Diann Ducharme

by The Outer Banks House (v5)

  The tables in the dining room had been removed, and the room was lined with chairs that faced a podium. It was a long way from the grandiosely old St. Paul’s, back home. Out here, we couldn’t even find a proper reverend. The wool-haired Reverend Weatherly was shipped all the way from Elizabeth City each and every Sunday to give us our sermons.

  But the effort was lost on me today. Episcopalianism was the furthest thing from my mind. I was still on the porch of the cottage, not in this makeshift house of God. New Testament passages had become the words of Robinson Crusoe, and hymns resounded with Ben’s easy, musical twang.

  During the sermon I thought of Run Hill, that haunted half-dead tree, and how Ben had looked when he stood at the top of the dune, looking down. As if everything below us was his kingdom, hard-earned and well-loved.

  I had never seen such adoration before, in anyone. This island was his religion. I wanted to see through his eyes, not just pages from a book, but everything out here that there was to see.

  I tried desperately to un-think Ben by helping Winnie in the kitchen that afternoon, much to her consternation.

  “Miz Abby, I don’t need you in here, a-stepping on my toes when I’m trying to get the supper made. Don’t you got something to read?”

  “I just want to help you is all. What can I do?” I asked, trying to stir a big pot of stewed vegetables, scallops, and mussels on the stove.

  She snatched the wooden spoon out of my hand. “If your mama saw you in here getting all mussed with Hector a-coming, she huff and puff so hard she start a hurricane to blowing! So scoot!” She shooed me out of the humid kitchen, pushing me on my back until I was in the dining room.

  I decided I could at least help lay the table. She couldn’t object to that, since Hannah was still out with Charlie and Martha, supervising their clam dig on the sound. And Winnie was frazzled nowadays, spending most of her free time waiting on Mama, who lay up in her bed all day, every day. She hadn’t even gone to Sunday worship with us.

  I was just taking the plates out of the china hutch when I heard a knock on the screen door of the western porch.

  I saw through the screen that it was Ben, and I was so happy to see him that my face flared from my chest to my forehead. We didn’t usually see each other on Sundays, and I had seen him every day this week. He had been unusually quiet and dedicated, too, as if he were in some kind of competition with himself.

  “Sorry to bother you, Abby,” he said, his voice shallow.

  “Please, come on in,” I said, holding the screen door open for him.

  Winnie hollered out from the kitchen, “Only if his feet is clean! I just done mopped every last sand grain from the floor, and you know I can’t stand grit under my shoes when I’m walking on a Sunday.”

  Winnie strove for perfectly clean floors on Sundays, even at the beach, where it was next to impossible. In Edenton, we referred to them as her “Sunday floors.”

  We both looked down at Ben’s filthy feet, which were absolutely caked in sand. With heavy eyes, he said, “I’ll walk ’round to the back. It ain’t no trouble, Abby.”

  I walked with him along the porch to the ocean side. Hardly anyone was out strolling this afternoon, it was so hot. I didn’t think I’d be able to sit outside with Ben for long, but I didn’t want him to go, either.

  To my surprise, Winnie elbowed her way out of the screen door with two glasses of sweet tea. “You always look to be spittin’ cotton,” she said to Ben.

  He smiled at her. “Thank you kindly, Winnie.” He drank the whole thing down in one rippling gulp and handed the glass back to her before she could go back inside.

  But she didn’t budge. For several long minutes, she just looked at the two of us sitting there, all alone. Finally she clicked her tongue, muttered something to herself, and banged her way back into the house.

  I snickered, but Ben just gazed at the sea, gently curling into crescents against the shore. “Is something wrong?”

  He stabbed his fingers through his crisp hair. “Oh, it’s been such a hot day is all. And it being Sunday today, you know. I just don’t care for Sundays anymore. And now it feels like God is punishing me with the heat.”

  He stopped himself then, and glanced at me as he fidgeted in his seat. “Your pap and me were out fishing off Roanoke Island, and we didn’t catch a thing. Your pap’s so downhearted, he plopped directly on a stool in the tavern and won’t be moved.”

  I smiled ruefully. “I can just picture it.”

  He said, “About the only thing halfway interesting was seeing your Madeleine and a few of those other folks sailing across the sound, heading to Roanoke Island for a day trip. She blew me a kiss.”

  “That’s Maddie for you. She told me she goes to the island sometimes, to get away from her parents. No telling what she does over there all day, unchaperoned.”

  He nodded. “Lots of visitors to the Banks like to go there, it’s such a pretty spot of land, and all alone like. It used to have a calming effect on me, but I guess I’ve grown tired of it.”

  I cocked my head at him. “Why would you grow tired of it?”

  “Oh, just gotten used to it, really. Beauty gets humdrum, you see it enough.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you at all,” I scolded. “What in the world is bothering you lately? You haven’t been yourself all week.”

  He shook his head and said nothing.

  I prodded, “It sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time on the island.”

  “I know it as well as I know Nags Head. It ain’t very big.”

  I smoothed my skirts with sweaty palms. I murmured, “I’d love to see the Lost Colony fort.”

  “Ain’t much to see, tell you the truth. Just a few old outlines,” he said. But then his face brightened up suddenly. “I could take you there, if you can get away sometime. You’d like it, I reckon. Full of history, more things to pack away in your brain.”

  I said as calmly as I could, “I’ll see if I can get away. Tomorrow morning, maybe.”

  My mind immediately conjured plausible excuses. I could tell Mama that some of the Edenton folks were going, too, maybe even Hector Newman. She would be pleased enough to let me go alone, most likely. And I doubted she would ever find out the truth.

  He said shyly, “You got time to teach me today? I don’t want to wreak havoc on your Sunday …”

  “Winnie would be more than happy to get me out of the cottage. And I like teaching you.”

  He narrowed his blue eyes at me. “You do?”

  “I think we’re doing pretty well, don’t you?”

  “I reckon we’ve both come a long way. Remember I couldn’t even spell my own name?”

  “And remember when I thought Robinson Crusoe a respectable gentleman?”

  As I walked into the bedroom to search for the teaching supplies, Winnie met me at the door. She scolded, “What you doing with that boy, Miz Abby? Your mama sure don’t want no hussy for a daughter. And it ain’t his day to get his learning—it’s the Lord’s day.”

  She knew as well as I did that Mama was so caught up in her own misery that she hardly cared about anything anymore, except marrying me off.

  I grabbed some pieces of chalk that had rolled under Martha’s bed. “He’s down in his spirits, Winnie. He’s crying out for education today, Sunday or no Sunday. Who am I to turn him down?”

  “You sure it’s the education he crying out for? He after right more than that.”

  I stopped collecting the supplies and stared at her. “You think he fancies me?”

  She cackled. “Miz Abby, if you have to ask me that, you are simpler than a Banker.”

  I grinned really big on the inside, then looked at her out of the corner of my eye. “You’re welcome to join us out there today.”

  “No ma’am, no thank you. I’ve got a meal to cook and about a hundred other things to tend to ’fore suppertime.”

  Then she grabbed for my arm, nearly causing me to spill all the supplies I had clutched to my ch
est.

  She whispered, “Don’t be getting that poor boy’s hopes up, now. You got to think on Mr. Hector. Think on your mama ’n’ daddy.”

  I bristled. “You think on Hector and Mama and Daddy. They hurt my head, the lot of them.”

  I heard her mumble, as I walked away, “I’ll marry Mr. Hector. And you can be my housemaid.”

  I laughed as I walked back out to the porch and sat myself next to Ben at the table, instead of sitting across from him at an angle as I usually did. I sat so close to him our thighs were almost touching. I could feel his bare skin’s heat clear through my layers of clothing.

  And instead of disgusting me, his sweat smelled earthy and primal. His dirty clothes looked humble. His bare feet even reminded me of Jesus.

  He didn’t seem to notice the change, though. He was as natural and as eager to learn as he always was. But my voice was high and watery as I read aloud from Robinson Crusoe.

  I ran my fingers under the lines in the book, very slowly, so that he could read along with me. As our eyes moved together over the pages, I experienced such an unusual feeling of intimacy. I felt him, without even touching him.

  He was attempting to say a few of the words with me. I had written a long list of regularly occurring words on a piece of paper for him to take home—words such as goat, sand, ship, shoot, Friday, and island. He had learned them all, and had even started adding words of his own to the list while we read.

  As we worked, the sun shifted lazily to the west, shining its gold through the windows from inside the house. It was blindingly bright, so that we had to shade our eyes to see the book. After a while, though, when the sun had moved a degree farther west, I saw the outline of Winnie’s lean body standing quietly near the open window. She had stopped to listen to us after all.

  With the light behind her, her white head scarf glowed like a dove in the dark house.

  I never did get a chance to lay the dining room table. Charlie and Martha had returned from the clam dig with muck in their fingernails and sunburn on their fair faces. They were also grumpy from exhaustion, and Hannah had eagerly taken over where I’d left off, glad to be done with them.

  Ben and I sat on the porch reading and writing until Winnie poked her head out the window, sending with it the scent of her hot seafood stew.

  “Mr. Hector and your daddy riding over now. Better call it a day,” she said sternly, furrowing her brow at Ben. It was Hector’s sixth supper here.

  Ben looked at me with a lopsided grin and said, “Don’t want to keep Hector waiting, now. Reckon he’s a punctual one, with a pock-etwatch and whatnot.”

  I handed him Robinson Crusoe. “See if you can string together some sentences tonight.”

  He stared at me, then rubbed his rough hand over the cover, as a zealot would caress a Bible. He nodded his head and smiled. “See you tomorrow, Abby. Thanks for the Sunday lesson.” Then he whispered, “Hotel docks, seven o’clock in the morning. Won’t be busy yet, so don’t be late.”

  I hurried inside to my bedroom to change my dress and wash my face, to try to ease the effects of the hot afternoon on my appearance. As I gulped down a glass of warm water from the pitcher, I could hear Mama upstairs, walking slowly around the room, getting ready for supper. The only person she dressed for nowadays was Hector.

  I heard Daddy and Hector clomp up the steps of the porch and scrub the sand off their shoes on the scraper. Daddy looked like hell warmed over, his beard and curly red hair uncombed and his clothing rumpled, but Hector was creaseless, as usual.

  He presented me with a large bouquet of perky orange lilies that he had carried with him. “These are all the way from Mother’s garden in Edenton. Cut just today and sent on the packet! A taste of home just for you, Abigail.”

  I knew that his mama had a fancy English garden, renowned in Edenton for its prizewinning blooms. Whenever we rode by the Eden Street house in our buggy, I always saw four or five servants tending it. I wondered what Hector would think if I told him that I preferred to do all the dirty work of gardening myself.

  But I just smiled politely and said, “They’re beautiful. Please tell your mama that I adore them. They held up awfully well on the trip over here.”

  I handed them to Hannah, who arranged them in a vase and set it on the table as a centerpiece. The petals flickered like flames in the light of the setting sun.

  We all seated ourselves at the dining room table. After Daddy’s quick blessing, Winnie and Hannah began to serve the food.

  Mama looked as if she was about to retch into her lap. “What is that stench? Is it seafood, Winnifred?”

  Winnie didn’t look at Mama when she said, “Mister Sinclair asked for it.”

  Mama looked to Daddy, who simply said, “You can’t deny us our seafood while we’re out here, Ingrid.”

  Winnie quickly said, “But I cooked extra biscuits for you, Miz Sinclair. Take as many as you please.”

  Mama took a deep breath and smiled at Hector. She then reached for the basket and took several of Winnie’s buttery biscuits. She created a little tower of them on her plate, like a child would.

  “I love seafood stew, myself. Tastes so fresh out here,” exclaimed Hector.

  Hector, particularly animated, occupied much of the table talk. He told us about his ongoing medical experiences with the Bankers, whom he said were highly superstitious and unusually resistant to any kind of medical assistance, even in the most dire of circumstances.

  “They still use herbs, and scoff at any kind of medicinal remedy. One little girl gave a full vial of my specially prepared cough medicine to her pet goat—perfectly healthy, I might add—then came and asked for more.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Living apart from the mainland has allowed them to live like savages. Something must be done to get them acclimated to modern medicine.”

  Daddy nodded along with Hector’s opinions, but he hadn’t spoken much at all, except to berate Charlie for dribbling stew on the tablecloth while he ate. He ate rapidly, spoon to bowl to mouth until the bowl was clean, and his whiskey glass had been empty for some time.

  I asked him, “How was Roanoke Island today, Daddy?”

  His spoon clattered in the bowl. “How did you know I was on the island?”

  I recalled Ben’s distressed demeanor today and suddenly had the feeling I shouldn’t have brought up Roanoke Island after all. But it was too late now.

  I said carefully, “Benjamin mentioned your recent interest in the island. He said you’ve been exploring over there.”

  “He told you that?” Daddy asked suspiciously, his voice loud with alcohol. “What else did he say?”

  Something was obviously wrong. I tried to keep my voice casual. “He came over today for some tutoring, and he mentioned your interest in Roanoke Island in conversation. That’s all.”

  Daddy just grunted and said, “Jesus Christ almighty. I need another drink.” He pounded his glass on the table for Winnie to fill.

  Mama cut in then. “Benjamin was here on a Sunday? You should have told him to leave.”

  I bit my lip. “Ben comes when he can. His visits don’t always coincide with your schedules. And you’re so ill these days, I think I would always be turning him away for lack of a chaperone.”

  It was painfully quiet for a second or two, as everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and stared at me.

  Hector broke the silence. “You should have called on me at the hotel. I am almost an official doctor, you know.”

  She looked at Hector apologetically. “I’ve been wanting to tell you, Hector. And your father as well. I’m expecting a child.”

  Hector’s pink lips curved upward. “My gracious! That’s wonderful news!”

  Charlie and Martha bounced up and down in their seats at the revelation.

  Charlie said, “I hope it’s a boy! I’m sick of girls.”

  Martha said, “If it is, let’s name him Benjamin!”

  Hector blinked maniacally for a second, then smiled flatly. />
  Mama looked down at her plate with a wormy smile. She murmured, “Girl or boy, I can’t tell. But I’ve never been more ill, I declare.”

  Hector was all business. “No wonder you don’t care for seafood! Well, don’t fret. I have just the remedy for morning sickness. Father uses it, so I’m sure you’ve taken it before. I’ll have my man bring the syrup over tonight. It should do the trick.”

  After big slices of apple cobbler, Hector asked to speak with me alone, and Mama and Daddy readily agreed. We walked out to the eastern porch, where just a couple of hours ago Ben and I had sat. The memory of him working over the paper with quill and ink, the way he had stroked the book when I gave it to him, made my full stomach lurch.

  We sat down on the rocking chairs, facing out to sea. The light was fading gradually, a candle slowly running out of wick. But the evening held on to the heat of the day.

  Hector said, “This cottage does have quite a view. You must be enjoying it.”

  “I am, most of the time. It is very isolated, though.”

  “Yes, I’ve noticed that. Maybe too much so.”

  His face to the dark ocean, he said sternly, “I don’t think it’s a very good idea for you to tutor this Benjamin anymore. He seems to be taking advantage of the situation here, and I cannot tolerate it.” I shook my head and tried to interject, but he pressed on. “Your mother seems very ill, your father is never here, and you are entirely too kind a person to tell this man no. This Benjamin is no gentleman, Abigail. You must send him away the next time he calls.”

  I cried out harshly, “I hardly think it’s your place to tell me what to do.”

  He looked surprised at my outburst. “I’m sorry, Abigail, if I upset you. But I called on you tonight to … I have been courting you for months. I’m sure you are aware of my intentions by now. And it doesn’t make me feel good about my chances with you when you’re entertaining a man at your home, and your parents aren’t even aware of his presence! I’m starting to question your judgment!”

  “I’m teaching him, not entertaining him. And my parents are the people who wanted me to tutor him in the first place. Question their judgment, not mine.”