy tooted out a loud, rebellious reply and wished he hadn't swallowed the cotton again. Last time, it had clogged him up for a week, moving through his guts and criks with the slow purpose of a glacier until finally working its way out when he was in the bateau with his father, not a toilet or land in sight.
When Ginny walked into the storeroom moments later carrying a tray of crab cakes, hot rolls, and margarine, Dr. Faux was praying again.
"… Amen, dear Lord. I'll get back to you later. That you, Fonny Boy?" the dentist asked hopefully. "Lord have mercy, it's freezing in here. Where'd this winter weather come from all of a sudden?"
"Blowed in from they bay. I got supper and water."
"I need to use the bathroom." Dr. Faux was embarrassed to talk this way in front of a woman whose mouth he had excavated and exploited for years.
Ginny said "yea," as long as he promised to return to the folding chair and didn't mind her tying him up and covering his eyes with the bandanna again.
"If you tie me up and put on the bandanna, I won't be able to eat," Dr. Faux complained as Ginny freed him and he squinted in the dim light of the storeroom.
"I'll sit right here without you don't come back from doing your business, and on the back of that, I didn't come over for to tell you nothing." It was Ginny's way of saying she'd leave him alone while he used the toilet, unless he tried something sneaky, like escaping, and in addition, she had no intention of giving him any sort of information.
While the dentist headed to the bathroom, she settled herself on a box of free antibacterial soap samples and ruminated about the speed traps, NASCAR taking over the island, and what the trooper had suggested about the Islanders' criminal dental care. She and several other women had convened at Spanky's and set out to spread the word to the entire Tangier population by posting signs on chainlink fences and all the shops and restaurants. They had even told the ferryboat captains, who promised to incorporate the NASCAR news and dental fraud alerts into their guided tours as they carried visitors back and forth between Crisfield and Reedville.
Dr. Faux returned to his folding chair and asked Ginny how her dentures were holding up.
"The same," she said. "And now and again I feel a bit squamish from when you pulled them last teeth the other week. I spewed up the evening 'fore last."
"If you're feeling nauseated and throwing up, it must be a bug of some sort," Dr. Faux misinformed her. "And it sounds to me like your new dentures are clacking a little bit."
"When the cream wores off, they do."
"Well, if you need another tube of adhesive cream, you can pick up one while you're here." Dr. Faux hungrily ate a crab cake. "They're in the middle cabinet in the examination room."
Ginny silently watched him eat and began to struggle with deep resentment that was inching toward hate. She was a solid church woman and knew that hate was a sin, but she couldn't seem to help herself as she watched the greedy, indifferent dentist stuff food into his mouth.
"I always thought you was the best I ever knew at teeth, Dr. Faux," she finally blurted out. "But now I seen you for the truth, and you learned me we shouldn't trust neither one neither more. We're of a mind what things you been doing on us. I'm just so out of heart about it, and was thinking as much when I was renching the dishes right afore I brung your dinner. We gave you all what we could, mostly food and good words, when you come here to help us, and then what you did! Why bimeby, you got aholt of each and ever one of us and mommucked up our mouths so you could get mor'n you was supposed to from the gov'ment!"
"My dear Ginny, you know that's simply not so," Dr. Faux said in a cajoling tone. "For one thing, government officials audit dentists constantly and check for things like that. I could never get away with it, even if it would ever enter my mind. And I swear and kiss the Bible," he tossed out one of the Islanders' favorite exclamations, "that what I'm saying to you is true!"
"That's all over!" Ginny declared, indicating she'd heard enough of his tales.
Huh, Ginny bitterly thought. A cold day in Heck it would be when some government agent took the ferry out here and tried to poke around in the Islanders' mouths, looking to see if certain work had really been done or was necessary. She tried to pray away the hate in her heart by reminding herself that were it not for Dr. Faux, she wouldn't have dentures or adhesive cream or free samples of mouthwashes. She supposed she would have no teeth of any sort, except for the real ones that Dr. Faux had claimed he had no choice but to extract because of abscesses, root fractures, bad enamel, an over-bite, and she forgot what else.
"I don't want to hate neither one," she silently prayed, but reality settled on her like a huge stone she could not push away.
The truth, of course, was that she had been rather shocked to discover she had such major dental problems, but she had trusted Dr. Faux. The truth was, that up until a few years ago, her teeth were fine and people were always talking about her pretty smile. Why, she hadn't had a cavity since childhood, and then suddenly, she didn't have a single tooth left in her head. The more she brooded over this as she locked up the clinic and headed down the dark street, the more she began to entertain a host of poisonous thoughts about Dr. Faux. How many times had he told her that all of the Islanders were born with bad teeth and Tangier Disease due to inbreeding? How many times did she hear yet one more tale about someone's fillings falling out or a root canal going bad o
r a crown that looked like a piano key cracking smack in half for no good reason?
Huh, she thought with gathering agitation and grief as she crossed the painted lines on Janders Road. Maybe they ought to hold Dr. Faux hostage until all of his teeth fell out. Maybe he ought to have clacking dentures that didn't fit right and caused a lot of gum soreness and missed meals. Maybe he ought to spy an ear of sweet corn and feel overwhelmed by nostalgia and loss, or be embarrassed when it sounded like he was playing the Castanet while he talked on the phone.
"Honey, you look a norder! Why, you're sob wet!" Ginny's husband noticed that she was sobbing as she rushed inside the house and slammed the door.
"I want my teeth!" she cried out hysterically.
"You remember whar you laid 'em last?" he asked, as he began walking around, looking for the glass jelly jar she usually soaked her dentures in. "Well, I swanny!" he suddenly said as he put on his bifocals. "Durn if they're not in your mouth, Ginny!"
AN HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE
by Trooper Truth
At a glance, it may not seem entirely honest of me to call this digression a footnote, because it should be plain to the reader that the text is not preceded by a number, nor is it at the bottom of a page.
However, a footnote doesn't have to mean a reference designated by a number that we find in works of nonfiction, textbooks, and term papers. A footnote can also indicate something of lesser importance. For example, it could be said that until a few years ago, Jamestown was nothing more than a footnote in history, since most people believed that the U.S. really began at Plymouth and that's why we celebrate Thanksgiving. Although schoolbooks still devote scant attention to Jamestown, at least our nation's first lasting English settlement has made it into accepted educational writings and is not relegated to a footnote, literally.
In the high school textbook The American Nation, I'm pleased to report, Jamestown is discussed on pages 85 and 86. Sadly, however, my 1997 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica offers only an eighth of a page on Jamestown and leads one to believe that there is nothing left of the site except replicas of the ships the settlers sailed on from the Isle of Dogs. The replicas are actually about a mile west of the original fort and are part of what is called the Jamestown Settlement, which is also a replica, I reluctantly point out, but worth visiting as long as you realize that the first settlers did not construct the twentieth-century buildings, restrooms, food court, souvenir shops, parking lots, and ferry, any more than they sailed on the fabricated ships moored in the river.
I find it rather embarrassing that when you visit Jamestown, there are numerous signs directing you to the Settlement and only one or two that point you in the direction of the original site. So you can choose to visit the fabricated Jamestown or the real one, and many tourists choose the former because of the conveniences, possibly. Of course, when the Settlement was built, it was believed that the original site had eroded into the river, which explains why Virginia thought a fabrication was the best the Commonwealth could offer.
"The point is," I said to my wise confidante, "people accept as truth things that are fabrications or at the very least can't be proven," and I went on to give my wise confidante the example of how Tangier Island supposedly got its name.
The story goes that when John Smith discovered the uninhabited island we now assume is Tangier but may in fact be Limbo, he was vividly reminded of a town called Tangier on the south side of the Strait of Gibraltar, in North Africa. He was thus inspired to name the new island in the New World Tangier Island, which seems an apocryphal tale to me.
"Tangier Island bears no resemblance to Tangier,
North Africa," I explained to my wise confidante, "and it makes me wonder if Smith was engaging in a little backward talk, assuming he ever uttered a word about any place called Tangier."
" 'Ye spy the isle there?' " I said he might have asked while he was exploring in his barge." 'It is most pleasant and does cause me to think of Tangier,' " I said he might have added with noticeable inflection and facial expression because he meant quite the opposite and was making a joke.
There are other theories that Tangier Island was named after Tangier, Morocco, based on information that some British soldiers stationed in Tangier set sail for America with their Moorish wives and settled on an island in the Chesapeake Bay some people believe was Tangier when the English military withdrew its garrison from the Moroccan city in 1684. However, years later, people who called themselves "Moors" and lived in Sussex County, Virginia, denied that their Moorish ancestors had any connection to Tangier Island.
Who knows what is true? In fact, no one seems quite certain when Tangier was first inhabited, but there are accounts of patents of land being granted as early as 1670, and a much-disputed Tangier tradition has it that in 1686, John Crockett settled on a rise and raised livestock, potatoes, turnips, pears and figs, and eight sons. The island began to flourish and gained the attention of warring factions during the American Revolution, when the British demanded supplies from Tangier, and the rest of Virginia responded by blockading the island and passing along severe threats from Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson.
Meanwhile, pirates seized whatever they wanted and burned down the house of an Islander named George Pruitt as they cruised about, terrorizing a people who were too few and unarmed to defend themselves. As if that wasn't bad enough, a boy named Joe Parks II was snatched by the British, conscripted and carried away, and all Tangier youth were forced into hiding. The Islanders had little choice but to decide it was better to openly trade with the enemy than to have their crops, property, and loved ones seized, and they began selling commodities to the British, to other Americans and pirates, and simply flew whatever flag was appropriate, depending on who was in the area. This survival technique has endured down through the centuries, and to me explains why the Tangier people of today suffer tourists on the island and ply them with crab cakes, trinkets, T-shirts, taxi service on the golf carts, and misinformation.
Dear readers, I'm asking you to interact with me by helping enforce the Golden Rule. Please! If any of you have suffered any suspicious or bad dental work performed by one Dr. Sherman Faux of Reedville, e-mail me as soon as possible. And if anyone happens to know the whereabouts of a female Boston terrier named Popeye, please let me know immediately! Like the dentist, the innocent dog has been spirited away and is possibly being held hostage somewhere. Unlike the dentist, Popeye has never hurt or taken advantage of anyone and doesn't deserve what has happened to her. If you have information about these crimes or any others-especially the recent vile murder of Trish Thrash-please get in touch.
Be careful out there!
Nine
Major Trader was hunched over his keyboard like a turkey buzzard when Trooper Truth's latest essay went up on the website at exactly three minutes past seven this Wednesday morning.
"What sort of nonsense is this?" Trader exclaimed out loud to no one but himself. "Naughty, naughty, Trooper Truth. We'll see about you mucking up the Commonwealth's revered history and asking the public to snitch for you!"
Trader bit into a jelly doughnut and wiped his thick fingers on his flannel pajamas as his wife stirred about in the kitchen, clanging cookware, rummaging and rooting through a cluttered cabinet for the frying pan.
"Do you have to make so much racket?" Trader yelled from his office on the other side of the spec house he and his wife would soon sell for a handsome profit.
Trader was very clever with his investments and had become a wealthy man over recent years. His modus operandi was simple. He would buy a lot in an exclusive neighborhood that did not allow spec houses. He would build a house, live in it for one year, then sell it, claiming that his position with the governor necessitated privacy and security, both of which were somehow violated, forcing him to move yet again. Although the neighbors had his scam figured out, no one could prove that he was really building a spec house, even though each of the ten homes he had sold so far were identical and rather g
eneric. Pointed letters from the neighborhood association had been ineffective and completely ignored, and Trader's pattern had become an addiction.
He loved moving. Perhaps it provided the only drama in his otherwise artificial, mendacious life. Several months out of every year Trader ordered his wife about, supervising her packing and cracking the whip over his contractor's spinning head, goading him into escalating the building schedule, all the while yelling "Hurry up! Hurry up! We've got to move in two weeks and the new house had better be ready! Don't you screw with me!"
"But we haven't even put the wiring in yet," the contractor had pleaded with Trader just last week.
"How long can that possibly take?" Trader fired back.
"And you haven't picked out paints yet."
"Just use the same damn eggshell white you've used on the other ten houses, you fool!" Trader yelled over the phone. "And the same off-white Burbur carpet, you idiot! And the same brass Williamsburgy light fixtures, you ninny! And the same pulls and door knobs from Home Depot, you meathead!"
It was vital that Trader play a sovereign role when he was in his own castle. The rest of the time, he was a toady for the governor and no one could possibly understand how hard that was on a man's ego unless he had experienced it firsthand. Do this, do that. Use a different word.
Rewrite that paragraph. Oh, I changed my mind. Let's tell the press this instead. Where's my magnifying glass? Leave my office now! I'm not feeling well.
At least Trader's demanding and unrewarding career had taught him the value of manipulation, revenge, and profiteering. Thanks to the Internet, it wouldn't be long before he would be a self-made millionaire if his latest investment scheme was successful.
"Major? You haven't told me which you'd like for breakfast. Sausage or bacon? Raisin toast or muffins? Grits with or without cheese?" his wife yelled from the kitchen as cookware clanged.
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