The air was perfumed with fresh paint and the floors gleamed slick with inexperience. The politician Buxton Adams and his wife, Iris, were waiting for us at a large table set with a lovely centerpiece of wild beach roses.
“Isn’t this a merry gang!” exclaimed Mr. Adams, shaking hands heartily with Daddy and kissing with relish our gloved hands. “How’s the ocean treating you folks? I still can’t get over that cottage of yours.”
His perfectly round head topped a thick body, and his mustached face glowed cherry-tomato red in the crowded warmth. Although you might not guess it at first from his large presence, Mr. Adams was dwarfed physically by Mama and Daddy both. Daddy counted this respected Conservative politician as one of his strongest allies in the fight for keeping the eastern North Carolina land, and the money and power that went with it, in the old planters’ hands.
Word had it that Mr. Adams was biding his time, waiting for the radical Reconstruction pendulum to swing in the Conservatives’ favor. With the recent Republican victory, however, things weren’t looking so good for the Conservatives in North Carolina. But you’d never know it by Mr. Adams’s jolly demeanor.
“Abigail, you are looking quite the young lady tonight. I’m not sure I would have known you from that rosy cherub of the tobacco fields! And my, my, just look at that dress—how becoming on you! You and Madeleine will have to compare notes on your dressmakers,” he said, indicating his daughter, Maddie Adams, a petite sixteen-year-old girl with the serenely beautiful face of a Rembrandt subject, seated next to her mother at the table.
Maddie was no angel, though. She was known throughout the state of North Carolina, and probably elsewhere, for her extravagant tastes and newly minted bosom, usually accentuated with inappropriately low-cut gowns. I had known her since we were small girls, although during the war we lost touch with her family and I didn’t see her as often as I used to.
“Abigail, I do so adore your gown,” purred Maddie, who wore her blond hair fashionably styled in droopy ringlets around her face. “It must be hard to find colors to go with your red hair. Lord-a-mercy, that dark green would look positively sickening on me!”
In her pink gown, with its voluminous petticoats peeking out from slits up the sides, Maddie resembled a sinfully sweet strawberry shortcake with dollops of whipped cream, carefully placed in the center of a china plate. I smiled to myself, imagining all of her drooling suitors taking tiny bites from her.
She sipped her mint tea and fanned herself with a wiggly wrist. “How is it out at that little ocean house of yours? It is a tiny thing—I can see it from our veranda. I can’t imagine how you all stand it! I simply got lost in your plantation home when I was a little girl!”
“It is small, but it’s refreshing to wake up to the sound of the ocean right outside my window. And we don’t have to hitch a horse to a cart to get to the ocean,” I tried to explain.
Maddie’s big blue eyes had wandered while I was talking, and she was now waving hello to some of her friends across the room. Maddie, always more interested in having tea parties with her dollies than in exploring our land with me, wouldn’t understand how the rawness of ocean living appealed to me, much more so than the Adamses’ location in one of many houses clustered on the sand hills and near the homes of politicians, attorneys, doctors, and businessmen, with their constant social obligations.
Edenton, North Carolina, was its own cluster, with the neatly lined colonial streets branching out from the courthouse green. There, the Adamses’ home was a pre-Revolutionary beauty on Water Street, with a view of Edenton Bay, but it was surrounded on three sides by houses owned by Mr. Adams’s contemporaries. I doubted he could even venture outside without encountering a fellow judge or attorney wanting to discuss politics with him. I always thanked my lucky stars that we lived a decent carriage ride from town.
“Our cottage is like a charming Swiss chalet. It sits right on the sand hills, with the cute curly trees all around for shade, and we’re up so high we have just a perfect view of the ocean and the sound. You should come on over after supper, to see what living in Nags Head is really like.” She giggled.
I frowned at her, clearly recalling why we’d always ended up on opposite sides of the nursery.
Maddie giggled again. “Bless your heart, Abby, don’t have a hissy fit. I’m sure your cottage is just dandy, in its own little way. I already invited Alice Monroe and George Wakefield and Red Taylor over to set on the veranda with me. You’re acquainted with them, aren’t you?” she said sweetly, then winked at me.
I barely smiled. Her friends were the privileged sons and daughters of Edenton society, the same people Mama and Daddy wanted me to socialize with this summer. I would have to accept the invitation.
While we dined on freshly made crab cakes, fried oysters, and corn bread, the men discussed in hushed voices the most upsetting business of the year—the election of Republican governor William Holden. The women, not to be outdone, chatted about fabrics for draperies and the newest Edenton millinery.
I had trouble following along with the men’s agitated whispers, so I was somewhat forced to discuss the elegance of hats that are bedecked with a single egret feather. Apparently they were very expensive, but quite fashionable, and I imagined the women of Edenton wandering the streets looking like a flock of egrets.
I wasn’t the only one at the table with a glazed expression, however. Mama, whose face had taken on a sickly yellow tinge, looked acutely miserable trying to keep up her end of the conversation with Mrs. Adams and Maddie. She hadn’t the skills for lighthearted conversation, and I noticed that her food remained largely untouched. And she kept beckoning for the harried Negro servant to refill her lemonade glass, to which she subsequently added several large spoonfuls of sugar.
At one point during dessert Mrs. Adams declared, “Ingrid, I’ve never seen you look so poorly.”
Mama said with a little shudder, “It’s that ocean air. I slept with the windows open last night … I declare, I’ve never smelled such nastiness. It’s made me quite sick.”
Mrs. Adams laughed heartily. “That air is the reason everyone is here in Nags Head! Oh, you do amuse me.”
Mama just reached for her glass of lemonade and took several frantic gulps.
The children’s table broke up first, of course. Martha and Charlie ran out the door of the dining room with the other children, who were all itching to explore the nearby sand hills in the waning daylight.
Soon young couples rose from the tables to dance to the band, whose horns and cornets were starting to squeak after a break. Red Taylor, the handsome son of a prominent attorney in Edenton, ventured over to ask Maddie to dance with him. I could tell that he was trying hard not to stare at the bubbles of skin squeezing from the top of her gown.
Maddie took her sweet time in accepting his invitation, batting her eyelashes and looking around the room before rising from the table like a slow-to-bake yeast roll. Then Mr. and Mrs. Adams got up to make a hand-shaking tour of the room, leaving us to ourselves.
So I lingered with my parents, almost a grown woman, aware of myself in my new dress and hat, aglow in the warm light of the newly lit oil lamps.
Daddy sat back in his chair with his pipe and port. “Abigail, your mother and I have decided that you should tutor Mr. Whimble in reading and writing this summer,” he said.
“Pardon me?” Surely the yelps of the children outside had somehow interfered with his communication.
He smiled at me, a smile with a warning concealed within it. “He indicated this afternoon that he would like to learn how to read and write, just rudimentary skills at best. He was crying over the fact that he had no one to teach him, and with no schools out here it’s impossible for him to learn anything. So it occurred to me then that you are a good teacher, having taught Martha and Charlie the last few years. I told him so, and one thing led to another.” He shifted his large weight, causing the new chair to cry out for mercy. “You should have seen his face. I’ve never
seen such a display of teeth in my life. He was so grateful that he’s suspending all the fees charged to me for his guide service.” Then, an afterthought, he said, “It’s good business, Abigail.”
I stared at his sunburned nose. I couldn’t even imagine a scenario in which I played tutor and dirty Mr. Whimble played student.
“Good business! I hardly think that tutoring a strange man is a wise idea. Teaching my own brother and sister is one thing, but a grimy fisherman! You don’t even know this Mr. Whimble,” I said desperately. “He could be dangerous! He’s as filthy as an urchin! Lord knows what he does when he’s not fishing and hunting and roaming around in the muck, adding clumps of dirt to his collection. I don’t want to do it. I won’t do it.”
Some diners, lingering over their dessert and coffee, turned their heads toward our table.
Mama shushed me, but Daddy merely looked at me as he would a curious specimen of duck. He said, “Ben is about as dangerous as a dandelion.” He shot back the last of his port. “He’s smart, in his way. And patient, a hard worker. And he’s a local hero, so they say,” he assured me. “I like him, I really do.”
“Mama, how could you of all people agree to this? It’s not proper! What will people say?” I blurted. “He’s a fisherman, for mercy’s sake!”
Mama disliked fishermen as a general rule. Her daddy had been a stevedore, laboring his entire immigrant life on the fast-paced Edenton ports after he arrived from Sweden, and she had learned to dislike with a passion anything that reminded her of her previous life as a daughter of the docks. Now Mama just shrugged, not up to the fight.
In misery, I looked at the empty chairs and dirty plates and cups at our table. Me, tutor a fisherman? I snorted scornfully. But my mind wandered to Mr. Whimble’s bluebird eyes, and I heard my mouth mumble, “Well, I suppose I could give it a try. Only for a little while.”
Daddy said with a nod, “I’ll tell him you can start tomorrow.”
Mama worked hard at stifling a yawn with a vanilla hand. She said, “It will be good for your education, Abigail. I have found that teaching reinforces and expands our own learning. This will provide a worthy occupation for you, and keep your mind from sliding into oblivion this summer.”
She removed her napkin from her lap and placed it on the table. “And I will chaperone, of course.”
They rose from the table, nodding and waving at everyone in the room, as I sat numbly, my head swimming. Mercy, what had I just agreed to?
A pink-faced Maddie, closely circled by a flock of scavenging boys, called out to me to accompany them on her family’s cart back to the house. It was dark outside, and getting late, but I agreed to go, on account of how thrilled Mama and Daddy were at the offer.
Sitting so close atop the cart, I could smell the pungent scent of alcohol on their breath as they laughed with one another. The boys then made a gallant show of assisting the ladies off the cart and helping us through the soft sand up to the little white house.
The story-and-a-half house really was charming, nestled cozily amid the bushy trees, with spectacular views of the surrounding island. Even if I couldn’t see the water, I heard the Atlantic Ocean with one ear and the Roanoke Sound with the other. For once, Maddie hadn’t been exaggerating.
We gathered on the eastern veranda to catch the night breeze. At the request of Mr. and Mrs. Adams, who were leaving us to ourselves, a little black boy came running to light the young men’s cigars with some hot tines.
With no adult chaperones, it was too intimate there on the dark veranda. I felt as small as a mouse on a patch of moonlit sand, an easy nighttime snack for the preying owls. I crossed my arms over my chest.
Red said, “I heard about your uncle Jack a couple years ago, Abigail. I’m truly sorry for your loss. I lost a cousin in the war, too. Didn’t know him very well, though. He was from down in Georgia. He got shot straight through his skull.” He puffed on a cigar, and the smoke blew quickly away into the night. “It’s morbid, having a dead relative in the family.”
“Yes, it is.” I nodded, uncomfortable talking about my dead uncle in front of this group. I touched my reticule, buried inside my green skirts.
After an awkward silence, Red asked, “How’s your plantation doing? I hear tell it’s rough going for planters like your daddy these days. Bankruptcies left and right.”
Alice asked, “You used to own over a hundred slaves, isn’t that about right? And they all ran off, I heard.”
Maddie, with a little swing of her curls, stopped her conversation with George Wakefield to eavesdrop. I heard the lonely call of a gull sliding over the ocean.
I cocked my chin out and said, “Some of our best people stayed on after the war, so we’re making out. In fact, we built a cottage, over on the ocean side.”
They all twittered and rustled over that like invisible birds in a bush. It got me to wondering what everyone was saying about us behind our backs. I glanced to where I thought our cottage stood, alone on the sand, but I couldn’t see a single thing in the darkness.
The black boy broke the silence when he banged out the door with a tray full of silver cups. I smelled the bourbon as he stood in front of me with his offerings, and I shook my head unconvincingly. I’d never tasted alcohol in my life, but at just that moment I wanted nothing more than to guzzle a cup or two down. But the image of Daddy at breakfast, chasing his customary slice of pie with two shots of whiskey, made me think twice.
I wondered what people like the Adamses and the Taylors thought of us. I knew that our situation didn’t look good. I knew that Sinclair House appeared dark and haunted, with its cobwebbed windows missing draperies, paint peeling off the moldy shutters, weeds growing in the flower beds. It resembled a sleeping giant, about to fall over with a mighty crash into the dusty earth.
Everything that my English ancestors had worked for, everything that my daddy and my uncle Jack had worked for, was disappearing. Maybe it was inevitable, the decline of our plantation. I’d like to blame its demise on the death of my uncle, but really, it was the death of the South that was to blame.
Still, the two deaths are always intertwined in my head. Uncle Jack was as much a part of the land as a tobacco leaf. He grew up in the house; he was even born, like my daddy before him, in the master bedroom, in a mahogany four-poster bed.
Even our slaves, the same ones who couldn’t wait to leave us when the war ended, cried when Uncle Jack was buried, even though Daddy wouldn’t let them come to the services. I could hear them late that same night, singing the saddest African songs in low, pained voices. Their singing kept me up almost the whole night, even after the songs had long ended.
Suddenly I couldn’t for a moment longer bear sitting with Maddie and her friends, who were getting progressively drunker. I made an excuse about being tired, so Maddie, with a puckered smile, ordered one of their sleepy servants to drive me home on the cart.
They all called out to me as they saw me bumping along toward the ocean, “Bye now, Abigail! Don’t get washed away by the waves tonight!”
I could hear Maddie’s laugh spiral over and over in the wind.
CHAPTER THREE
Abigail Sinclair
June 20, 1868
I was greatly delighted with him, and made it my business to teach him everything that was proper to make him useful, handy, and helpful; but especially to make him speak, and understand me when I spoke and he was the aptest scholar that ever was, and particularly was so merry, so constantly diligent, and so pleased, when he could but understand me, or make me understand him, that it was very pleasant to me to talk to him.
—ROBINSON CRUSOE
WITH A BELLY FULL OF PULLED PORK AND WINNIE’S TASTY COLLARED greens, I sat idly on the porch, watching the beachcombers strolling up the shore. My limbs still felt like large pieces of waterlogged driftwood from my poor night’s rest, and some strands of hair, having escaped a sloppily pinned knot, blew in ticklish ovals around my face.
I longed for a nap, but Mama
had just leaned her head out the window to see if I had planned a lesson for Mr. Whimble. I finally went poking around in one of my trunks to find some appropriate items. I pulled out my slate and a couple pieces of chalk, which I had brought for Charlie and Martha’s summer lessons, and some writing paper and my quill and ink.
Since there wasn’t much wind today, I brought everything out to the porch, along with the old wooden table and chairs. I couldn’t for even a minute imagine sitting indoors all summer, especially with such a smelly man.
After what seemed like a long while, I heard Winnie greet Mr. Whimble at the door on the western side of the house, but she didn’t invite him in like she would a normal guest. She walked him around the outside of the house, like she would a horse.
“Here you go, Mr. Benjamin. She been waitin’ on you—it ain’t right to keep a lady a-settin’ in the heat, you know,” she said, and ambled back inside. She didn’t even offer him anything to drink, which he desperately looked like he could use.
Mr. Whimble seemed not to care. He climbed up the three steps to the porch and greeted me with an easy smile. But I could see how filthy he was. I tried to conceal my distaste, since I didn’t want to embarrass him. Yet even outside I could smell the fishy stench that lingered on his clothing and skin.
I was somehow disappointed that the man didn’t even bother to wash before coming to sit for hours in the company of a young lady. He seemed to realize his state by the sour look on my face. “I’m afraid that I stink like a hog at slop time. I came straight from hunting with your daddy, and those largemouth bass sure gave us a hard time. I can go wash up, if you can’t stand me,” he offered.
I fiddled with the supplies and nibbled my lower lip. Making him wash seemed the utmost in rude hostessing. But I was spared a response by the squeaking of the screen door and Mama’s appearance on the porch.
Diann Ducharme Page 3