Diann Ducharme (13 page)

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.

T
HE CASTLE WAS AS TALL AS
C
HARLIE, ALMOST
. O
VER 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.