Isle of Dogs

  “I’m sorry,” Dr. Faux told God. “I had it coming. Kind of like Jonah saying he wasn’t going to Nineveh, so you said ‘Guess again’ and had that big whale swallow him up and spit him out on Nineveh, after all. I ask you not to make me wake up and find myself in the Congo, God. Or Zaire, as it was called last I heard. It’s bad enough to be where I am right this minute.”

  Fonny Boy was sitting on the floor, leaning against a wall inside the medical supply room. He was hot and itchy from insect bites and already weary of guard duty, but when the dentist had started praying out loud, clearly oblivious to Fonny Boy’s presence, he had slowly lifted anchor and puttered away from his favorite fantasy of pulling in a crab pot and finding a treasure chest in it that was filled with gold and jewels. His obsession with sunken ships was probably the only reason he could force himself out of bed every summer, holiday, and weekend morning at two o’clock when his father woke him up and they headed off to the docks in the golf cart. As Fonny Boy ate a fried oyster or crab breakfast sandwich, he would imagine himself hauling up a crab pot and finding it was snagged on a sunken picaroon ship, or maybe one of the crabs would be holding on to a gold coin or a diamond.

  There were several self-published legends of the island that most of the gift shops sold, and Fonny Boy had read them all because of his interest in maritime history and salvage. His favorite story was of an incident that occurred in February of 1926 when strange winds and tides lowered the shallow waters of the bay just offshore and revealed the hulk of an old rotting ship, a picaroon ship, Fonny Boy was sure, because a battle-ax was found along with fine china and other artifacts that the watermen quickly sold to a visiting antique dealer from New York.

  Unfortunately, the waters rose rapidly and the ship was never seen again. Fonny Boy had done the math. If the picaroon ship had survived several centuries in the bay, then certainly another quarter of a century or so wouldn’t have made that much difference. It was still out there somewhere, but unfortunately, no one remembered exactly where it was sighted during that long-ago cold winter.

  The other possibility Fonny Boy entertained was that the sunken ship might be a Spanish one that in 1611 stopped at Old Point Comfort in what is today Hampton, Virginia. The ship might have been sent by King Phillip III of Spain to spy on the people of Jamestown and see what they were up to. Other historians believe the Spaniards were, in fact, searching for another vessel that had sunk in the area. Why go to all that trouble unless there was treasure on the ship that sank? Fonny Boy reasoned. There wasn’t much going on in the new English settlement except the people were hiding inside the fort to avoid the Naturals, who were very fickle, from what Fonny Boy had read—one minute bringing the settlers maize, the next minute greeting them with a storm of arrows.

  Fonny Boy had always taken sides with the Naturals. He supposed that to the Naturals, the settlers were rather much like the strangers the Islanders tolerated most of the time but didn’t particularly trust or like. Why was it that strangers were always looking down on people who were Naturals or local? Strangers ought to be called Unnaturals and should be pitied because they are the ones who need taxi rides and don’t know the best place to eat or how to grow corn and have to pay a quarter to peek at peelers, as if molting blue crabs were some exotic creature like a panda bear or an anaconda.

  Dr. Faux had fallen silent as the sun slipped into the Chesapeake Bay and restaurants and gift shops closed sharply at six. Although the dentist couldn’t see because of the brackish-smelling bandanna, he could feel the temperature dramatically shift as night began to cloak the island and a cold front blew in. It was clear he would not be going anywhere anytime soon. No one, including the Coast Guard, visited Tangier after dark, when fog rolled in and obscured the eroding shore and what was left of the airstrip. Only the watermen’s work boats could move about freely when conditions were poor, but that did Dr. Faux not a bit of good, since he knew from experience that the Islanders were stubborn and not inclined to change their minds. No one was going to let him go home, perhaps ever.

  “You keep me here tied up like this,” Dr. Faux said out loud, because he thought he had heard a stirring inside the room a few minutes ago, “then who’s going to take care of your teeth? That you in here, Fonny Boy?”

  “Yea.” Fonny Boy’s answer was followed by several blows on the harmonica.

  “I would like to know what the plan is, if you don’t mind telling me,” the dentist said.

  “Depends on the gov’ner,” Fonny Boy repeated what the watermen had discussed among themselves after taking the dentist hostage. “If the stripes stay on the road, then there is no hope for you. We had wer fill of Virginia and are sick and tard of the way we is treated and don’t want to go to the jail for speeding in the golf carts and don’t want NASCAR building a racetrack so they can make a barrel. And we plan to really fix you for what you done to wer teeth, making out that you care when it ain’t so!”

  “NASCAR?” Dr. Faux was stumped. “Have you ever been to a NASCAR race, Fonny Boy?”

  “Yea!” he exclaimed, lifting his eyebrows and tightening his jaw, meaning he was talking backward and saying no.

  “Well, I can’t tell if you mean yes or no, but I assure you, NASCAR has no intention of coming here and there is no barrel of money to be made from stock-car racing or anything else on this island.”

  “The police say so. And if the gov’ner don’t do what he orte do and stop steering us up, we going to set out all the bateaus and form a blockate around the island and raise a flag with a jimmy on it and burn up the Virginia flag! And you made a barrel here on Tanger, now ain’t that right, Dr. Faux?”

  “You’re going to raise a flag with a male crab on it and commit treason?” Dr. Faux was shocked and persisted in side-stepping the boy’s accusations about the dentist’s honesty. “That would cause another civil war, Fonny Boy. Do you realize the serious consequences of such a hostile act?”

  “All I know is we had wer fill,” Fonny Boy said with defiance and a bit of a swagger in his voice.

  “Well, I tell you, son, I’ve visited your island for many years,” Dr. Faux confessed. “And it’s no coincidence that I don’t choose to live here. My point is, if you want a chance in life, Fonny Boy, you’ve got to do the smart thing, which in this case is listening to me.”

  “Listening to you is not much count,” Fonny Boy replied with a few toots on the harmonica, not letting on that his interest was snagged by what might just prove to be a transaction of some sort.

  “Listening to me has plenty of value. Because doing the smart thing might just give you an opportunity. Maybe there’s something special out there for you, Fonny Boy. But if you go along with these people that have me locked up in here, there’s a good possibility you’ll end up in trouble and spend the rest of your life on this tiny, eroding island, selling crabs and souvenirs and playing the harmonica. You got to help me get out of here, and if you do, maybe I’ll take you with me back to Reedville and you can work in my office and learn to drive a real car.”

  “If I carry you to shore, what you gonna do? Throw silver dollars at me?” Fonny Boy asked sarcastically as he blew out an unrecognizable rendition of “Yankee Doodle.”

  “You know what a recruiter is?” Dr. Faux said smoothly. “Well, I’ll tell ya. I could put you to work going around and finding needy children whose teeth require a lot of work their families can’t afford. You bring them in to my Reedville clinic and I’ll give you ten dollars for every kid. When you learn to drive, I’ll find you a car. We don’t have to come back here to this impoverished little island ever again.”

  Fonny Boy had a lot to think about and it was time to head home for supper. He walked out of the storage room, shutting the door hard to make sure the dentist heard him leave, and failing to inform him that water and a tray of food would be delivered momentarily. Fonny Boy felt a pinch of guilt as he got on his bicycle and pedaled away from the clinic, still working on “Yankee Doodle.” Maybe he should have bee
n a little kinder to Dr. Faux and told him food and drink were on the way. Maybe he should work harder to do what he had been taught in church, but getting involved in military and mutinous activities sharpened Fonny Boy’s edge.

  He felt a bit feisty and in a mood to commit mischief and mayhem. He played his harmonica loudly and rode his bicycle faster than usual, speeding up full tilt when he crossed the two painted lines on Janders Road. Fonny Boy pumped furiously through chilly air and moonlight, scarcely acknowledging his aunt Ginny, who was headed to the clinic in a golf cart.

  “Heee!” she called out to him as they passed each other in the road. “Doncha play the juice harp in the evening! You gonna drive the neighbors star-crazy!”

  Fonny Boy tooted out a loud, rebellious reply and wished he hadn’t swallowed the cotton again. Last time, it had clogged him up for a week, moving through his guts and criks with the slow purpose of a glacier until finally working its way out when he was in the bateau with his father, not a toilet or land in sight.

  When Ginny walked into the storeroom moments later carrying a tray of crab cakes, hot rolls, and margarine, Dr. Faux was praying again.

  “. . . Amen, dear Lord. I’ll get back to you later. That you, Fonny Boy?” the dentist asked hopefully. “Lord have mercy, it’s freezing in here. Where’d this winter weather come from all of a sudden?”

  “Blowed in from they bay. I got supper and water.”

  “I need to use the bathroom.” Dr. Faux was embarrassed to talk this way in front of a woman whose mouth he had excavated and exploited for years.

  Ginny said “yea,” as long as he promised to return to the folding chair and didn’t mind her tying him up and covering his eyes with the bandanna again.

  “If you tie me up and put on the bandanna, I won’t be able to eat,” Dr. Faux complained as Ginny freed him and he squinted in the dim light of the storeroom.

  “I’ll sit right here without you don’t come back from doing your business, and on the back of that, I didn’t come over for to tell you nothing.” It was Ginny’s way of saying she’d leave him alone while he used the toilet, unless he tried something sneaky, like escaping, and in addition, she had no intention of giving him any sort of information.

  While the dentist headed to the bathroom, she settled herself on a box of free antibacterial soap samples and ruminated about the speed traps, NASCAR taking over the island, and what the trooper had suggested about the Islanders’ criminal dental care. She and several other women had convened at Spanky’s and set out to spread the word to the entire Tangier population by posting signs on chain-link fences and all the shops and restaurants. They had even told the ferryboat captains, who promised to incorporate the NASCAR news and dental fraud alerts into their guided tours as they carried visitors back and forth between Crisfield and Reedville.

  Dr. Faux returned to his folding chair and asked Ginny how her dentures were holding up.

  “The same,” she said. “And now and again I feel a bit squamish from when you pulled them last teeth the other week. I spewed up the evening ’fore last.”

  “If you’re feeling nauseated and throwing up, it must be a bug of some sort,” Dr. Faux misinformed her. “And it sounds to me like your new dentures are clacking a little bit.”

  “When the cream wores off, they do.”

  “Well, if you need another tube of adhesive cream, you can pick up one while you’re here.” Dr. Faux hungrily ate a crab cake. “They’re in the middle cabinet in the examination room.”

  Ginny silently watched him eat and began to struggle with deep resentment that was inching toward hate. She was a solid church woman and knew that hate was a sin, but she couldn’t seem to help herself as she watched the greedy, indifferent dentist stuff food into his mouth.

  “I always thought you was the best I ever knew at teeth, Dr. Faux,” she finally blurted out. “But now I seen you for the truth, and you learned me we shouldn’t trust neither one nei-ther more. We’re of a mind what things you been doing on us. I’m just so out of heart about it, and was thinking as much when I was renching the dishes right afore I brung your dinner. We gave you all what we could, mostly food and good words, when you come here to help us, and then what you did! Why bimeby, you got aholt of each and ever one of us and mommucked up our mouths so you could get mor’n you was supposed to from the gov’ment!”

  “My dear Ginny, you know that’s simply not so,” Dr. Faux said in a cajoling tone. “For one thing, government officials audit dentists constantly and check for things like that. I could never get away with it, even if it would ever enter my mind. And I swear and kiss the Bible,” he tossed out one of the Islanders’ favorite exclamations, “that what I’m saying to you is true!”

  “That’s all over!” Ginny declared, indicating she’d heard enough of his tales.

  Huh, Ginny bitterly thought. A cold day in Heck it would be when some government agent took the ferry out here and tried to poke around in the Islanders’ mouths, looking to see if certain work had really been done or was necessary. She tried to pray away the hate in her heart by reminding herself that were it not for Dr. Faux, she wouldn’t have dentures or adhesive cream or free samples of mouthwashes. She supposed she would have no teeth of any sort, except for the real ones that Dr. Faux had claimed he had no choice but to extract because of abscesses, root fractures, bad enamel, an overbite, and she forgot what else.

  “I don’t want to hate neither one,” she silently prayed, but reality settled on her like a huge stone she could not push away.

  The truth, of course, was that she had been rather shocked to discover she had such major dental problems, but she had trusted Dr. Faux. The truth was, that up until a few years ago, her teeth were fine and people were always talking about her pretty smile. Why, she hadn’t had a cavity since childhood, and then suddenly, she didn’t have a single tooth left in her head. The more she brooded over this as she locked up the clinic and headed down the dark street, the more she began to entertain a host of poisonous thoughts about Dr. Faux. How many times had he told her that all of the Islanders were born with bad teeth and Tangier Disease due to inbreeding? How many times did she hear yet one more tale about someone’s fillings falling out or a root canal going bad or a crown that looked like a piano key cracking smack in half for no good reason?

  Huh, she thought with gathering agitation and grief as she crossed the painted lines on Janders Road. Maybe they ought to hold Dr. Faux hostage until all of his teeth fell out. Maybe he ought to have clacking dentures that didn’t fit right and caused a lot of gum soreness and missed meals. Maybe he ought to spy an ear of sweet corn and feel overwhelmed by nostalgia and loss, or be embarrassed when it sounded like he was playing the castanet while he talked on the phone.

  “Honey, you look a norder! Why, you’re sob wet!” Ginny’s husband noticed that she was sobbing as she rushed inside the house and slammed the door.

  “I want my teeth!” she cried out hysterically.

  “You remember whar you laid ’em last?” he asked, as he began walking around, looking for the glass jelly jar she usually soaked her dentures in. “Well, I swanny!” he suddenly said as he put on his bifocals. “Durn if they’re not in your mouth, Ginny!”

  AN HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE

  by Trooper Truth

  At a glance, it may not seem entirely honest of me to call this digression a footnote, because it should be plain to the reader that the text is not preceded by a number, nor is it at the bottom of a page.

  However, a footnote doesn’t have to mean a reference designated by a number that we find in works of nonfiction, textbooks, and term papers. A footnote can also indicate something of lesser importance. For example, it could be said that until a few years ago, Jamestown was nothing more than a footnote in history, since most people believed that the U.S. really began at Plymouth and that’s why we celebrate Thanksgiving. Although schoolbooks still devote scant attention to Jamestown, at least our nation’s first lasting English settlement h
as made it into accepted educational writings and is not relegated to a footnote, literally.

  In the high school textbook The American Nation, I’m pleased to report, Jamestown is discussed on pages 85 and 86. Sadly, however, my 1997 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica offers only an eighth of a page on Jamestown and leads one to believe that there is nothing left of the site except replicas of the ships the settlers sailed on from the Isle of Dogs. The replicas are actually about a mile west of the original fort and are part of what is called the Jamestown Settlement, which is also a replica, I reluctantly point out, but worth visiting as long as you realize that the first settlers did not construct the twentieth-century buildings, restrooms, food court, souvenir shops, parking lots, and ferry, any more than they sailed on the fabricated ships moored in the river.

  I find it rather embarrassing that when you visit Jamestown, there are numerous signs directing you to the Settlement and only one or two that point you in the direction of the original site. So you can choose to visit the fabricated Jamestown or the real one, and many tourists choose the former because of the conveniences, possibly. Of course, when the Settlement was built, it was believed that the original site had eroded into the river, which explains why Virginia thought a fabrication was the best the Commonwealth could offer.

  “The point is,” I said to my wise confidante, “people accept as truth things that are fabrications or at the very least can’t be proven,” and I went on to give my wise confidante the example of how Tangier Island supposedly got its name.

  The story goes that when John Smith discovered the uninhabited island we now assume is Tangier but may in fact be Limbo, he was vividly reminded of a town called Tangier on the south side of the Strait of Gibraltar, in North Africa. He was thus inspired to name the new island in the New World Tangier Island, which seems an apocryphal tale to me.