Diann Ducharme

by The Outer Banks House (v5)

He looked at me with narrowed eyes, as if suddenly seeing me in a bright light. “But I guess you and your family were slave owners, and not too long ago at that. I bet your pap wishes he still had his slave shacks filled to the roofs.”

  My sunburn suddenly felt cool on my cheeks. “Pardon me, Mr. Whimble, but you are being rude. We have done nothing but help you! You will apologize for your criticism of my daddy, or I’ll have you fired from your guide job!”

  I accidentally kicked Ben’s shin under the table when I uncrossed my legs, but I couldn’t apologize.

  His face created a crookedly evil grimace I’d never seen him make before. “Now, you don’t have to go and tattle to your daddy. We’re just talking here, you know, having one of your ’critical inter-patations.’ I might as well ask you, though, where it is you stand on the issue of black and white, being a planter’s daughter your whole life. What’s it like having folks serve you all day, every day?”

  The sickening sludge inside me was sloshing around, hot and thick. I couldn’t tell him that I thought it was a comfortable life, a happy life, while it had lasted.

  I said quietly, “I suppose not many folks on the Banks owned slaves before the war.”

  There were no plantations, no extensive fields of tobacco, rice, or cotton for the Bankers. Slavery had likely never taken hold on the islands, with nothing to grow except vegetables, nothing to sell except fish and feral horses.

  “Guess you could say we’re our own slaves out here on the Banks. We each do our own work. It’s just our way.”

  His self-righteousness irked me. I said, “And I suppose you all get along like pie out here. One big happy family of white and black.”

  “There’s good and bad of both colors. But I have lots of Negro friends, sure. I’d trust them with my life.”

  “We care for our Negroes. They’re like our family members. We all get along fine. We know where the other stands. And we are helping them to have better lives. We have made Christians of them, and take them to church with us.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Better lives? Christians? You don’t actually believe that manure, do you? Somebody fed you that stuff, and you ate it up and licked the plate clean. You’re not fooling anyone with all that do-good talk.”

  My rage lowered my voice to a hiss. “My uncle Jack died fighting for the South. He was the best man I have ever known. And our Negroes loved him. They saw his goodness.”

  I could hardly discuss my dear uncle with this disgusting fisherman who didn’t know me at all.

  “I’m sorry about your uncle, I truly am, but he died in vain, fighting to keep black folks in bondage. Owning other people just ain’t right.”

  I shook my head. “I love Winnie like my own mother! She didn’t leave us after the war, because she cares for our family. Can’t you see that? We have given her a home, with a bed, and good food. You can’t call that wrong.”

  “Are you that simple? You don’t even know the hardships she’s had to endure at the hands of your family. As for the woman’s bed, I’ve seen her sleeping in a hammock on your porch! I don’t see any of you sleeping out of doors. You should ask her sometime how she really feels about you folks!”

  He was an insufferably ignorant buffoon. I couldn’t even look at him anymore. “How dare you judge me, my family? What do you know about anything, Benjamin Whimble? Fishing? Hunting? Anyone can do those things, and probably better than you can!” An angry tear squirted from my eye and ran for its life down my cheek. “You don’t fool me. You’re an expert at killing, not some benevolent nature saint, like you want me to think. You take the lives of ducks and geese looking for a place to rest, a bite to eat. You ambush those beautiful waterbirds for their feathers! For ladies’ hats! And you lay down nets at the exact spots fish come to lay their eggs. You chase down turtles for stew! So be careful who you judge, Benjamin. We all take advantage when we can. You’re no better than anyone else.”

  He looked at me, his face a mask of gray revulsion. “I reckoned you to be a different kind of gal, Miss Sinclair. But you ain’t nothing special after all.”

  He stood up and walked quickly down the porch steps, taking out a little piece of paper from a trouser pocket and throwing it down in the sand.

  “Don’t bother coming back here, Benjamin. You’re not welcome!” I hollered, even though he had already disappeared around the corner of the cottage.

  I stood up slowly on trembling legs, my head throbbing in shock. Ben’s scrap of paper skittered over the sand like a gull feather. I stumbled down the porch steps and chased after it. It was a torn piece of old envelope, folded in half. My name was written on the outside: “Deer Abee.”

  I opened it to see Ben’s childlike lettering over every inch of the paper. He had tried to write in smaller letters than he normally did, so that he could fit everything he wanted to say on the little paper.

  “Heer iz the res apee fer cootr stu.”

  He went on and on, describing in minute detail how to make a stew from the turtle’s meat. At the bottom of the paper, he wrote, “keep the shel fer a stu bole.”

  He thought he was so smart. Didn’t he realize that Winnie couldn’t even read a recipe card?

  Keep the shell for a bowl, he wrote. How lovely. I could just imagine proper company taking notice of it on our dining room table back home.

  As I crumpled the note in my hand, I hiccupped laughter through a stream of tears. I looked over at the turtle shell sitting innocently on the porch, the headless body curled inside somewhere.

  Winnie walked up beside me and placed her big warm hand on my miserable head. “Don’t you worry none, Miz Abby. This messed-up world ain’t nothing to do with you.”

  I turned to look at her with my sore eyes. She had somehow been listening to our every word. “Were you spying on us? For Mama? Even you don’t trust me to act a lady?”

  She shook her head. “Your mama don’t know nothing about me setting at the window, so don’t you be saying nothing about it, mind?”

  “But why?”

  She looked at me with the mischievous eyes of a child and recited the alphabet, right there on the beach. Then she bent over and, with her forefinger, scrawled her name in the sand.

  I realized then that Ben hadn’t been the only person I was teaching. She must have been standing right by the porch window during the lessons, memorizing and reciting along with Ben.

  But the thought of Winnie, sneaking around in the name of learning, pulled me down with a bucket of sadness. She was trapped in her dark skin even though the slaves had been free for three years now.

  Mercy! All around me people were yearning for just the smallest amount of education. Twenty-six letters, that was all. They all lined up in my mind now, a row of orderly sticks and curls. Five vowels, twenty-one consonants. Endless combinations, and the basis of all education.

  In Winnie’s handsome face I saw myself, a baby in her rocking black arms. The seed of racism grew inside me even then, an infant in the arms of a slave. It was as common and as simple as the alphabet, the origin of all of my future learning. Since then, it had penetrated and poisoned each and every part of my mind. I doubted I could even think without it.

  I grabbed Winnie’s hand and held it so tightly I thought I’d break the bones in both of our hands.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Abigail Sinclair

  July 18, 1868

  But I wronged the poor honest creature very much, for which I was very sorry afterwards. However, as my jealousy increased, and held me some weeks, I was a little more circumspect, and not so familiar and kind to him as before; in which I was certainly in the wrong, too, the honest grateful creature having no thought about it, but what consisted with the best principles, both as a religious Christian and as a grateful friend, as appeared afterwards to my full satisfaction.

  —ROBINSON CRUSOE

  I DIDN’T EXPECT BEN, EVEN THOUGH I SAT MYSELF IN A ROCKER ON THE porch every afternoon, watching the shell chime dangle in the breeze. I squ
inted at the male beachcombers as they strolled up and down the shore, but they didn’t have to get very close for me to pick out their unnatural gaits and virginal skin.

  I wanted to reread Robinson Crusoe, to try to see the book with fresh eyes, to figure out what went wrong that day and try to make things right again. I opened it up to where we’d left off and read a couple of sentences, but I was distracted by some grains of sand that had lodged themselves along the spine of the book, and the pages that had warped a bit in the humid air. I closed the book without swiping the sand away. And now it stared at me from the porch table, its innocuous brown cover disguising its questionable contents.

  As the afternoons dragged by, my spirits deflated so markedly that Winnie hurried to procure some cloth and a pattern from New Bern. The package had arrived midweek, and she was still busily sewing my bathing costume. Whether Mama had given her approval for it or not remained a mystery. Except for Winnie, no one had laid eyes on her for days. We just heard her hollering for lemonade and toast.

  Winnie kept holding the ugly gray thing up for me to see, hoping to cheer me. It looked like a dress with bloomers. I couldn’t imagine it taking on water very well. And now that Ben had disappeared from my days, I found I didn’t really want to splash in the surf anymore. I felt idle and useless.

  To make myself feel better, I had insisted that Winnie cook the cooter stew.

  I dragged her out to the porch to show her the shell. “I ain’t even trying to feature how to clean that thing,” she had said, her hands planted on her hips.

  “Well, at least it’s missing its head,” I said. “One less appendage to worry about.”

  She clicked her tongue. “Lord have mercy.”

  Together, we read the recipe that Ben had written. Then she sighed, picked the turtle up from its resting spot on the porch, and carried it away to the kitchen house. A few minutes later I could hear her hollering for Hannah to come help her pry the bottom shell off.

  With dollops of cream and a shot of brandy in each of the bowls, the warm stew was savory, and the turtle meat was so delicate that it seemed to melt on my tongue. I could taste the clear blue sound water, the mysterious plants and animals that had sifted through the turtle’s blood. It made me think of Ben, and the things he knew about the Banks, the things he cherished.

  I felt closer to him with each bite. I ate until I was more than full, and I was a bit happier than when I’d started.

  Ben finally returned to the cottage when Daddy arrived for the weekend. Saturday morning I heard his voice outside, on the western side of the cottage, talking with Daddy about the day’s fishing plan. Just hearing his good-natured drawl for those brief minutes made me want to cry out his name through an open window like a lunatic.

  But I just sat on my bed, staring at Moby-Dick. As the day wore on, I got the worst headache I’ve ever had. Winnie said it was from squinting at a book in the sun, but I knew very well that I hadn’t read an entire page in days.

  Dreams of water coursed through my turbulent sleep that night. Rain and ocean waves pooled and puddled all over the hazy images. In one dream, Ben and I sat on the porch, but his face was wet and his clothes dripped. He looked skeptically toward the clouded sky and said, “We’re in for some weather, I reckon. Best batten your shutters.”

  But when I looked at the sky, I saw only sun shining, absolutely no hint of bad weather at all. Nothing was for certain here in Nags Head, and I found this oddly comforting. I said confidently, “You never know, Ben. Some things are too unpredictable to know for sure.”

  Distant thunder shook the air, and the waves crashed with determination. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Oh, some things there’s no mistaking. Sometimes a man just knows things.”

  I wanted to strangle him for his stubbornness. “From where I sit, it’s sunny. Just look at that sky and you’ll see!” I pointed and pointed at the endless blue.

  He turned around to look, and when he did, the light around us was almost yellow. Dark clouds were marching in earnest down the shoreline. The waves were rocky crags, blown by the northeast wind.

  I felt horribly embarrassed. “You were right, Ben. It looks like a storm is coming.”

  He nodded and smiled at me, with affection in his eyes. I wanted to tell him that I missed him, really missed him something awful, but my mouth wasn’t working right. The dream dissolved before I could find the right words.

  I felt I had just fallen asleep when I heard Winnie’s nimble footsteps cross the floorboards of my bedroom. Before I could even wonder what she was up to, she banged the shutters closed and shut the bedroom windows.

  She muttered to my closed eyelids, “Be a miracle if I can cook up a hot breakfast today, with that storm a-ragin’.”

  “Storm? What storm?” I mumbled.

  She scoffed. “‘What storm,’ she say.” Then I heard the rain scouring the roof upstairs. And the ocean roared too closely, the wind whistled too high. I hastily dressed and walked into the parlor, where Charlie and Martha and even Mama perched on the edges of their chairs.

  With the shutters closed and the storm water plopping monotonously into a little tub in the sitting room, the house mourned the change in weather. Winnie and Hannah darted to and fro, taking up the rugs and filling crevices around the windows with small rags.

  The wind raged against the screen door, which lacked a proper latch. It squeaked open, and then banged erratically every few seconds or so, making us all lurch.

  Mama’s face was green, but there was life in her eyes. She likely still wished to be in bed, instead of sitting with us in this sad state of affairs. But during the night the water had leaked through the shingles on the roof and soaked her bed linens, so she hadn’t had much of a choice. The linens wouldn’t be dry for a long while.

  In silence, we fiddled with our cold oatmeal and stale bread. Winnie’s efforts to keep the cook fire going were soundly unsuccessful.

  Mama slammed her hand down on the table, causing bowls and glasses to jump. “Curse your daddy for building this house on the beach! Where is he, now that we need him? Left us just in time, and didn’t even stay for church!”

  She got up from the table, white-faced and shaking, and began pacing the length of the rattling house.

  Then Charlie wailed, “I want my daddy! Daddy, Daddy, help us!”

  And Justus, who was hovering nearby, hollered, “Mark my words, this pine-wood house gonna be our coffin! Oh Lordy!”

  Hannah taunted, “Justus, hush up, you scaring the children.”

  Then Martha started crying, “I don’t like this! I want to go home!” And Winnie went to rock her in her arms.

  Nobody ate much after that, not that we had much appetite to begin with. I got up and cracked open the door to the eastern porch and, feeling confrontational, stepped out into the powerful wind.

  I’d never seen the ocean so angry. As far as I could see, the water snarled, its teeth sharp-peaked white caps.

  Blotchy-faced Charlie and Martha soon peeked out the door after me, their eyes wide, and I gathered them closely to me. After days of existing peacefully with the land, sweetly lapping the shore like a cow licking salt, the ocean was fighting the earth in a fierce battle for territory.

  Sea spray filmed my face and wet my hair, and my sleeves soon clung uncomfortably to my arms.

  Charlie suddenly pointed out to the sea, scaring me nearly to death with his yelling. “Look, Abby! I think that ship is in trouble! Over there, see?”

  I looked through the driving rain and dark clouds to see a ship turned brokenly on its side, caught on an outer bar far out in the ocean. Its mast leaned almost completely sideways, like a bird mired in the dirt with a broken wing. Water washed relentlessly over the hull.

  My stomach clenched in panic as I tried to figure out what I should do. Perhaps we had a whistle or something, maybe some pots and pans to bang!

  But before I had time to run back to the kitchen I saw six men in puffy dark jackets come boltin
g down the beach, pulling a boat outfitted with oars. Without hesitation they dragged the boat quickly into the water, their legs pushing insistently through the raging surf. Once they got it out a ways, they jumped into it, facing seaward. Their strokes cut through the waves, but they made slow headway in the dips and crests marching their way.

  I watched them in a trance as the boat bobbed wildly on the waves, until the gray sheet of rain and swirling mist swallowed them up.

  Several people—hotel guests and locals alike—were also making their way to the beach to take in the scene. They stood on the wet sand, their Sunday clothes covered in blankets. Eventually Mama, Winnie, and Hannah came out to the porch as well, attracted by the unfolding story of the sailors and the brave men who were trying to save them.

  It seemed we stood on the porch for hours before we could see anything that indicated life. And then a terrifying sight—two oars from the rowboat came washing violently ashore. Everyone pointed to them, exclaiming loudly over the bad omen, but no one went to fetch them. They just stuck in the wet sand as the waves washed over them.

  Finally I saw the lifeboat, rocking helplessly. Five men were inside, one of whom appeared to be a slumping sailor from the wreck. A few of the men on the beach ran out into the thrashing water to try to grab the boat as it slowly drew toward shore.

  I scampered down the steps with one of our wool blankets, out into the pelting rain and wind. Charlie and Martha cried after me to come back, but I had seen something far out in the white-capped sea—something moving and splashing. I hollered out to the crowd of people up the beach and pointed with an outstretched arm to the speck of movement.

  But no one could hear me above the commotion; they were busy tending to the weary men who had come ashore on the boat.

  I watched helplessly as the awkward splashing slowly grew closer. I could see that it was one of the local men, wearing the telltale life vest, and he was dragging a man along with him as he swam one-armed through the water. As they neared the shore, the waves pushed them both out to the beach, tired of the game.