It occurred to me then that as a doctor’s wife I would be in for a lifetime of Hector’s trials and tribulations. I would be expected to sit quietly and smile for the rest of my days, while Hector boasted and carried on. I had never realized just how much he liked himself.
Yet it was newly obvious to me, especially after spending so much time around the Bankers, that his many accomplishments were of the indoor variety. His skin was the color of milk, and his arms and legs were lanky from lack of labor.
I also noticed that he ate like my sister, Martha, daintily holding the fork and knife with his pinkie finger jutting out and carving up his soft crab with small, careful movements, perhaps the way he had been taught in an etiquette class for boys. He chewed a mouthful of crab meat and potatoes about twenty times before swallowing it all down. And he even sipped his watered-down whiskey like a kitten, taking several tiny sips at one time.
When it was time to order dessert, Hector declined, explaining that he was restricting his intake of sugar for health reasons. Of course, Mama also turned down dessert (she had turned a bit green during dinner), but Daddy and I took great pleasure in ordering the most decadent item on the hotel’s menu—Kill Devil Cake, a dark-chocolate fudge cake with sugared blackberries on top. I couldn’t help taking slow, luxurious bites.
Perhaps all the self-enforced forswearing caused Hector to ask me to dance in a quick, blunt fashion, hardly waiting for me to put down my fork after my last bite. He rose stiffly from his chair and took my outstretched hand in limp, gloved fingers. We made our way to the crowded saloon, where the band played a waltz.
As we circled the room, I blurted, “What do you do for amusement, Hector? It can’t be all books and studying, can it?”
He smiled patronizingly. “I’m afraid it can. They just don’t hand out medical degrees, you know.”
I blushed, and stammered, “I-I know that. It’s just that since I’ve been living out here, I’ve seen many men swimming in the ocean, and fishing with a rod and reel … I wondered what it was that you enjoyed doing, in your free time.”
Hector’s hand stiffened in mine as he forced a smile. “Women have the silliest notions about doctors. They have no idea of the work involved to become one! Medicine really occupies my every waking minute. I don’t have time for much else.”
I was silent as we navigated the room. The vision that I had of the two of us sharing intimacies at a supper table as husband and wife haunted my thoughts like a fading spirit.
He finally offered, “I like to read the newspaper every so often—at breakfast?”
I nodded politely.
He tried on a joking attitude. “So, what have you been doing to pass the time here, Abigail? I have no notion of the kinds of daily activities a young lady might find herself doing in a cottage by the sea. I know of several acquaintances of mine from Edenton who are currently summering here. Perhaps you’ve had the opportunity to socialize with them?” He named a few members of Edenton society, including Maddie Adams.
I spoke carefully. “I’ve already had the pleasure of visiting Madeleine Adams’s cottage, and it is quite charming in the moonlight. Very cozy, surrounded by trees with excellent views. And I’m tutoring a local man down here, at my parents’ suggestion. I’m teaching him to read and write.”
Hector stopped dancing in mid-pivot and drew me to a deserted corner of the saloon with a grip that was much more forceful than I could have imagined him capable of. Several of our fellow waltzers looked our way and started whispering to one another.
“Perhaps I didn’t hear you correctly. You say your parents arranged for you to tutor a man? Indeed, they said nothing of this at supper! Nor you, in your recent letter! What kind of a man?”
I felt quite queasy all of a sudden. The cake seemed to be expanding inside my stomach.
“He’s my father’s guide this summer. He is about your age, and a fisherman by trade, among other things …” I trailed off. It was difficult to describe what Benjamin did for a living without listing several different occupations.
Hector gazed at me with a pinched-up look on his fine features. “This is highly unusual!”
“Yes, you’d think so, but let me assure you that he is lacking in all manner of culture. He is completely uneducated, and he smells of dead fish, and he is so dirty you can’t—” I stopped and looked out a nearby window. I felt like I was betraying good-natured Benjamin by discussing his personal hygiene with a man who had received every kind of advantage in life.
“His name is Benjamin Whimble, and he has lived here all his life—the only child of a fisherman. My parents believe him to be harmless, and you must know how my mother feels about education.”
Hector collected himself, patting his slicked-back hair carefully and breathing in deeply. “I see, I see. It’s nothing, to be sure. Good for you, teaching one of this island’s indigents. I hear there are many out here, poor souls ignorant of the benefits of medicine and trained medical treatment. Indeed, something must be done, and a spot of education is the place to start.”
He stopped to give a practiced half bow to one of the ladies, who had flirtatiously called over to him. “I’d like to meet this Benjamin Whimble, to see what a real Banker is like. Perhaps our paths will cross this summer, since we seem to have something in common now,” he said pointedly.
We continued to waltz after that, but stiffly. His determined, bony arm held me tightly around my lower back, and I found I was holding my breath as we spun around.
When it was time to leave, he awkwardly escorted me out to the cart through the piles of sand surrounding the hotel. He picked his way through, one foot at a time, lifting his legs high as if marching in a cavalry and shaking his shoes with each step to get the sand out.
He jerked my arm down with him as he stumbled, then muttered about never having seen a place with such large quantities of suffering sand. I figured that Hector was more cut out for the fine northern streets of New Haven, Connecticut.
He finally let go of my arm and said to Daddy, “I’ve had such a superior time out here that I think I’ll stay on at the hotel for a bit, see the sights. Perhaps I’ll see about making some progress on the sad state of medicine on the island. Might be a good concept for my thesis, actually.”
He looked at me then, and I glimpsed something like hope in his eyes and a familiarity in his bearing. Even in my cool silk dress, I grew itchy.
Mama, still a bit green, cried, “We ’ll have to have you out to the cottage soon for supper!”
“How I’d love to see the house. People have been talking about it all over Edenton,” Hector said, looking me in the eye. “I hope to be seeing quite a lot of it this summer.”
Riding back on the cart, Mama gushed on and on about what a wonderful husband he would make for me, and how lucky I was to have received such a popular suitor, who had traveled all the way to Nags Head just to visit me.
She said that I had bewitched him so completely that he had decided to stay on the island indefinitely, most likely to venture a marriage proposal by the end of the summer season. Remembering his iron grip, I felt certain of the possibility.
And yet I found myself consumed with thoughts of Benjamin Whimble and how naturally he moved through the world. He walked—even through the largest of sand piles—with a virile self-assurance, in spite of the fact that he was dressed in tatters and he stunk like a dead fish baking in the sun.
He carved out an existence on this rough island with his own physicality, eating what he caught or hunted, riding a horse that had grown up on the sandy land, and fishing from a boat that he constructed himself with materials he had found washed on the shore.
He was charming, in a way that I had known only once before.
In that moment, I was sure that I never wanted to see Hector again, much less marry the man. But I was afraid to show Mama and Daddy even an inkling of my disdain. I would have to carry on with the courting.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Abigail Si
nclair
July 13, 1868
In a little time I began to speak to him, and teach him to speak to me. And first, I made him know that his name should be Friday, which was the day I saved his life. I called him so for the memory of the time. I likewise taught him to say Master, and then let him know that was to be my name.
—ROBINSON CRUSOE
THE CASTLE WAS AS TALL AS CHARLIE, ALMOST. OVER THE COURSE OF THE morning, our hours of work had transformed it from half a pail full of poorly congealed wet sand to an impressive structure, complete with a moat full of seawater and shells for windows, that soon caught the eye of every beachcomber out.
Hotel folks who had strolled south down the beach stopped to gaze at it and chat with Charlie, who had really done most of the work.
I kneeled in the damp sand to finish carving some stonework, with one eye on the upstairs windows. Mama would skin me alive if she caught me messing in the sand. Then she’d holler at me for not wearing a bonnet, especially in the midday sun.
I leaned back on my elbows and closed my eyes. The sun whitewashed my eyelids so that when I opened my eyes again, Winnie’s image was blurred, doubled in number.
She growled, “Master Charlie, you give me back that pot right now. That’s the best pot we got out here, and I don’t want you sandin’ it up.”
“But I need it, Winnie. Look at the big circles it makes!” Charlie cried.
Winnie sighed resignedly as she surveyed the bleak landscape. “I just can’t escape the sand. The beach is the devil’s work, you ask me. Just a tiny grain o’ sand can wreak a whole bunch o’ havoc. It’s my bet that hell itself is covered every inch in sand.”
Sweat trickled down my back as I gazed up the beach at the women in their bathing costumes, splashing in the surf on this humid day. Slapping a fly away from my cheek, I said to Winnie, “I think I’d like one of those bathing costumes after all.”
She eyed me with amusement. “Oh, would you now? If I remember correct, you swore you’d never be caught dead in one of those getups.”
“Well, I’ve changed my mind is all. It’s hot out here. I should be able to get myself wet.”
She cackled. “I ain’t sure your mama want you wearing one of those things. She say it all right for the children, but you … I wouldn’t count on it, Miz Abigail. Those women out yonder don’t know no better.”
She grabbed my face then and looked me over. She clicked her tongue and said, “And where your bonnet at? You know your skin gonna burn like dry kindlin’ on the fire! What your mama gonna say?”
“Am I burning?” I asked, patting my face, all of a sudden worried about having red skin for Ben. He would be here soon for his lessons.
“You ain’t peachy, that’s for sure. Best get on inside.”
Winnie was right. When I went to my bedroom and saw my face in the mirror, I almost screamed. It was the color of a lobster and about a hundred new freckles had appeared all over it. I scrubbed myself hard, hoping the freckles would come right off, and repinned my hair just in time to hear Ben’s footsteps on the porch outside my window.
His arms strained with what I thought might possibly be an enormous dead snapping turtle. He laid it down with a little thud.
He saw me in the window and said, “Uh-oh. Did someone forget her bonnet today?”
“Never you mind, Benjamin Whimble. I was helping with the sand castle over there and clean forgot about it.”
He laughed. “Forgot about it? I thought ladies like you wore bonnets morning, noon, and night.”
“The sun just felt so warm on my face. I couldn’t help myself.”
He took a couple of steps closer to me and peered critically at my face. “Woohoo, look at those freckles! Must be thousands of them.”
I put my hands over my face. “Look away, now.”
“Aw, I like them. They’re like glazing on a pie.”
I peeked through my fingers at him and saw that he was gazing at me fondly. “Well, are you going to tell me what that thing is?” I asked.
He looked to the shell with a burst of satisfaction. “Oh, right. I was fishing with my pap when I caught sight of this here cooter, making her way up a little stream. She was about the stubbornest one I’ve ever seen. But just look at the size of her!
“I dove on in after her and swam I don’t know how far under the water to catch her. Should have kept her myself, she was so heavy to carry. But I thought Winnie might know how to cook cooter stew, so I brought her on over.”
I leaned my head out the window to look at it. Its shell was a shiny olive brown, but I supposed its dead body was still curled up inside somewhere. “How do you know it’s a female?”
He laughed. “Stubborn, you know.”
“Ho, ho. Well, is she dead?”
“Oh yeah, I killed her and bled her for you.” He made a slicing motion across his neck.
I wrinkled my nose, thinking about Ben dismembering the turtle’s head, her blood draining. He was so nonchalant about killing sometimes.
I grabbed some teaching supplies and walked out through the cottage to the porch.
“We don’t eat whatever you call them—’cooters’—in Edenton. I doubt Winnie knows how to make the stew, either, but I’ll ask her.” I grinned. “First a wind chime, now a turtle. What’s next, Moby Dick?”
He scratched at his messy hair. “That’s a whale, right?”
I smiled. “A white one.”
He looked down at his naked feet on the dry wood of the porch. “Well, don’t count on that. Don’t think I ever seen a white whale, anyhow. But I always say, it would be a shame to arrive at the pearly gates not having enjoyed what God put on the Earth for us. Cooters included.”
I just nodded, thinking on the untold numbers of things I hadn’t done in my boxed-in seventeen years of life. Ideas of all I’d been missing out on multiplied like scurrying field mice in my mind.
After the lesson, I pulled Robinson Crusoe from the pile of things on the table. I spanned the pages with my thumb, the paper stirring up the air as it fanned from cover to cover. We had already read through three quarters of the book, I was amazed to see, as I removed the little leather bookmark.
This was my favorite part of the lesson, and sometimes I snuck glances at Ben while I was reading aloud, to see the rapturous expression on his face. At times my eyes would accidentally meet with his startling blue ones, and I’d hurriedly look back at the page. But sometimes Ben would be staring out to sea, lost in the story. I wondered what everything on the island looked like in Ben’s imagination, and if it looked the way it looked in mine.
From watching him under my eyelids the past few weeks I had learned that he paid the strictest attention to the parts of the book that bored me to death with their details, such as the building of Crusoe’s cave house or the descriptions of his tools.
Ben would nod and shout vigorously in approval at his craftsmanship, and outright marvel at Crusoe’s persistence in hunting and fishing. Then he would regale me with his own stories and techniques. I think he was proud that his very own occupations were written about in this book of literature.
In today’s reading Crusoe was finally about to have contact with another human being, after twenty-five years on the island with only himself, the goats, and his parrot Pol for company. A footprint had been found in the sand, and Crusoe was afraid for his life. Ben’s fingers drummed loudly on the table, and his right leg jiggled up and down as I read.
I sailed through the part about Crusoe saving Friday’s life from the savages, and the bit about making Friday his slave, until Ben interjected irritably, “I don’t get why Crusoe wants Friday to be his own personal slave. You’d think he’d be pleased enough with the company. Couldn’t Crusoe and Friday just be friends?”
My answer came too quickly for me. “It’s repayment for saving the man’s life. You can see that Friday doesn’t mind. He wants to help Crusoe.”
Ben snuffed through his nose. “Have you ever been saved by someone? Did
it turn you into a dog, your savior into your master?”
“I’ve never found myself in such a situation, thank God.”
“Well, ’course you haven’t. You have your book learning, and it’s mighty fine and all that. But I know about other things, about fishing, hunting, boat-building, and yes, since I have to do all these things on the water, I know about saving lives, when I have to.
“And if there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that men don’t go following around the one that saved them like a slave for the rest of their natural-born lives. Might invite ’em to supper or give ’em a haul of fish for their thankfulness, but slaving, no ma’am.”
“Maybe that was the custom in the early 1700s, when Defoe wrote the novel. Myself, I always try to take into account the historical framework surrounding a book. It’s part of the critical interpretation.” My didactic tone landed too heavy on the pine porch, even to me.
“You mean the part of history back when white folks decided that enslaving the blacks was a dandy idea? Seems to me Crusoe is a racist, plain and simple.”
A thick tar bubbled and stirred inside me. Crusoe, a racist? “No, I don’t see it that way at all.”
“You know, I find I don’t have as much in common with Crusoe as I thought I did,” he said petulantly, crossing his arms across his chest. “Friday. What kind of a knucklehead name is that, anyway?”
Ben’s words caught me off guard, as if an adorable, playful puppy had suddenly growled and bitten my finger with its needle-sharp teeth. I had no idea he felt this strongly about anything, except maybe fish.
He pointed agitatedly to the book, in which I was still marking the page with a forgotten index finger. “And ’course, the man’s black. What if he had been a white man? I bet it would have ended up an entirely different kind of book.”
“I don’t think so,” I said stubbornly.
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