Teetoncey (7 page)

"He told me 'fore he told them. We'll try to cure her, Ben. Her body's all right. Nothin' was broken."

"He said she might be a vegetable. I've never heard a human called a vegetable."

Rachel took a deep breath. "Ben, she can't talk jus' now. I'm sure she can think, in a matter o' speakin'. She knows when she's bein' talked to. I've noticed that. We have to work with her."

"How?"

Rachel's laugh was hollow. "I don't know. But I do know this. If it was a hurt animal, we'd try to help. Boo Dog don't speak, but if he hurts hisself we try to help. Same with her. And more."

Ben shrugged. If she was loony, an asylum would be the best place for her.

They went inside. She was staring up at the ceiling.

 

Soon, the girl got her name.

It was at the end of dinner—the first square meal she'd had—
squeteague,
which was gray sea trout, fried, and a boiled potato, milk on the side.

Rachel was trying to be natural. "We do have to call you somethin'," she said, without making too much of it. "Is there any name you want to be called?"

The girl just sat, head down.

They waited. There was no answer.

"Ben?"

He didn't know what to call her. Then he thought of what Filene had said on the beach. It was as good a name as any for now. "Teetoncey."

"That's no name for a girl," his mother protested.

"It's a Banks name."

Rachel laughed, shaking her head. "Well, if that's what you'd like to call her..."

Tee became her name.

After dinner, and after she'd had her sponge bath in the tin tub, Ben ordered to sit outside during it, Rachel said, "While I dean the dishes, I want you to talk to her. Jus' talk natural."

"About what?"

Why talk when she wouldn't answer? Why talk when they didn't even know she could hear? Her brains were mommicked and that was it.

"I don't want to talk to her."

"Ben, I'm not askin', I'm tellin' you."

He felt the fool but sat down on the end of the bed and told her about the lighthouses, the whalebone fences at some of the houses at Kinnakeet and Chicky; the snow geese that came to winter on Pea Island; how the Hatterask Indians had been the first to live here, the Poteskeets up at Kitty Hawk; how the pirate Blackbeard had been cutlassed by Cap'n Maynard not thirty miles from their dock; how the damn Yankees' ironclad
Monitor
foundered off Hatteras.

However, he didn't mention the wrecks and the ghosts that walked the beach at night figuring that might disarrange her more than she was already.

Although she did look at him several times, it was all useless.

He went into the kitchen. "I might as well have talked to a log."

He was disgusted.

T
EETONCEY
was
built like a well-made hairpin.

Rachel whipped up a nightgown of cotton cloth for her and Saturday morning Tee opened the front door when the sun was far to east, just to look out. It was the first time she'd done that. Ben and his mother watched, wondering what she had in mind. It almost seemed she was afraid to look out.

She was framed a minute in the strong light and Ben could see she had very little meat on her.

Rachel said, absently, "We'll fatten her up, if nothing else." That could be accomplished with hominy grits and juice from slab bacon.

Tee closed the door and went past them into Ben's room and slipped into bed. It had been moved back there.

Ben said, "Think I'll go on up to the store."

Rachel was looking toward the small bedroom. She could see the girl staring out the window. "You know there's nothin' for you to do till next week."

That was true, unfortunately.

Rachel said, "See if she'll take to Fid."

Ben sighed and went out to find the sand pony. He was about a quarter mile away, down near the sound, eating long grass. Ben threw a leg over, grabbed his mane, and said, with irritation, "Let's go to the house."

Fid was more interested in eating and Ben jerked one of his ears to get his attention, and then kicked him in the ribs. The pony wheeled around and began trotting home.

Ben had noticed that Tee had taken to Boo Dog, and he had taken to her. He was on the floor around that bed most of the time now. But there was no secret to that. You rub a dog off and on all day, he'll take to you. Pony might be the same.

Rachel had opened the window and had a handful of com. "Bring him on up," she said.

Ben traveled him to the window and watched.

Fid stuck his head in to get the com, naturally.

Rachel said, "Pet him, Tee."

The girl's eyes brightened, Ben noticed, and she reached over to rub his nose, and between his ears. Ben jumped off and put his back up against Fid's rump to hold him there.

"What's she doin', Mama?"

"She knows it's an animal."

"She sayin' anything?"

"No."

In a minute, Fid pulled his head back out and Ben rapped him on a flank. The pony took off for the marshes.

"It's encouragin," Rachel said, pulling the window down.

What was encouraging? For someone to pet a pony? Ben shook his head.

His mother was making soap from lye, ashes, and grease that day and he was of no further help. So he went to Chicky. He gladly stayed until the boats came in and the catch was unloaded. It was shipped to Elizabeth City on a big sharpie.

Sunday was rainy but it was falling softly. Rachel got dressed in a dotted swiss and felt hat to go up to Mrs. Farrow's and read Bible with the other women from around Chicky. The nearest church was in Hatteras village and it was just too far to go unless there was a revival meeting. Then everyone went.

Ben knew he'd have to be alone with Teetoncey for three or four hours, but that was better than sitting in Mrs. Farrow's and listening to round-robin Bible; singing, "Jesus, Lover of My Soul." Those women didn't have a pump organ, but sang anyway. Mrs. Farrow used a tuning fork to get the right starting key. The men slapped their sides about that.

After his mother left on the sand cart, wearing an oilskin and sou'wester over the felt hat because of the dampness, Ben roamed around the house for almost a half hour, then decided to try to talk to Tee again. There wasn't anything else to do.

He went into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. She was sitting on the opposite side, staring out of the window; watching the rain.

She turned when he said, "I'll tell you some things."

She looked back at him, almost without blinking, as he began to talk about things that he knew. Whales or white porpoise or laughing gulls or eating-sized turtles. He told her that deer scratched themselves on the bark of old trees during tick season and that you could always tell when a raccoon had gone up a berry tree by the daw marks. He discovered that the worst thing in the world to talk about was fish. You catch and eat them and there is nothing else to say.

Then he ran dry and sighed, "C'mon."

He took her by the wrist into his mother's bedroom and showed her the pictures on the dresser. "That's John O'Neal and my brother, Guthrie."

She looked at them but the blank expression didn't change.

He took her to the opposite wall to show her the gold Medal of Honor, with its crossed oars. "Government gave that to my papa. He was a hero, Teetoncey."

Nothing.

Ben said, "Whew."

He led her back into the living room and sat her down on the couch. She folded her hands.

Then he thought about that British professor who'd come out to investigate all the words that didn't sound so strange to the Bankers at all. If the words were from Devon, maybe she'd know them.

He pulled a chair up. "If someone tells you they caught a slew of feesh, that's many.
Slew
is many.

"Mama is
couthy.
That means she's capable."

He pointed out the window. "That timber out there for the laundry line is a
postie.
An' we get
waspies
an'
nesties
in our chimney summers.

"
Disremember
is to forget an'
disencourage
means what it says.
Mindable
is payin' attention an'
studiments
is lessons...

"We
traveled
him to you means we brought him to you...

"
Swayzed
means it moved aroun'...

"Fid an' Boo Dog are
critters
... I'm a
youngun'
...

"
Fleech
means to flatter..."

Offhand, he couldn't think of any more that the professor had gotten so all-fired excited about, but it didn't make any difference. He might as well have been talking to a postie.

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.

T
HE 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."